The Napsterfication of Learning
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7:54PM I’ve recently enjoyed the honour of being invited to present keynote talks at conferences in the UK and US. I rarely give talks at my own events so it’s great to have the opportunity to attend and speak at others.
My general topic has been “Disruption, Innovation and Learning” that being the theme for LWF during 2011 and usually why I’ve been invited. However I like to customise my talks to the audience whom I’m addressing and the general themes of the events themselves plus I don’t like giving the same talk twice.
Will you choose the red pill or the blue pill?
The events I’ve attended have been well organised and well attended with interesting and many inspiring delegates so my comments here are not intended as a critique but a general observation about the teaching profession and our existing formal establishments for learning. Each event has, by their nature, attracted progressive educational thinkers, practitioners and innovators with a keen interest in deploying the kind of technologies that many young people are already using as opposed to the kind of bone-headed technology that has been forced upon many learners by less enlightened practitioners.
However, what has become clear to me during the events I have participated in as a speaker as well as the events I have hosted is that whilst the discussions are around potentially disruptive technologies such as mobile, video games and social media the real impact of these technologies, like an elephant dancing on the table, is rarely considered.
Common themes emerge such as how we might integrate these technologies into the classroom or within existing teaching practice rather than how these technologies might genuinely change or disrupt the way we teach and learn.
So are we to go through another cycle of missed opportunity as a result of trying to fit the 21st century into the 19th?
Are we really going to carry on talking about how we might use clunky learning platforms on mobile and gaming devices? How we might integrate iPads with Interactive White Boards? How the over-priced and over-maintained LMS might integrate with gaming platforms? How we might apply gaming mechanics to tired educational software? How we might enable the teacher with admin rights or other controls on a learners personal device?
I could go on ad-nausea here but I think you get my point.
There’s been an on-going industrial-institutional complex at play here for at least the past 30 years that has ensured the continued irrelevance of technology to learning in the formal setting which has been a gift to those in government who would like to opt our learners out of the 21st century and return to back to basic teaching practice. This would be fine of course if our learners where joining a back to basics, 1950’s world after they leave their formal education.
You know what I’m talking about here, technology designed to replicate and support existing teaching practices and formal learning environments which quite frankly haven’t changed a great deal since the mid-20th century. As I’ve oft said the problem with this approach is that we get the same, often mediocre, results only quicker.
What do young people say?
When I retired the Handheld Learning Conference after 5 years at the height of its growth and success (2,000 international delegates) it was because I believed that the argument had been won. I just couldn’t see the point of more navel-gazing about devices. There could no longer be a question about the value of the connected learner who had near permanent access to learning via their mobile device.
Or could there?
Naively I didn’t count on the legion of practitioners or IT job-worths who were still thinking in the context of the mobile or tablet device as a laptop replacement and set about retro-fitting these modern marvels with the same garbage that didn’t work very well even on laptops. They must have missed the memo about the shift in computing that has left the desktop PC all but dead and the laptop on death-row.
So my question is what will happen when every learner has their own iPad like device, permanently connected to the internet without filtering and other controls?
What disruption might this enable?
So the analogy or even challenge that I make is what would the Napster of learning look like?
I’m referring to the original Napster that Shawn Fanning introduced in 1999 that despite being illegal changed the music industry and the way we access music forever. I’d venture to say that without this ingenious act of piracy the iPhone and iPad that we know today would not exist. As Matt Mason opined "piracy drives innovation" and as Stephen Heppell has said “technology + people, breaks cartels”.
Napster to my mind was a text book example of this.
The enabling technology for this disruption was the Internet and affordable, readily available computing that sent shock waves through the industry paving the way for legal platforms such as iTunes.
Napster effectively disintermediated our access to music, it took out the middle men, bypassed the record labels, the record retailers and connected the listeners directly to the music. It also meant that many artists, the creators of the music, didn’t get paid and even today it is estimated that 95% of all music downloads are illegal. However the savvy artists and labels who embraced the disruption used file sharing technology to launch themselves and shifted their revenue streams to live performances.
Interestingly Napster and illegal file-sharing didn’t damage the independent record labels who were innovating as much as the majors who were largely innovation-free and relied on re-releasing proven artists and old recordings in new formats.
I think we can draw some interesting parallels here to what is already happening in the world of learning.
Understanding who the client is here is easy. But who or what are the middle-men? Who are the cartels? Who are the artists and who are the new artists that will embrace this inevitable disruption? How will they get paid?
And what of the physical school or university building?
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Addendum added August 17th 2011 - Video of talk given at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival 2011
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change, disruption, ipad, learning, napsterfication, tablet, teaching in Game Based Learning, Handheld Learning, Mobile, Technology, disruption, learning, publishing, teaching 
Reader Comments (26)
Much as the analogy sounds promising, I'm also struggling to identify the 'middlemen'. I think the notion of 'gatekeepers' might be a more productive (although less sexy) analogy. :-)
I think some commercial firms are going to offer template learning around resources for schools where the teacher is spoonfed everything related to a particular topic or resource. This morning I was looking at Scholastic's Read and Respond resource http://education.scholastic.co.uk/read_and_respond which seems to have a lot of online elements there for the busy teacher around key books. Obviously it is proprietary and locks the learners into one system (I may be wrong here it may have open elements I haven't had time to take a good look). Teachers like that - it provides a lot of the groundwork for them and they don't have to work too hard at the admin. Now without highlighting the merits or demerits of that one particular resource and looking at the principles involved here I'd say this new hybrid type of online resource will probably be pretty popular with teachers but is it open enough for the children? Teachers and children would not be able to replicate a resource like this themselves but should they want to - do they need to? Is this the way pedagogy should be going?
Graham - I built a Napsterised learning system in 2002!, inspired by a talk in US - no centralised server, truly peer-to-peer, all shared content, still going strong as Learningpool (I'm a Director).
great stuff! couple of related links for you....
http://www.khanacademy.org/
http://learningidea.blogspot.com/2009/05/death-of-education-dawn-of-learning.html
re What happens when every learner has an iPad or similar? We have a 1:1 iPad program for 155 Early Years (5-7 yr olds) at our school. They can eloquently explain what does happen!
Many thanks for the comments so far & apologies to those who have tried to comment but have had problems with the commenting module were using via by our provider Squarespace (we are trying to solve the problem!). I really value the feedback so please keep trying - some have had success by resetting cache or trying a different browser - not satisfactory but a short-term stop gap while we solve it! (thanks!!!). You can also comment via our group on LinkedIn
Generally I have been surprised by how much comment mainly in the social media channels and independent blog post responses where teachers & practitioners have identified themselves as the middle-men or mediators of learning.
I find this quite fascinating - perhaps they are like Metallica, the artists who brought the first legal case against Napster and became the dinosaurs of rock, whereas new artists who understood the new medium embraced it (including Napster) to enable them to reach a larger audience.
@Doug
I understand what you mean but I'd suggest that there are willing gate-keepers who operate on behalf of cartels but there are indeed organisations, commercial as well as state, that operate as mediators, i.e. middle-men. My suggestion is that, as per everything else happening outside the learning silo, they will ultimately be disintermediated and bypassed if only by necessity.
Access to learning is now being so restricted and university being placed out of the reach of so many (US student debt now exceeding credit card debt at $1 Trillion) that, I believe, a new alternative will emerge that, like Napster, will break the cartels
@Leon
Undoubtedly there will be numerous commercial attempts to leverage connectivity, the internet and the rapidly growing installed based of cheap, connected, mobile devices and tablets. However I wonder if this will be more of the same, i.e. digitized curriculum rather than a digital curriculum and will fail as a consequence - as indeed they are and have.
Young people are already learning more from apps, virtual worlds, social media and user-generated/media sharing sites than they are from traditional/prescribed educational content IMO.
Like Apple became the world's largest distributor of music by legitimising Napster in the form of iTunes after the music industry couldn't see the wood for the tree's I wonder if a consumer products company like Nintendo might end up being the largest direct supplier or enabler of learning.
You've hit the nail on the head here in questioning how pervasive connectivity and learner owned (not state provided/sanctioned) communication devices may affect pedagogy which was really at the nub of my post. But I'd go a step further given that "pedagogy" means "the process of teaching". My question is about whether there will be a process of teaching at all when learners are completely in control. Here we enter the realm of Mitra, Vygotsky and dare I say it, Illich.
@Donald
You know I respect you a great deal as friend, colleague and co-conspirator (so this isn't one of those responses that start "with the greatest respect..." but means anything but!), however you didn't napsterise learning did you?
A website that shares out some e-learning nuggets is not the point I was trying to make here so perhaps I haven't articulated it very well. I was using Napster as an example of extreme disruption that utterly disrupted a huge $ multi-billion that was controlled by mafiaesque cartels and genuinely felt it was invincible.
For all it's merits, Learningpool didn't do this for learning and won't, IMO. I believe there will be an unforeseen (by their nature disruptions as opposed to displacements are always unforeseen) disruption enabled as a result of connectivity and cheap tablets/gaming technologies, etc.
My Napster example falls apart if one gets too literal and thinks of a Napster for Learning as simply a way of passing around the stuff that was already failing, e.g. e-learning, but for free. Napster, of course, worked because it passed around existing media that was already in demand around a network for free - the motivation was a kind of theft. However those organisations and artists who embraced it saw it as a new and powerful distribution channel and succeeded as a result. Apple then legitimised it in the form of iTunes and the rest is history.
It may be that the Napsterfication of Learning, if it happens at all, might not be a single disruptive tool but a shift by suppliers of learning or content that contains some learning or catalyst for learning towards the client/consumer rather than the school or middle-men. Perhaps in some ways some of the apps on the AppStore are already doing this.
@John
Thanks for the links!
Khan Academy, MIT Open Courseware, Connexions, iTunesU and other entrants are all interesting with Khan Academy being particularly hyped at the moment but I do wonder whether these approaches are truly as disruptive as we might think - exponential or disruptive change is hard to imagine.
My Napster analogy was to make a point that even when the music industry was warned, I gave a keynote on the subject at the world's largest music industry trade event, Midem, in 1995 - 4 years before Napster, it didn't respond - I was booed and jeered off stage and royally flamed in Billboard magazine for having "no social responsibility" or "respect for copyright".
The fact that I have already been attacked on Twitter (at least one tweet used the C word) and other social channels following this post as well as causing heated debate (with cursing) at the conferences I have given keynotes gives me a sense of Déjà vu which may indicate that I'm on the right track ;)
@Dean
Great, let's hear what your students have to say!
How have these devices ended up in their hands? Was this a school/state sanctioned provision or did they already own them?
Do they have 100% control over how they use them and do they now attend class or do they have 100% 24/7 access from home?
What are they doing with these devices? Are they being integrated into formal classroom practice or has classroom/teaching practice changed as a result of each child having their own device?
I'm fortunate enough to have come across 100's of global projects that provide 1:1 access for learners but the point I've tried to make here is that so often I'm seeing these 21st century mobile, 24/7 connected, anytime, anywhere enablers being co-opted into 20th or 19th century practices.
Thanks again for the feedback and please keep it coming
Graham
I fear I may be missing the point, but hasn't the web already done this? Aren't we already at the point where a [sufficiently motivated, literate, connected] learner can pretty much learn anything they choose from almost any source, including those you list in response to John's comment, but also the whole of YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter and Google.
Illich was here a long time before us, and indeed before Berners-Lee, with his notions of learning webs and peer matched networks.
Despite Napster, we still have record stores (well, just) and folks do go to concerts and play in bands, which suggests there's still some life left in the traditional mechanisms for education (books and schools/universities), but they're no longer the only places to go to learn, nor, to be fair, have they ever been.
Graham, I walked by you about a dozen times during Mobile, always with a few people waiting in the wings to talk to you. I did thank you for your talk on the last day, be it while you were in conversation. A shame we didn't get to sit down. Next time.
As for your post, I have avoided reading it until I had sufficient time to sit down and properly receive the message. Your Middlemen are the education boards, they are the ones investing in maintaining the status quo. Shifts in costs and control affect them most of all, and they are the ones writing the curriculum. Teachers are the artists in this scenario, and will be the ones that will lose their livelihood if they cannot shift into a new model of practice. The writing has been on the wall for some time. Every time a new course in our division is developed for distance learning, there are teachers claiming we are putting ourselves out a job. While they are speaking from a short-sighted position, they may be closer to the truth than they realize as we sow the seeds for a new method of education. Open courseware from the major universities is our initial incident, the crisis point will come when teenagers begin to realize that they can challenge a course for credit in their district solely based on the knowledge they have procured themselves, never having set foot in a classroom. They could do it now of course, but no one has realized the implications of this...yet.
Graham, what I find so wrong-headed about this is that it treats learning as a ‘commodity’, much as the music industry you attack treats music. It isn’t. Learning is a ‘practice’ – something that people do, not something that they consume. In using the Napster analogy you appear to challenge the othordoxy that sees learning as something to be dolloped onto a plate alongside school dinners while maintaining the deeply conservative idea of learning as consumption. To a music industry obsessed with controlling the channels for consumption, of course Napster appeared a threat, but the ease with which the industry adapted creating new channels for consumption shows how little it really challenged the ‘music as commodity’ idea. Capitalism is very good at reinventing itself without really allowing power to shift. (But then I’m not a capitalist – punk or otherwise.;-))The radical idea is democratizing the means of production not the means of consumption. The thing that is changing the industry is access to tools that help you make music and showcase it. I’m more interested in the tools that help learners make learning than new distribution models. I think you are too, and that’s why people find the apparently radical veneer over a transmission model confusing. Why not write something about learners as producers next? Niel
Very interesting piece. What is also interesting is how the same theme is discussed here: "Socrates to Blogging" it's about the benefits of disruptive technologies in the classroom at
http:// teacherscpd.wordpress.com
I fear that we will 'go through another cycle of missed opportunity as a result of trying to fit the 21st century into the 19th.' Graham. There is still, and I fear always will be, the tendency for technologies to be enslaved to traditional methodologies. However, there are a good many people who have either swallowed or are still chewing the red pill and options/evidence for change/transformation are out there, being shared and growing.
Be under no illusions though, the community that inhabits, Twitter, the blogosphere and the world of technology and learning is still very much, in my opinion, a small one.
Resistance to change is strong.
I would ask, aren't we all just a little too comfy in our lifestyles and structures to have that DESIRE or NEED to change? I think we are and continually feel that the bar of expectation/aspiration of ourselves and our learners is all too easily attained.
You have initiated a debate of real significance but I believe that many of the barriers to change are not solely wrapped up in educational debate.
Graham I completely agree with the sentiments of your article. I have started to see this movement of disruption that started in the software industry over a decade ago and knocks over market incumbents like a line of dominoes. I am now seeing more market dominators attempt to disrupt their own market by investing is cannibalistic startups to try an avoid becoming todays Blockbuster. Its a beautiful thing to watch as our world moves from the industrial revolution era to something more like what was described in the recent Macrowikinomics.
I see the real challenges today is how the general population will disentangle the obscene costs of learning from a life of debt. Its strange to see the the education industry is almost tracking the same path as that of the music industry at its peak in terms of cost even though the requisite expenses should be cheaper than ever before (reminds me of CDs). Khan academy is a lovely step in this direction but perhaps there is a young Neo out there planning to cross of ideas of Khan Academy with the inquisitive learning of Montessori method.
Thanks again for all the feedback!
I'm keen to respond to all but first would like to respond to the challenge presented by my friend Niel McLean whom whilst I think we agree on many things have different ideas of how they might be achieved :)
@Niel McLean
Many thanks for your input.
The C word has already been aimed at me as a result of this blog post. However it wasn't attached to "Conservative" although I'm not sure which I find most worrying ;)
The other C word you have suggested, "Capitalist", I'm quite comfortable with given that this the environment in which we are forced to operate and participate within although granted like all ideologies it's open to abuse hence the notion of Punk Capitalism which allows us to play with the capitalist ideology in a form of DIY entrepreneurship that "encourages us to reject authority and hierarchy, advocating that we can and should produce as much as we consume."
This is a movement documented by the likes of Matt Mason in the Pirates Dilemma and former speaker at an earlier LWF event.
There has always been a method to my madness in terms of the eclectic speakers invited to present their LWF Talks!
But I digress.
So on to the crux of your troubled argument here.
As much as I agree with the sentiment of your point I must disagree.
Education and by extension, learning, is a commodity and perhaps the ultimate consumer product. Learners are the clients and customers.
In the UK the last Labour government, continued still with the present administration under Gove, the consultation from Sir Michael Barber and McKinsey introduced the same processes and measurements to the state education system as have been used to manufacture nearly all commodified products from cars to tea spoons. Sir Michael even coined a term for it to make it seem more scientific and no doubt more valuable in terms of consulting fees. "Deliverology" is what he called it and frankly my term "Napsterfication" is a call to action to defeat this absurd notion that we can turn learning into a set of factory processes that will output standardised human beings meeting the latest PISA standards set by OECD.
The affect of deliverology has turned teachers into factory workers where no longer is it necessary to understand the "practice of teaching" and how we learn but simply to attend a one year training course after a university degree that is effectively an operators guide to get the product (the kids) through the factory (the school) pass the assessment (the quality measurement) and then out to the world (delivery).
As an aside it's worth considering Professor John Seddon's critique of Deliverology in this address.
Whilst pleasing the OECD, our friends at the Daily Mail and the back to basics naysayers of the right what it hasn't done is output the creative innovators that will be essential for the future growth of the UK or indeed the solving of significant challenges that each successive generation faces.
But this isn't a recent phenomenon in the education sector. It's always been thus certainly within our life-times.
Bourdieu, in perhaps his most influential book, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture describes how systems of education reproduce cultural dominance of the ruling class. Drawing on theories of Marx, Weber and Durkheim, Bourdieu points to the examination, academic language and certification as ways of concealing the class inequality inherent in the school as an institution. Bordieu argues that schools transmit "cultural capital" by which he means any knowledge, skills, education or expectations - from one generation to the next, thus ensuring the dominance of the ruling class. Furthermore, this transfer is concealed by taking on the supposedly democratic form of examination and certification.
I quote:
"…in societies which claim to recognise individuals only as equals in right, the educational system and its modern nobility only contribute to disguise, and thus legitimise, in a more subtle way the arbitrariness of the distribution of powers and privileges which perpetuates itself though socially uneven allocation of school titles and degrees"
Thus Niel my call to arms was to break down this "ideological hegemony of education" as suggested by Antonio Gramsci who regarded this hegemony as "a form of control exercised primarily through a society's superstructure, as opposed to its base or social relations of production of a predominantly economic character".
Or to put it more succinctly, as my 10 year old daughter suggested to me this morning over breakfast, education as a commodity is a way of getting parents to pay more tax whilst their children are taken care of while they go to work, become good citizens and buy more stuff.
My personal influences in this matter stem more from the Frankfurt School of Thought rather than the ideology of the right.
I fear, therefore, that you have mistaken my post as a call for further commodification rather than a plea for liberation where the means of production are in the hands of the people and not the state.
Cheers!
Graham
Earlier this year when we were all being asked to campaign to save our local libraries, I tried to stir up a bit of discussion about what we were being asked to save. 90% of the respondents described a library as a social meeting space, an exhibition space and a community hub. Only a very small number actually mentioned books - CDs, DVDs and Internet access were all cited. To me a library is a thing, not a place. I can carry more data than my local library (when I was growing up) in my pocket now. Librarians need to be repurposed as 'Discovery Assistants'. Libraries are places to get help in searching for knowledge because we all have access to unimagined amounts of data.
Some colleagues of mine are In the enviable position of designing a university - including the space formerly known as a library. What would you put there?
Adults are more self-sufficient than children yet educating a university student costs £9000 a year and educating a child £5000 a year. The younger they are the bigger the class size? Doesn't that seem a bit like entrenchment of a culture rather than logic? Especially as the more mature technologically, the more individualised learning support can be made.
Thanks Graham. I agree all of that, particularly your daughter's comments. Also liked the reference to the Frankfurt School. Thanks for taking the time. Niel
The web is disrupting all information based activity.
- The natural resource ( information) - the scarcity - abundance argument.
- The means of production
- The means of consumption
- The channels of distribution
Why should the education system be different - hasn't education become commodified anyway.
http://goo.gl/syh2X
I think we just don't know where the red pill will take us but the genie is escaping the bottle.
We (the pesky adults) are the only ones that see the use of technology and IT/ LMS platforms, IPhannies etc in the classroom as disruptive. I am sure if we asked the young learners of today what they think about all of this; they might say current teaching practice is disruptive because it doesn’t engage them in the same way COD does. I am sure many would prefer being at home, connected and free to absorb media and data in ways that suit them but would this work as education?
Isn’t this the case for workers too that we often want? How many times have any of you worked somewhere with poor tech, processes, and systems and thought to yourselves, I could do this easier at home with my new Apple I Book, a mug of medium roast Lavazza and the comfort of my Ikea coconut husk three seater?
So what is it that they want from school, the young learners I mean? Do they want total autonomy and ownership of what they learn or do young students need/ demand a formal framework to feel comfortable and engaged?. Surely this is the reason this is so complicated anyway, we are talking about people? There isn’t ever going to be a one size fits all solution for teaching/ learning, this is the only fact in this reply we can count on.
Teaching methodology has always been under the microscope; even before all this tech and even if we crack the code and get all our young learners to pass with at least 5 A-C GCSE's inc Maths and English, it will still be the case that people will want more and in some eyes, teachers will never be doing enough as is the case for the achievements of our young.
Some topics are just not covered well with technology and this will probably always be the case but for many subjects, it can really help remove barriers for many learners since it can be made to at least appear more personal.
I can’t say I would be enthralled with the prospect of a super flat, hello kitty warehouse for all learning content, where so long as you have enough gummy credits in your bobo account, you too can own some power.
In the future, we will almost definitely look back at these times and chuckle at our hamfisted integration of ICT in to the teaching and learning arena. We believe technology can help us deliver personalised learning but, we have to be ready to let go some of our control to make it work. We have to learn to trust our students and ourselves.
I am glad you are here Graham; I get called the “C” word at times too
The most striking aspect of your ‘napsterfication’ analogy is, in my mind, how education is being changed by technology & the web, irregardless of our individual feelings on the subject. Essentially, it doesn’t matter if we are Metallica – the dinosaurs – or Radiohead – the embracers – change is inevitable.
As such, the parallels that you draw with ‘The Matrix’ are very interesting; take the blue pill and willing blind oneself to the truth of this inevitability, or take the red pill and try to embrace how deep the rabbit hole goes. Personally, I always want to feel sharp & innovative, so I like to feel that, on my best days, I am reaching for that red pill. I am wary, though; I have enough experience of the occasional colleague (and in my experience, the majority of parents) who believe that ‘best practice’ is a set, rehearsed pedagogy – essentially a version of teaching by rote that produces little rectangles of paper that can prove that work (and, so the logic goes, learning) has been undertaken. I do not entirely disagree with this perspective either; there is something to be said for traditional teaching methodologies and the foundations that excellent teachers have laid in years past.
Ultimately, The Matrix Trilogy was all about the freedom of choice. Maybe there is another parallel here for here for the teaching profession? Perhaps it is not a question of whether we take the blue pill or the red pill – perhaps it is the knowledge that we have to choice to take either that is important. If learning can be boosted with technology & interactivity, then great – I try to incorporate e-learning & new ideas into my teaching whenever I feel that I would improve the students’ learning experience. Likewise, if I believe that a method rooted in the 1950s classroom has the potential to be the most effective means of teaching & learning, then that is not a retrograde step, in my view.
Change is inevitable, and I participate in boards like these to keep up with my peers regarding how I can incorporate this change into the classroom on a day to day basis. Thanks for the debate.
Education will be a commodity as long as learners are seen as the customers. The recent debates around personalisation and learner voice suggest that it is the school system and teachers that are the shop keepers who must provide whatever the children and parents want.
This has led to a ludicrous system where children must be rewarded to learn, students are paid to sit exams or stay in education. Teachers are given the responsibility to entertain their learners in case they switch off. Why is it that families and children in Africa or India may sacrifice many things for their children's education? How did we move from education being a privilege in the 19th century to a situation where schools have to persuade families to send their children to school so they meet 100% attendance targets?
The real disruption in education is to challenge the notion that education is a commodity that the schools have to sell to an unwilling nation. Learners aren't customers waiting to be sold at or entertained. Learners are people who have a motivation and a hunger for development. The ongoing desire to improve or satisfy our curiosity is what makes us human. We are all born learners but somehow we have handed the task to keep learning to the state so individuals aren't personally responsible.
We don't need buildings or even technology to help us learn. We need our own personal motivation. I agree that the cost of higher education may lead to an era where people seek out their own learning. They will learn about things that will help them do what they want to do next. The value of this learning won't be ascribed by a grade or a certificate but by the intrinsic reward and future benefit.
There will still be the need for "more able others" who will help us learn more than we can on our own, perhaps they will be teachers or perhaps they will be other learners.