Sunday, March 12, 2006
The future of education
I'm attending a panel on the future of education in the digitally convergent world. There's some information about the Digital Convergent Initiative in Texas here. I think this is the fullest, non-keynote-like session I've been to, which tells you something about how interested people are in this issue. Where does education go as everything goes online? Hopefully, we'll find out something about that in this session.
The convener just asked who was here, but left out educators--just a note. Edited to add: I met Jessica and mentioned this to her. She acknowledged that was problematic. Very nice person and her company looks very interesting.
Official panel information is here.
Apologies for the incoherence below. Live-blogging is hard.
Brainertainment. Educates and entertains your brain. Spears' company focuses on music and art for young children. How digital content will change the landscape of education. Putting audio and video content on mobile devices. Multimodal learning. What she's saying sounds like pretty passive consumption. Customization--but done by the company. Self direction and self pacing, but not creation. Engaging all of the user senses.
Social contract of education. How is the contract changing? Some people have the opportunity to learn. Then, more people have the opportunity to learn. Changing the word opportunity to guarantee. Do all people have a guarantee to learn? The vortex model of education. Tactical requirements. Use the data about how individuals learn. NCLB uses the data as football scores. That's not an appropriate use of data. Use the data to move forward the idea that all learners can learn. Rigor matters. People want success not products, solutions.
Telecampus. Learners to content, learners with other learners, learners with their instructors. Completely ignoring the learners. Basically discussing connectivism. The network can solve some learner issues. The new generation of learners grew up with technology. They don't think of computers as technology. They are just things that they use. Doing is more important than learning. Staying connected is important. The millennial generation expects to learn in multiple ways and expects to learn as much from each other as from the "almighty" instructor.
EnterTech project. About lifelong learning. Helps people who are unemployed or underemployed get the education they need to get a job or get a better job. The project is built around gaming theory. People leave the program with entry level skills.
We're to the discussion part. I'll add key points later.
The discussion was quite lively, touching on concepts such as access, allowing kids to have more control over their learning, and what the goals of education really are. As soon as the podcast is up, I'll link to it, because I think it was a very important discussion.
The convener just asked who was here, but left out educators--just a note. Edited to add: I met Jessica and mentioned this to her. She acknowledged that was problematic. Very nice person and her company looks very interesting.
Official panel information is here.
Apologies for the incoherence below. Live-blogging is hard.
Brainertainment. Educates and entertains your brain. Spears' company focuses on music and art for young children. How digital content will change the landscape of education. Putting audio and video content on mobile devices. Multimodal learning. What she's saying sounds like pretty passive consumption. Customization--but done by the company. Self direction and self pacing, but not creation. Engaging all of the user senses.
Social contract of education. How is the contract changing? Some people have the opportunity to learn. Then, more people have the opportunity to learn. Changing the word opportunity to guarantee. Do all people have a guarantee to learn? The vortex model of education. Tactical requirements. Use the data about how individuals learn. NCLB uses the data as football scores. That's not an appropriate use of data. Use the data to move forward the idea that all learners can learn. Rigor matters. People want success not products, solutions.
Telecampus. Learners to content, learners with other learners, learners with their instructors. Completely ignoring the learners. Basically discussing connectivism. The network can solve some learner issues. The new generation of learners grew up with technology. They don't think of computers as technology. They are just things that they use. Doing is more important than learning. Staying connected is important. The millennial generation expects to learn in multiple ways and expects to learn as much from each other as from the "almighty" instructor.
EnterTech project. About lifelong learning. Helps people who are unemployed or underemployed get the education they need to get a job or get a better job. The project is built around gaming theory. People leave the program with entry level skills.
We're to the discussion part. I'll add key points later.
The discussion was quite lively, touching on concepts such as access, allowing kids to have more control over their learning, and what the goals of education really are. As soon as the podcast is up, I'll link to it, because I think it was a very important discussion.
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