On Saturday, I’m off to Quito, Ecuador, the home of Guayasamin! I will present at the FLACSO 50th Anniversary Congress and at the Universidad San Francisco. The University of Minnesota-FLACSO Mexico co-seminar I taught with Arthur Harkins and Cristobal Cobo will be the primary focus of my talks. Since I will travel without my laptop [...]

Join us for the next Horizon Forum meeting! Technologies and education in Latin America: Changes in the infrastructure and not in the teaching methods Monday, February 26, 12-3 p.m. Room 319, Coffman Memorial Union University of Minnesota, East Bank Campus 300 Washington Avenue, S.E. Minneapolis Cristobal Cobo, Ph.D., is a specialist in information technologies, faculty [...]

At yesterday’s Horizon Forum meeting, Chris Dede delivered a presentation via Skype on using multiple-user virtual environments in educational contexts. These environments, he argues, allows students to co-design and co-instruct their own educational experiences, allowing for guided social constructivism and learning that goes beyond what traditional schools try to accomplish through test-based assessments. Scott McLeod [...]

Last Friday, 26 leaders from Minnesota’s PreK-17 spectrum gathered for the second meeting of the Horizon Forum. Dr. Tom Tapper, superintendent of Owatonna Public Schools, presented a compelling argument that public education is nearing obsolescence. He states: Today, the system of public education has a choice: it either leads change, or is led by it. [...]

ZDNet is running a blog story on the Singularity Summit at Stanford University. Particular attention in the article is focused on the debate between Ray Kurzweil and Douglas Hofstader on utopian versus dystopian futures: Kurzweil acknowledged that Singularity could lead to an unappealing or cataclysmic future, but he believes his vision will have a soft [...]