If you’re new here and like what you read, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.
Thank you for visiting!

Education Futures contributor Brock Dubbels was interviewed in the National Education Association’s October 2007 issue of NEA Today on the use of games in the classroom. Make sure to read the article, and bookmark Brock’s list of video game resources for educators!

Also, click here to read Education Futures posts by Brock on games in the classroom.

People seem really concerned about “future-proofing” in a world driven by accelerating change and accelerating uncertainty.  For example:

• How do we future-proof our schools?
• How do we future-proof our libraries?
• How do we future-proof our wealth?
• How do we future-proof our careers?
• How do we future-proof our families?

This promotes dichotomic thinking along the lines of, “if the rest of the world is going to change, how can I (or my beloved institution) best survive by changing the least myself?” Why shouldn’t we expect ourselves to change significantly as well? To leapfrog beyond the contradictory thinking of “future-proofing,” perhaps we should ask ourselves:

• Does the future need schools?
• Does the future need libraries?
• Does the future need wealth?
• Does the future need careers?
• Does the future need families?

…and we ought to also ask how, why, and what do we need to change today?

From Ars Technica:

Rumors of Google’s plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again over the weekend. The company could now be collaborating with Arizona State University to test the 3D social network, which may be tied into Google’s current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps.

By targeting the higher education social networking crowd (at least initially), can we expect this to take education by storm? Whereas Second Life is based on an invented (and inventable!) world, My World appears grounded in the real world –and more purpose-driven. Would such a grounding help to bridge virtual learning environments with reality?

As Education Futures nears its third anniversary, a couple changes are taking place:

1. The Library of Congress has issued ISSN 1940-0934 to this blog. This means Education Futures is a recognized serial and is cataloged by the Library.
2. Global Leapfrog Education (ISSN 1933-0200) is now merged with Education Futures. Future GLE articles will be published as a section within Education Futures and cataloged with the new ISSN.

As the academy (slowly!) moves toward recognizing blogs as legitimate, peer-reviewed publications, and as the boundaries between blog posts and traditional publications continue to blur, it is important for blogs to adopt ISSNs. For more discussions on ISSN and blogs, see especially:

• The Library of Congress Blog on the topic
• Joe Clark’s “ISSN for Weblogs” page (includes a “how to” for applying for an ISSN)

A quick note: Futurelab has a free magazine, Vision, that you can subscribe to or view online. My summer/autumn copy just arrived, and it is quite good. The current issue focuses on the future of digital learning and their impacts on youth.

Read the article…

Tailing the news that India is making Linux compulsory in schools, the Russian government is working to create a national operating system for schools:

Russian OS is to be installed on every school computer in Russia by 2009. Furthermore, every pupil will get the opportunity to operate the applied software produced in Russia, Leonid Reiman, acting Minister of Communication stated at a press conference. Experts and market participants consider the terms within which software is to be developed quite reasonable. According to Mr. Reiman, that might significantly reduce Russian dependence on foreign software…

Again, I ask, can we expect free software to correlate to freedom? By soliciting bids for the selection of a sole distribution vendor to develop and implement a monolithic, Russian OS, is Russian OS an effort to boost software freedom or is it an effort to increase state control?

Linux Today reader Artem Vakhitov notes that the project is probably not as ambitious as the Minister stated. As he understands it, “several Russian Linux vendors and solution providers, including ALTLinux, formed an alliance to jointly participate in a bid to develop and implement a FOSS operating system and necessary software packages for Russian schools.” There is no guarantee that the government will actually move ahead with the plan. (See the ALT Linux statement…)

The Preparation to Practice Group is pleased to announce that the first Horizon Forum meeting of this year will be held on October 3 from 8:30 – 11:00am in the historic Upson Room at the Walter Library on the University of Minnesota East Bank campus.

Two visiting speakers from the Faculty of Latin American Social Sciences in Mexico will discuss initiatives to bridge technologies between classrooms (co-seminars), and the use of electronic media in classrooms to completely replace traditional textbooks to transform pedagogies:

• Giovanna Valenti, Director General, FLACSO México
  Internet-mediated co-seminars: Reflections on the Mexican experience
• Cristóbal Cobo, Communications Director, FLACSO México
  Enciclomedia: Redesigning curricula with videos, text, virtual visits, sounds and images

Space for the event is limited! RSVP to me at moravec@umn.edu.

The Horizon Forum is an ongoing discussion group, focused on the role of innovation and the future of PreK-17 education. The Forum is sponsored by the Preparation to Practice Group in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota.

Validated parking and a light breakfast will be provided.

For a moment, consider the scale of education in India. Then, read this article:

The Director of Public Instruction (DPI) has issued orders making free software compulsory. It says Linux Operating System should be used for IT education in eighth, ninth and tenth standards.

This is huge for a huge country making a huge investment in IT. Big stuff.

I offer a question for discussion: When free software becomes mandatory, is it still what GNU founder Richard Stallman would term “free as in freedom?”

Somehow, this conference stayed off my radar until now. I would love to go, but I will be en route to China around the same time…! Oh well, maybe next year…

The Open Minds Conference is the first national K-12 gathering for teachers, technicians and educational leaders to share and explore the benefits of open source in education. Virtual Learning Environments that provide 24X7 access to teaching and learning resources, cutting-edge and easy-to-use desktop applications, coupled with powerful management tools and low-cost computer strategies make the classroom of tomorrow available today!

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin for noting this on his blog, otherwise I might’ve never known! Is anybody going to this?

This post is a little bit off topic, but it’s good to point out excellent examples citizen journalism –or Journalism 2.0. Many civil service workers at the University of Minnesota are on strike. One of our picketing colleagues, Tom Elko, posted an excellent video of his observations over the past week:

More at Tom’s blog…