(Note: Conversation alternates between Spanish and English.)Картини

From Consult Minnesota’s press release:

John Moravec predicts a revolution, and is calling on Minnesota technology consultants to help make it happen.

During his presentation to Consult Minnesota Thursday, Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. in the Walnut Room of Axel’s Char House at the Roseville Radisson Hotel, Moravec, a faculty member in Innovation Studies and coordinator of the Leapfrog Institutes at the University of Minnesota, will call on his Consult Minnesota audience to use their technological skills in helping bring about new approaches to infuse creativity and innovation into education.

“As changes in society pressure enormous transformations in education, we need to consider that education at all levels will change so radically that we won’t recognize it,” states Moravec. “Standardized learning – the lecture – is giving way to hands?on, individualized learning at each student’s own pace. Although change will be disruptive, it has many potential benefits.”

Among the advantages of the new educational paradigm are:

• More effective use of scarce assets to meet a rising demand. At the same time, students can access a wider selection of high?quality course offerings and teachers.
• Fewer time constraints. Advanced students no longer have to choose between waiting for others to catch up versus leaving them behind.
• New combinations of tacit and explicit knowledge creation, or invisible learning. As the focus switches away from rote learning merely for higher test scores, students build capacities for continuous learning, unlearning, and relearning – not WHAT to think, but HOW to solve problems.
• New priorities. Says Moravec, “In the age of YouTube lectures, universities need not worry about their bubbles bursting, but rather, what they should be doing in the classrooms instead of lecturing.”

Admission to the August 19th meeting is free. Dinner and beverages are optional at regular prices. All present will be eligible for a free drawing for door prizes including USB flash drives from General Nanosystems and carwashes from Downtowner Express Lube.

Consult Minnesota is a voluntary association of Minnesotans with a shared interest in facilitating Information Technology support to community and non?profit organizations. The group meets bimonthly. Further information is available at www.consult-mn.org or (612) 568-3243.

“I believe we need to engineer new technologies to help them HOW to learn, not WHAT to learn. Our school systems have focused on WHAT for centuries. Likewise, we see too many educational technologies focus on the WHAT as well (i.e., pushing content rather than new idea generation). WHAT technologies are great for producing factory workers, but for creatives and innovators, we need to focus more on HOW to learn. The rapidly changing world demands no less. Students need to build capacities for continuous learning, unlearning, and relearning to be competitive globally. So, I believe that the technologies that address the HOW question will become the key for educational success in the remainder of the 21st century.”

Read the full interview at Udemy.

We had an opportunity to interview Dr. Moira Gunn, host of Tech Nation (carried by NPR and available as a podcast), at the Synergy 2008 conference in Phoenix, Arizona, last month. We wanted to know what she thinks is innovation, the relationship of innovation with markets, how important innovation is for social leaders, and what it would take for a place like Minnesota to take a leadership position in terms of innovation.

For her responses, watch the video:

School is out for summer! Education Futures will continue publishing on a reduced schedule until late August. This means, we expect to get an article out once every week or so. We will also use this time to redesign bits of the website. Expect great things!

Education Futures had an opportunity to cover Barack Obama‘s historic clinch of the Democratic Party’s nomination in St. Paul last night. Next week, we will focus on change, and what both presidential candidates believe needs to be changed in regard to human capital development to secure America’s future.

Photos from the event are available here. Also, make sure to visit Minnesota Monitor for more coverage.

1. Wikipedia
2. Wired
3. The New York Times
4. The Wall Street Journal
5. Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Viking.
6. Pink, D. H. (2005). A whole new mind: Moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New York: Riverhead.
7. Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.
8. Kelley, T. (2006). The ten faces of innovation: IDEO’s strategies for beating the devil’s advocate & driving creativity throughout your organization. London: Profile.
9. Owen, H. (2001). Just how good could you be? grow your personal capital: what you know, who you know, how to use it. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub.
10. Harkins, A., & Kubik, G. (2006). StoryTech: A personalized guidebook to the 21st Century. Minneapolis: The StoryTech Group.

1. Informal learning is learning by living – learning isn’t specifically planned, it simply occurs. Two examples of informal learning: 1) taking in what one observes while walking the streets; and 2) listening in on an interesting conversation being held by others.
2. Informal learning is arguably how most people learn most of what they know and are able to do, because the learning occurs automatically within (often) quite specific contexts. Yes, informal learning also occurs within classrooms.
3. Nonformal learning takes place through planned activities that are not strictly regarded as educational. Two examples of nonformal learning: 1) flying an airplane with the assistance of an instructor pilot; and 2)learning to run dope under the guidance of a veteran pusher.
4. Nonformal education is growing. In television, tens of channels are devoted to nonformal learning. The Internet may be said to be a huge and growing nonformal learning context.
5. The Internet is a spectacular engine for both informal and nonformal education, because some of its resources are structured for casual learning and more focused, context-specific learning.
6. Schools are foolish not to use the resources of the Web to help students learn 24/7 and to pass tests, because the Web lends itself to formal learning as much as to informal and nonformal learning.
7. Schools that use the Web to the maximum simply duplicate what is already going on in business and industry around the world. Currently, schools lag the world of work by not emulating the practice of learning through all three modes in real-world contexts.
8. It is possible to imagine a new educational institution evolving from dovetailed, Internet-supported formal, informal, and nonformal learning. Such an institution might be labeled the Global Classroom because it would be (nearly) ubiquitous around the planet.
9. Anywhere/anytime learning is already with us, but it presents a threat to most formal educators. Families and their children can minimize this threat in a number of ways, including joining the Global Classroom and using it to Leapfrog their relative advantages within the world economy.
10. Individualized and peer-to-peer learning are huge changes on the educational horizon. This is exciting because the Web vigorously supports both. Through individualized and peer-to-peer learning, new expressions of formal, informal, and nonformal learning will emerge.