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

Fernando S. posted a Spanish translation of my Education 1.0 - Education 3.0 taxonomy at gabinetedeinformatica.net last week. The table has since appeared at quite a few other blogs in the Spanish-language blogosphere:

Thanks, Fernando!

(The English version of the table appears here.)

The StarTribune reports that the town of Chaska, Minnesota, is planning for a new higher education campus, built by an outfit called “EdCampus.” What makes the site unique is that it is being built without a sole tenant in mind:

The company plans to erect classrooms as shells, line up higher education institutions as tenants to fill them, then customize the rooms for satellite classes or lectures offered by as many colleges and universities as it can line up.

“They could lease space to anyone from Harvard to North Dakota State,” Chaska Mayor Gary Van Eyll said.

According to the Mayor of Chaska:

EdCampus located in Chaska. It is hard to explain this facility. It will be an innovational educational model that leverages the power of combining dynamic students from diverse institutions into a single campus – outfitted with customizable classroom space and student-centric services.

EdCampus will offer state-of-the-art technology, never seen before in post-secondary education.

Since secondary education institutions develop a tremendous amount of educational technologies, I’m not sure what technologies have never been seen before in post-secondary education. (Also, does this high tech EdCampus have a website?) The real innovation, however, is that such a “campus” concept allows higher education institutions to create a presence in a community without outlaying a huge investment. Some institutions may wish to try certain communities/markets before making a large investment in facilities. Others will appreciate the pathways for rapid egress afforded by lease arrangements.

What does this ability to enter and exit new markets rapidly mean for land grant universities, which are intended to create lasting presences in the communities they serve?

From this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/04/antioch

Antioch University’s announcement last week that its board had “reconfirmed” plans to shutter Antioch College at the end of this academic year has prompted a flurry of activity to prevent that from happening.

Most notably, alumni and professors are working on plans for the faculty to continue to teach students — even if that takes place without the university’s endorsement. Plans being discussed would have classes held in various locations in Yellow Springs, Ohio, so that there would be no stoppage of Antioch instruction. Alumni announced that they have raised $1 million to support such efforts, called “Non-Stop Antioch.”

Antioch College likes innovation in education, but if they had Leapfrog on their mind, they might look to the Shibuya University Network for an innovative operational model. The Shibuya model would provide a lifelong learning approach that is infused into the community Antioch serves. In effect, the entire city of Yellow Springs could become a classroom. What need would there be for a formally organized Antioch College?

There’s a lot of talk about moving to “Education 2.0″ –but, what would Education 3.0 look like?

Here’s my take on the Education 1.0 – 3.0 spectrum:

Read the background story…

(Thanks to Darwin Hendel for passing this along.)

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.

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.

One of the big ideas from 6.0 was that kids are not naturally good at complex games. They often have the time, resources, but they do not always have the guidance of a mentor. Many kids are playing games designed by adults for adults. This is good and bad. Good in that the adult games have some complex problems and require some really deep thinking; bad in that they may just be provocative on their content without having very good game play. The point is, kids learn through play and our games are often cultural tools to transfer knowledge, develop skills, and get them ready to become adults. What we try to do as educators is pretty much the same. So why have we stepped away from using games?

(Read more …)

Reader Arturo B. from Durango (Mexico) notes that Karen Littman posted an outstanding essay from 1992 in which she describes why she started Morphonix (creators of Neuromatrix, discussed in an earlier post):

Even young children will become researchers as they discover and explore new information at their own pace. New technology is multisensory. It allows a student to use his or her curiosity to learn and develop his or her own personal understanding of the world. Students can choose to express ideas with words, pictures, and music.

In the classroom of the future, students will work on individualized programs tailored to meet each child’s interests and needs. They will learn how to problem-solve and synthesize information. Creativity and personal exploration will be encouraged.

Fifteen years later, many of us are still talking about these same ideas as necessities for advancing education, but they still haven’t caught on. Eerie, huh?

Also, I’m pleased to announce Brock Dubbels will continue to post more often on Education Futures as a regular contributer! We’ve noticed a bit of a “Brock Effect” where site traffic quadruples when Brock posts his thoughts:

Somebody’s taking interest. Rock on, Brock!

Do kids just naturally get it? Are they just good at games, computers, phones, and all things digital?

My experience and common sense says no, although I wish it were a general truth.

Do kids need to learn about games in school?

Yes, if we want to guide them in optimal usage, and maybe learn something from them.

This post looks at formal and informal learning and begins to make connections between what is done in school: formal learning and what is done out of school: informal. The importance of this inquiry is to look at how we can recruit these informal processes to create leverage and development in formal learning situations. What is generally true for informal learning is that the learners are learning spontaneously and then moving to the next experience. This spontaneous learning is often thought to be tacit, or below the conscious awareness. One may be able to do a thing, but may not be able to describe the process they created, much less know a name for it. Conversely, in classroom, or formal learning experiences, we hope that students are being guided through learning experiences with structured reflection to give the process and elements of the process a formal name: like reading is a process.

There are four pieces to this post:

1. Are the kids just born with gaming skills?
2. Should we teach with them? Games as embodied informal models of scientific reasoning and the role of play.
3. Why we should recruit culturally relevant knowledge like games and other out of school experiences?
4. What happens when we honor the culture, language, and experience outside of the classroom by bringing it into the classroom to connect with formal academic culture, language, and experience?

(Read more …)