By John Moravec (Updated May 30, 2010) This timeline of the history of modern education provides not only a glimpse into the past and present, but plots out a plausible future history for human capital development. The future history presented is intended to be edgy, but also as a conversation starter on futures for education [...]

I like conceptual maps –tools for illustrating the relationships among ideas– and, Tero Heiskanen created an interesting one. It’s huge. Without any further commentary: Settlers of the shift is an open map of experts, organizations and ideas that are scattered around the globe. It’s for people whose work is shifting us towards a better tomorrow [...]

“Tomorrow is yesterday,” Skyped an attendee at today’s Networks & Neighborhoods in Cyberspace conference at the University of Minnesota today. “Even worse – yesterday is tomorrow.” The irony is that this conference is supposed to be related to a Minnesota Futures grant project. This conference is highlighting a key problem at the University of Minnesota [...]

Brock Dubbels is looking for more people that belong to (or that can soon join) the American Educational Research Association (AERA) – for a Special Interest Group (SIG) especially for 3D Virtual Worlds, such as Second Life. http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=ARVEL The Applied Research for Virtual Environments for Learning (ARVEL) special interest group at AERA, “is a community [...]

For those of us in Minneapolis/St. Paul, this looks good: eLearning Games and Simulations workshop May 24: 8:30 – 4:00 Normandale Community College Learn what your students already know Games and simulations are powerful tools – changing the way we learn Hands-on Instruction Enables You to Play the Games Yourself Seated at your own computer, [...]

Two articles surfaced recently regarding Second Life. First, CNN reports that over 60 educational organizations are using Second Life to explore how to promote learning in the virtual world. Whereas there is a concern that mainstay online education providers do not provide a sense of community or social interaction, virtual, three-dimensional online communities may fill [...]

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 [...]