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 [...]

Folks, when you use new technologies to teach the same old garbage, you’re not going to get the results that you want. The NY Times started to touch on this in their article, Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops: …the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting [...]

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. [...]

Arthur Harkins and I deivered a presentation on “Facilitating 21st Century Education: Leapfrogging Culture and Time through Simulational Learning” at the 30th Annual Pacific Circle Consortium meeting at Mexico City on July 13. Read on for the abstract or download the PowerPoint slides.