In response to Dave and George’s request for thoughts about the future of education, I offer the following parody. This twisted view of the future of education is completely undesirable, and yet completely possible. What will you do to prevent it from happening?
As part of our recent application to establish a UNESCO Chair in Open Education at Utah State University, we’re creating an emphasis in Open Education in our PhD in Instructional Technology here. The emphasis is simply a sequence of electives that students will be able to choose from that will provide them with a stronger foundation in open education. I believe this will be something really special, and will help us attract even more passion and great talent into the department and the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, as well as enrolling students from outside our department. ...
I recently challenged students in one of my classes to build some educational materials primarily from existing, openly licensed materials. The results are in and the work is crazy / excellent / inspiring: Learn about how to use wikis and blogs in education at wikiblogedu.org. (Don’t forget to pick up a Rick Noblenski t-shirt afterwards). Learn how to prepare for and carry off an effective job interview at Interviewing Basics. Learn how to find or make clean water after a natural disaster at the Open Water Project. ...
There have been lots of articles around the blogosphere of late ringing the death bell for learning objects. It’s hard to tell if they’re right or not, because no one can agree about what a learning object is (although I enjoyed reading that a urinal apparently qualifies). And perhaps that very statement is all that needs to be made. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about these declarations since they started appearing, and I’ve come to the somewhat troubling conclusion that I don’t think I care if learning objects are dead or not. My primary interest always has been, and I suspect always will be, in increasing access to educational opportunity to people who have been denied that right for any of a variety of reasons. I loved the learning objects idea because the “write once, use anywhere” idea had a lot of economic appeal - once an object had been created for whatever reason, we could copy it (for free) and send it (for very close to free) almost anywhere around the world to be employed in the exercise of an individual’s right to education. ...
Holy cow. What a hysterical post by Jay Cross. The post provides a summary of the new 186 page report, “Learning styles and pedagogy post-16 learning: A systematic and critical review.” I agree that this particular body of research is all but worthless (you have to see the list of style dichotomies Jay has extracted from the report). My question, though, is can anyone point to an area of educational research that does much better?
The notion of teacher as DJ may have been implied when people started applying the “rip-mix-burn” metaphor to education, but lately I can’t seem to get it out of my head. The similarities were there even when teachers worked primarily with paper textbooks and printed research articles, but is even more pronounced now in the era of digitized resources. There are the obvious similarities… Both start with a collection of existing materials - acoustic resources like songs, sound effects, and samples, and educational resources like simulations, tutorials, and articles. Both sequence and blend these materials in interesting ways. Both do quite a bit of planning (think syllabus as playlist), perform in discrete blocks of time (think course meeting as set); and both have to make meaningful connections between the resources they choose to employ (think lecturing and discussion leading as beat matching). ...
Check out this fab collection of educational blogs over at incsub. This is the short list for this year’s awards in a variety of categories. Some really excellent educational blogs here, and almost certainly at least one you don’t already know about.
Only in the Instructional Technology Department could two people who sit all day within ten feet of each other have an extended conversation about work via their blogs. Brett pushes back on my Gagne, Games, and Learning post with another of his own, lest we forget, learning is complex. It’s good stuff. ...
Hadn’t mentioned my new book project here yet, mostly because I didn’t want to be accused of talking up vaporware. However, the new learning objects book is well underway and it’s time to get more people involved than my students. The book is written as a series of conversations around a conference room table, and deals with the what I feel are the least understood / most important concepts in learning objects. Also, the book is being written on the OpenContent wiki, and I would encourage anyone interested to jump in and have a go and writing new dialogue - or if you’re seriously committed - writing in a new character. And now, the links: ...
If it makes sense to mobilze the army and everyone else to come to the aid of the poor and unfortunate after a natural disaster (like Katrina), why doesn’t it make sense to mobilze this level of support for “them” the rest of the time? Is it because, barring a natural disaster, it’s their own fault and so they don’t deserve any help? Is it that we would really rather not help at all, but what with all the images on TV it would be political suicide not to help? Seems rather duplicitous to be helping now. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying we shouldn’t be helping now. I’m saying we should be helping more often. Helping, of course, is what open education is all about.