You open the front door and are overwhelmed by the most fantastic, enticing, delicious cooking smells. Half an hour later, you can’t even smell them anymore. Your senses are dulled by familiarity . It turns out the same is true for thoughts.
If the industrial age redesigned education for the twentieth century, in 2011 we are right on time to begin redesigning higher education for the 21st.
I recently had occasion to talk on the phone with someone whose posts on education and social media I follow with interest on Twitter. ToughLoveforX (his Twitter name) is a retired printer whose scan of the educational horizon in the digital age is as eagle-eyed as that of anyone I know. I follow him on Twitter because I know that, if I click through to one of the url’s he posts, I’m bound to find something good. When I asked him what he would do, if he could make one monumental change that would have an impact on the worlds of learning and social media, he said, “Scale John Seely Brown.” Perfectly to the point of my question. Perfectly Twitter. You cut right to the chase when you think in 140 characters or less. Scaling John Seely Brown is an awfully good idea.
Designing Future of Learning Conference Draws 500 Thought Leaders, Innovators, Designers, Educators, Activists to Long Beach—-and that has to be good for our kids and the future of higher education. HASTAC, the organization I cofounded in 2002, administers the annual HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition to identify, support, and then mentor to success teams of people who are figuring out brilliant new ways for us to learn together. This year’s winners will be showcasing their projects at this conference. I’ll be on two panels. There will a science fair, a hundred or so kids coming to the Showcase . . . and we’ll be tweeting and blogging about all of it, and videocasting too, so you can see what we are all up to on behalf of our kids’ future (and our own).
I know you saw IBM’s impressive Watson robot/computer/cyborg wipe the floor with some of Jeopardy’s smartest winners this week. There is no question that it is brilliant AI (Artificial Intelligence) programming and that the team of computer scientists, coders, linguists, and other knowledge-makers have done an incredible job pushing robotics forward. But is Watson smarter than a 5th grader? Short answer: no. Longer answer: well, in some things he is lots smarter and in others, he doesn’t stand a chance.
Internet instead of universities? This article features HASTAC and Cathy N. Davidson’s “crowdsourced grading,” and looks at how the web is inspiring a revolution in higher education. Just as we expect easy access to information on the internet, the open education movement is shaking up the traditional education system by making teaching resources available for … Education 2.0 in BBC Focus Magazine
Click Here To View Video.
iPads in schools to teach math? Here is the issue: if you change the technology but not the method of learning, then you are throwing bad money after bad practice . . .
I wrote a blog that has seen over 20,000 visitors on “How to Crowdsource Grading” and now I’m always asked, as if people know the answer, “Is it still working? Aren’t students getting away with murder?”
Well, no, in fact.
This is a delightful Call for Proposals for Ignite Talks on the topic of creative ideas that will transform the future of education. If you have any ideas worth igniting, all the information is provided below for how to propose a talk: