Social Media Revolution

Learning in a Networked World: Trends and Opportunities in the Future of Technology for Learning Environments and Education

AACE has made Stanford's Dr. Roy Pea's November 25, 2009 Keynote at the 2009 E-Learn Conference available in a video podcast. It is entitled Learning in a Networked World: Trends and Opportunities in the Future of Technology for Learning Environments and Education. See
http://editlib.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Reader.ViewAbstract&paper_id=30282&$3 His research on informal and formal learning was especially revealing.

Global Education

I am current viewing a fantastic keynote at the ELearn Conference in Vancouver, BC. It is entitled Using Adventure and Internet for Environmental and Global Education by National Geographic Writer and Filmmaker, Jon Bowermaster. To see some of his work that he is showing today, see
http://www.jonbowermaster.com/videoplayer/videoplayer.php?videoid=1022

I had a chance to meet him at a reception last night and talked about taking teachers along on some of his adventures who blog along the way. He uses adventure to talk about bigger issues.

The earth is a truly a remarkable place.

Bob Leneway

The Information Literate Who Reach for Education

This article was submitted on October 17, 2009 at 04:44 PM PDT
By Lorette Weldon, Project Archivist, Allvoices


As an educator responsible for integrating technology into the curriculum, I have found that information literacy is the ability to learn a process and develop it into a way that the individual could... You can find the news story at http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4418764-the-information-literate-who-reach-for-education

The Lost Generation - Unemployment for the Just Graduated?

How will extended unemployment impact the digital tribe. The growing unemployment challenge for recent college graduates may have severe long term effects for this generation and others. This week's Business Week cover story about "The Lost Generation" is well worth a read:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_42/b4151032038302.htm

What to learn: 'core knowledge' or '21st-century skills'?

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — If someone told you that kids need to think critically and creatively, be technologically savvy and work well with others, you'd nod in agreement, right?

At least 10 states have committed to helping students develop these "21st-century skills" in schools, the workplace and beyond. Most recently, officials in Massachusetts committed to working with the Arizona-based Partnership for 21st Century Skills, or P21, the movement's main advocacy group.

But a small group of outspoken education scholars is challenging that assumption, saying the push for 21st-century skills is taking a dangerous bite out of precious classroom time that could be better spent learning deep, essential content. For the first time since the P21 push began seven years ago, they're pushing back. In a forum here last week sponsored by Common Core, a non-profit group that promotes "a full core curriculum," they squared off with education consultant Ken Kay, co-founder of the P21 movement.

"It's an ineffectual use of school time," says E.D. Hirsch Jr., founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and author of a series of books on what students should learn year-by-year in school. He calls the P21 movement "a fragmented approach with uncertain cognitive goals" that could most profoundly hurt disadvantaged children: At home, he says, they don't get as much background as middle-class students in history, science, literature and the like.

Core Knowledge holds that an explicit, grade-by-grade "core of common learning" is necessary for a good education. So, for instance, when fifth-graders learn about Galileo's role in astronomy, they study Italian history and geography as well.

Kay calls criticisms by Hirsch and others "a sideshow that distracts people from the issue at hand: that our kids need world-class skills and world-class content."

Kay notes that virtually all of the industrialized countries the USA is competing with "are pursuing both content and skills."

His seven-year effort has earned enviable support — not only from lawmakers and policy wonks but also from a wide range of corporate backers. His non-profit board of directors boasts members from Intel, Apple, Dell, Adobe, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems, among others, and recent IRS filings show more than $1 million in revenue.

In November, a Massachusetts task force concluded that straight academic content "is no longer enough" to help students compete: It urged state education commissioner Mitchell Chester to add 21st-century skills to curriculum guides and teacher training. That drew a rebuke from The Boston Globe, which editorialized last week that it's "not clear that the approach can be implemented without de-emphasizing academic content."

At its heart, say Hirsch and others, the conflict is about what should happen in a school day: Do kids learn to think by reading great literature, doing difficult math and learning history, philosophy and science? Or can they tackle those subjects on their own if schools simply teach them to problem-solve, communicate, use technology and think creatively?

If you pursue the latter, says University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, the rich content you're after inevitably "falls by the wayside." While kids may enjoy working together on projects, for instance, the amount of knowledge they get often ends up being shallow. Furthermore, he says, research shows that many teachers find it difficult to actually teach children to think creatively or collaborate. In the end, they rarely get better at the very skills that P21 advocates.

"If we want our kids to learn how to be better collaborators, we're going to need to teach that," says Willingham, author of the new book Why Don't Students Like School?.

Kay says P21 critics miss the point, offering "a false choice" that won't help U.S. students. He says he hopes to work with critics on incorporating both thinking skills and content into future P21 work.

"We need kids who don't just do what they're told but who are self-directed," he says.
Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-04-core-knowledge_N.htm

New Resources Focus on the Effective Use of Technology in Title I Programs

According to David Nagel," two national education organizations--the State Educational Technology Directors Association and the National Association for State Title I Directors--are launching three new co-developed resources designed to help education leaders with their Title I programs, especially in terms of using technology to help improve outcomes for Title I populations".

The report, "Leveraging Title I & Title IID: Maximizing the Impact of Technology in Education," provides data, research, mini-case studies, program profiles, and best practices on approaches to educational technology. To see the report and its excellent resource guide see
http://www.setda.org/web/guest/titleIwiki

Bob Leneway