New Opportunities for Education

ICTs hold great promise for improving the efficiency, reach and character of learning opportunities in developed and developing countries. Yet many (most?) of these potential gains are undocumented. Among the obstacles that we will explore are the familiar structural and cultural issues embedded in educational programs around the world and a newer variety of Internet-mediated challenges.

E- learning is just one aspect of ICT, which allows one to learn in unconventional yet stimulating ways. E-Learning can result in a more productive work force as discussed in Hawkins article Ten Lessons for ICT, if not be the catalyst for new educational opportunities. Can E-Learning be used as a tool that fosters new skills for today's society? Reasoning, communication, judgment, engagement, and preparation for society, to name a few, will be credited to E-learning because it's that effective. Would you define this as result driven? Integration of computers and learning leads to enthusiasm, not only on behalf of the teachers but for the students as well. Now it's time to take this enthusiasm and merge it with the value that has evolved from the classroom environment. How should this be done? This merging of the classroom and innovative and interactive learning via ICT is like bridging the gap in the digital divide as Hawkins speaks of in his article. As Benjamin Franklin professed, Power is knowledge put into action. Here we must question, what is knowledge without action? Is it perhaps education without E-Learning?

Readings

• Wikipedia Article on OLPC
• Browse the OLPC site
• Bob Hawkins, Global Information Technology Report, Ten Lessons for ICT and Education in the Developing World
• Read the Executive Summary (2 pages) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century - Henry Jenkins

NOTE: The above Jenkins link is broken. This link should work [1]

Readings added 4/21 worth reading if you have time! Mark Prensky, "Engage Me or Enrage Me" http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf

Additional Resources

• Taking up online opportunities? Children's uses of the internet for education, communication and participation (2004)

• Rethinking Learning in the Digital Age, Mitchel Resnick

• Read the Executive Summary (1 page) Terry Fisher & Bill McGeveran, The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age

A case for beginning OLPC at home: [2]