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]

Class Discussion

Observations on the New Opportunities for Education class description above, the readings, and my own opinions.

We need to be looking at educational reform through the lens of searching for solutions, not through the lens of revisiting the same problems and challenges.

Yes, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) do hold ‘great promise for improving the efficiency, reach and character of learning opportunities’. Hawkins tells us 'governments around the world are focusing on strategies to increase access to and improve the quality of education'. There is no argument employers are demanding an educated work force that 'understands how to use technology as a tool to increase productivity and creativity'.

We have the technology to 'transform how and what people learn'; and there is the possibility of a 'learning revolution' in education. But it will not come, Hawkins warns us, until we address how students learn and how teachers teach. Resnick supports the need for education reform with a call to 'rethink our approaches to learning and education' – and our ideas of how new technologies can support them. Computers do not just speed up communication flow; they can also be seen as universal construction tools 'greatly expanding what people can create and what they can learn in the process'.

In short, technology has revolutionized education, but no one has taught teachers how to use the technology. Hawkins has it right when he says 'teachers need to be transformed from information consumers…to information producers.' (1)

Steve Jobs even understands the problem when he quips 'what is wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology.' One Laptop Per Child may make us feel good, but it does not address the issue of building learning environments, and communities of learners. We must introduce teachers to the new technologies, show them how it can be integrated into the classroom, and where necessary help them overcome their fear of technology.

If the educational system is broken, as Hawkins, Resnick and Prensky suggest, we should be looking for solutions. Resnick’s 'reforming educational reform calls for rethinking how people learn and what people learn’. Hawkins, at minimum, suggests 'schools should be transformed into active learning environments.' Prensky says Engage me or Enrage me. [I don’t think kids know they are enraged. Or, if they do, why.] Students are bored because they are not engaged.

Hawkins and Resnick are in essence saying we need to give-up the conventional didactic teaching model in favor of a constructivist approach. The constructivist model has proven 'when technology is used in concert with constructivist teaching practices students tend to perform well; and when used in concert with didactic teaching practices, they do not.' [Wenglisky].

There are some practical solutions to the technology integration piece of the reform movement. We should be reading Using Technology Wisely, The Keys to Success In Schools, Wenglinsky, Harold; as well as The Technology Fix, The Promise and Reality of Computers in Our Schools, Pflaum, William D.

To address how learners learn, there is Universal Design for Learning [UDL] and differentiated instruction. Educators are constantly being challenged to teach a standardized curriculum to a community of learners with various learning styles. The UDL initiative provides educators with a blueprint for creating flexible methods, materials, and assessments that can accommodate learner differences.

These teaching / education reforms are not restricted to brick-and-mortar facilities. E-Learning or On-line learning is affected as well. The challenges of developing a constructivist On-line teaching model based on the affordances of 21st Century technologies are even greater, when many On-line courses are still taught asynchronously.

If, according to Benjamin Franklin ‘power is knowledge put into action’, then I believe knowledge is education in action.

The class discussion should be interesting, and informative.

Scott McCutcheon

==

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

(1) Many professional development initiatives that address these issues can be found in Chris Dede’s, ONLINE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT for TEACHERS, Emerging Models and Methods.