That's So 21C Education

What's wrong with our world and what can we do about it? The shift is about to hit the fan...

What does the SOPA threat mean for online education and the cloud? Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to "go dark" on Wednesday in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. "What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites," says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net."

Throw away all of your preconceived ideas about the behaviour and nature of teenagers. New research suggests that without our turbulent teen years the human race would be, as Dr. David Bainbridge puts it in Surviving:) The Teenage Brain, "short lived and stupid." In the past, when we put the words selfish, reckless, irrational, irritable and impossible together we could only be describing one thing: the teenager - that odd creature that invades our homes for what seems like an eternity and tests the limits of our reasoning skills and patience. But what if teenagers are doing exactly as nature intended? Surviving:) The Teenage Brain looks at this critical developmental stage from a scientific and evolutionary point of view. The film combines cutting edge scientific research with YouTube clips of outrageous teen behaviour and a graphic novel approach to challenge conventional thinking about the adolescent years. It illustrates that our teens are doing precisely what they should be doing to finesse the development of their brains and ensure the survival of the human species.

Collaboration & sharing Young people communicate and collaborate every few minutes - it's an obsession. They text, MSN, BBM, Myspace, Facebook, Facebook message, Facebook chat and Skype. Note the absence of email and Twitter. Then there's Spotify, Soundcloud, Flickr, YouTube and Bitorrent to share, tag, upload and download experiences, comments, photographs, video and media. They also collaborate closely in parties when playing games. Never have the young shared so much, so often in so many different ways. Then along comes someone who wants to teach them this so called 21st C skill, usually in a classroom, where all of this is banned. I'm always amused at this conceit, that we adults, especially in education, think we even have the skills we claim we want to teach. There is no area of human endeavour that is less collaborative than education. Teaching and lecturing are largely lone wolf activities in classrooms. Schools, colleges and Universities share little. Educational professionals are deeply suspicious of anything produced outside of their classroom or their institution. The culture of NIH (Not Invented Here) is endemic. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed Thursday to sidestep a labor dispute over teacher evaluations and form "school-based committees" to evaluate teachers at 33 struggling schools - and fire up to half of them. Bloomberg said he can make the move under a school turnaround provision authorized by federal and state law. "This year, we'll do more to make sure every classroom has an effective teacher - and to remove those who don't make the grade," he said in his annual state of the city speech.

In our sometimes wholesale embracing of the new groupthink, we are reminded not to forget the immense value of solitude, privacy and independence... and we cannot forget the introvert, the introspective person, whom many believe are the trail blazers of innovation and creativity, like Apple's Wozniak, who's creativity thrived in solitude, but developed in his networks with Jobs and beyond. A great challenge to the prevailing wisdom that collaboration, teamwork and collective wisdom are the ultimate end. And a reminder for balance and flexibility in our model both inside and outside the classroom...

Research by the Institute for the Future released in a report entitled "Future Work Skills 2020″ shows that preparing for a specific career area based on content is difficult and, instead, people should be developing certain broad skills. These same skills are important for our students to learn. The report explains each of the skills in detail, and also goes into the implications for education and policies. 

The teen years can be emotionally difficult, but blogging can help adolescents to open up and become more socially confident MORE: Kids Sexting May Not Be as Big a Problem as We Thought

Great resource for setting up eFolio reflection goals

I know that "flipped" is a trendy idea right now. While I am intrigued by the idea of video tutorials to help guide students in learning, it is absurd to suggest that a video can replace a human in creating the ultimate customized learning experience. What this concept misses is the nature of human learning. Teaching is a relational endeavor. I'm a proponent of the flipped approach. But if we are pushing for flipped, we need to make sure that remains a conversation.

Don't shoot the medium. While no doubt FB presents challenges in its application in education, the real problem is not Facebook. The issue is professional value of teaching in the US, and North America in general. Until teachers are treated as professionals with salaries, responsibilities and statuses on par with university professors, following the Scandinavian and Asian models, the calibre of professional conduct will be as inconsistent as the pool of quality teacher candidates committed to an underpaid and undervalued profession.

This is going to sound ridiculous. But "irony" is dead, at least in its latest incarnation.

Good list... Can we adopt this as our expectation of our great leaders? especially 2, 6 and 7

A new Facebook program aims to prevent suicides by connecting distressed users with counselors via chat. The program, which launched Tuesday, lets friends alert Facebook when users express suicidal thoughts, reports The Associated Press. If your friend posts a comment related to suicide, for instance, you can report it to Facebook by clicking a link next to the comment. Facebook will then send an email to the comment's author directing them to a telephone hotline or a link they can click to start a confidential chat. Facebook reps could not be reached for comment on the program, which was identified as "Lifeline."

Following the story of a small American town confronting a firestorm of controversy ignited by a same-sex wedding announcement and the brutal bullying of a gay teen, this gripping documentary will challenge you to rethink your values and help close the gaps that divide our communities.

We've spoken of education for so long as though it is representative of an objective academic truth that we've missed the fact that for the majority of human history it was a matter of survival. A matter of love. A matter of inspiration and compulsion. As often a matter of the irrational as the rational.... there may not be any objectively "best" practices, only your communities' own best findings in any practice. 

"No news is better than Fox News" What the researchers found out may not surprise you: For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18 points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors). Fox News watchers are also 6 points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.