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Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was getting on a train. One of his sandals slipped off and fell to the ground. The train was moving, and there was no time to go back. Without hesitation, Gandhi took off his second sandal and threw it toward the first. Asked by his colleague why he did that, he said one sandal wouldn’t do him any good, but two would certainly help someone else.

It was also a knowledgeable act. By throwing that sandal, Gandhi had two important insights: He knew what people in the world needed, and he knew what to let go of.

crisis of content

productive learning is the learning process which engenders and reinforces wanting to learn more" (p. x). Never has that been more possible than at this moment of abundant access to information, knowledge, and people via the web. But "wanting to learn more" suggests a transfer of power over learning from teacher to student—it implies that students discover the curriculum rather than have it delivered to them. It suggests that real learning that sticks—as opposed to learning that disappears once the test is over—is about allowing students to pursue their interests in the context of the curriculum.

literacy is much more than simply reading and writing texts. The organization's position statement (n.d.) now defines 21st century literacies as including "proficiency with the tools of technology," an ability to "manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information," an ability to "design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes," and more.

Stanford professor Howard Rheingold, believe that technology now requires an attention literacy—the ability to exert some degree of mental control over our use of technology rather than simply being distracted by it

 ✓ We create learning environments that are carefully crafted, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity and engaging. ✓ We develop curriculum that has greater depth than breadth. ✓ We make sure our curriculum takes into account local culture and celebrates the uniqueness of our local community. ✓ We don’t isolate skills development but let students grow their skills as they engage with important content. ✓ We construct learning environments that foster questioning, creativity and innovation, such as the maker movement and project/problem based learning. ✓ We find the courage to have serious discussions about abolishing standardized testing, classroom marks and grading, and the use of “birth year” as our primary criterion for sorting students. ✓ We lobby our governments for funds to assure true equality in education for all children. ✓ We discontinue the ranking of teachers and schools.  ✓ We replace our egg-carton grades with flexible, personalized learning that takes into account when students are ready to engage in and acquire important skills. ✓ We make time for teacher collaboration a top priority.

Sadly, many online classes are Web-based correspondence courses where students complete worksheets and take tests. The offerings and content mirror traditional curriculums

My colleagues and I have demonstrated that online environments focused on collaboration and action, rather than reading and test-taking, can be more social, creative, substantial and personally meaningful than traditional classes

The computer’s real power lies in how it allows kids to learn and do new things in new ways unimaginable just a few years ago

The linchpin effect of authentic learning is that.. The value of what is being learned is obvious to the learnerAndDoes not have to be explained by the teacher. There is great powerWhen the learning whyIs part ofThe learning how.

they are expected to graduate with the habits of mind—curiosity, skepticism, compassion, wonder—that will prepare them to be better physicians

About half of all medical knowledge becomes obsolete every five years. Every 15 years, the world’s body of scientific literature doubles.

better integration of formal knowledge and clinical experience and a learning process that is individualized, not one-size-fits-all

New Models for Education: Maker Faire and the Young Makers Program

Maker Faire also captures something about the potential for a new direction in education

our optimism for making as a way to learn

For years school curriculums have emphasized top-down instruction, especially for topics like math and science. Learn the rules first — the theorems, the order of operations, Newton’s laws — then make a run at the problem list at the end of the chapter. Yet recent research has found that true experts have something at least as valuable as a mastery of the rules: gut instinct, an instantaneous grasp of the type of problem they’re up against. Like the ballplayer who can “read” pitches early, or the chess master who “sees” the best move, they’ve developed a great eye.

Now, a small group of cognitive scientists is arguing that schools and students could take far more advantage of this same bottom-up ability, called perceptual learning

One of the strengths of gamification is that it provides visible milestones of the student’s mastery of content in real time (when it is well designed). Too often in an instructional setting, the learner doesn’t know whether or not he or she really understands or can apply the knowledge they are learning. There is often no visible sign of mastery of the content or application of the content.

Perhaps the weakest area of the typical one-to-one computing plan is the complete absence of leadership development for the administrative team—that is, learning how to manage the transition from a learning ecology where paper is the dominant technology for storing and retrieving information, to a world that is all digital, all the time. Leaders must be given the training to: Craft a clear vision of connecting all students to the world’s learning resources. Model the actions and behaviors they wish to see in their schools. Support the design of an ongoing and embedded staff development program that focuses on pedagogy as much as technology. Move in to the role of systems analyst to ensure that digital literacy is aligned with standards. Ensure that technology is seen not as another initiative, but as integral to curriculum.

The student-teacher faces a rowdy class. “We’re not going to have that kind of behavior in here,” she says. “It’s too loud in here to move on.” The students don’t pay much attention. A boy in the back row, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, slumps his shoulders. Another student waves his hand aimlessly. “Nah, just stretching,” he replies, when the teacher asks if he needs something. Scenes such as that aren’t uncommon in urban classrooms, but in this case there is one critical difference: These students are avatars—computer-generated characters whose movements and speech are controlled by a professional actor. Each of the five characters—all with distinct abilities, personalities, and psychological profiles, and even names like “Maria” and “Marcus”—were created as part of the TeachME initiative at the University of Central Florida, in Orlando. There, teacher-candidates can practice in a virtual classroom before ever entering a real one. Real-time classroom simulations like TeachME, supporters say, offer promise for a host of teacher-training applications. Through them, candidates could learn to work with different groups of students, or practice a discrete skill such as classroom management. Most of all, such simulations give teachers in training the ability to experiment—and make mistakes—without the worry of doing harm to an actual child’s learning. “It allows the teacher to fail in a safe environment,” said Lisa Dieker, a professor of education at the University of Central Florida and one of the designers of TeachME. “Real kids, trust me, will remember in May what you said to them in August. You can’t reset children.”