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eachers also think they have to teach like a champion because they are the ones responsible for the learning. Don't you think that this is backwards?

When we put the focus on each learner and how they can own and drive their learning, then we see engaged, self-directed learners with agency.

This is just the beginning of a new world of learning and it's time to put the "Person" back in "Personalization."

They probably don't realize that their digital footprint is actually a "digital tattoo" that can never be removed.

If we teach as we taught yesterday,we rob our children of tomorrow.”

There are companies that frame "personalized learning" as adaptive learning systems using algorithms to choose the right path for learning. So we're going to end this blog emphasizing learners need to be the ones who choose their path with their teacher guiding the process. It is about encouraging learners to have a voice and choice in their learning. It's happening now all over the world.

When we focus on learning and not on curriculum, teachers roles change. We still can teach to standards but let's involve learners in the process and give them a voice so they own the learning.

They also need to understand who they are, how they learn best, and how to be global digital citizens.

If tools are needed, he suggested, it is better that we make them ourselves, and for the sake of the children’s freedom it is better that they acquire the belief that the imperfect tools they make themselves are better than perfect tools made by others.

he great Romantic pedagogy of liberation becomes a parody of itself when it loses sight of how vulnerable the child is to a myriad imperial forces, reducing itself to the myopic claim that the only thing children need to be liberated from is teachers.

Of course, the child must feel at every step of the way that she is making the discoveries, or, as Rousseau says of his Emile in his now outdated language: “let him always believe he is the master” but, he reminds the tutor, “let it always be you who are.” (120)

Rousseau suggests beginning the scientific part of a child’s education with some geographical discovery learning. He has a nice criticism of his EdTech contemporaries: “You want to teach geography to this child, and you go and get globes, cosmic spheres, and maps for him. So many devices! Why all these representations? Why do you not begin by showing him the object itself so that he will at least know what you are talking about?” (168)

If curiosity and attention need cultivation and direction, they also need protection. Rousseau sees a particular risk with the sciences – and this is one which online learning surely magnifies, not diminishes. He puts it beautifully, describing the entry into science as something that can be like entering “into a bottomless sea…When I see a man, enamoured of the various kinds of knowledge, let himself be seduced by their charm and run from one to the other without knowing how to stop himself, I believe I am seeing a child on the shore gathering shells and beginning by loading himself up with them; then, tempted by those he sees next, he throws some away and picks up others, until, overwhelmed by their multitude and not knowing anymore which to choose, he ends by throwing them all away and returning empty-handed.” (172)

In a parallel way, learning emerges at the edge of chaos where children meet Google, and it emerges with the same spontaneity seen when the first amoeba dragged itself out of the primordial soup.

“The man who did not know pain would know neither the tenderness of humanity nor the sweetness of commiseration. His heart would be moved by nothing. He would not be sociable; he would be a monster among his kind.” (87)

Rousseau makes a point more specifically about the psychology of the child, arguing that it is damaging for children to be encouraged to learn things that are beyond the developing sphere of their experience.

Children become accustomed to parroting the truth instead of perceiving for themselves that something is true.

No child ever came face to face with his mortality when his avatar was struck by a pixelated bullet. No, the child learns infinitely more about the human condition from a single bout of toothache than from 1,000 hours of online gaming.

Mitra’s minimalism is not just the minimalism of a hands-off approach to teaching; it is also the minimalism of a theory that – in that questionable analytic tradition – wants to limit itself to technique. All we are given is a methodology – the theoretical equivalent of the automotive machinery that children can drive.

schools

Media

Social

Our students are gravitating (on their own) to Social Media

Learning for the 22nd century

Social Media adds so many layers of depth

Communication has changed in the world around us.

Information has changed our lives.

The lines between our lives and “digital lives” are blurring

The world is shrinking.