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Back to my statement: Knowledge of facts is critical to building understanding. In-depth understanding. And yet, knowledge is slowly becoming a Cinderella in the broader context of education for reasons that escape me. Cognitive science tells us that “thinking” well depends on activating knowledge effectively: “The power of human cognition depends on the amount of knowledge encoded and the effective deployment of it.” (A Simple Theory of Complex Cognition, John R. Anderson, 1995) We all know that there are two types of knowledge: declarative knowledge (yes, those “irrelevant”, googlable facts), and procedural knowledge (more commonly known as “skills”). These two are intertwined and as student-friendly as you might want to be in dismissing the former (because, well, “knowing” stuff is hard and we want students to have only great experiences or “fun”), you cannot. These facts (“units” in scientific terminology) are the building blocks of skills (“rules”). Simply put, you cannot build a skill or develop deep conceptual understanding in the absence of facts.

employee education and training can be hard to sustain

human tendency that to overestimate our depth of knowledge and the strength of our abilities.

Finally, technology is embedded into the structure of all we do. It’s part of how we research, how we capture information, and how we display our learning. It’s never an accessory tacked on at the end.

My students started by creating a Flickr feed, Facebook page, a YouTube account, a Tumblr blog, and a Twitter account. They decided that visual representations of their knowledge would be the most powerful. So some of my students created photographs depicting images that they felt best represented modern trafficking. These photos were then edited in Picnik, and posted to our blog.

A few years ago I tried to teach this idea to a grade 12 class when we were studying essay writing. They didn’t get it. But in the context we were using, after comparing social media content, it made perfect sense to my grade 11 students.

As a teacher, your "self" is embedded within your teaching -- which is how it goes from a job to a craft. The learning results are yours.

it makes sense that students' self-defense mechanisms kick in when they're challenged.

Lack of apparent curiosity Apathy Refusal to take risks Decreased creativity Defeated tones Scrambles for shortcuts

In web 1.0, users are viewed as mere receivers and consumers of content. Knowledge is centralized and expert-based and hence the use of taxonomies and directories to organize and store it. In the same vein, education 1.0 is also based on a notion of one way communication where teachers are the sages on the stage and students are pails to be filled with facts to be regurgitated and spewed back in standardized tests.

In web 2.0 things are a bit different. Users are empowered with tools that permit them more  interaction and participation in knowledge building. Web tools such as blogs, wikis, and social media websites have decentralized knowledge and enhanced collaboration and communication. Web 2.0 foregrounded concepts of collective intelligence, distributed-expertise, and wisdom of the mob. Similarly, in education 2.0 learning is student-centred and involves continuous interaction between learners and their teachers and also with the content being studied. Collaborative approaches to instruction such as PBL, game based learning, flipped learning have been adopted as  teaching modes.

education3.0 is based on the belief that content is freely and readily available as is characteristic of web 3.0. It is self-directed, interest-based learning, where problem-solving, innovation and creativity drive education. Education 3.0 is also about the three Cs: connectors, creators, and constructivists.

Many years ago we might have been able to argue that schools were organized in ways that fit with conventional knowledge about how young people learn. Our knowledge about learning has grown immensely since the turn of the twentieth century and yet the school day, especially in high schools, looks very much the same as it did 100 years ago.

Outcomes of the project will likely be available in 2013, but regular updates will be posted on the project website where you can also find a copy of the literature review written to stimulate thinking about innovative practices for high school redesign including, Increasing learning opportunities for students; Enhancing engagement of students in their learning; Addressing diverse learning needs of students; Enhancing relationships in the school community; and, Enhancing teacher collaboration.

“21st century student outcomes”

are the skills, knowledge and expertise students should master to succeed in work and life in the 21st century.

Disciplines include: English, reading or language artsWorld languagesArtsMathematicsEconomicsScienceGeographyHistoryGovernment and Civics

Briefly, Education 1.0, 2.0. and 3.0 is explained as: Education 1.0 can be likened to Web 1.0 where there is a one-way dissemination of knowledge from teacher to student.  It is a type of essentialist, behaviorist education based on the three Rs – receiving by listening to the teacher; responding by taking notes, studying text, and doing worksheets; and regurgitating by taking standardized tests which in reality is all students taking the same test. Learners are seen as receptacles of that knowledge and as receptacles, they have no unique characteristics.  All are viewed as the same.  It is a standardized/one-size-fits-all education. Similar to Web 2.0, Education 2.0 includes more interaction between the teacher and student; student to student; and student to content/expert.  Education 2.0, like Web 2.0, permits interactivity between the content and users, and between users themselves.  Education 2.0 has progressive roots where the human element is important to learning.  The teacher-to-student and student-to-student relationships are considered as part of the learning process.  It focuses on the three Cs – communicating, contributing, and collaborating. Education 3.0 is based on the belief that content is freely and readily available as is characteristic of Web 3.0. It is self-directed, interest-based learning where problem-solving, innovation and creativity drive education. Education 3.0 is also about the three Cs but a different set – connectors, creators, constructivists.  These are qualitatively different than the three Cs of Education 2.0.  Now they are nouns which translates into the art of being a self-directed learner rather than doing learning as facilitated by the educator. Education 3.0: Altering Round Peg in Round Hole Education

What should students learn in the 21st century? At first glance, this question divides into two: what should students know, and what should they be able to do? But there's more at issue than knowledge and skills.

For the innovation economy, dispositions come into play: readiness to collaborate, attention to multiple perspectives, initiative, persistence, and curiosity. While the content of any learning experience is important, the particular content is irrelevant. What really matters is how students react to it, shape it, or apply it. The purpose of learning in this century is not simply to recite inert knowledge, but, rather, to transform it.1 It is time to change the subject.

Expanding the "Big Four" Why not study anthropology, zoology, or environmental science? Why not integrate art with calculus, or chemistry with history? Why not pick up skills and understandings in all of these areas by uncovering and addressing real problems and sharing findings with authentic audiences? Why not invent a useful product that uses electricity, or devise solutions to community problems, all the while engaging in systematic observation, collaborative design, and public exhibitions of learning?

ll children are born to drive their education. The problem is that prior to the digital age there were no child-friendly pedagogic vehicles. Now that the military-industrial complex has created them, parents and teachers should give the keys to the kids as soon as possible and let them head off on their own down the beautifully linear highway of knowledge.

One of the empires is the empire of fear. Surely we are not free if our lives are dominated by fear. Although Mitra’s minimal model blithely assumes that children greet everything new with a calm curiosity, Rousseau recognises that children can just as easily respond to the new with fear. To avoid this requires early training. A snippet of his advice on this subject:

At another junction on the same road is the empire of habit. We are not free if we are too firmly set in our ways. Hence Rousseau’s advice: “the only habit that a child should be allowed to contract is none. Do not carry him on one arm more than the other; do not accustom him to give one hand rather than the other, to use one more than the other, to want to eat, sleep, or be active at the same hours…Prepare from afar the reign of his freedom…” (63) (Sir Ken Robinson’s critique of the school bell is but a footnote to this.)

Teachers can use the QFT at different points: to introduce students to a new unit, to assess students’ knowledge to see what they need to understand better, and even to conclude a unit to see how students can, with new knowledge, set a fresh learning agenda for themselves. The technique can be used for all ages.

Dupuy, Muhammad, and many other teachers are using a step-by-step process that we and our colleagues at the Right Question Institute have developed called the Question Formulation Technique (QFT)

In health care, for example, research funded by the National Institutes of Health has shown that the QFT produces dramatic increases in levels of patient activation and improved patient-provider communication. In the classroom, teachers have seen how the same process manages to develop students’ divergent (brainstorming), convergent (categorizing and prioritizing), and metacognitive (reflective) thinking abilities in a very short period of time.

ust as advances in technology enabled the growth of science, the extremely rapid growth of technology we’re experiencing today is impacting our perspectives, tools, and priorities now. But beyond some mild clamor for a focus on “STEM,” there have been only minor changes in how we think of content–this is spite of extraordinary changes in how students connect, access data, and function on a daily basis.

What kind of changes might we expect in a perfect-but-still-classroom-and-content-based world? What might students learn in the future? Of course any response at all is pure speculation, but if we draw an arc from classical approaches to the Dewey approach to what might be next–factoring in technology change, social values, and criticisms of the current model–we may get a pretty decent answer. This assumes, of course a few things (all of which may be untrue): 1. We’ll still teach content 2. That content will be a mix of skills and knowledge 3. Said skills and knowledge will be thematically arranged into “content areas”

The Content Of The Future: 8 Content Areas For Tomorrow’s Students 1. Literacy Big Idea: Reading and writing in physical & digital spaces Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas included: Grammar, Word Parts, Greek & Latin Roots, The Writing Process, Fluency; all traditional content areas 2. Patterns Big Idea: How and why patterns emerge everywhere under careful study Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: Grammar, Literature, Math, Geometry, Music, Art, Social Studies, Astronomy 3. Systems Big Idea: The universe—and every single thing in it–is made of systems, and systems are made of parts. Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: Grammar, Law, Medicine, Science, Math, Music, Art, Social Studies, History, Anthropology, Engineering, Biology; all traditional content areas by definition (they’re systems, yes?) 4. Design Big Idea: Marrying creative and analytical thought Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: Literature, Creativity, Art, Music, Engineering, Geometry 5. Citizenship Big Idea: Responding to interdependence Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: Literature, Social Studies, History; Civics, Government, Theology 6. Data Big Idea: Recognizing & using information in traditional & non-traditional forms Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: Math, Geometry, Science, Engineering, Biology; 7. Research Big Idea: Identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing diverse ideas Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: English, Math, Science; Humanities 8. Philosophy Big Idea: The nuance of thought Examples of traditional ideas and academic content areas include: Ethics, Literature/Poetry, Art, Music; Humanities

Education should not be about teaching to the next level

True learning is intrinsically motivated and the reward is knowledge.

Our teachers are stuck within the confines of a system that no longer serves our children.

Let's start with the secondary system. As this level of education becomes significantly student focused, there are many of us in the system who fear we are coddling students in the extreme and not preparing them at all for the realities of the work world or college/university. Here are samples of policies, largely instituted by the Ministry of Education, that added together, have lead to concerns re: coddling.

•Late work: Student work is not penalized for lateness. Late work is viewed as a behavioural issue, not an academic one. •Plagiarism: This is also seen as a behavioural issue, and usually does not result in any academic penalty, even in a grade 12 University level course. •Evaluation: Policies are moving away from grades being derived from an average of all student assignments in favour of a more general approach that reflects "most recent and/or most consistent" achievement. •Lower limits: Students getting failing grades are assessed by this policy which requires teachers to give a mark of 30 to students who are, on paper, achieving anywhere from 1-29 per cent. This is designed to 'give them hope' of success. •Credit rescue/recovery: A policy designed to give students who fail a course the opportunity to make up key missed work with the goal of achieving a passing grade. •Memorization: The idea of students actually memorizing material is viewed as "old fashioned" and is rejected in favour of "inquiry based learning'." The world of the university student is decidedly different, as evidenced by their policies. •Late work: Most courses do not accept late work. Period. •Plagiarism: This is viewed as academic dishonesty, and harsh academic penalties are in place. •Evaluation: Most courses feature few evaluations that are weighted heavily, and grades are based on the average of all assignments. •Evaluation: The move toward knowledge-based evaluation is epidemic. Exams, even in courses like literature studies and philosophy, are commonly multiple choice and short answer exams.

•If students are trained for the 14 years they attend school that there really are few consequences to academic problems, how will they fare in the much more rigorous world of post-secondary education? A history professor recently asked me what we (high school teachers) were doing to our kids.