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Stadium seating, sound-absorbing panels and other acoustic technologies are designed to draw maximum attention to the professor at the front of the room.

The “message” of this environment is that to learn is to acquire information, that information is scarce and hard to find (that's why you have to come to this room to get it), that you should trust authority for good information, and that good information is beyond discussion (that's why the chairs don't move or turn toward one another). In short, it tells students to trust authority and follow along.

Most of our assumptions about information are based on characteristics of information on paper.

Even something as simple as the hyperlink taught us that information can be in more than one place at one time

Blogging came along and taught us that anybody can be a creator of information.

Wikipedia has taught us yet another lesson, that a networked information environment allows people to work together in new ways to create information that can rival (and even surpass) the content of experts by almost any measure.

Our old assumption that information is hard to find, is trumped by the realization that if we set up our hyper-personalized digital network effectively, information can find us.

It is like continuously working with thousands of research associates around the world.

Unfortunately, many teachers only see the disruptive possibilities of these technologies when they find students Facebooking, texting, IMing, or shopping during class.

We have had our why's, how's, and what's upside-down, focusing too much on what should be learned, then how, and often forgetting the why altogether.

All of this vexes traditional criteria for assessment and grades. This is the next frontier as we try to transform our learning environments.

Content is no longer king, but many of our tools have been habitually used to measure content recall.

Course facilitators, Siemens and Downes, gave learners control over how they learned.

The concept was enough to lure in D’Arcy Norman

He was one of the 2,300 students who signed up for a free account that would allow him to access class documents, receive emails from the facilitators and participate in online class discussions.

Norman was one of the more passive participants, while others participated fully, doing all the reading and the assignments, without receiving recognized credit for their work. The instructors only marked papers and the final project from for-credit students, but others were free to post papers on the course website for other students to view and comment on.

“At the beginning, we had quite a number of students feeling quite overwhelmed because you would get 200 or 300 posts going into a discussion forum per day and that’s just about impossible to follow,” Siemens says.

“You have people in there who were really interested, but they were afraid to explore the technologies that were being used and they got lost,” Lane says.

Even if students in massively open online courses master the technology and overcome their virtual stage fright, a third problem remains: how to recognize the value of a learning experience that isn’t for credit.

“If you’re in a business and you’re a young professional and you want to take an open class, how do you get your superiors to respect that, and say ‘Wow, that’s really good professional development. We should put that in your personnel file,’” Lane questions. “If it’s open and everyone can drop in and drop out, it’s just not seen in the same way.”

Wend Drexler, a professor and grant administrator at the University of Florida who also took Siemen’s class as a for-credit student, says that as more professors are posting their content online, figuring out how to recognize non-credit learning will continue to be an issue.

“You could really piece together a good undergraduate education based on what’s available out there, but how do you prove to an employer that you have done that?” Drexler questions. “I don’t know, but it’s something that everyone is trying to work through.”

College leaders don't yet know how to credential the knowledge students are gaining on their own, but they may soon have to

While the concept of a self-educated citizenry circumventing the traditional system of higher education may have sounded far-fetched a decade ago, the fact that the likes of Spilde gave it more than lip service marks something of a shift. Indeed, there was more than a subtle suggestion across hours of sessions Monday that colleges are in for a new world, like it or not, where they may not be the winners.

This is the very best model of pedagogy that 18th century technology can provide.  It’s teacher-centered model that is one way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. It’s time for a rethinking of the entire model of learning.  We need to move to a customized and collaborative model that embraces 21st century learning technology and techniques.  This is not about technology per se – it’s about a change in the relationship between the student and teacher in the learning process.

Are we willing to accept that an Industrial Age form of education isn’t much good for children who have to work in a digital age?

Portugal launched the biggest program in the world to equip every child in the country with a laptop and access to the web and the world of collaborative learning. To pay for it, Portugal tapped into both government funds and money from mobile operators who were granted 3G licenses. That subsidized the sale of one million ultra-cheap laptops to teachers, school children, and adult learners.

The impact on the classroom is tremendous, as I saw this spring when I toured a classroom of seven-year-olds in a public school in Lisbon. It was the most exciting, noisy, collaborative classroom I have seen in the world.

too often, in the American and Canadian school system, teachers still rely on the traditional model of education. Teachers often feel that this is the only way to teach a large classroom of kids, and yet the classroom in Portugal shows that giving kids laptops can free the teacher to introduce a new way of learning that’s more natural for kids who have grown up digital at home.

First, it allows teachers to step off the stage and start listening and conversing instead of just lecturing. Second, the teacher can encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the teacher’s information. Third, the teacher can encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the school. Finally, the teacher can tailor the style of education to their students’ individual learning styles.

simply providing computers in schools is not enough. Teachers facing a classroom of kids with laptops need to learn that they are no longer the expert in their domain; the Internet is.

BIE Institite For PBL - The main Buck Institute of On-line Resource Site is a must visit for anyone serious about PBL. There is some good information on the professional development .

PBL: Exemplary Projects - A wonderful site for those wanting practical ideas to infuse PBL into the curriculum. This is the creation of a group of experienced teachers, educators, and researchers whom you may contact as resources.

4Teachers.org PBL - This site has a contains some useful information on supplying sound reasoning for PBL in school. Especially interesting are articles on Building Motivation and Using Multiple Intellegences. One very useful resource in this site is the PBL Project Check List Section.

Houghton Mifflin Project Based Learning Space - This site from publisher Houghton Mifflin Contains contains some good resources for investigating PBL and was developed by the Wisconson Center For Education Research. Included is a page on Background Knowledge an Theory.

Intel® Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches - If you are looking for free, just-in-time professional development that you can experience now, anytime, or anywhere, this may be your answer. Intel promises that this new series will provide high interest, visually compelling short courses that facilitate deep exploration of 21st century learning concepts using and PBL.

New Tech Network - I have personally visited the New Tech Schools in both Napa and Sacramento California. I was impresssed with more then the technology.

High Tech High School - These high schools also operate using a project based learning model centered around 21st century skills.

GlobalSchoolhouse.net - Great site to begin PBL using the web while cooperating with other schools.   Harness the ability to use the web as a tool for interaction, collaboration, distance education, cultural understanding and cooperative research -- with peers around the globe.

So are you calling for the death of the lecture?

Not at all.

A lecture done well can be motivating or energizing if the faculty member is communicating their passion.

What are common problems?

We try to stuff too much in a lecture.

If it doesn’t work, why are universities and professors so fond of the format?

it is important to recognize this challenge has been going on for more than 100 years.

What’s the answer?

You have to look at the education of faculty.

they haven’t been taught anything about how people learn.

Is it realistic to expect change when universities are scrambling to balance budgets?

Given the cost of university, the expectations of students and their families are shifting, as well. They want to know there is a rich learning environment.