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What is “disruptive change”?

On April 28, 2003, Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, and on April 3, 2008, less than five years later, it became the largest music retailer in the US, with 50 million customers and 4 billion songs sold. Then about two years down the road, this past February, Apple more than doubled that sales figure to 10 billion songs. This is what I consider to be disruptive change.

As educators, we must ask: Could there be a parallel in our own industry, or the potential for other disruptive changes ahead? What might higher education look like in a future filled with disruptive change?

What can colleges learn from Facebook?

Where Facebook has shown unique value is as a data-gathering tool. Never has a website been able to learn so much about its users. And that is where higher education should be taking notes, said Angie McQuaig, director of data innovation at the University of Phoenix, at the 2010 Educause conference on Friday.

If Facebook can use analytics to revolutionize advertising in the Web era, McQuaig suggested, colleges can use the same principles to revolutionize online learning.

People organically develop their PLNs when chosing to participate in social media like Twitter, Facebook , blogs, and through learning networks like Classroom 2.0.

In this post I wish to share with you some of the top sites I have found to be useful on the internet that promote true PBL.

Edutopia PBL - Edutopia is a site containing outstanding educational content for teachers. It contains an area devoted to Project Based Learning.

PBL-Online Is a one stop solution for Project Based Learning! You'll find all the resources you ne​ed to design and manage high quality projects for middle and high school students.

While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.

This new media environment can be enormously disruptive to our current teaching methods and philosophies.

Our physical structures were built prior to an age of infinite information, our social structures formed to serve different purposes than those needed now, and the cognitive structures we have developed along the way now struggle to grapple with the emerging possibilities.

Can a videogame teach you to be a better person? Given that many centre around shooting people in the face, that might seem ridiculous. But games have been used for centuries to teach skills: it is theorised that chess was developed as a training tool for Persian army officers.

The latest issue of Computers in Classrooms is now available, with the following games-related articles:

It’s not about the game! Dawn Hallybone discusses activities surrounding games to maximise the benefits of games-based learning. Red Mist, the prison-based video game. Jude Ower tells us about a game which is won or lost by the state of your emotions! Creating a game – a positive impact on learning? David Luke reports on research he and colleagues undertook to determine, amongst other things, whether games-based learning disadvantages girls. Games-based learning: a personal view. Mother and computing graduate Amanda Wilson gives her opinion of games-based learning. Battling the barriers of games-based learning. John McLear explains how he set about developing a search engine for educational games.