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September 26, 2013: 6:00pm - 8:00pm A Fireside Chat with MIT and edX leaders, Sanjay Sarma, Director, Office of Digital Learning, MIT and Kathy Pugh, Vice President of Academics, edX Registration and refreshments: 6:00-6:30pm Program 6:30-8:00pm Moderated by Nish Sonwalkar, Editor-in-Chief, MOOC FORUM Journal The Educational Technology field is exploding with innovation, and in response the MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge brings you a look at this field with two experts from MIT.

"Nelson: Giving readers what they need to form their own opinions on the important topics of our time." While this platform has a lot of potential and a lot of positive aspects, I can't help but wonder if it's not just imposing a top-down system of learning. Although it's marketed as helping you form your own opinions, I'd argue that you're shoved in the direction of that opinion.

an interesting article on procrastination. Perhaps worth reading to better understand our own behavior and the behavior of future students we attempt to engage. There is a not a direct technology angle here, but it would be important to think about this topic when looking at technologies for the classroom.

Notes from a conference on emerging technologies (not sure if Professor Dede was there or not). Count me as a skeptic re: OLPC's Ethiopia experiment, but the Institute of Play/EA partnership is an interesting one. 

I was at EmTech  at MIT during this panel discussion.

Thanks for sharing Mohit. I think the implementation of OLPC in numerous countries have been beneficial and a step in the right direction. Maybe if you do place a laptop in a child's hands, he/she could learn certain basic skills (like what the article suggested). But to go beyond that to higher-order thinking skills, a robust curriculum would be needed to complement the technology. Still, credit to these folks for reaching out to the children in need.

In Disrupting Class, one of the predictions that Clay Christenson makes is that classroom content in the future will not come from traditional textbooks, but from students and teachers who contribute user-generated content for learning. Here is an example of a site that allows users to download free textbooks. This is further proof that once the information is out there for all to see, it is going to be more and more difficult to prevent people from spreading ideas and circumventing the charge-for-information model that is currently out there.

This is the easy part of predictive analytics - the hard part is those aspects related to learning.

The future of smartphones? What could technology like this mean for the spread of mobile learning?

another example of customized experience on the web. Perhaps these algorithms will one day serve educational purposes. Could we transfer from visiting physical locations to visiting learning locations?

Really interesting article about the potential of a lifelong and nonlinear path through college - reminiscent of Prof. Dede's lifelong and life-wide learning propositions/models.

MIT considering its future vis-a-vis edX: "An education from MIT may soon involve a freshman year spent completing online courses, two years on campus and a fourth "year" of continuous education. While students pursue their careers, they could access a growing library of online courses to refresh their knowledge."access a growing library of online courses to refresh their knowledge."

The Cyberlearning Research Summit will take place in Washington DC, with speakers from industry and academia, who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. Topics include role of emerging technology in learning, individualized learning, augmented reality, and many others topics covered in T561. HGSE Faculty Dr. Todd Rose will also be a speaker.

Todd Rose presented here last year and it seems highly relevant to our course. In class right now. More on this later.

This 1990 video, where Steve Jobs talks about videogames and simulations in education, is an eloquent testimony to his visionary capabilities.

This is a captivating video made by a group called Iowa Future that was premiered at the 2011 School Administrators of Iowa Conference. Though it is aimed at Iowans in particular it is applicable to all of us as it highlights the staggering pace that the world has progressed to our current state of technological overload. It features shocking statistics about digital media use that are quite fascinating and applicable to the entire world.

Educational Arcade paper from MIT focusing on: "the background and affordances of Simulations, Digital Games, and Social Networking, the cognitive implications of these technologies, specific challenges with using these tools in the classroom, as well as strategies for overcoming these challenges in order to achieve successful learning experiences, and the future of these technologies and their impact and learning and teaching."

"KnowledgeWorks Foundation has just released the third edition of its education forecast, called Forecast 3.0, Recombinant Education: Regenerating the Learning Ecosystem, that outlines the deconstruction of the current education model, a change in educators' roles based on their strengths, changing career pathways, and the role of technology in this realm."

This article explains why the district chose laptops over tablet and how the community is helping to turn the schools around.

"The teachers that were involved said that if every kid had their own computer, we could do amazing things". It would be interesting to know if the teachers presented some concrete ideas of 'amazing things'. It would also be interesting to know whether they have a bank of spare laptops to loan to the students while the defective ones are getting fixed. I have a feeling that in the not-so-distant future the choice between a tablet and a computer may become a moot point. The hardware that powers a MacBook Air and iPad is very similar. We have laptops that double as tablets and tablets that are paired with a keyboard to be used as a laptop. Eventually these two will merge.

Great overview of the issues -- I agree with Kasthuri -- I think the issue will become moot

The video looks at the potential to redefine how we learn and educate through emerging education technologies.

Nice Video of Mr. Salman Khan talking about lessons on demand and teachers as mentors and not delivering a script.

Brings up the interesting issue of physical space in 21st century classrooms. Should schools of the future look like the way they do now (ie. desks and chairs, albeit with iPads/laptops atop desks)? How can we match the shift in pedagogical thinking with what our physical spaces of classrooms look like? On a related note, a colleague at an international school in Mumbai showed me around their new K-12 school recently (K-12 1:1 laptop program, phenomenal tech integration program)... and they no longer have walls to demarcate classrooms across the entire school. Instead of classrooms, they have "learning pods." So, imagine you're a third grade teacher--you have four slidable "walls" that you can open up to collaborate with the adjacent third grade section for social studies. Or perhaps you notice that the fifth grade science experiment seems to align with what you're doing today so you walk over to see if they'd be up for sharing what they're doing. Their idea is that the physical space needs to reflect the same environment of open education and collaborative learning that we're promoting in our classrooms.