University of the future is here | The Australian 01/06/2011 - 3 views
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Roger Cook on 07 Jun 11In our new world of online plenty, "no matter what you are interested in you can go online and join a group of people attracted to something because they want to learn about it", ... "It also means education, knowledge and achievement are opening up to a much broader range of students, particularly visual learners who didn't have a chance to shine in text-based education systems, international e-learning expert Marc Prensky says. "What many educators often forget is that reading and writing, although they have enjoyed primacy for hundreds of years, are very artificial ways to communicate, store and retrieve information," he says." ... "We have to get over the myth that mobile phones have eaten the brains of our children and talk productively about using new communications tools. "There is an untapped reservoir of interest and enthusiasm, and if you can find the right tasks [that] empower students, it's like reaching a [teaching] tipping point," Allen says.