Group items tagged

When it was necessary for education to be performed face to face, a number of services were bundled together. When it becomes digital and online, this may no longer be the case, as we have seen in most content industries, such as music and newspapers (education has some similarities with content and also some significant differences). The first round of learning tools replicated the centralised model, but as the tools have become easier to use, and the methods for integrating them simpler, so this centralised approach seems less applicable. Clay Shirky (2008) argues that the ‘cost’ of organising people has collapsed, which makes informal groupings more likely to occur and often more successful:"By making it easier for groups to self-assemble and for individuals to contribute to group effort without requiring formal management, these tools have radically altered the old limits on the size, sophistication, and scope of unsupervised effort"Part of the function of universities is to provide this organisation, for example by grouping individuals together to form a student cohort who are interested in the same subject. But as this grouping becomes easier to do online, it becomes less of a valued function of the university - ie you don’t need to go to a university to find like minded people. Education then faces the same challenges regarding the cost of organisation that, say, the Encyclopedia Brittanica faced from wikipedia. Returning to the theme of this paper, Shirky’s argument can also be applied to technology, namely that the ‘cost’ of integrating technology has drastically reduced, meaning it is now feasible for individuals to do this, thus alleviating the need for centrally provided pre-integrated solutions. For example, we could reword the above quote to read:By making it easier for tools to (self) assemble and for applications to contribute to the environment without requiring integration, these approaches have radically altered the old limits on the size, sophistication, and scope of any individual to create their own environmentProjects such as SocialLearn, illustrate that the conceptualisation of a learning environment goes beyond technical, or even pedagogical considerations. In a digital society it comes to represent the institutional response to changes in the nature of knowledge creation, sharing, and participation, in short to the nature of education itself. Shirky argues that ‘when we change the way we communicate, we change society’, and the new socially based technologies we have today are doing this in fundamental ways. It is only by exploring their potential that universities can remain relevant to the society they are helping to shape.

Most of the advantages ­described support overall competence-building for life and work in modern, information-rich, internet environments.

The benefits reported include enhanced capacity for learning whereby knowledge of languages can lead to superior memory function, especially short-term “working” memory.

Another cluster concerns enhanced mental flexibility.

Enhanced problem-solving capability is also reported.

Greater understanding of how language functions and is used to achieve specific goals in life acts as the fourth cluster.

Finally the study reports on research that links knowledge of languages to a slowdown of age-related mental diminishment such as certain forms of dementia.

The cognitive neurosciences stress the need for powerful learning environments, and yet not enough of our language education is spent encouraging learners to engage in higher-order thinking about meaningful content that fires up the brain.

Quest to Learn

The school believe that students today can and do learn in different ways, often through interaction with digital media and games.

iSchool

The NYC iSchool has taken a problem-based learning approach to education.

The mission of School of One is to provide students with personalized, effective, and dynamic classroom instruction so that teachers have more time to focus on the quality of their instruction.

investigating what schools will suit the needs of their 21st century learning and teaching styles and then figuring out how to attend or work in such environments.

Chrome OS: In November, Google gave the world a sneak peek at its Chrome operating system, which is expected to be released later this year.

HTML5: The Web is built on HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and the next version which has been taking form for a while is HTML5.

Mobile Video: With video cameras integrated into the latest iPhone 3GS and other Web phones, live video streaming apps are becoming more commonplace—both streaming from phones and to them.

Augmented Reality: One of the coolest ways to use the camera lens on a mobile phone is with the increasing array of augmented reality apps.

Mobile Transactions: As mobile phones become full-fledged computers, they can be used for mobile commerce also.

Android: Last year saw the launch of nearly two dozen Android-powered phones, including the Verizon Droid.

Social CRM: We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools.  This year, those modes of realtime communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise.

tangible rewards tend to have a substantially negative effect on intrinsic motivation (...) Even when tangible rewards are offered as indicators of good performance, they typically decrease intrinsic motivation for interesting activities.

This is why play can become work when we get paid. The person who previously enjoyed painting pictures, weaving baskets, playing the cello or even writing blog posts, suddenly finds the task tedious once money has become involved.

When we do something for its own sake, because we enjoy it or because it fills some deep-seated desire, we are intrinsically motivated. On the other hand when we do something because we receive some reward, like a certificate or money, this is extrinsic motivation.

Rewards have even been found to make people less creative and worse at problem-solving.