Trends+in+Education

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Click [|here] for a collection of bookmarks on the future of education.

Click [|here] for a collection of bookmarks on trends in education.

[|Digital Kids @ Analog Schools] [|Teacher Movie] [|Administrator Movie] [|Introducing the Book: Medieval Help Desk] [|Did You Know 2.0] [|A Vision of Students Today] [|The Machine is Us/ing Us] [|Information R/evolution] [|EPIC Video] A glimpse into 2014 [|2020 Vision] From Carl Fisch What will today's kindergarten students (2007) be hearing at their graduation ceremony in 2020?

04-24-08 Pew Report [|Writing, Technology, and Teens] Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.

National Association of Independent Schools [|The Trend Oracle] Review of presentation by Faith Popcorn

03-31-08 eSchool News [|Cell Phones Test Schools' Outreach Efforts] "Seismic shift in mobile phone use calls for new communication strategies."

03-27-08 Education Week [|The Push to Improve STEM Education] U.S. schools face pressure on science, technology, engineering, and math

[|iPhone U @ Abilene Christian University] "What might a university look like with a fully deployed program of converged devices like the iPhone? //Connected// is one possible vision. This fictional day-in-the-life account highlights some of the potential benefits in a higher education setting when every student, faculty, and staff member is "connected." Though the applications and functions portrayed in the film are purely speculative, they're based on needs and ideas uncovered by our research - and we've already been making strides to transform this vision of mobile learning (mLearning) into reality."

02-21-08 MSNBC [|Virtual Teachers Outperform Real Thing] "Justine Cassell of Northwestern University has found that children with autism can develop advanced social skills by interacting with a "virtual child" that they might not develop by hanging out with real children or teachers."

02-27-08 Education Week [|"Market for K-12 Course-Management Systems Expands"] [Moodles increase in educational use...."Yet while Moodle is free, it is not without cost. Those costs include computers, networks, and personnel to install and maintain the hardware and software, as well as the cost of training teachers, though some or all of these requirements can be outsourced to outside providers."]

02-24-08 eSchool News [|TCEA 2008 Serves Up Ed-tech Wisdom] [//New York Times// technology columnist David Pogue shares his perspectives on education technology. "Web 2.0 technologies, which rely on user-created content and interactivity, are yet another trend with enormous implications for schools...We've only scratched the surface on the things that we can share... With these shifts in technology, however, come profound cultural shifts--changes that create whole new challenges for educators. Pogue said."]

02-20-08 Association for Curriculum and Supervision [|"Most Clicked: Fitness and the Brain"] ["This week's most-clicked ASCD SmartBrief article considers the research and some school programs that are getting behind exercise as a warm-up for the cognitive demands of the school day."]

02-20-08 Reuters News [|"Nintendo Rolls Out Wii Fitness Game Product"] ["Games maker Nintendo Co Ltd on Wednesday said it will launch a new physical fitness game product called Wii Fit for U.S. shipping in May."]

02-17-08 USA Today [|"Film Raises Troubling Questions About U. S. Students"] ["The brainchild of Memphis businessman Robert Compton, Two Million Minutes takes its title from the amount of time most students spend in high school absorbing, one hopes, enough math, science, literature and history to compete in an increasingly flat, competitive world."] Watch the video [|here].

01-24-08 The Michigan Daily [|"Going Public"] ["Want to get an education from the University of Michigan without the exorbitant tuition rates, the pesky attendance requirements and the unaccommodating class schedules? With the launch of the University's Digital Scribe, a program that could offer course syllabi, lectures, homework and tests free online, in a few years this might be possible for students around the world. But don't drop out just yet. The website, also known as dScribe, won't offer the intangibles that a University education does, but it will wisely open University classrooms to the world with large recruiting and accountability benefits for the University."]

01-23-08 Forbes [|"A Matter of Scale: Expanding Educational Opportunities"] by Bill Gates

01-23-08 Forbes [|"Technology's Greater Role in Education"] by John Chambers

12-31-07 New York Times [|"Web Playgrounds of the Very Young"] [“'Get ready for total inundation,' said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today."]

12-19-07 MSNBC [|"OMG! Teens Still Talk with Friends Face to Face"] ["Teenagers still value phone calls and face-to-face meetings with friends even as they frequent online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace, a new study finds."] ALSO SEE THE STUDY from Pew Internet and American Life Project [|Teens and Social Media: The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media]

[|Twittervision] A real-time geographic visualization of posts to Twitter. What is [|Twitter]? It is a social network. Folks around the world type in no more than 140 characters about what is happening in their world--from "what are you doing right now" to news headlines. ALSO SEE 12-17-07 NPR [|Middle School Kids Write Story on Twitter] ALSO SEE the story in action. [|"A Twitter story created by 140 Elementary and Middle School Students Across the Globe"]

12-17-07 USA Today [|“Log In, Enter Password, Read a Textbook”] [45% of California school districts have ordered digital history textbooks.]

12-10-07 USA Today [|“High School Course Aims For Better Citizens”] [Homeland security and emergency preparedness curriculum setting trend.]

12-06-07 The Times (London) [|"It ws bst f tms, it ws wrst f tms: Japan's Mobile Phone Literature"] ASCD Summary: "Five of Japan's bestselling books for 2007 are "mobile novels," books that are designed for users to download onto cell phones. The books are written using simple sentences that can be easily displayed on cell phones, which is a worry for some who say such compositions will stunt literacy in young readers."

11-20-07 USA Today [|"As China Booms, So Does Mandarin in U. S. Schools"] ["Chinese isn't the new French, it's the new English."]

09-21-07 Sydney Morning News “Mandarin a Must for Some” [Mandarin to be required in some Australian public schools.] http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/mandarin-a-must-for-some/2007/09/20/1189881683386.html

09-24-07 Washington Post “Breathing Life into the Lecture Hall” ["Lecturing is not good for children and other living things," says college professor who engages 192 students simultaneously.] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/23/AR2007092301035.html

Emerging Technologies

[|MIT's Technology Review] //[|Special Reports: 10 Emerging Technologies 2008]//

[| Agent-based Modeling]

[|Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix]

[|Emerging Technologies for Learning: Nailing Digital Jelly to the Virtual Tree] ALSO SEE Innovation Exchange ALSO SEE [|New Media Consortium] "The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of nearly 250 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. NMC member institutions are found in almost every state in the United States, across Canada, and in Europe, Asia and Australia. Among the membership are an elite list of the most highly regarded colleges and universities in the world, as well as a growing list of innovative museums, research centers, foundations, and forward-thinking companies." ALSO SEE [|Horizon Project] "The Horizon Project, as the centerpiece of New Media Consortium's (NMC) Emerging Technologies Initiative, charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative expression and produces the NMC’s annual Horizon Report. ALSO SEE [|The Horizon Project report] "The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project, a five-year qualitative research effort that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations."

[|Futurelab]

Who are we and what we do
Futurelab is passionate about transforming the way people learn. Tapping into the huge potential offered by digital and other technologies, we develop innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century. A not-for-profit organisation, we [|work in partnership] with others to:
 * [|incubate new ideas], taking them from the lab to the classroom
 * [|share hard evidence and practical advice] to support the design and use of innovative learning tools
 * [|communicate the latest thinking and practice] in educational [|ICT]
 * provide the [|space for experimentation] and the [|exchange of ideas] between the creative, technology and education sectors.

[|Future School: Reshaping Learning from the Ground Up] An interview with Alvin Toffler From Edutopia [|Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0] (EV 02-03-08) BY JOHN SEELY BROWN AND RICHARD P. ADLER "The building blocks provided by the Open Educational Resources movement, along with e-Science and e-Humanities and the resources of the Web 2.0, are creating the conditions for the emergence of new kinds of open participatory learning ecosystems that will support active, passion-based learning: Learning 2.0."

[|Ride the 2.0 (Successfully): A Strategy for Deploying Web 2.0 Technologies]"Marist College's award-winning work with Web 2.0 applications has led to the development of an e-learning 2.0 strategy for the pedagogically based deployment of these technologies. We will present our strategy and lessons learned from recent implementations, including methodologies for controlling costs, enhancing learning, and ensuring alignment with strategic goals." (EV 02-03-08)

[|Using Video Streaming and Podcasting to Design Rich-media Online Courses] "This session will cover lessons learned and best practices for creating highly interactive, student-centered, rich-media online courses with customizable and mobile learning using Mediasite video streaming and video and audio podcasting. It will include a tour of a course Web site, 10 principles for good practice for innovative online education, and a course design toolkit." (EV 02-03-08)

[|KnowledgeWorks: Map of Future Forces Affecting Education] "It could be video games. Bioengineering. Or health care. All of these forces and more are explored on the KnowledgeWorks Foundation and Institute for the Future 2006-2016 Map of Future Forces Affecting Education.Look around the map. Explore it. While we'd never suggest that this map contains all of the answers and perfectly predicts the future, it does offer a clear point of view based on countless hours of research, analysis and expert opinion. Think of the map as a provocative tool, as the beginning of a movement, or, at the very least, part of a good conversation. Join in. And help us shape the future."

[|Project Tomorrow] Preparing today's students to be tomorrow's innovators, leaders and engaged citizens.

[|Blogs and RSS as a School Communication Environment] From David Warlick's blog

[|Language: Learn What a Billion People Already Know] PREDICTION: Chinese will be the new French. As China rises, speaking its language becomes a practical advantage. From Edutopia

Da Vinci Institute [|The Future of Education] by Thomas Frey "As part of the rapidly developing courseware movement we will see education transition from: Teacher-centric to learning-centric Classroom-based teaching to anyplace, anytime learning Mandated courses to hyper-individualized learning A general population of consumers to a growing population of producers Learning will become hyper-individualized with students learning what they want to learn, when they want to learn it. Most of today’s existing learning impediments will eventually go away.

As a result of this shift we will begin to see dramatic changes in society. The speed of learning will increase tenfold because of a combination of the following factors:


 * Confidence-based learning will significantly increase learning speed and comprehension
 * Learning what we want, when we want - shifting away from a prescribed course agenda to one that is hyper-individualized, self-selected, and scheduled whenever a student wishes to take it will dramatically change levels of motivation
 * Technology improvements over time will continually improve the speed and comprehension of learning
 * The speed of learning will increase tenfold, and it is possible that the equivalent of our current K-12 education system will be compressed into as little as one year’s worth of learning.

In the future, we predict students entering the workforce will be ten times smarter than they are today."

[|MacArthur Series on Digital Media and Learning] The series examines civic engagement; credibility; ecology of games; innovative uses and unexpected outcomes; race and ethnicity; and identity.

National Center for Children in Poverty [|Who Are America's Poor Children?] "Nearly 13 million American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is $20,000 a year for a family of four. The number of children living in poverty increased by more than 11 percent between 2000 and 2005. There are 1.3 million more children living in poverty today than in 2000, despite indications of economic recovery and growth.

Not only are these numbers dispiriting, the official poverty measure tells only part of the story—it is increasingly viewed as a flawed metric of economic hardship (see box). Research consistently shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty level to make ends meet. Children living in families with incomes below this level—for 2006, $40,000 for a family of four—are referred to as low income. Thirty-nine percent of the nation’s children—more than 28 million in 2005—live in low-income families. 1"

Nonetheless, official poverty statistics continue to be used by researchers, policymakers, and the media to define economic disadvantage. In addition, eligibility for many public benefits is based on the official poverty measure. This fact sheet details some of the characteristics of American children who are considered poor by these official standards.

[|Orono Fits a World of Words into Language Lab] At a suburban Minneapolis high school, students are learning Tagalog, Japanese, Korean and other languages only rarely part of public school curriculum. A new language lab allows students to use interactive software to independently study languages at their own pace using digital lessons and digital audio files. From Minnesota Star Tribune

[|Performance Assessment to Replace Standardized Testing] From the Forum for Education and Democracy

[|Digital Directions] and [|Technology in Education Research Center] from Education Week

[|eTwinning] "is a framework for schools to collaborate on the Internet with partner schools in other European countries. eTwinning is the main action of the European Union's eLearning programme."

It promotes school collaboration in Europe through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) by providing support, tools and services to make it easy for schools to form short or long term partnerships in any subject area

[|Teaching 21st-Century Learners--December 17, 2007] Profiles use of technology K-12. Are colleges prepared to educate a completely new generation of learners? That was the question posed during one session at the 2007 Educause conference in Seattle. ALSO SEE [|SpeakUp 2006: Snapshot of Selected National Findings from K-12 Students]

[|Ten Years From Now...A BusinessWeek poll indicates big changes are ahead in tomorrow's workplace]

[|Pew Internet and American Life Project] Reports on latest trends.
 * [|Broadband: What's All the Fuss About?] "Today, with nearly half of all Americans having high-speed internet connections at home, online interactivity means something different for a lot of Americans than it did when it was mainly about email. Many-to-many communication is now buttressed by many-to-many participation in the online world through user-created media. Still, questions remain about the use of advanced communications networks. Among them: Why does access to a high-speed connection at home matter? The fuss about broadband extends beyond access to information to active participation in the online commons as people with shared interests or problems gather at various online forums to chat or collaborate."

[|Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)] The United States ranked 24th out of 57 countries whose 15-year-old students took the Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA). Finland, Hong Kong, and Canada ranked in the top three spots of science achievement.

[|Wikinomics] What is "Wikinomics"? "In the last few years, traditional collaboration—in a meeting room, a conference call, even a convention center—has been superceded by collaborations on an astronomical scale. Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, //Wikinomics// explains how to prosper in a world where new communications technologies are democratizing the creation of value. Anyone who wants to understand the major forces revolutionizing business today should consider //Wikinomics// their survival kit."

Don't miss the [|Wikinomics Playbook] as online contributors write about the impact of collaborative environments on law, medicine, religion, social groups, and education.

[|Wikiversity] "Wikiversity is a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Wikiversity is a multidimensional social organization dedicated to learning, teaching, research and service. Its primary goals are to: Learners and teachers are invited to join the Wikiversity community as editors of this wiki website where everyone can edit the pages. The community portal lists information about many aspects of Wikiversity."
 * Create and host free content, multimedia learning materials, resources, and curricula for all age groups in all languages
 * Develop collaborative learning projects and communities around these materials


 * //The World is Flat// and //A Whole New Mind// Resources**

[|Daniel Pink's Website]


 * [|Daniel Pink's Book Schematic for A Whole New Mind from Steve Richards' Blog]
 * [|Alan November's Podcast Interview with Daniel Pink I]
 * [|Alan November's Podcast Interview with Daniel Pink II]
 * [|Alan November's Podcast Interview with Daniel Pink III]

Education in a Flat World Wiki Space

[|Thomas Friedman's Website], author of //The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century//

//[|Why the World is Flat]// from Wired Magazine

//[|Are 21st Century Skills Right Brain Skills]// by Doug Johnson

[|Game School to Open in NYC in 2009] from Gamelab: Institute of Play


 * Learning Spaces**

[|Learning Spaces] an Educause eBook. "Space, whether physical or virtual, can have a significant impact on learning. Learning Spaces focuses on how learner expectations influence such spaces, the principles and activities that facilitate learning, and the role of technology from the perspective of those who create learning environments: faculty, learning technologists, librarians, and administrators. Information technology has brought unique capabilities to learning spaces, whether stimulating greater interaction through the use of collaborative tools, videoconferencing with international experts, or opening virtual worlds for exploration. This e-book represents an ongoing exploration as we bring together space, technology, and pedagogy to ensure learner success."

[|DesignShare]
 * [|Creating a 2020 Vision for School Design] by Karl Fisch
 * [|Most Popular Publications] Topics addressed include flexible learning spaces, collaborative, and project-based learning.

[|Learning Spaces at MIT] "Active learning methods place unique demands on the physical space in which education occurs. MIT has recognized this—and taken steps to reconfigure our learning environments. We have gutted and rebuilt the Aeronautics and Astronautics building to reflect a core educational model, redesigned and enhanced individual classrooms, and carefully overseen the makeup of facilities at our partner institutions half a world away. Bill Mitchell, former Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and current head of the MIT Media Labs, pinpointed five guiding principles for the construction and renovation of educational spaces:


 * **Community:** Creative interaction supported by technological resources and physical layouts
 * **Intensity:** Local and remote interface, through both synchronous and asynchronous communication, that fortifies the learning experience
 * **Variety:** Seamless integration of technology to encourage a multitude of tasks
 * **Flexibility:** The ability to change with the needs of the community
 * **Ubiquity:** A campus where teaching and learning happen everywhere.

The practical application of these principles dictates multi-media environments, with network and wireless connectivity, videoconferencing equipment, and opportunities for hands-on experimentation. More importantly, it requires collaborative settings, where students cluster together to learn not only by doing, but by doing together."

[|SCALE-UP at North Carolina State] "Educational research indicates that students should collaborate on interesting tasks and be deeply involved with the material they are studying. We promote active learning in a redesigned classroom of 100 students or more. (Of course, smaller classes can also benefit.) We believe the SCALE-UP Project has the potential to radically change the way large classes are taught at colleges and universities. The social interactions between students and with their teachers appears to be the "active ingredient" that make the approach work. As more and more instruction is handled virtually via technology, the relationship-building capability of brick and mortar institutions becomes even more important. The pedagogical methods and classroom management techniques we design and disseminate are general enough to be used in a wide variety of classes at many different types of colleges."

[|Wallenberg Hall at Stanford University]. Check out what this university is doing in nurturing student-centered learning, including rearranging learning spaces.