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10 Sep 09

Let The Students Teach

  • Russell Ackoff, who I took a class from at Wharton twenty plus years ago, says in his book, Turning Learning RIght Side Up, that he has learned more from teaching than anything else. Of course that makes sense. I learn way more blogging, giving talks, and teaching than I do listening to others. When you are required to explain something to others, you have to figure it out yourself first.

    I love the idea of turning students into teachers and I would do that going all the way down to elementary school. But in high school and college, it ought to be a primary way we educate students.

    I am going to dig deeper into the unschooling movement and look at other models, like the Montessori schools, to figure out who is doing this well and why. It's a bit late for my own kids, who have largely been educated in the traditional school system (albeit a progressive one).

    But if we are going to fund people who are hacking education, I think its best to figure out what is working and what is not. Then we know what to hack and why.

09 Sep 09

How to Save the World

  • It is not up to teachers or school administrators to figure out what
    you should be or do. It’s not up to the State, it’s
    not up to your guidance counselors. It’s not up to your
    parents. What you do with your life ought to be up to you. What you
    learn ought to be up to you.  How you navigate the world and
    create your place in it ought to be your decision. Your life
    belongs to you.  School does its best to disabuse you of this
    notion. Unschooling celebrates it. Unschooling puts the
    responsibility for creating a satisfying life squarely where it
    belongs: in the hands of the one living it.
  • PS presents 50 reasons why schooling is, in every imaginable way, bad
    for us and our society, and then 50 reasons why unschooling, which she
    defines as "learning
    without formal curriculum, timelines, grades or coercion; learning in
    freedom"     is the natural way
    to learn. She argues that we are indoctrinated from the age of five to
    cede our time, our freedoms, and what we pay attention to, to the will
    of the State, so that we are 'prepared' for a work world of wage
    slavery and obedience to authority. We are deliberately not taught
    anything that would allow us to be self-sufficient in society. And in
    the factory environment of the school, where teachers need to 'manage'
    thirty students or more, ethics and the politics of power is left up,
    from our earliest and most vulnerable years, to the bullies and other
    young damaged psychopaths among our peers, to teach us in their
    grotesquely warped way. As PS explains, it is in every way a prison
    system.
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07 Sep 09

College for $99 a Month by Kevin Carey | Washington Monthly

  • Solvig threw herself into the work, studying up to eighteen hours a day. And contrary to expectations, the courses turned out to be just what she was looking for. Every morning she would sit down at her kitchen table and log on to a Web site where she could access course materials, read text, watch videos, listen to podcasts, work through problem sets, and take exams. Online study groups were available where she could collaborate with other students via listserv and instant messaging. StraighterLine courses were designed and overseen by professors with PhDs, and she was assigned a course adviser who was available by e-mail. And if Solvig got stuck and needed help, real live tutors were available at any time, day or night, just a mouse click away.
  • StraighterLine is the brainchild of a man named Burck Smith, an Internet entrepreneur bent on altering the DNA of higher education as we have known it for the better part of 500 years. Rather than students being tethered to ivy-covered quads or an anonymous commuter campus, Smith envisions a world where they can seamlessly assemble credits and degrees from multiple online providers, each specializing in certain subjects and—most importantly—fiercely competing on price. Smith himself may be the person who revolutionizes the university, or he may not be. But someone with the means and vision to fundamentally reorder the way students experience and pay for higher education is bound to emerge.
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Education, psychology and technology: Games lessons | The Economist

  • Abandoning it, though, is what Katie Salen hopes to do. Ms Salen is a games designer and a professor of design and technology at Parsons The New School for Design, in New York. She is also the moving spirit behind Quest to Learn, a new, taxpayer-funded school in that city which is about to open its doors to pupils who will never suffer the indignity of snoring through double French but will, rather, spend their entire days playing games.
  • In one of the units of Being, Space and Place, for example, pupils take on the role of an ancient Spartan who has to assess Athenian strengths and recommend a course of action. In doing so, they learn bits of history, geography and public policy. In a unit of The Way Things Work, they try to inhabit the minds of scientists devising a pathway for a beam of light to reach a target. This lesson touches on maths, optics—and, the organisers hope, creative thinking and teamwork. Another Way-Things-Work unit asks pupils to imagine they are pyramid-builders in ancient Egypt. This means learning about maths and engineering, and something about the country’s religion and geography.
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Is Online Education More Effective Than Traditional Learning?

  • With social networks, slidesharing, IM, video and more at their disposal, students are finding it easier to get homework help, attend seminars, and even learn new languages. And educators can connect at a global level to discuss lesson plans and offer seminars.



    Although Twitter may not penetrate the classroom just yet, social media help students maintain an active social life beyond the classroom. One of the biggest myths about online education is that students will become socially inept. Instead, learning online allows students to study at their own pace, usually opening up hours for sports, hobbies, volunteer work, and time with friends. Most programs also allow students to study what interests them. Not that learning online is easier. In fact, quite the opposite: students require tremendous discipline and excellent time management skills, two qualities that Insight Schools uses to promote its program. Insight Schools operates a network of tuition-free, accredited, online public high schools. Students receive their own laptop, as well as personalized education tailored to their lifestyle.

26 Aug 09

How We Learn

  • When we talk about learning, we really mean two quite different things, the process of discovery and of mastering what one discovers. All children are naturally driven to create an accurate picture of the world and, with the help of adults to use that picture to make predictions, formulate explanations, imagine alternatives and design plans. Call it "guided discovery."
  • As in the gear-and-switch experiments, children seem to learn best when they can explore the world and interact with expert adults.
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23 Aug 09

Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

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