Jane Vella, the founder of Global Learning Partners, gained her insights on adult education from the thousands of participants she met over her 40 years of teaching in Africa, Asia and North America. Jane's academic research into the work of theorists Paulo Freire, Malcolm Knowles, Kurt Lewin, and Benjamin Bloom confirmed what she saw in the communities where she had worked: that adults learn best through a "dialogue" that takes place in an atmosphere of mutual respect and safety, and with learning designs that are grounded in the reality of their lives.
Every morning five-year-old Tristan starts his school day by reading in bed with his mother. He especially likes Enid Blyton. And even though he often doesn’t bother to get out of his pyjamas in time for his first class of the day, at the age of five he has a reading age of between seven and eight. He is also ahead of his peers in a variety of subjects—all, his mother reckons, thanks to home schooling.
Three decades ago home schooling was illegal in 30 states. It was considered a fringe phenomenon, pursued by cranks, and parents who tried it were often persecuted and sometimes jailed. Today it is legal everywhere, and is probably the fastest-growing form of education in America. According to a new book, “Home Schooling in America”, by Joseph Murphy, a professor at Vanderbilt University, in 1975 10,000-15,000 children were taught at home. Today around 2m are—about the same number as attend charter schools.
Grok: (1) Understand (something) intuitively or by empathy; (2)Empathize or communicate sympathetically; establish a rapport.
For the past couple years I've been experimenting with using guided meditation as a medium for teaching students and designers. That is, I've found that students are able to learn effectively when the mental model is described clearly and slowly, while minimizing cognitive, emotional, and sociocultural distractions.
We've seen that the optimal means of reducing distraction in a classroom is to sit and close one's eyes in a room where others are known to be doing the same. When I conduct a Grok-X session, I also close my eyes at the front of the class (i.e., not walking around in a manner that can seem threatening or draw attention; not watching them). It is crucial that teacher is (appropriately) seen as a guide, not an authority figure to be feared. In this way I am then able to guide the student's own creation of a mental model that resembles my own - while also ensuring the possibility exists for students to manipulate, add to, or subtract (or even destroy) that model in their own minds.
From the instructor's perspective, it also requires a very calm mind - to be able to describe insights in a manner that can be constructed in the student's own mind - rather than simply memorized.
I've been recently referring to this process as "Guided Knowledge Transfer" (Grok-X for short) and plan to continue experimenting with it in more detail in our Winter 2013 course, d.compress: Designing Calm (blog).
The Khan Academy has had quite a year and to end 2012 on an even higher note, the organization recently introduced Khan Academy Lite, or KA Lite, which provides a version of the service’s popular educational lessons using wireless peer-to-peer sharing. That means that the nonprofit organization’s lessons can be accessed by offline users who, for one reason or the other, do not have an Internet connection.
Once learning is institutionalized under a central authority, both freedom for the individual and respect for the local are radically curtailed.
Learning Environments for the 21st Century
With Howard and Andrew Gardner
Wednesday, November 7
The field of education is undergoing a revolution precipitated not only by the rapid growth of new technologies, but by the demands of an evolving global economy. These changes combined require collaboration, creativity and critical thinking.
“What role should a museum play as a place of learning in the 21st century?” and “What unique value will museums add to the field?”, are key questions that Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education and his son Andrew Gardner, Senior Manager BrainPOP Educators, will consider in a conversation moderated by Edward John Noble Deputy Director for Education, Wendy Woon.
The evening will end with a reception in the interactive space MoMA Studio: Common Senses, featuring installations by artists and educators including J. Morgan Puett, who will provide a brief overview of her installation and be present for conversation during the reception to follow in the MoMA Studio.
As a part of its collaboration with the Born This Way Foundation, the Berkman Center is publishing on this website a series of papers that synthesize existing peer-reviewed research or equivalent scholarship and provide research-grounded insight to the variety of stakeholders working on issues related to youth empowerment and action towards creating a kinder, braver world. This series, called the The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series (danah boyd, John Palfrey, and Dena Sacco, editors), is presented by the Born This Way Foundation & the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and supported by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. 28 28 This set of papers involves topics related to the Role of Youth Organizations and Youth Movements for Social Change.
How does OCW create video and audio lectures?
Video and audio production is one of the most expensive and time-consuming parts of the OCW production process.
To record lectures and other course material, we partner with an MIT media production group. Once this is complete, we review the video content to identify any third-party material (such as music or diagrams that appear in slides) and try to obtain permission from the owner to display the material. In some cases, this is impossible and we have to edit out these sections of the recording.
When each video is edited, we encode them into H.264 MP4s.
Transcripts and subtitles are increasingly available for our video content, with subtitles available for about half of our courses with full lecture videos. Subtitles are created by a vendor and reviewed by a student who has taken the course or has subject-matter expertise.
If you would like to support MIT OpenCourseWare's video production, please consider making a donation.
Open Education Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials freely available for everyone to use, whether you are a teacher or a learner. This includes full courses, modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.
The creation and use of OER represents a shift in education that supports shared teacher expertise and peer-based learning. Free and open content is not only a new economic model for schools and students, but also a primary vehicle for disseminating flexible, adaptable curricula that support learner-centric approaches.
People acquire the skills they use at work informally — talking, observing others, trial-and-error, and simply working with people in the know. Formal training and workshops account for only 5% to 20% of what people learn from experience and interactions.
The college of the future unfolds here.
It’s no wonder: Jeff is the leading authority on higher education worldwide.
When he discusses the college of the future, colleges listen. When he shares insight regarding how families will pay, what campuses will look like and how students will learn and prove their value in the job market, people take note.
When I reflect upon the two MOOCs – xMOOCs and cMOOCs in terms of how the courses are structured, I come to a conclusion that:
When I was starting out in education, I really longed for an exciting range of technological solutions that could engage students from a distance, and encourage online interaction - or what we now refer to as MOOCs. It never seemed to come though, and as the years went by I found myself becoming disillusioned, and later disappointed. My faith in MOOCs as an educational solution wilted.
Traditionally Nike — like Apple — has been a closed, super secretive company. Yesterday when I read about its launch of a new Accelerator program, I smirked. Is this a sign that large corporations are begining to embrace the virtues of a more open design platform?
SparkFun's Department of Education and our pal Ludus are proud to welcome you to the SparkFun Education Website. Here you'll find all sorts of goodies relating to education and electronics. The DoE (that's Department of Education) started in February of 2011 working towards making electronics and technology a more integrated part of the education curriculum all over the world. We provide resources for educators to teach 21st century hardware and software skills. Every day we're dedicated to rounding up people from all different walks of life and getting them interested in the world of electronics. Our goal is to create fun and hands-on ways of helping people learn skills that will last a lifetime. We love to watch people come up with innovative projects and hope our site will offer some help along the way. Welcome to learn.sparkfun.com and enjoy your journey!
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.
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by Howard Rheingold: "...an...open, voluntary, shifting, growing community that uses the same media they are teaching their students. These folks don't just talk about using social media to share knowledge -- they are among the first to evaluate and maybe adopt new media that show educational pote...
Updated on Mar 25, 13
Created on Nov 07, 12
Category: Cultures & Community
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