Educon 2.3

EduCon is an annual gathering of educators focused on the future of education: http://educon23.org/

They have an interesting set of axioms:

Guiding Principles of EduCon

1. Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
2. Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen
3. Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around
4. Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
5. Learning can — and must — be networked

"Blended" Learning

The phrase "Blended Learning" has come to represent an instructional approach which mixes face-to-face teaching with an online component. Michael B. Horn, one of the co-authors of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), has a good article and white paper about the increase in blended learning offerings here: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/media-room/publications/education-publications/the-rise-of-k-12-blended-learning/

In Disrupting Class, the authors project that by 2019, 50 percent of all high school courses will be delivered online. This pattern of growth is characteristic of a disruptive innovation—an innovation that transforms a sector characterized by products or services that are complicated, expensive, inaccessible, and centralized into one with products or services that are simple, affordable, accessible, convenient, and often customizable. Think personal computers, the iPod and mp3s, Southwest Airlines, and TurboTax. At the beginning of any disruptive innovation, the new technology takes root in areas of nonconsumption—where the alternative is nothing at all, so the simple, new innovation is infinitely better. More users adopt it as the disruptive innovation predictably improves.
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In classic disruptive fashion, online learning is expanding beyond distance learning. Educators and entrepreneurs are increasingly creating blended-learning environments—where rather than doing the online learning at a distance, students learn online in an adult-supervised school environment for at least part of the time. At the outset, this occurred in areas of nonconsumption, such as credit-recovery labs and dropout-recovery schools. A small but growing number of schools, however, are now starting to introduce blended learning into their core programming for mainstream students.

10 Trends for Global Education in 2011

The Green Banana blog wrote a nice list of the top 10 issues for education: http://greenbananablog.org/2011/01/10-trends-for-global-education-in-2011/

Are these important for Lawrenceville? In what ways?

1. Ubiquitous – The Internet has brought us a host of online education choices including everything from unscrupulous diploma mills to a myriad of so-called learning games as well as apps for nearly every subject, platform, and device. This trend will continue. The challenge to identify quality amidst the quantity will grow.
2. Social – Face it, we are social creatures and the only things we learn well in isolation are survival techniques (and even then, we wish we had some others to help us). The Internet’s social layer is solidly in place so expect to see education delivered more broadly on the social grid.
3. Mobile – The mobile generation will expect mobile access to all matters beyond mere communication and game-playing. Devices are personal links to best practices and apps will be developed to meet the ever-increasing demand.
4. Pushed – Traditional supply-side education will continue to lose ground to demand-side education where location-aware apps push just-in-time learning. Instructional design should take advantage of push technology.
5. Personalized – Learning will be personalized more and more in the way of both eportfolio content creation as well as learner-specific and contextually relevant assessment. Department of Education initiatives include plans to aggregate student achievement from cradle to grave and this data will empower apps to deliver personalized learning experiences.
6. Media rich – Whether we agree with it or not, future literacy will demand our reading of symbols that go beyond mere letters on a page. The digital landscape requires a broader skill set than previous generations learned.
7. Computer free – Web 1.0 was platform and software specific. Web 2.0 has been rather device centric. However, technology has a way of becoming invisible with wide-scale adoption. Expect the same in the education arena. The Internet of things will include more than kitchen appliances. The tools of the education trade will integrate smart technologies to seamlessly deliver interactive experiences previously relegated to traditional face-to-face settings.
8. Relevant – Thanks to gps chips, technology will afford customized delivery of learning opportunities contextually relevant to the learner.
9. Augmented – Emerging technological innovations are adding ways for learners to interact with subject matter in ways previously unavailable. Virtual field trips enable learners to transcend time and space barriers. Virtual technologies allow learner avatars to transcend identity barriers.
10. Layered – Just as the social layer has been added to the globally networked world, and just as a game layer is being constructed as I write this, watch for an education layer to be integrated where Like and Comment buttons may be accompanied by a Learn This button (Similar to Apture’s Learn More plugin but more developed).