Skype real-time language translator goes live — from pcmag.com by Angela Moscaritolo
With Skype Translator, have a conversation with someone over the Internet who speaks a different language.

Excerpt:

The Microsoft-owned chat service on Monday launched the first phase of its Skype Translator preview program first announced back in May. Jointly developed by Microsoft researchers and Skype engineers, the new feature uses real-time speech translation technologies to let you have a conversation with someone over the Internet who speaks a different language.

This means you can have a conversation just like normal, and Skype will translate what you say into the other person’s language in “near real-time.” Then, when the other person says something, it will be translated back to your language.

 

 

————–

SkypeTranslatorPreview-Dec152014

 

SkypeTranslatorPreview3-Dec152014

 

SkypeTranslatorPreview4-Dec152014

 

SkypeTranslatorPreview5-Dec152014

 

The New Leadership Challenge — from educause.edu by Michael Kubit

Excerpt:

These are not traditional IT leadership challenges: IT leaders must develop a new set of skills. Emotional and social intelligence, the ability to provide leadership through ambiguity, managing behavior as performance, and effective engagement of stakeholders are the critical skills for IT managers today.

Historically, the use of information technology focused largely on infrastructure and enterprise business applications. Today, IT organizations need to find ways to align more closely with the teaching, learning, and research missions of their respective institutions. Three of the EDUCAUSE Top Ten IT Issues for 2014 emphasize the support of technology in the teaching and learning mission. The remaining issues involve positioning information technology as a strategic asset to leverage as a vehicle for innovation.

The speed at which things change fundamentally, both within information technology and higher education, makes it clear that traditional approaches will not take us where we need to go. We need to develop organizations that are more networked and interconnected, that are flatter, flexible, and focused on outcomes. We need to develop learning organizations that can respond to both challenge and opportunity without managers playing the role of parent.

A great deal of evidence collected over several decades and significant research have identified the qualities and characteristics of effective leadership. As technologists, do we pay enough attention to the science of organizational development? Effective leadership is the key to solving the challenges and opportunities before us. No longer are the principles of emotional intelligence and organizational effectiveness reserved for senior leaders. These skills and competencies must become part of the core requirements for anyone in a leadership position. As an industry, we need to find ways to offer professional development for the most critical aspect of a manager’s tool kit — leading people.

 

The Architects of Online Learning: A Strategic Partnership for the Sustainability of Higher Education — from educause.edu by Robert Hansen

Excerpt:

The transformational impact of online education has profound implications for the sustainability of many traditional higher education institutions. As we all know, nontraditional students became the new majority well before the turn of the past century. More than 75 percent of today’s higher education students are nontraditional. As enrollments at many tuition-dependent institutions have declined, colleges and universities have turned to the adult market to stabilize their budgets. This means that having a clear vision for online education—the preferred format for so many working adults—has become a strategic imperative.

And yet, even though many college and university leaders acknowledge the value of serving adult and nontraditional students, it’s fair to say that serving these students continues, more often than not, to be marginal to the mission—a noble afterthought to the core enterprise of serving first-time, full-time residential students. In other words, today’s colleges and universities are still designed to serve yesterday’s students.

Whether or not higher education is the next bubble, it is clear that online education is creating winners and losers. In order to thrive—or, in some cases, to survive—many institutions (especially regional colleges and universities) must use online education as the foremost opportunity to reach new markets.

We propose a renewed partnership between those who are innovative with technology (IT professionals) and those who are innovative in creating new academic programs and ways of reaching new audiences (continuing and online educators). This partnership has become a strategic imperative: the technical has become entrepreneurial, and the entrepreneurial has become technical.

 
 Excerpt:

Our latest report explores the relationship between the corporate learning experience and the education system.‘Business and education’ addresses such issues as engaging Gen Y, MOOCs and corporate learning, academic research for learning strategy, and learning analytics and puts the commercial partner right at the heart of some of today’s most crucial conversations around learning.

 

BusinessAndEducation-Dec2014

 

Contents:

Introduction
Rebecca Stromeyer, Managing Director, ICWE GmbH
Jon Kennard, Editor, TrainingZone.co.uk
Ian Myson , Director of Partnerships and Product Management, CMI

Making the link between academia and corporate learning
Anita Pincas, Visiting Fellow, Institute of Education

Digital Higher Education through partnership
Gilly Salmon, Pro Vice-Chancellor, University of Western Australia
Ben Mackenzie, Director, Learning Transformations at Swinburne
University of Technology

Big Data and Analytics in Education and Corporate Learning
Ger Driesen, Consultant, Challenge Leadership Development Academy

How to engage Generation Y in the workplace
Martin Couzins, Founder, LearnPatch

Ten ways MOOCs can underpin your corporate learning strategy
Donald Clark, Founder, Epic Group Ltd

 

From DSC:
I’m posting this item in support of such collaborations. As I mentioned the other day, we need stronger, more well-thought out spectrums of growth/scaffolding and collaborations amongst the worlds of K-12, higher ed, and the corporate world.

 

Disney will launch its first Imagicademy Learning Apps — from techcrunch.com by Anthony Ha
Disney just unveiled its digital learning initiative Imagicademy, which will launch on December 11

Excerpt:

As outlined at a press event today in New York, it’s a suite of mobile learning apps for kids, along with an app where parents can follow along, give their kids a virtual high five, and see recommended physical activities that complement that in-app lessons.

With Imagicademy, on the other hand, there are plans for a suite of 30 similarly branded apps covering math, creative arts, science, language arts, and social skills. The first app to launch will be Mickey’s Magical Math World on iPad, as well as the companion app for parents.

 

Also see:

 

DisneyLaunchesImagicademy-12-4-14

 

 

DisneyLaunchesImagicademy2-12-4-14

 

 

DisneyLaunchesImagicademy3-12-4-14

 

From DSC:
When you look at their About Imagicademy page, you’ll notice words like:

  • Imagination
  • Wonder
  • Love of learning
  • Curiosity
  • Magical
  • Discovery
  • Creativity
  • Dream
  • Passion
  • Build
  • Design
  • Create

Those seem like great words for any classroom.

Are their profit motive here? Sure there are. But these types of efforts could be important because they represent team-based approaches as well as some solid collaboration. Disney consulted with a number of education experts to create these games — while bringing their own strengths to the table as well.

 

 

 

A college completion idea that’s so simple. Why aren’t we doing it? — from huffingtonpost.com by Brad Phillips

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

This week’s White House “College Opportunity” summit will focus on an overlooked area with enormous potential for student success: K-12 and higher education working together to improve college completion. It sounds so simple and obvious. In fact many assume it’s already happening. After all both groups of educators share the same students, just at different points in their education careers. Why wouldn’t they share information about students and coordinate efforts to help students be successful?

The process of closely analyzing high school to college data is eye opening for both K-12 and college educators. Faculty discover that while they both may be calling a subject Algebra or English, what is taught and assigned can be very different, setting up students for a struggle.

In Southern California, high school teachers and college faculty members participating in English Curriculum Alignment Project (ECAP) shared years of transcript information Examining student performance over time, educators learned that what was taught in High School English did not align with what was expected in college English.

 

From DSC:
I’ll take that one step further and say that we need stronger continuums between K-12, higher ed, and the corporate/business world.  We need more efforts, conversations, mechanisms, tools, communities of practice, and platforms to collaborate with each other.  That’s what I try to at least scratch the surface on via this Learning Ecosystems blog — i.e., touching upon areas that involve the worlds of K-12, higher ed, and the corporate/business world. We need more collaborations/conversations along these lines.

 

 

IBM, Fluor and the University of South Carolina Team to Create Innovation Center — from finance.yahoo.com
Public-private partnership will center on analytics and higher education solutions

Excerpt:

COLUMBIA, S.C., Nov. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM), the University of South Carolina (USC) and Fluor Corporation (FLR) today announced the formation of the Center for Applied Innovation. The Center will provide application services to both public and private sector organizations across North America with specialties in the areas of analytics and higher education industry solutions. As part of the initiative, the organizations will collaborate on tailored IT curricula and advanced analytic techniques for personalized learning

“The Center for Applied Innovation is the realization of the University of South Carolina’s vision to advance higher education through strong, public-private partnerships,” USC President Harris Pastides said. “Through this collaboration with IBM and Fluor, USC students will have unique opportunities to learn both in and outside the classroom and further hone their IT skills. By using advanced technologies and data analytics the collaboration will help students, educators and others in higher education make intelligent decisions that improve the student experience and enhance student achievement.”

The collaboration is part of an ongoing effort to expand student skills and understanding of applied computing to meet the growing demand for highly skilled IT professionals and business leaders. IBM and USC will develop internship opportunities that better link the classroom with career pathways as well as curricula to build analytics skills that support businesses both locally and across North America. IBM will work with the Darla Moore School of Business as well as USC’s College of Engineering and Computing to team with companies in the region on analytics solutions to their most pressing business challenges.

 

MinervasClassroomOfTheFuture-11-24-14

 

Here’s a peek at the Minerva Project’s classroom of the future — from washingtonpost.com by Matt McFarland
Check out five ideas that could impact the way we live, work and play.

Excerpt:

“Think of the fanciest version of Google Hangouts or Skype designed to be a classroom,” explains a student. “It’s very different than a traditional classroom, but in a way it’s what a traditional classroom distilled down to its purest form I feel like would look like,” says another.

 

 

Also see:

 

Minerva-Sep2014

 

Following up on yesterday’s posting, History Channel bringing online courses to higher ed, I wanted to thank Mr. Rob Kingyens, President at Qubed Education, for alerting me to some related work that Qubed Education is doing. Below is an example of that work:

The University of Southern California, Condé Nast and WIRED launch Master of Integrated Design, Business and Technology — from qubededucation.com
New Learning Model Combines Network and Access of WIRED with Academic Strength and Vision of the USC Roski School of Art and Design

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

MARIN, Calif., October 1, 2014 – The University of Southern California, Condé Nast and WIRED today announced a partnership to create a new online Master’s degree in Integrated Design, Business and Technology. The partnership creates an unprecedented learning experience, combining the expertise of the editors, writers, and designers at WIRED with the academic rigor of USC, a leading research university known for its pioneering interdisciplinary programs. The aim of the 18-24 month degree is to educate creative thinkers and technologists to better equip them to transform the world of industry and enterprise. The first cohort is scheduled to begin in the 2015-2016 academic year.

“The pace of technology development requires higher education to continue to respond with programs that are flexible and adaptable, and that meet the needs of future cultural and business leaders,” said Dean Muhl.

“We’ve been thinking for years about what a university curriculum with WIRED would look like, and now we have a chance to build it with a terrific partner,” said Dadich. “Taking the best from USC and WIRED, we can teach discipline and disruption, business fundamentals, and the very latest innovation models from Silicon Valley. This is going to be thrilling.”

USC’s program development and build out will be powered by higher education partners Synergis Education and Qubed Education.

 

From Qubed’s website:

Qubed is the gateway for world-class, global brands to enter the education market with top tier universities.

 

From DSC:
I’ve long wondered if institutions of higher education will need to pool resources and/or form more partnerships and collaborations — either with other universities/colleges or with organizations outside of higher education. This reflection grows stronger for me when I:

  • Think that team-based content creation and delivery is pulling ahead of the pack
  • Hear about the financial situations of many institutions of higher education today (example1; example2)
  • See the momentum building up behind Competency Based Education (CBE)
  • Witness the growth of alternatives like Ideo Futures, Yieldr Academy, Lessons Go Where, ClassDo, Udemy, C-Suite TV.com and others
  • Hear about the potential advantages of learning analytics
  • See the pace of change accelerating — challenging higher education to keep up

For some institution(s) of higher education out there with deep pockets and a strong reputation, I could see them partnering up with an IBM (Watson), Google (Deepmind), Apple (Siri), Amazon (Echo), or Microsoft (Cortana) to create some next generation learning platforms. In fact, this is one of the areas I see occurring as lifelong learning/self-directed learning opportunities hit our living rooms. The underlying technologies these companies are working on could be powerful allies in the way people learn in the future — doing some heavy lifting to build the foundations in a variety of disciplines, and leaving the higher-order learning and the addressing of gaps to professors, teachers, trainers, and others.

 

 

 

History Channel bringing online courses to higher ed –from edtechmagazine.com by D. Frank Smith

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Television and higher education are being married through a new partnership between A&E Network’s History Channel and the University of Oklahoma.

The network has announced a 16-week, paid, online course focusing on U.S. history from 1865 to the present. The accredited course will involve video lectures produced by History Channel staff, quizzes, discussion groups and social interactions. The series is priced at $500 for college students, and $250 for lifelong learners.

 

Also from their press release (emphasis DSC):
History® Digital partners with the University of Oklahoma to offer the first TV network-branded online course for college credit — from  historychannel.ou.edu

New York, NY (October 28, 2014) – A+E Network®’s HISTORY® Channel will partner with the University of Oklahoma to offer the very first TV Network-branded online course for transcripted college credit or for the lifelong learner. HISTORY® Channel’s United States, 1865 to the Present course enrollment will launch on October 28 at History.com/courses and will be taught by award winning teacher, OU professor, and renowned historian Steve Gillon. The announcement was made today by Dan Suratt, EVP, Digital Media, A+E Networks and University of Oklahoma President David L. Boren.

The groundbreaking 16-week interactive, immersive course, which will be offered during the Spring Semester, officially begins on January 12, 2015. Utilizing the strengths of both HISTORY® Channel and OU, “United States, 1865 to the Present” has been rigorously designed by an academic team from OU and will be taught by Professor Steve Gillon, the scholar-in-residence at HISTORY®Channel and professor at OU. Combining professionally-produced and engaging video lectures with quizzes, discussion groups and social interactions between student and professor, as well as selectively integrated multimedia assets from HISTORY® Channel, this course has been created to offer a singular and collaborative learning experience to a wide range of students.

 

From DSC:
Interesting partnership/collaboration effort here…again, this endeavor gets at the idea of using teams of specialists to create and deliver content.  Also interesting here are the lower pricing structures and the idea of addressing lifelong learners.

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

Last week I attended the 20th Annual Online Learning Consortium International Conference.  While there, I was inspired by an excellent presentation entitled, A Disruptive Innovation: MSU’s Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse – Are You Ready to Survive a New Way of Learning?   The four team members from Michigan State University included:

  • Glenn R. Stutzky | Course Instructor
  • Keesa V. Muhammad | Instructional Designer
  • Christopher Irvin | Instructional Designer
  • Hailey Mooney | Course Librarian

Check out the intro clip on the website about the course:

 

MSUZombie-Oct2014

 

From the description for the presentation:

This session highlights MSU’s award winning, groundbreaking online course that fuses social theory, filmmaking, social media, and viral marketing while students survive an apocalyptic event. http://zombie.msu.edu/

MSU created and used powerful digital storytelling and multimedia to overlay real, experiential, immersive learning. Important content was relayed, but in a way that drew upon your emotions, your ability to solve problems and navigate in a world where you didn’t have all of the information, your ability to work with others, and more.

“This innovative course integrates current research and science on catastrophes and human behavior together with the idea of a zombie apocalypse. In doing so, we actively engage with students as they think about the nature, scope, and impact of catastrophic events on individuals, families, societies, civilizations, and the Earth itself.”

“Our innovative approach to teaching and learning features: students as active participants, the instructor becomes the facilitator, storytelling replaces lectures, zombies become the catalyst of teaching, a “zombrarian” (librarian) drives research, and the students emerge as digital storytellers as a way of assessing their own learning.”

Others outside MUS have found out about the course and have requested access to it. As a result of this, they’ve opened it up to non-credit seeking participants and now various people from police forces, Centers for Disease Control, and others are able to take the course. To make this learning experience even more accessible, the cost has been greatly reduced: from $1600+ to just $500. (So this talented team is not only offering powerful pedagogies, but also significant monetary contributions to the university as well.)

For me, the key thing here is that this course represents what I believe is the direction that’s starting to really pull ahead of the pack and, if done well, will likely crush most of the other directions/approaches.  And that is the use of teams to create, deliver, teach, and assess content – i.e., team-based learning approaches.

So many of the sessions involved professional development for professors and teachers – and much of this is appropriate. However, in the majority of cases, individual efforts aren’t enough anymore.  Few people can bring to the table what a talented, experienced group of specialists are able to bring.  Individual efforts aren’t able to compete with team-based content creation and delivery anymore — and this is especially true online, whereby multiple disciplines are immediately invoked once content hits the digital realm.

In this case, the team was composed of:

  • The professor
  • Two Instructional Designers
  • and a librarian

The team:

  • Developed websites
  • Designed their own logo
  • Marketed the course w/ a zombie walking around campus w/ brochures and a walking billboard
  • Used a Twitter stream
  • Used a tool called Pensu for their students’ individual journals
  • Made extensive use of YouTube and digital storytelling
  • Coined a new acronym called MOLIE – multimedia online learning immersive experience
  • Used game-like features, such as the development of a code that was found which revealed key information (which was optional, but was very helpful to those who figured it out).  The team made it so that the course ended differently for each group, depending upon what the teams’ decisions were through the weeks
  • Used some 3D apps to make movies more realistic and to create new environments
  • Continually presented new clues for students to investigate.  Each team had a Team Leader that posted their team’s decisions on YouTube.

They encouraged us to:
THINK BIG!  Get as creative as you can, and only pull back if the “suits” make you!  Step outside the box!  Take risks!  “If an idea has life, water it. Others will check it out and get involved.”

In their case, the idea originated with an innovative, risk-taking professor willing to experiment – and who started the presentation with the following soliloquy:

Syllabi are EVIL

Syllabi are EVIL and they must die!
Listen to me closely and I’ll tell you why.
Just want students to know what is known?
See what’s been seen?
Go – where we’ve been going?
Then the Syllabus is your friend,
cuz you know exactly where you’ll end.
But if you want to go somewhere new,
see colors beyond Red, Green, and Blue.
Then take out your Syllabus and tear-it-in-half,
now uncertainty has become your path.
Be not afraid because you’ll find,
the most amazing things from Creative Minds,
who have been set free to FLY,
once untethered from the Syllabi.

Glenn Stutzky
Premiered at the 2014
Online Learning Consortium International Conference
October 29, 2014

 

 

They started with something that wasn’t polished, but it’s been an iterative approach over the semesters…and they continue to build on it.

I congratulated the team there — and do so again here. Excellent, wonderful work!

 


By the way, what would a creative movie-like trailer look like for your course?


 

 

OfficeLovin-August2014

 

 

From Herman Miller:
How Innovation Can Thrive on Campus as accessible from this web page:

Excerpt:

Innovation has a long tradition on campus. But many universities are seeking new ways to get more students innovating. Programs that work outside traditional academic parameters, often called Innovation Centers, are having success. One contributor to their success is the spaces in which innovation teams operate. They are as organic as the process of innovation is.

 

 

And from David Jakes at jakes.editme.com:

  • Classroom Redesign: Strategies for Rethinking Learning Spaces
    Session Description:
    Connective technologies, mobile devices, and new global learning opportunities are reshaping how, what and where people learn.  Conversely, traditional brick and mortar schools are composed of decades-old classrooms designed to support a different type of learning from a different age.  So, do our current schools, to maintain relevance and effectiveness, need to rethink how their spaces are used to support learning in a connected world?  The answer is yes.  In this session, we’ll explore exemplars of physical space design and strategies for rethinking how “classrooms” can be rethought to support a more contemporary learning experience.

 

StratsForSpaceDesign-David-Jakes-Aug2014

Above slide shows 1-5 of a total of 17 strategies.

 

 

Collaboration Curriculum: Managing Active Learning Environments — from avnetwork.com by Carolyn Heinze

Excerpt:

Tech managers in higher education should plan to support more active learning environments.

A recent study conducted by EDUCAUSE found that a majority of undergraduates own two to three Internet-enabled devices, and the more of these devices they own, the more they’re inclined to see the advantages of applying technology to their education. For those tech managers that are still gunning against BYOD, this suggests—strongly—that they’re fighting a losing battle.

 

2014 Student and Faculty Technology Research Studies — from  educause.edu / ECAR

From the ECAR RESEARCH HUB
This hub contains the 2014 student and faculty studies from the EDUCAUSE Technology Research in the Academic Community research series. In 2014, ECAR partnered with 151 college/university sites yielding responses from 17,451 faculty respondents across 13 countries. ECAR also collaborated with 213 institutions to collect responses from more than 75,306 undergraduate students about their technology experiences.

Key Findings

  • Faculty recognize that online learning opportunities can promote access to higher education but are more reserved in their expectations for online courses to improve outcomes.
  • Faculty interest in early-alert systems and intervention notifications is strong.
  • The majority of faculty are using basic features and functions of LMSs but recognize that these systems have much more potential to enhance teaching and learning.
  • Faculty think they could be more effective instructors if they were better skilled at integrating various kinds of technology into their courses.
  • Faculty recognize that mobile devices have the potential to enhance learning.

 

Excerpts from infographic:

 

ThirdTaughtOnlineLastYr-EducauseRpt-8-2014

 

 

EducauseRpt-8-2014

 

 

SteelcaseWhitepaperCover-July2014

 

 

SteelcaseWhitepaper-July2014

 

 

SteelcaseWhitepaper2-July2014

 

 

Also see:

  • Report: Classroom Design Improves Student Engagement  — from campustechnology.com by Joshua Bolkan | 07/22/14
    Classrooms designed for active learning can improve student engagement, according to new research from Steelcase, a company that provides furniture for use in educational settings.

Excerpt:

Findings of the study, which was conducted by Lennie Scott Webber, director of education environments globally at Steelcase Education and appeared in the peer-reviewed Planning for Higher Education Journal, include:

  • Seventy-two percent of students surveyed said that making their classroom more flexible improved their motivation to attend class;
  • Eighty-four percent of participating students said they were more engaged in classroom activities in a flexible classroom;
  • Seventy-two percent of students surveyed told researchers that they believed they would earn a higher grade in the flexible classroom;
  • Students rated the flexible classroom higher on 12 different measures of engagement, such as collaboration, focus, comfort with participation and active involvement; and
  • When measured, student engagement levels were higher in the flexible classrooms than in the traditional classroom with row and columns of desks.

 

Reflections on “C-Suite TV debuts, offers advice for the boardroom” [Dreier]

C-Suite TV debuts, offers advice for the boardroom — from streamingmedia.com by Troy Dreier
Business leaders now have an on-demand video network to call their own, thanks to one Bloomberg host’s online venture.

Excerpt:

Bringing some business acumen to the world of online video, C-Suite TV is launching today. Created by Bloomberg TV host and author Jeffrey Hayzlett, the on-demand video network offers interviews with and shows about business execs. It promises inside information on business trends and the discussions taking place in the biggest boardrooms.

 

MYOB-July2014

 

The Future of TV is here for the C-Suite — from hayzlett.com by Jeffrey Hayzlett

Excerpt:

Rather than wait for networks or try and gain traction through the thousands of cat videos, we went out and built our own network.

 

 

See also:

  • Mind your own business
    From the About page:
    C-Suite TV is a web-based digital on-demand business channel featuring interviews and shows with business executives, thought leaders, authors and celebrities providing news and information for business leaders. C-Suite TV is your go-to resource to find out the inside track on trends and discussions taking place in businesses today. This online channel will be home to such shows as C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett, MYOB – Mind Your Own Business and Bestseller TV with more shows to come.

 

 

From DSC:
The above items took me back to the concept of Learning from the Living [Class] Room.

Many of the following bullet points are already happening — but what I’m trying to influence/suggest is to bring all of them together in a powerful, global, 24 x 7 x 365, learning ecosystem:

  • When our “TVs” become more interactive…
  • When our mobile devices act as second screens and when second screen-based apps are numerous…
  • When discussion boards, forums, social media, assignments, assessments, and videoconferencing capabilities are embedded into our Smart/Connected TVs and are also available via our mobile devices…
  • When education is available 24 x 7 x 365…
  • When even the C-Suite taps into such platforms…
  • When education and entertainment are co-mingled…
  • When team-based educational content creation and delivery are mainstream…
  • When self-selecting Communities of Practice thrive online…
  • When Learning Hubs combine the best of both worlds (online and face-to-face)…
  • When Artificial Intelligence, powerful cognitive computing capabilities (i.e., IBM’s Watson), and robust reporting mechanisms are integrated into the backends…
  • When lifelong learners have their own cloud-based profiles…
  • When learners can use their “TVs” to tap into interactive, multimedia-based streams of content of their choice…
  • When recommendation engines are offered not just at Netflix but also at educationally-oriented sites…
  • When online tutoring and intelligent tutoring really take off…

…then I’d say we’ll have a powerful, engaging, responsive, global education platform.

 

 

The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

 

From DSC:
I ran across Manish Mohan’s blog posting — Seven Survival Skills in Today’s World — which focused on Tony Wagner’s keynote address at the IFC’s International Private Education Conference: Rethinking Education, Shaping the Future.

So I read the blog posting and then I listened to Tony Wagner’s address. Below are my notes from his talk.


What’s the problem we need to solve in education?

Challenges

  1. Education today has become a commodity. Knowledge is free; it’s like water or air.  Educators once had the corner on the market. Knowledge had to come through the teacher. Not true today. You can acquire knowledge via the Internet. Teachers are no longer the gatekeepers. Where, then, is the value that teachers/schools are providing?
  2. Work is being transformed around the world. Routine jobs being automated/replaced by computers or in other countries for far less $$. World cares about what you can DO with what you know. Not just acquiring knowledge. Skill and will are other legs of the stool (in addition to knowledge).
  3. The longer students are in school (in the U.S.), the more bored they are. Less engaged as time goes on. The Internet is their preferred source of learning.

Tony focused on skill (adding value) and will in this keynote. Need to be a continuous learner.

Tony talked to senior executives — what skills do you need today? Where are the gaps?

7 survival skills/competencies a person needs before they reach the end of their secondary school:

  1. Critical thinking and problem solving — how to ask the right questions
  2. Collaboration across networks — how are we going to teach
  3. Agility and adaptability
  4. Initiative and entrepreneurship
  5. Effective oral and written communication — need to be able to write with “voice” — own passion and perspective, to be convincing
  6. Accessing and analyzing information
  7. Curiosity and imagination

New achievement gap — these 7 survival skills vs what is being taught around the world.

Growing unemployment of college graduates compels us to look at goals of education.  Academically adrift — communication skills not growing in college.

One person to Tony:
“I want young people who can ‘Just go figure it out.'”

Want graduates who have a sense of mission.  Autonomy.

How do we prepare kids to “Just go figure it out.”

We need innovators — creative problem solvers. People who ask the right questions.

The teachers (of innovative individuals) who made the greatest difference were outliers in their respective institutional settings but were remarkably alike in their patterns of teaching and learning.  The culture of schooling, as we continue to practice it, is fundamentally and radically at odds with the culture of learning to be an innovator in 5 respects:

  1. Culture of schooling is about rewarding individual achievement vs being a team player
  2. Compartmentalizing knowledge; innovations happens at the margins of academic disciplines, not within them; interdisciplinary courses needed
  3. Passivity and consumption — students listen, consume information; only 1 expert.  VS creating information. Teacher as coach who empowers students.
  4. How failure is viewed — fear of failure creates risk aversion. But innovation requires risk and failure. Trial and error. Iteration — systematically reflecting on what worked and what didn’t.
  5. Grades and what they represent in school. Often a motivational tool. Rely on extrinsic motivation. But intrinsic motivation is key amongst innovative individuals. They want to make a difference.

Parents and teachers of these innovative individuals emphasized 3 things:

  1. Play
  2. Passion
  3. Purpose

Provided a buffet of opportunities to discover interests. But did not pigeonhole the person.

We have some responsibility to others — to give back — and to make a difference.

So much of our thinking revolves around delivery systems, but what about the GOALS of education? All too often assumed.

Need to be differently prepared vs. students/graduates of 50 years ago.

How do we motivate students to want to be continuous learners?

A merit badge approach to learning. Evidence. Digital portfolios.

In Finland and Singapore one can see the massive importance of — and investment in — teaching as a profession.  Elite group of teachers. Trust through professionalism.

Collective human judgement is key. High stakes testing is completely distorting education system. What gets tested is what gets taught.

Preparation for citizenship is equally important (as skills development for earning a living).

Why not specifically teach about entrepreneurship?

Finland — much less homework, and far more opportunities to discover interests and to be entrepreneurial. Start-up like culture.

 

 

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian