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Back to basics? Time to redefine ‘basics’ for the 21st century [Knock]

On 09/26/2011, in 21st century, communities of practice, education reform, generational differences, K-12 related, reinvent, staying relevant, by Daniel Christian

Back to basics? Time to redefine ‘basics’ for the 21st century — from Learning Everywhere today by Anne Knock

Excerpt:

Let’s reinvent what is considered the ‘basics’ for this generation and make it flexible enough to roll with the changes that will inevitably come. Let’s not say ‘back to basics’ but develop the ‘new basics.’

From DSC:
This posting provides a nice listing from Anne re: some of the items to help prepare our students for a dynamic and changing world; the posting also lists some of the key characteristics for the delivery of content, the learning environment, and for a thriving community of practice.  

 

 

 

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The Floating University — A great resource for lifelong learners!

On 09/06/2011, in 24x7x365 access, dangers of the status quo, disruption, education technology, elearning, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, lifelong learning, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, online media, real-world assignments, reinvent, by Daniel Christian

The Floating University

From their website:

Great Big Ideas delivers the key takeaways of an entire undergraduate education. It’s a survey of twelve major fields delivered by their most important thinkers and practitioners. Each lecture explores the key questions in the field, lays out the methods for answering those inquiries and explains why the field matters. It is an effective introduction to thinking differently, and a primer in the diverse modes of problem solving essential for success in the 21st century.

A wide range of subjects are covered including Psychology, Economics, Biomedical Research, Linguistics, History, Political Philosophy, Globalization, Investing and more. Within each topic, we will discuss the most current, innovative ideas in the field, dissect them, and look at how they impact not only the world-at-large, but our own lives as well. How does Demography predict our planet’s future? How is Linguistics a window to understanding the brain? What are the fundamentals of successful Personal Finance and Investing? Each of these lectures will be presented by top experts from top institutions around the country.

Two example lectures:

 

 

From DSC:
I post this not because I believe they have the world’s best educators — they may or may not.  But rather, I post this to:

  1. Provide a great resource for those who love to learn — i.e. lifelong learners
  2. To show another example of the disruption that technologies / the Internet bring to higher education.  Such technologies bring affordable, new models and  learning opportunities into the higher ed landscape in a big way.

 

Also see:

 

 

 

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Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities [DeMillo]

On 09/02/2011, in 21st century, change, changing business models, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, innovation, new business models, open courseware and systems, reinvent, staying relevant, by Daniel Christian

Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities by Richard A. DeMillo

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From Daniel Christian: Fasten your seatbelts! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes.

On 08/25/2011, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adjunct faculty, analytics, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), blogs / blogging / vlogging, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, convergence, creativity, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, disruption, drama/theater, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), economics, education, education reform, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, engineering, expectations, faculty, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning theories, liberal arts, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, memory, mirroring and/or multiple devices, mobile learning, mobile technologies, multi-touch, multimedia, music, Near Field Communication (NFC), New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new media literacies, online learning, online media, pace of change, passions, pedagogy, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, publishing, reading, reinvent, robotics, RSS, social learning / networks, social media, society, staying relevant, storytelling, strategy, streams of content, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, surviving, tablets, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), telepresence, television, textbooks, tools, transmedia, trends, ubiquitous learning, United States, universities, videoconferencing, virtual K-12 schools, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, web-based collaboration, writing, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Immediately below is a presentation that I did for the Title II Conference at Calvin College back on August 11, 2011
It is aimed at K-12 audiences.

 

Daniel S. Christian presentation -- Fasten your seatbelts! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes (for a K-12 audience)

 

From DSC:
Immediately below is a presentation that I did today for the Calvin College Fall 2011 Conference.
It is aimed at higher education audiences.

 

 Daniel S. Christian presentation -- Fasten your seatbelts! An accelerated ride through some ed-tech landscapes (for a higher ed audience)

 

Note from DSC:

There is a great deal of overlap here, as many of the same technologies are (or will be) hitting the K-12 and higher ed spaces at the same time. However, there are some differences in the two presentations and what I stressed depended upon my audience.

Pending time, I may put some audio to accompany these presentations so that folks can hear a bit more about what I was trying to relay within these two presentations.

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Another example of the need to constantly reinvent our organizations and ourselves

On 07/06/2011, in business, business side of he, corporate / business world, new business models, reinvent, staying relevant, surviving, by Daniel Christian

BlackBerry’s blues continue as platform falls to third place –– from mashable.com by Todd Wasserman

Excerpt:

It’s another humiliating day for Research In Motion. The company’s BlackBerry, which once owned 55% of the smartphone market, has now fallen to third place with less than a quarter share, according to comScore.

To make matters worse, BlackBerry’s share seems to be falling pretty quickly. In February, RIM was number two in the market with 28.9%, based on an average of the previous three months. By May, RIM’s share had dropped 4.2% to 24.7%, behind Apple’s iOS with 26.6% and Google’s Android platform with 38.1%.

 

From DSC:
RIM did not innovate fast enough. They did not reinvent themselves as Apple has done, and now they are paying the price. The hurt has set in. This is a good reminder to all of us to constantly be reinventing our organizations and ourselves.

 


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I wondered when this was going to happen…Pearson entering the degree market

On 07/05/2011, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, future of higher education, game-changing environment, new business models, organizational change, publishing, reinvent, staying relevant, UK, using teams, by Daniel Christian

Royal Holloway to validate publisher Pearson’s degree — from the BBC

  • Publishing giant Pearson has announced a partnership with Royal Holloway university that will allow it to enter the degree market.
  • The university is to validate a degree in business, developed by Pearson, which says it eventually wants its own degree-awarding powers.
  • A White Paper last week outlined government plans to allow the expansion of private degree providers.
  • But the lecturers’ union warned of a possible focus on profitable courses.
  • Pearson said the degree would be available from September 2012.
  • It said it was in talks with further education colleges, which would teach the course.

From DSC:
Many of the publishers already have teams of specialists in place; i.e. they’ve already set their tables (see the graphic I created below that represents where I believe ALL institutions of higher education need to get to — and as quickly as possible).

 

 

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This is why futuring is so important

On 07/01/2011, in business, corporate / business world, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, expectations, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, reinvent, strategy, surviving, trends, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
A reflection on:

Excerpt (with emphasis from DSC):

The secret to visionary companies’ continued success was explained best what NHL great Wayne Gretzky stated: “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” What Apple and Facebook know and more specifically their founders/CEOs’ Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have in common is aspirational clarity. They appear to be able to see where the puck will be and into the future of what their market will not just want, but go ga-ga over and then they deliver it. Some may refer to that as their being market makers, but what enables them to make their market is that they can anticipate what will delight their customers and members that those people don’t even know will delight them.

From DSC:
This is why futuring, taking pulse checks on current trends, being in touch with your customers’ expectations (and future customers in the case of students), and scenario building are so important these days.

With the pace of technological change continuing to pick up, a healthy organization will constantly be looking to maintain its relevancy — to innnovate, to reinvent itself.

If you are not constantly reinventing yourself — as an individual or more collectively as an organization — your chances of staying relevant and marketable will likely decrease in the future.

 

We need to constantly be monitoring trends

 

Image by Daniel Christian

 

 

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Colleges in Crisis [Harvard Magazine July-August 2011]

On 06/20/2011, in budgets, business side of he, change, colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, organizational change, reinvent, staying relevant, United States, universities, using teams, by Daniel Christian

Colleges in Crisis - Harvard Magazine -- July-August 2011

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Surveys of the American public and of more than 1,000 college and university presidents, conducted this past spring by the Pew Research Center in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education, revealed significant concerns not only about the costs of such education, but also about its direction and goals.

More fundamentally, the business model that has characterized American higher education is at—or even past—its breaking point. Many institutions are increasingly beset by financial difficulties, and the meltdown since 2008 is but a shadow of what is to come. Undergraduate tuition has risen dramatically: at a 6.3 percent annual clip for nearly the last three decades—even faster than the much-decried 4.9 percent annual cost increases plaguing the healthcare industry. The full increase in the price of higher education has actually been hidden from many students and families over the years because gifts from alumni, earnings from private university endowments, subsidies from state tax revenues for public universities, and federal subsidies for students have been used to mitigate some costs. But universities are exhausting these mechanisms.

…

A Thriving, Disruptive Innovation
Just at the moment when these challenges to established higher education have arisen and compounded, another group of universities has arisen whose financial health is strong and enrollments have been booming. And yet the brands of these schools are weak and their campuses far from glamorous; sometimes the campuses are even nonexistent from the perspective of students, as online learning has largely driven their growth. How could this upstart group be so successful when the rest of higher education is treading water at best?

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DIY U: The Future Of Learning [Kamenetz]; DSC’s reflections re: the bubble in higher education

On 06/15/2011, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, budgets, business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, learning, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, open courseware and systems, reinvent, society, staying relevant, United States, by Daniel Christian

DIY U: The Future Of Learning [Video] — from FastCompany.com by Anya Kamenetz
From Khan Academy and TED Talks to instructional YouTube videos, the future of learning is open and free.


DYI: The future of learning

 

A related comment from DSC:

I have it that higher ed is a bubble and if an increasingly larger group of people can’t afford it — yet still want it — then, in my book, that’s a major problem.

I’ll use myself as an example. My wife and I could not begin to afford to send our kids to many of the colleges and universities out there right now — today, in 2011! (Let alone in 2017+ when our kids start hitting the college scene.)  I should note that our kids are doing well in school and are very talented, hard workers.  I should also point out that my wife and I place a very high value on being educated and we are both trying to pass that value along to the next generation.

But if you tell me that higher ed is not a bubble, the first question I will ask you (besides what planet are you living on) is what’s the gross income for your household? If you are making close to 6 figures, I highly doubt that your perspective will be the same as that of folks from households who are making $20,000-$50,000 a year. In fact, my hunch is that those who say higher ed is not a bubble are:

  • Upper middle class to upper class (i.e. wealthy in the eyes of many in the world today)
  • Folks who don’t have to worry about where their next paycheck is coming from (nor have they had to live like that in years!); that is, they are doing quite well these days…living quite comfortably
  • College educated (nothing wrong with that!)
  • Potentially involved with higher ed — or at least want to maintain the status quo
  • Folks who do not have children

My take on this is that all of us in higher education need to figure out how we can greatly reduce the price of higher education. It shouldn’t be how well you understand the system or how many hours of work you have done to figure out the grants, loans, etc. that exist out there.

NEVER again should we be pleased with ANY sort of increase in tuition. Never again should we say, “Well, our tuition only went up by ___% which is the smallest increase in our history (or the smallest increase relative to our competition…or the smallest in our state/country/nation).”

Such a situation is causing a backlash against the current higher education environment/setup.
As such, we need to constantly be looking to reinvent ourselves — and to staying relevant.

 

Addendum on 6/17/11:

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A technology broadside against school leadership preparation programs [McLeod]

On 06/15/2011, in change, education, education reform, education technology, K-12 related, leadership, pedagogy, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, student teaching/teacher education, surviving, United States, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

A technology broadside against school leadership preparation programs — from BigThink.com by Scott McLeod

Excerpt:

If every other information-oriented societal sector is finding that transformative reinvention is the cost of survival in our current climate, schools and universities shouldn’t expect that they somehow will be immune from the same changes that are radically altering their institutional peers. We shouldn’t pretend that these revolutions aren’t going to affect us too, in compelling and often as yet unknown ways. And, yet, for some reason we do.

As long-existing barriers to learning, communicating, and collaborating disappear – and as what it means to be a productive learner, citizen, and employee shifts dramatically – it’s worth asking how we as educational leadership faculty and programs are responding. Are we doing what we should? To date the evidence is pretty clear that most of us are not.

…

Can we as educational leadership faculty do better? Given the scale and scope of the transformations occurring around us – and their power and potential for student learning – we MUST do better. It’s embarrassing to consider how little we’ve done to stay relevant. A learning revolution has occurred and – given the attention we’ve paid it – it’s as if many of us didn’t care.

 

From DSC — also see:

 

Frustrated Educators Aim to Build Grassroots Movement

 

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How Apple will draft everyone into the cloud. Or else. [Boyd]

On 06/08/2011, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Apple, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, game-changing environment, innovation, programming, reinvent, staying relevant, tablets, by Daniel Christian

How Apple will draft everyone into the cloud. Or else. — from FastCompany.com by E.B. Boyd
Pity the poor programmer whose software doesn’t automatically sync every digital thing you own across all of your devices instantly. Thanks to Apple, if you’re not in the cloud soon, you’re buried.

Excerpt:

And so we at Fast Company expect the same to happen with the cloud. Apple has just introduced an attractive system for a whole range of things consumers care about. Sure, cloud solutions previously existed for some of the things Apple introduced Monday–like documents (Google Docs) and music (Amazon). But it is the comprehensiveness and elegance of the iCloud system that will unleash a tipping point.

Soon users will become used to how much easier their lives become with iCloud. All my stuff is everywhere I want it to be, instantly. I download a song from iTunes, and it’s instantly on all my devices. I put down the book I was reading on my iPad at home, get on the subway, open up my iPhone, and presto, the book is not only on my phone, it opens up to the exact place where I stopped reading on the tablet.

Documents, photos, email, contacts, calendars–users will get used to moving fluidly between all of them on different devices

And as soon as consumers become used to things acting this way, they’ll start actually expecting things to act this way. And when that happens, beware any software company that doesn’t deliver the same experience. In the new world Apple will create, to ask a user to manually sync files between different devices will be the equivalent, back in the ’80s, of asking a bunch of home computer users used to interacting with GUI’s, to use command lines instead.

 

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Is Higher Education Ready for “The Education Bubble”? [Batson]

On 06/01/2011, in accreditation, budgets, business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, education technology, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, instructional design, leadership, learning theories, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, open courseware and systems, pedagogy, reinvent, staying relevant, teaching & learning, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Is Higher Education Ready for “The Education Bubble”? — from CampusTechnology.com by Trent Batson

Excerpts:

American higher education–the jewel in the global crown of universal education, with nearly a quarter of the total number of higher education institutions in the world, and including graduate programs that are the envy of the world–is facing the prospect of being the next bubble to burst. Technology is both a culprit and a promising ally.

The spread of information technology, and its infusion into our culture, has opened the world to learning opportunities–raising expectations for college graduates and changing the terms of success.

Is American higher education ready to either prevent the bubble from bursting or to weather the storm when it does burst? And what is the bubble?

…

The bubble, as we can see by all the dimensions just described, is, in fact, a potential “perfect storm.”

…

But this effort must also result from a presidential-level decree: “The learning theory that fit so well in our culture and with the dominant technology pre-1995 (print-based and paper-based technologies), now is not working very well for any of us, so we have to change. Each of you on campus has sincerely and devotedly committed yourselves fully to learning, but now we know that our learning epistemology is less and less appropriate. This is not your fault; it is simply a time of incredible human growth; it is a time of rapid evolution in our culture; a time of re-shaping our economy. We must transform or become irrelevant.”

 

From DSC:
Good to see I have some company in these perspectives; thanks for the article Trent. Also see:

  • The Forthcoming Walmart of Education
  • The below graphics that I created a while back reflecting on whether there was a bubble building within higher ed (2/16/09) as well some of the elements of “The Perfect Storm in Higher Education” (9/10/10).
  • The point is we need a response to these trends — we don’t want to be broadsided.

 

The perfect storm in higher ed -- by Daniel S. Christian

Is higher ed the next bubble?

 

Daniel S. Christian: My concerns with just maintaining the status quo (from 2009).

From 5/21/09

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College 2.0: Transforming higher education through greater innovation and smarter regulation (ICW, McMahan, Loyola)

On 05/30/2011, in accreditation, business side of he, change, cost of getting a degree, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, policy, reinvent, staying relevant, by Daniel Christian

College 2.0 -- Transforming Higher Education through Greater Innovation and Smarter Regulation -- May 2011

 

Originally saw this May 2011 document at Biz Dean’s Talk

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New textbook paradigm – In which I get it [Wilson]

On 05/27/2011, in digital textbooks, new business models, publishing, reinvent, staying relevant, textbooks, by Daniel Christian

New textbook paradigm – In which I get it — from The Education Business Blog by Lee Wilson

Excerpt:

The role of textbooks in a rapidly digitizing world is an open question. The publishing industry needs to develop a new paradigm for commercially produced instructional materials or it faces extinction.

These and many more questions haunt the dreams of educational publishing professionals.

Now, thanks to the folks at Nature (a division of MacMillan) and their new eTextbook Principles of Biology, I glimpse a promising path forward. As is so often the case with paradigm shifts once it “clicks” in your head it is so simple that you wonder that you didn’t get it earlier.
Better late than never I guess.

The product itself is innovative but from what I can tell not groundbreaking. It won’t ship until September but from the description it sounds similar to Our Choice or Roma, excellent examples of cutting edge iPad publishing for non-fiction.

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Reform the PhD system or close it down! : Mark Taylor [posted by Reid Cornwell]

On 05/27/2011, in change, colleges, education reform, faculty, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, universities, by Daniel Christian

Reform the PhD system or close it down! : Mark Taylor — from The Center for Internet Research; posted by Reid Cornwell (emphasis DSC)
There are too many doctoral programs, producing too many PhDs for the job market. Shut some and change the rest, says Mark C. Taylor [Chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University in New York and the author of Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities (Knopf, 2010)]

Excerpt:

The system of PhD education in the United States and many other countries is broken and unsustainable, and needs to be re-conceived. In many fields, it creates only a cruel fantasy of future employment that promotes the self-interest of faculty members at the expense of students. The reality is that there are very few jobs for people who might have spent up to 12 years on their degrees.

…

There are two responsible courses of action: either radically reform doctoral programs or shut them down.

The necessary changes are both curricular and institutional. One reason that many doctoral programs do not adequately serve students is that they are overly specialized, with curricula fragmented and increasingly irrelevant to the world beyond academia. Expertise, of course, is essential to the advancement of knowledge and to society. But in far too many cases, specialization has led to areas of research so narrow that they are of interest only to other people working in the same fields, subfields or sub-subfields. Many researchers struggle to talk to colleagues in the same department, and communication across departments and disciplines can be impossible.

…

If doctoral education is to remain viable in the twenty-first century, universities must tear down the walls that separate fields, and establish programs that nourish cross-disciplinary investigation and communication. They must design curricula that focus on solving practical problems, such as providing clean water to a growing population. Unfortunately, significant change is unlikely to come from faculty members, who all too often remain committed to traditional approaches. Students, administrators, trustees and even people from the public and private sectors must create pressure for reform.

 

From DSC:

  • Again, the phrase staying relevant comes to my mind, as does the word reinvent.  Academia doesn’t need to pour more fuel on the backlash that’s building up against it.

 


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