From DSC:
The other day, I was lamenting that the love of learning gets lost waaayyy too quickly in our youth. With drop out rates in the 25-30% range nationwide, we must turn this around.

A piece of that turn-around picture involves the opportunity for students to collaboratively create things (in a cross-disciplinary sort of way). This is why I am a big fan of multimedia-based projects:

  • One student can write the script.
  • Another can do the filming.
  • Another can take pictures for still shots.
  • Another can do the film and/or image editing.
  • Others the acting or singing or playing music.
  • Others can create the artwork or use their knowledge to create props
  • Etc.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The film below discusses the dark side of our culture as it involves schools and education. But the topic is not just related to schools, but to our society in general. That is, we’ve been sold a bill of goods. We believe that you must earn a lot of money to be successful and happy…and that whomever dies w/ the most toys wins.

This competitive streak is a worldly way of looking at things…but is a powerful current to fight. In fact, coming from a competitive background and being a Christian (in faith) myself, I’ve often asked myself whether I believe competition is a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t think I’ve arrived at the final answer to that question, as sometimes I think it can be good (as it can be helpful in developing characteristics of discipline, perseverance, character, integrity, etc.) and sometimes it can be bad. Check out the video/trainer here to see what I mean.

racetonowhere.com

While looking at the video for Sonos Controller for the iPad, I wondered…what if we could replace the selection below — i.e. the word music with the words “educational providers” — and then control which room received which signal/content?

Wow…talk about a home dedicated to learning!   🙂

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WordPress and other items of potential interest -- by Daniel S. Christian

From DSC:
As we begin a new academic year, several questions and thoughts come to my mind…such as:

  • Will this be the year we really start seeing a visible/tangible change in the incoming freshmen at our college in terms of how they prefer to learn? What it takes to keep them engaged? How to best adapt to their use of technology? (Perhaps you’ve seen changes in students’ preferences/styles at your college or university long ago…)
    • Or are the changes happening so slowly that it’s like looking in the mirror? (i.e. we can’t see changes on a daily basis…but if we look at photographs from 5-10 years ago, we can see the changes)
    • Or are we not there yet?
    • Or is all this talk about students’ use of technology a bunch of hype from the vendors trying to make a buck?
      .
  • Control
    • Much of what influences students within K-12 and higher education is out of our control. Therefore, much of what needs to change in higher ed is not in our control.
    • What is in our control is taking pulse checks on trends, student expectations / preferences…and then making plans and executing those plans as to how we want to respond to those changes
      .
  • What adjustments do we need to make in the next 1-5 years? 5-10 years?
    • Should we be offering more cross-disciplinary assignments/courses? More project-based learning?
    • Should we be offering more multimedia-based materials, available 24x7x365? Or would students not even use these materials if we made the effort to put them out there?
    • Should we change what we want to achieve within our face-to-face times?
    • How do we best prepare our students for jobs that haven’t yet been created?
    • Given the higher costs involved, what’s the balance between more traditional liberal arts and more vocationally-based curriculums/offerings?
      .
  • Preferences / attention spans
    • Are there changes in how students prefer to learn?
    • Is it getting harder to get through “the gate” (i.e. gaining someone’s attention to get into someone’s short-term and long-term memory)?   If so, what do we want to do about that, concretely speaking?

If attention can be visualized as a gate...is it getting harder to get through the gate?

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Learning Ecosystems -- by Daniel S. Christian

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My objective with this blog is to provide you with a broad-range of insights and resources regarding some tools, technologies, and strategies that help people learn and communicate.  I address elements that relate to the worlds of higher education, K-12, and the corporate training/development.  I seek to identify and relay patterns and trends in the quickly-changing landscapes out there, helping folks keep a pulse check on such items as:

  • 1:1 computing, AI, personalized learning
  • “The Forthcoming Walmart of Education”; changing business models, opportunities, and threats within the world of higher education
  • The disruptive power of technology
  • What elements should be in your learning ecosystem
  • “Learning from the Living Room”
  • Keeping students engaged
  • Digital storytelling
  • Multimedia (tools, techniques, trends, other)
  • Mobile learning
  • Building your global network
  • Instructional design
  • Web design and production
  • …as well as other educationally-related topics.

To get an idea of my views on the above topics — along with some of the other topics I’ve covered in the last 3 years — please feel free to review my personal site at Calvin College.  Here’s an example archives page covering all of 2009:  http://www.calvin.edu/~dsc8/announcement_archives_2009.htm

I look forward to our future discussions as we try to make our individual and corporate contributions to the worlds of education…thereby making the entire world a better place.

Sincerely,
Daniel S. Christian

Daniel S. Christian
© 2025 | Daniel Christian