September+17


 * Sharing:**
 * Show this to your IT Department.
 * Rethink Learing. Now.
 * Now You Know...

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 * 21st Century Media Literacies - Howard Reingold

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 * Diigo

1. How have the purposes of schooling shifted and expanded from the 20th century to the 21st century? 2. How has the meaning of “literacy” shifted and expanded in the 21st century? 3. How has “student,” “teacher,” and “learner” been redefined in the 21st century? 4. How might you apply your knowledge to lesson design for a 21st century classroom teaching and learning environment? 5. What new questions do you have after studying the material on 21st century education?
 * Discussion:**

Choose a driver for your group to engage in discussion.
 * New Topic: The Future of Education**
 * What about the map strikes you as most interesting? Why?
 * What trends should we most care about in education? Why?
 * How can you think about education differently?

//Some notes on the Future of Education map://
 * 1990s - consumers
 * 2000s - participants
 * 2010s - creating knowledge - people as makers and creators of knowledge

What are the big trends in society that we need to pay attention to? What world is education taking place in? Education shouldn't be the last institution in society to change in the most reactive and reluctant way. This has been the message around the various forecasts for the world of learning.

The forecasts are NOT prediction. They are plausible, internally consistent picture of forces and how they will likely effect education. They also provide points where we can intervene and shape how the future unfolds.

Six drivers of change, followed by trends and signals:


 * //**Self**// - **Altered Bodies** - trends in changes in our own bodies - those of our own choosing and those caused by environmental changes (we don't have control over these). What questions does this present to educational organizations? Is this something schools should be thinking about? Are there ways that school communities can help us deal with these environmental effects? The human brain can change - plasticity. There are many opportunities to help brains in good ways. How will this impact customized education? IEPs no longer have to be only for special education students. It is feasible, and necessary, to have individualization for every learner. What is a school community? While schools have narrowed there focus to basic skills, this trend suggests that schools should be more - centers for whole communities.
 * //**Organizations**// - **Amplified Organizations** - reflect the way that organizations are being changed by the new habits that individuals have adopted. The capacity for social networking and transparency has extended the capacities of individuals. When this is grouped together in organizations, the capacities of those organizations are extended. For learning, how do "digital natives" remake schools into learning organizations? they are becoming the parents and teachers. Do the same boundaries apply? How does our need to create change the rules? There is danger that schools that do not allow themselves to become amplified will be at a disadvantage. How do we think about the fact that most school organizations are now structured so that students leave their world at the door? This is about how we get things done and how we work together. The model of learning will be redefined by those who use all these tools to create their world. Do we need institutions for the things that we have them for now? It's coming...will schools be there? Can they wait? Can they resist? The importance of transliteracy - being able to function in various literacies: broadcast, digital video, tagging, wikis, etc. (more and more will be invented). These behaviors and forms of communication will amplify the organization. Individuals that can do more create organizations that can do more.
 * //**Systems**// - **Platforms for Resilience** - Has to do with the need for systems to adapt to system shocks. Takes the point that climate shock along with energy, health care, etc. are inevitable. Will our institutions remain brittle by resisting the disruptions or will they develop resiliency, more flexibility, more transparency, more collaboration both internally and externally? The forecast suggest that this is the only way to deal with the challenges that are coming. Will this be true of school communities? What would that look like for a school community? How could we form partnerships to support that kind of flexibility and innovation? What kind of shocks will we face? How are we going to be prepared? Shocks coming from within just as much as from without. Our education system was really designed for another time when we wanted to produce factory workers. Our economy has evolved and we have new kinds of problems. If our education system doesn't change, it's chances of success are limited. The "autoimmune responses" trend reminds me of the core knowledge movement - "brittle hierarchies continue to act in ways that seem institutionally rational but which further destabilize weak, inflexible systems." NCLB is another example of an "autoimmune response."
 * //**Society**// - **A New Civic Discourse** - This driver is about the effect of participatory media culture, frameworks for collaborating, the culture in the society at large. The notion of diaspora - communities that have been dispersed but maintain an identity. Diasporas continue to force an emergence of how we identify community and identity. This will be a challenge for education. The new media opportunities allow ways for people to mobilize and put pressure on organizations - educitizen. People who run schools are going to have to get used to handling this new civic discourse. The longtail of education - finding connections with other people dispersed throughout the world who share the same interest. They are better positioned to mobilize for action because they are connected and not so dispersed.
 * //**Economy**// - **The Maker Economy** - One of the sources of creating an environment for learning. A new manufacturing. Not just mass production assembly lines, but rather bottom up, customized, democratized activity. This is not as evident in our lives as some of the other trends. There are a whole new sets of tools (such as the 3D printer) and new methods for sharing. These contribute to a localization of manufacturing. It won't require a huge infrastructure to manufacture stuff. Local communities will become hubs for designing, prototyping and producing things. What new skills will this require? What existing skills that we have valued are still important? What new model of education is suggested when we move beyond the assembly line? We will have both a globalized and localized economy. Simulations and games can be used to teach resilience in a system that is not resilient.
 * //**Knowledge**// - **Pattern Recognition** - There are already new tools that are making data more and more visible. This means that we will need to have a new set of skills to make sense of data - discerning patterns. Visual data is going to mean that all of us will need to discern patterns in visible data. Includes the data trail of our online interactions - how we contribute to groups, things we look up, how we use our social networks. These will be used to help us understand our world better as well as customizing our own education and learning. Sensors will track factors about our location, health and surrounding environment. This will be our visual data picture. How will the effect creating and assessing learning experiences? How will we use this skill to make decisions. Knowledge is of a whole different sort. It is more than just access to so much information. It is the kind of information and how we can see what it means. It's just not individual literacy, but collective literacy.

The drivers are not in any rank order. You can start studying the forecast wherever you want to. The drivers are, however, organized from more concrete to more abstract. They sort of feed into each other. The signals are actually real-world examples of how the trend is currently playing out.


 * What technologies are you most interested in learning about?** Visit our Google Spreadsheet and add your ideas. This will help to determine how we approach the next segment of the course.


 * For Thursday, September 24**


 * Blog post for next class:** How have your ideas about teaching and learning been shaped by some of the resources you have been exposed to over the past few weeks? Revisit your initial blog post and reflect upon what you have learned and how your thinking has advanced. Please complete this by **Monday evening** so we can //all read them before next Thursday's class.// Here is a [|rubric] for blogging. REFLECTION is key. Good writing is important, too. Length is whatever works best for you and the story you want to tell. Please comment using the Diigo highlighting/commenting toolbar.

None!
 * Readings for next class:**


 * Post**, if you'd like, any interesting articles, videos, findings on the Internet, etc for next week to the September 24 page. I would like everyone to do this. Sort of a M.Ed. show-and-tell.

If you haven't done so already, **order the text** from [|Amazon] or some other bookseller. Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marra, R.M., & Crismond, D. (2007). //[|Meaningful learning with technology]// //(3rd ed.)//. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

** Next Meeting: Thursday, September 24 - 4:00-7:00 PM New Topic: TBD**