Schools must be restructured to give teachers the greatest possible flexibility in matching the student with the appropriate learning experience.
[Richard] Fenman was a truly great teacher. He prided himself on being able to devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students. Once, I said to him, “Dick, explain to me, so that I can understand it, why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics.” Sizing up his audience perfectly, Feynman said, “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it.” But he came back a few days later to say, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don’t really understand it.
Source: amazon.com
With knowledge doubling every year or so, “expertise” now has a shelf life measured in days; everyone must be both learner and teacher; and the sheer challenge of learning can be managed only through a globe-girdling network that links all minds and all knowledge.
I call this new ways of technology hyperlearning…It is not a single device or process, but a universe of new technologies that both possess and enhance intelligence. The hyper in hyperlearning refers not merely to the extraordinary speed and scope of new information technology, but to an unprecedented degree of connectedness of knowledge, experience, media, and brains - both human and nonhuman…We have the technology today to enable virtually anyone who is not severely handicapped to learn anything, at a “grade A” level, anywhere, anytime.
At every step we have to ask whether current technology is leading us in directions that serve our human purposes. Such questions are not technical; they are social, moral, and political.
Sherry Turkle, quoted from How computers change the way we think
The overselling of foolish ideas about technology should not be allowed to discredit the whole field of online education. We as faculty need to get beyond defensive contempt for this significant education innovation and look at specific designs with legitimate pedagogical objectives in mind.
If there is no risk of dropping, juggling is actually sort of boring.
The core of good thinking is the ability to solve problems. The essence of problem solving is the ability to learn in puzzling situations.
The good Lord didn’t create anything without a purpose, but the fly comes close.
We are now all in favor of learning, just as we all aspire to be thin, but we have not changed what we cook and serve to students.
(Technology is) anything that isn’t around when you were born.
If we don’t agree to the use of technology, we will be considered out of date and may lose our credibility.
I'm a Ph.D. student studying Educational Computing and an instructional designer. I'm currently focusing on the gamification of education. Read the full bio
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