Archive for the 'Flat World Education' Category

Digital Media & Learning Competition

Author: tom | 27 January 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Flat World Education

Today the HASTAC / MacArthur Foundation opened comments on the applications to the Digital Media and Learning Competition.  Mine is called “Our2020” and seeks to engage a global audience of teenagers to explore and develop media artifacts and knowledge around what they can expect the world to look like in 2020.  If accepted, we will [...]

Denmark: Exams 2.0

Author: tom | 10 November 2009 | No Comments
Categories: Flat World Education

As I mentioned in the NML Conference debrief, Denmark is taking the lead in piloting full Internet access for students taking their end of high school exams.  Nice to see the BBC article verifying that this has taken place.  As was indicated at the conference three main elements inform the decision:

This is the real world
Students [...]

Intriguing Ourselves to Death…

Author: tom | 03 January 2008 | 8 Comments
Categories: Flat World Education, Greek Sculpture, The New WWW, Wikicademy

a plea for Education…
What follows isn’t anything new, but will likely be all too common – yet it serves as a concrete example of why education must change and what it must address.
Over an hour ago, I thought I’d better see if any comments had been made to a recent post of mine on the [...]

Change “Music” to “Schools” and…

Author: tom | 29 December 2007 | 1 Comment
Categories: Assembly Lyin', Flat World Education

It’s no secret that the music industry has played hardball with users of filesharing networks. Leaders in the field worked hard to ignore the fact that those who swapped files via BitTorrent were also the greatest purchasers of music. Now it seems that Big Music may be crumbing just like the Berlin Wall, [...]

“Seat time” 2.0

Author: tom | 29 December 2007 | 4 Comments
Categories: Flat World Education, Wikicademy

Reports have been surfacing about different ways students use the daily bus ride to school. One particularly interesting one comes from Arkansas where it’s reported that Sheridan Turns School Bus into Classroom. This program is a joint effort and demonstrates some smart thinking. For instance, in combination with the WiFi’d bus in [...]

A “Vision” of Knowledge

Author: tom | 02 November 2007 | No Comments
Categories: A New 3Rs, Flat World Education, Web 2.0

File this post under: “Intriguing ourselves to Death”
Check the cool new mashup of Google Maps, Wikipedia and László Kozma’s programming that he calls WikipediaVision. It’s a great illustration of the changing nature of “knowledge.” WikipediaVision provides relatively realtime markers for who just added content to Wikipedia from where and on what topic. Like the [...]

The “outsourced brain”

Author: tom | 31 October 2007 | No Comments
Categories: Flat World Education, The New WWW, Web 2.0, Wikicademy

David Brooks’ Op-Ed piece “The Outsourced Brain” in the New York Times is a must read for educators. Beginning with a GPS goddess that gently steers the author in the right direction, Brooks goes on to invoke his use of calculators for math (a given), iTunes for musical selection, search engines for memory of [...]

Teachers in Short Supply

Author: tom | 24 August 2006 | 3 Comments
Categories: Flat World Education

The Seattle Times ran this article from the Gannett News Service that I think highlights why outsourcing aspects of teaching is inevitable.  While districts around the U.S. entice teaching candidates with signing bonuses ($4000), laptops, and gym memberships, the article points out the obvious reality.  Tom Carroll, president of the nonprofit National Commission on Teaching [...]

Too Few Overachievers

Author: tom | 24 August 2006 | No Comments
Categories: Flat World Education

In this opinion piece, Jay Mathews at the Washington Post draws attention to something most visitors to most high schools in most parts of the developed world would echo:
For the vast majority [of high school students], academic stress is pretty rare.
Mathews’ attention was brought to the topic by the buzz around Alexandra Robbins’s new book, [...]

Editure Thought Leaders Conference

Author: tom | 27 July 2006 | 2 Comments
Categories: Flat World Education, Tom's work

Two days this week I worked with Editure – a new company made from several including myinternet and CSM. Editure and its strategic partners and customers gathered for this first annual Thought Leadership Conference. I am fortunate to work with Editure as a consultant charged with developing a thriving community of users. [...]