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Turning Education Up to 11?

Amplify + education = ?

How would that work? To the extent that Amplify combines social bookmarking and annotation or commentary, on the one hand, and blogging (micro-, midi-, and now full-blown) on the other, it replicates or parallels tools I already use in and out of the classroom - diigo, blogs, and twitter (read more here).  It also plays well with those other tools - I was particularly grateful when the team added diigo to the integrated services.

The question for me is whether there is added value in combining elements of these things in one platform in a formal educational context.

Informally, I learn from Amplify every day. I am clearly an active and enthusiastic user. Can and should that transfer in some formal way to my role as educator? I’ll be thinking about it, experimenting a bit, probably. And reporting back in this space. In the meantime, I would welcome input from educators, learners, researchers, and everyone else, with ideas on what Amplify can do for education.

Messin’ with Texas through open resources?

The fifteen elected members of the Texas Board of Education have disproportionate influence over K-12 education in the United States because of market effects - Texas buys textbooks en bloc, so publishers tailor their books to meet Texas standards. Given the Board's alarming revisionist leanings in history and social studies, among others (see http://www.nytimes.... read more

Amplify’d from gawker.com
I’d love to see a textbook counter-movement where a superior core curriculum is posted online — free for anyone to use. The texts could then be more specific and in-depth and actually, you know, good. I think today’s youth are ready for it.Read more at gawker.com
 

Do George & Dave’s Work For Them: Future of Education

Go go go! I’m leaning toward an opera, but may settle for a drawing.

Amplify’d from www.elearnspace.org

What is the future of education? A request for help

Dave Cormier and I are offering an open course on the Future(s) of Education, starting in April. Dave has an introduction based on a workshop he is running in Singapore next week. I’ve co-taught courses with Dave in the past and while we irritate each other, he has a keen, critical, and creative mind. Which means it’s always a great experience for me.

We need your help, according to the Levine/Norman playbook of getting others to do your work for you. Could you post a video/drawing/audio recording/dance routine/cave drawing/clay pot that represents your vision of the future of education?

Please tag your contribution with #edfuture and let Dave and I know via Twitter (Dave=@cormier, George=@gsiemens) or drop a link in the comments here.

Read more at www.elearnspace.org
 

Pedagogy of fun, continued (again)

It’s nice when smart folks at MIT add some patina of credibility to my, frankly, instinctive and un-researched advocacy of fun as the best pedagogy.

Amplify’d from teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org

What can we do? Bring some of the fun back to learning. Break some of the rules….especially the ones you think you can get away with: more collaborative group work, answer fewer questions but ask more, let them teach you, give them the tools to show what they know.
Say, “Look!” more often., “Hey, everyone, look at this!”
When the lights start going back on in their eyes, you’ll know it’s working.

Read more at teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org
 

Civ V

I hope it is as moddable as previous iterations. Great educational applications!

Amplify’d from www.youtube.com via Google Reader
See more at www.youtube.com
 

Pay Structure

This is about the size of it. I love teaching. I love much of my job. The administrative headaches I could live without - but I guess that’s why they pay me rather than vice versa. Thanks to @f_rancesca for finding this.

Amplify’d from www.gapingvoidgallery.com
Free
See more at www.gapingvoidgallery.com
 

@timbuckteeth’s credo

It’s all about the fun.

Amplify’d from steve-wheeler.blogspot.com
Whatever the technology, whichever the environment, if learners are engaged (motivated, captivated, excited and inspired) I want to know how and why. That’s why I’m a researcher in learning technology.Read more at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com
 

Learning through gaming - and game design

Great example of how the process of game design can be powerfully educational. If they’ve carried out the R&D process well, including beta testing, then the end-product should be educational as well, of course. I hope we’ll see more of this kind of project, particularly from liberal arts institutions.

Amplify’d from chronicle.com

In Development at Champlain College: a Video Game to Help Prevent Domestic Violence

A team at Champlain College wants to educate boys about the effects of violence against women. So they are creating a product using two things that appeal to their target audience: soccer and video games.

Champlain students working on the project include programmers, electronic-game designers, and art and marketing majors; they received no credit, but some were paid for their time. Many of the students also had little to no training on domestic-violence issues, Ms. DeMarle said. But students have learned, both by doing their own research and by traveling as a group to the Caribbean and South Africa to do research and product testing.

“To see them embracing the rest of the world and issues around the world. … It’s very powerful because it just broadens who they are and their understanding,”Read more at chronicle.com
 

It IS broken, so let’s fix it

Education, government, business - all the big systems are lagging. Building up from the community level, regionalization, localization, cooperatives - these are or should be the wave of the future. Big is doubleplusunbeautiful.

Amplify’d from davetroy.com

Our educational system is designed to promote an ersatz fungibility of place and to denigrate people’s relationship to extended family by offering instead a false idol of corporate, industrial superiority. The fact is that place is a kind of human right, as is extended family. Any system that asks you to devalue a relationship with place or with extended family is evil.

Your remembering self cares about money and mobility deeply. Why? No one wants to be remembered as the person who “didn’t do anything with their life.” Getting rich and moving around a lot adds dramatic, tangible plot-points to your story, which comforts your remembering self greatly. But your experiencing self can easily be less happy. What if you are unable to turn your money into people you enjoy spending time with? What if you move away from the people and places that bring you joy?

we need to reinvent our educational system upon a more agricultural model, rather than the industrial modelRead more at davetroy.com
 

Edupocalypse in the UK?

Oh, bollocks. Not pleasing.

And why is a business secretary in charge of universities, anyway?

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

Universities across the country are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, the Guardian has learned.

Other plans include using post-graduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action which could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.

UK universities were being pushed towards becoming US-style, quasi-privatised institutions.
Peter Mandelson, the business secretary who is in charge of universities, accused the principals of “gross exaggerations” and “extreme language”, but would not be drawn over whether he would make further cuts to higher education.
The policy adopted by the government is in stark contrast to the response in the US where President Obama this week proposed a 31% increase in education spending for next yearRead more at www.guardian.co.uk