Education as we know it is going…going…gone.
The death of education is here! It is now the dawn of……. learning.

Recent additions to the themes of this blog have been moved to a new WordPress site.  The new blog “Beyond the Crystal Ball” will focus on preparing teachers and  students for the 21st Century, so the focus has been expanded beyond the original topics covered on this site.  To visit the new blog click on http://futurestudy.wordpress.com

The WFS 2010 conference, “Sustainable Futures, Strategies, and Technologies” will be held in Boston, July 8-10.  Usually they offer a choice of one day workshops prior to the conference proper.  There are typically a number of educationally focused presentations and workshops. Registration fee discounts are available for members, early bird registrants, students, and those over 65.

The World Future Society is a nonprofit educational and scientific organization in Bethesda, Maryland, U.S., founded in 1966. The Society investigates how social, economic and technological developments are shaping the future. It helps individuals, organizations, and communities observe, understand and respond to social change appropriately and investigates the benign effects of applying anticipatory thinking to society.

Through its magazine The Futurist, media, meetings, and dialogue among its members, it raises awareness of change and encourages development of creative solutions. The Society takes no official position on what the future may or should be like. Instead it provides a neutral forum for exploring possible, probable, and preferable futures.   —-Wikipedia . 

https://www.wfs.org/2010regform.htm

Posted via web from Exploring the Future

The Institute for the Future at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland “encourages engaged learning, actively pursuing foresight and future thinking through applied and experiential learning.”  Built around their course “Exploring the Future,” the Institute promotes the integration of future thinking across the campus and throughout their community.  In addition, their web site provides a variety of resources for schools and individual educators that wish to enhance their students ability to prepare for the 21st century.

http://www.aacc.edu/future/

Posted via web from Exploring the Future

The information on this site is being gathered during the process of developing a college learning community on the future.  Two faculty members (Psychology & English) are co- creating this new course.  While we will be considering a number of future issues, the focus will be on human change during the 21st century from the vantage point of both future studies and science fiction.

While there are many web sites that deal with various aspects of the future, at this point, we have not discovered a web site that fully pulled together the ideas and resources for our purpose.  We hope this blog will be of help to other educators who wish to develop courses on the future, or add a future studies element to their current classes.

Posted via web from Exploring the Future

Is Education means the Qualifications,

Many would have done

BSc Che and MCA
BSc Math and MCA
Msc Phy and MTech
BE Mech and MBA HR
BE+MBA(Commonly)

What is the use of both the degrees…? how these both qualifications helps together……..?
waste of years and age and learning and etc.. is not it..?

if one interested Electronics, then after Higher secondary, if he/she works in Electonics Mechanic shop cant he learn electronics than in BSc Electronics..?
likewise for mech and every thing..?

Basic Communication and General awareness thats all..

expect that this such education wont help in professional growth i feel, apart from doing courses form IITs and IIM or at this class.

-Gokul

ขอนำเสนอสภาพการศึกษาในปัจจุบันของนักศึกษามหาวิทยาลัยในต่างประเทศที่ต้องประสบกับความสับสนงุนงง ในผลลัพท์ที่ได้จากการศึกษาในระบบ  มีความแตกต่างจากในบ้านเมืองไทยเราบ้างหรือเปล่า

I started to see the fragmentation of the organized, linear brick-and-mortar educational environment back around 1992. It was my freshman year of college at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and one of my classes relied heavily on collaboration through the University’s VAX system. Pretty much the old-school granddaddy to today’s e-mail, IM, and virtual work-groups.

Back then, we still had to do the bulk of our research at the university’s library. You know: Dewey Decimal System, index cards, those tiny yellow pencils that were always too dull to write with? Some of our work was shared online with the professor a day prior to submission, so he could keep track of our progress. I could also see the proliferation of multi-users in a virtual setting as we geeks ran MUDs and MUSHs.

But, all that system work was clunky and left to basically the highly technically savvy. That doesn’t seem to be the case now.

Now, communication for our school-aged children is fragmented, multi-layered, and instant. A picture taken with a cell phone can be uploaded to MySpace, blogged about, and commented on by a limitless number of people. All in the span of minutes.

This can greatly impact what we know, and how we approach education. Dr Michael Wesch with Digital Ethnography seems to get this (I would recommend reading his blog). I ran across this video by accident, and I would highly recommend taking the 4 minutes and 44 seconds to watch it:

Zae’s been using a computer since, I don’t know, she was two-years-old. She flies through the prompts when looking through PBSKids.org, or Noggin.com. At four, she was able to change out her DVD’s without any help. Yet, her social interactions and transitions need work. Not like she hasn’t had opportunities; she’s been in private pre-schools (some topnotch places, too, like Joyful Noise), for three years.

So how could we, as conscientious parents, really put our child in a “traditional” brick-and-mortar public school? She doesn’t thrive with 50 minute classes, or auditory/visual learning in a classroom, or the fast transitions needed to go from one subject to the next. Why set her up for failure, when we’re seeing a paradigm shift in how children learn and how they structure their day?

Img Source: Spring Cove School District, Roaring Spring, PA

As it is now, I’m trying to use a more traditional approach to home-schooling while using the online K12 curriculum. Set up her lessons, teach her a single subject, have her do rote work. And it’s been a difficult and trying start-up. At the very least, it’s reinforcing our decision to not send Fae to public schools. Fae already exhibits an “Engage Me, or Enrage Me” attitude when on the computer for more than a short time.

If she is already showing – at the age of five -  characteristics of how college students view technology, how they learn, how they interact; then I can’t even imagine what her life will be like, and how she processes information, when she’s college-aged. If the brick-and-mortar educational industry cannot seem to keep up with teenagers today, how can they hope to progress fast enough to be effective learning institutions 10-15 years from now?

]]> http://blog2teach.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/google-and-education/ Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:53:21 +0000 Captain http://blog2teach.wordpress.com/2008/03/23/google-and-education/

Think of Google, what comes to your mind? Search engine and what else. How many Google service can you name? Goggle maps, Picassa, Blogger, Google Docs… One of my friends, Marie, has recently conducted a workshop on educational uses of Google. I have not catched up with her yet. It shows signs of educational implication of Google. I recently come across some resources and papers discussing about Google and Education. i was amazed by the possibilities and innovative uses of Google and the its impact to Education in the future.Google has a university.Google Universityhttp://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/03/google-university.html is just a prototype idea at the moment but there is no reason why it cannot be in reality.  With its Google Scholars and Google Docs and Google videos, it has all necessary learning technologies to put it into practice. Google Teacher’s Academy.While Google University is still in the planning stage. Three Google Teacher’s Academies were organized to train teachers how to use Google apps to empower their teaching.Read the follwoing blog to learn more about this initiative.http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/teachers-rock-our-world.htmlAnd the Google Education Home offers a lot of resources for teachers and the like.   http://www.google.com/educators/index.htmlThere is Google Groups for Education if you want to stay tuned with the latest news.  In there, I found a page talking how Google Docs can be integrated for language teaching purpose ( esp. process writign and peer editing)  http://www.google.com/educators/weeklyreader.htmlIn the acdemic circle, similar claims have been ropsoed recently. In the latest Languag Learning and Technology, http://llt.msu.edu/, there is an article about Google Assisted Language Learning    http://llt.msu.edu/vol12num1/net/default.html Who says technology has nothing to do with language teaching?

Years back, when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, I decided that I needed some money to pay for bills, food and rent because I didn’t want to move home and live with my parents. I was 18 you know and that would have been a real blow to my independence and self-esteem if I had had to move back home. After doing a few odd things, I happened upon someone who needed some painting. The rest, as they say, is history. I liked the job and, after a few summer working for someone else, I decided to work for myself. With a partner, a company was born that proved to be quite successful, employing 20 odd university students during its peak operations. I was also attending university and this “summer” job provided me with the opportunity to  earn enough money to put myself through school plus pay the bills. At one point, I decided that I should really take this a bit more seriously and took some classes in the craft moving toward my journeyman status.

I’ve been reflecting on this over the past few weeks. I’ve been finding it rather difficult to write these past few weeks because of a ho-hum that has settled in. Now this could partly be due to the fact that my candle has finally reached the point where two ends cannot burn at once. Another important impact is that I’m neck deep in various projects that are requiring my time. A third possible reason for my lack of ideas is that I’m not really sure where I’m going right now. That whole “being adrift” feeling and not having a focus. I’m lacking enthusiasm right now and I really don’t know why.

However, while cruising through some posts the other day, I watched a video Digital Students @ Analog Schools. As I listened to the students speak, I was reminded of the movie Teachers with good ol’ Nick Nolty.

The issues that are raised in that movie regarding teacher/student relations, the incredible tensions teachers find themselves under and the ways they deal with that stress, are similar to those we are still facing today. The schools didn’t work for those students, or the teachers for that matter,  why should we expect them to work now? I mean, the best teacher is an escapee from a mental institute who makes history come alive for the students. Students are depicted as entering and exiting a world of ditto worksheets and any teacher who is reaching out to students and using whatever technological methods available is still an outsider. Now there is more going on in the movie than this but the whole idea that the schools weren’t working.

As for what students are saying in the video about what they expect when going to school, I’d venture to guess that it was no different than some previous generations. I mean, my university experience didn’t prepare me a lick for what I do today. In fact, other than the skills of reading, writing and math, I really question all the other things that were covered in my schooling. Very little, if any, gave me the skills that I needed when I entered the work force, started a company, did a variety of other things and then entered my present profession.  Not to mention the skills I have found that I need as a parent and a community member. Holly macaroni! Where was I during those classes? No amount of “real world” experience or problem solving could have prepared me for that.

However, I didn’t have the means to express that frustration or angst that today’s youth are being provided and it has given them a voice unlike any voice they have had in the past. As I’ve discussed with students a few times, having a voice is one thing but expecting that you will get what you want is another. As I watch the different presentations about schools and read the discussions, I wonder if there is any way we can bring the two sides together? Can schools ever hope to provide what the youth want when it comes to education? Did schools ever really provide students with skills for society? Or do we just pay homage to a system by saying “it worked for past students but wont’ for these students.” when in fact it didn’t work and, from my brief survey of people around me, didn’t really prepare them for the lives they are living. Could it be the whole idea of “preparing the youth future society” won’t really take place at school? Instead, it will take place like it did for many, during the day-to-day of actually living and dealing with what is taking place at that time.

As I ponder what people say about schools, students, technology and the future,  I wonder if we are any different from what has taken place before? Sure there is greater access to global partnerships but we still need to take care of what is happening in our own backyard. Sure we can communicate with people all over the world via a multitude of methods but it’s the daily face-to-face encounters that move us and affect us far greater. Yes we can work and collaborate in incredible ways but the sharing of duties within a house still impacts people in deeply rooted ways.

I don’t think we stop using and working with the technologies and helping students to use them to broaden their learning and sort through their  understandings. Technologies do give us access to things we didn’t have before in a number of areas. But, when we really get down to it, did schools really prepare students for the future? Or does school play another role in our societal design besides the preparation for the future? Should we be looking at things from a different perspective?  I’m not sure. But as I work through quite a few different “real world” problems with students, parents, teachers and staff, I wonder if we need to reconsider how we label the role schools have in our society.