One wiki or two? Education waking Up
6 12 2007Over at Paul’s Reynolds blog there are many wonderful post, however what caught my attention was this one on Digital Strategy.
“Day Two – economic/cultural transformation
The second day began with a brilliant presentation from Sean McDougall, the Irish education expert who laid down a strong set of education challenges – or in plainer English /Irish -let’s bin our 19th and 20th century education system and replace it with a collaborative – open learning co-operative model based on innovation and creativity.
Sounds like jargon – too much of the old Irish – not a bit of it – total plain sense, especially if you want to actually do something around economic and cultural transformation.”
As many readers will know schools everywhere are struggling to work out how best to equip their students for a world which is vastly different than even 10 years ago.
I’m a fan of Sir Ken Robinson’s work on using creativity as a key driver in education and have posted before on that. Great to see more work in the area.
The teachers need help too. Over at Futurelab there are some great resources.
One tablet or two? Opportunities for change in educational provision in the next 20 years
from June 2006 – Sean McDougall imagines how we could embrace all the technologies that children use and re-organise our learning system to take account of them.
- pdf version (pdf, 118KB)
And
Using wikis in schools: a case study
May 2006 – Social software has the potential to support and structure communities where individuals come together to share, learn, create and collaborate with each other. Based on a case study in a UK secondary school, this paper explores the use of wikis in schools.
- pdf version (pdf, 279KB)
To highlight two. There is also much we can do as parents to encourage new thinking and new approaches to help.
Jason – how much do you know about Steiner education – while in some ways it is anti-tech it is very pro creativity – which in this rapidly changing society is more important than any one particular technical skill
Thanks Ben – I’ll have a look – I did notice this UK study and wondered what the results have been since 2005 when the report came out.
You did mention the Christchurch Rudolf Steiner school once before and I’ll check it out. I know that even after only 18 months I’ve been a bit surprised to find out more about the regular curriculum at “regular” schools. Math is definitely much better than what previous NZ generations experienced but art is still definitely a poor cousin.
My daughter goes to a regular after school art classes at Marco Trust and is a very keen artist anyway.