ICT Central's List: Education 21C

A great collection of resources around the future of education.

This New York City, 6-12 school measures student ability through formative assessments, presentations, exhibitions, and tests. Their special sauce? A rigorous focus on measuring "authentic" tasks tied to real world challenges.

The economy has changed, probably forever. School hasn't. School was invented to create a constant stream of compliant factory workers to the growing businesses of the 1900s. It continues to do an excellent job at achieving this goal, but it's not a goal we need to achieve any longer.

Doug Belshaw's doctoral thesis to Durham University: What is 'digital literacy'? A Pragmatic investigation.

Editor's Note: This is a milestone article that deserves careful study. Connectivism should not be confused with constructivism. George Siemens advances a theory of learning that is consistent with the needs of the twenty first century.

Can connectivism alone provide a theory to inform learning and its technology-enabled support in an internetworked world? What other theories can support change in the use of technology in teaching and learning?

Siemens describes connectivism as “the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organisation theories”.

Instructivism is dead. Gone are the days of an authoritarian teacher transmitting pre-defined information to passive students.

It can be quite a challenge for the modern learning professional to identify an appropriate learning theory, draw practical ideas from it, and apply it to their daily work.

Author argues that our information models in education (curricula, textbooks and other learning materials) are hopelessly outdated and based on knowledge assumptions that border on being comical.