Category: Readings

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 08, 2011

No One Right Way
(I apologize in advance if this comes off as more rant-y than usual – if that’s even possible. This is very much thinking out loud, so take it for what it’s worth. It’s certainly not intended to be directed at anyone, the people I mention are all helping me think through this. And, of course, I very well may be completely wrong. On to the post.)

As happens every so often, I was involved in a briefly intense Twitter discussion yesterday where I followed my usual habit of pushing (provoking?) hard just to explore my own (and others’) thinking. This one, however, I felt sort of deserved a follow-up, so here’s my attempt to summarize my current draft thinking.

The genesis of the discussion was a tweet by Will Richardson:

I pushed back a little with:

And away we went with lots of other folks chiming in along the way.

Read the rest at The Fischbowl

There is much talk (chatter) about 21st century skills – even OECD is trying to define what those skills for “jobs that have not yet been created, using technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems that cannot be foreseen”. This statement is silly. It is my main critique with the emotional-feel-good message of Ken Robinson’s focus on creativity. First, we need to get over the view that our generation is astonishingly unique. Hasn’t every generation faced new technologies to solve problems not foreseen? The present moment arrogance that invades much of school reform thinking is frustrating. And, I might as well add, the pendulum-thinking mindset that is evident in Robinson’s view is damaging in the long term. If a view of educational reform is defined by the current reality that it is reacting against, rather than a holistic model of what it will produce in the future, then we’re playing a game of short-term gains, planting in our revolution the seeds for the next revolution that will push back against gains that we make now.

Read the rest @ ELARNSPACE

Several of the white papers produced as part of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative are available as free kindle books.
If you don’t know about this MacArthur project, check out the website.
If you don’t own a kindle, you can download free software for mac or pc to read kindle books.

The white papers are:

Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, by Henry Jenkins

Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project, by Carrie James

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project, by Mizuko Ito, et. al.

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, by Cathy Davidson and David Goldberg