Source: www.j6design.com.au
I saw this visual on George Couros blog which he originally saw on Bill Ferriter’s flickr and I decided to share it on my blog because I it is one of those visual that speaks volume about how and how not to effectively use educational technology.
Source: Bill Ferriter’s flickr by way of George Couros blog
The Future Is Now: 15 Innovations to Watch For – Commentary – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
I have been monitoring innovation in education for the past 20 years and am always looking for new insights so any post, article or story that points to “innovations to watch for” catches my attention. Even before I fully read the article I did a quick look up of the author Steven Mintz to see if he had the credentials or the experience to be offering these types of predictions. He does openly warn he readers he is a
“historian and far better at interpreting the past than forecasting the future.”
In addition to being a Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, Mintz is also the Executive Director for the Institute for Transformational Learning in the University of Texas System. Finally, he points to over a decades worth of teaching with technology and walks the talk with a personal website http://stevenmintz.com/ that demonstrates his belief and skill in using technology to enhance learning.
Mintz points to following 15 innovations that he suggests will alter the face of higher education over the next 36 months:
1. e-Advising
2. Evidence-based pedagogy
3. The decline of the lone-eagle teaching approach
4. Optimized class time
5. Easier educational transitions
6. Fewer large lecture classes
7. New frontiers for e-learning
8. Personalized adaptive learning
9. Increased competency-based and prior-learning credits
10. Data-driven instruction
11. Aggressive pursuit of new revenue
12. Online and low-residency degrees at flagships
13. More certificates and badges
14. Free and open textbooks
15. Public-private partnerships
Despite not being an acclaimed expert in educational technology Mintz’s predictions fall in line with the literature and research in this area and more importantly he points to changes in learning as the key disruptive innovation in 8 of his 15 predictions. He sees evidence based pedagogy not only informing instructional design but also personalized adaptive learning. He accurately places the emphasis on student-centred, competency based, well designed and collaborative constructed learning experiences as a major catalyst for change. His remaining predictions point to the disruptors of open educational resources (OER), growth of online learning and the loosening of credentialing through certification and badges and the move toward public-private partnerships.
Mintz sums up his piece with a positive challenge to faculty members to work together and:
take the lead in designing an education that will truly serve the needs of our 21st-century students.
As a rule I seldom add words to an infographic and simply let the visual do what is was designed to do—communicate the message. But I think it is important to put a qualifier on the notion of “new styles of K-12 teaching” being presented through this well made visual. While schools should be applauded for finally making the move to using educational technology we must also be very aware that most of the uptake of these digital resources falls into the very traditional realms of assessment, content delivery and monitoring and control of students.
Moving tests online do not change the fact that we are still reinforcing the damaging test culture that dominates K-12 and the horrible practice of teaching to the test. Digital textbooks may lighten a students load physically but using the network to deliver information just makes the practice of dumping content on students and pumping them to regurgitate it on an test all the more efficient. It is wonderful that teachers are using video content but moving to youtube over traditional video tape or DVD is just a more efficient way to deliver teacher centric content. There should be greater emphasis on the learner using video to create their own content making the learning experience active and dynamic.
On the positive note the infographic does show that the notion of going deeper with students in the flipped classroom is starting to gain some traction. However, hasn’t it always been the responsibility of the learner to cover the material outside of class and be prepared to explore it deeply face2face? Social media is also gaining traction and this is one area that has the potential to move education. Our species has always been highly social and once you allow learners the chance to exploit this intrinsic ability and to collaborate and communicate effectively in the learning process this may be one key factor that will bring about the most significant change in K-12.
