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Don't Go Back to School: How to Fuel the Internal Engine of Lifelong Learning

Don't Go Back to School: How to Fuel the Internal Engine of Lifelong Learning
by Maria Popova “When you step away from the prepackaged structure of traditional education, you’ll discover that there are many more ways to learn outside school than within.” “The present education system is the trampling of the herd,” legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright lamented in 1956. So, in 2012, when I found out that writer Kio Stark was crowdfunding a book that would serve as a manifesto for learning outside formal education, I eagerly chipped in. People who forgo school build their own infrastructures. Reflecting on her own exit from academia, Stark articulates a much more broadly applicable insight: A gracefully executed quit is a beautiful thing, opening up more doors than it closes. But despite discovering in dismay that “liberal arts graduate school is professional school for professors,” which she had no interest in becoming, Stark did learn something immensely valuable from her third year of independent study, during which she read about 200 books of her own choosing:

Clay Christensen takes closer look at how online learning will disrupt K-12 education When you first hear disruptive economics guru Clayton Christensen’s prediction that by 2019 half of all K-12 classes will be taught online, it’s easy to wonder if brick-and-mortar schools as we know them are on their way out. But a new study released Thursday from his think tank, the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, depicts a future of education, particularly at the elementary school level, that isn’t nearly as stark as that. The paper, which refines theories on blended learning Christensen and his colleagues have laid out in the book “Disrupting Class” and other studies, introduces the idea of hybrid innovation. While Christensen’s famous theory of innovation mostly focuses on disruptive and sustaining innovations, the new paper offers the concept of the hybrid. Often, the researchers argue, sectors experiencing disruption go through an extended phase in which old and new technology exist side by side, providing “the best of both worlds.”

Smoke and mirrors mask corruption at Pennsylvania’s largest cyber-charter school By Carmel DeAmicis On August 26, 2013 For the last decade, cyber charter schools have been springing up all over the country. Cyber schools give classes over the Internet to students in grades K-12, who get their education entirely online instead of in a brick-and-mortar location. Despite the lack of research into these schools’ educational quality, in recent years some states have removed limitations to their growth. Pennsylvania is one such state pioneering cyber charter schools. As of the 2012-2013 school year, 16 of its public schools were cyber. On Friday, the founder of Pennsylvania’s bigger charter school — PA Cyber — was charged with fraud, for funneling $8 million of the school’s funds into his personal companies and holdings. The indictment raises questions about whether regulatory bodies need to monitor cyber schools more closely. Youth cyber school programs are controversial in education.

David Foster Wallace's timeless graduation speech on the meaning of life, adapted in a short film" by Maria Popova “The real value of a real education … has almost nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with simple awareness.” On May 21, 2005, David Foster Wallace got up before the graduating class of Kenyon college and delivered one of history’s most memorable commencement addresses. It wasn’t until Wallace’s death in 2008 that the speech took on a life of its own under the title This Is Water, and was even adapted into a short book. Now, the fine folks of The Glossary have remixed an abridged version of Wallace’s original audio with a sequence of aptly chosen images to give one pause: UPDATE: The David Foster Wallace Literary Trust exemplifies everything that’s wrong with copyright law. The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Hear the full speech in its sublime entirety, along with transcript and highlights, here, then wash it down with Wallace on ambition and why writers write. Thanks, Matt Donating = Loving

Nathan Heller: Is College Moving Online? Gregory Nagy, a professor of classical Greek literature at Harvard, is a gentle academic of the sort who, asked about the future, will begin speaking of Homer and the battles of the distant past. At seventy, he has owlish eyes, a flared Hungarian nose, and a tendency to gesture broadly with the flat palms of his hands. He wears the crisp white shirts and dark blazers that have replaced tweed as the raiment of the academic caste. His hair, also white, often looks manhandled by the Boston wind. Nagy has published no best-sellers. This spring, however, enrollment in Nagy’s course exceeds thirty-one thousand. Many people think that MOOC s are the future of higher education in America. Some lawmakers, meanwhile, see MOOC s as a solution to overcrowding; in California, a senate bill, introduced this winter, would require the state’s public colleges to give credit for approved online courses. But MOOC s are controversial, and debate has grown louder in recent weeks. “There’s the subtitle!”

What You Need to Know About MOOCs - Technology We'll be updating this page regularly.Please check back for updates. Call it the year of the mega-class. Colleges and professors have rushed to try a new form of online teaching known as MOOCs—short for "massive open online courses." The courses raise questions about the future of teaching, the value of a degree, and the effect technology will have on how colleges operate. Struggling to make sense of it all? On this page you’ll find highlights from The Chronicle's coverage of MOOCs. If you'd like to learn more about MOOCs in a condensed format, try reading "Beyond the MOOC Hype: A Guide to Higher Education's High-Tech Disruption," a new e-book by The Chronicle's technology editor. What are MOOCs? MOOCs are classes that are taught online to large numbers of students, with minimal involvement by professors. Why all the hype? Advocates of MOOCs have big ambitions, and that makes some college leaders nervous. These are like OpenCourseWare projects, right? Sort of. Who are the major players? edX

To Advance Education, We Must First Reimagine Society Why haven’t education reform efforts amounted to much? Because they start with the wrong problem, says John Abbott, director of the 21st Century Learning Initiative. Because disaffection with the education system reflects a much deeper societal malaise, it’s imperative that we first figure out what kind of world we really want: a world populated by responsible adults who thrive on interdependence and community, or a world of “customers” who feel dependent on products, services, and authority figures, and don’t take full responsibility for their actions? The answer, he says, will point to the changes needed in all three pillars of education — schools, families, and communities. As Abbott sees it, the need for reflection has never been greater. Overhauling the educational paradigm means replacing the metaphor — the concept of the world and its inhabitants as machine-like entities — that has shaped the education system, as well as many other aspects of our culture. Teachers as Guides Related

Open online courses – an avalanche that might just get stopped These days there are plenty of prophets preaching hi-tech and digital solutions to the problems of expanding access to knowledge and higher education. Barely a week goes by without some new hymn to education technology, open-source software or open-access publishing. In the US, the growing chorus for online education through massive open online courses, or moocs, has been deafening. But in Britain, it has barely registered. Across the Atlantic, the debate about online courses and their potential to restructure higher education has been raging for some time. Historically, the University of California has often proved a weathervane for global trends in higher education. And yet when a Californian senator outlined a bill that would allow students in the state to take online classes from a private provider for credit, it unleashed a storm of criticism. Those who teach in California's system of higher education are not luddites.

Applying Cognitive Psychology to Enhance Educational Practice Edssential article from Robert Bjork : The primary goal of this research, which is funded by the James S. McDonnell foundation, is to promote learning and memory performance within educational contexts through the investigation of principles in cognitive psychology. The overlying theme of “desirable difficulties,” first introduced by Robert Bjork (1994), is also explored through manipulations in the spacing of learning events and the study schedule produced by interleaving various to-be-learned items, such as English-Swahili translated word pairs or prose materials. Read More About the Author Edssential simply shares and links thought provoking or inspirational educational articles Social Share

Hackschooling Jason, what's with the John Lennon quote? It's a great quote, but unless someone has explicitly told you otherwise, it has nothing to do with Logan any more than it has to do with your story above; which might be fine less the need to somehow single out your obsession with John Lennon (who's great but your making big reaches; not a good sign). It's not really necessary to try and make a great link in the specific way you have, between a good historical quote and some necessity by Logan to somehow tell the audience; "Hey, everything I've done is from John Lennon." It's not of course; maybe Logan hasn't listened to a Beatles song in his entire life. If you read-up, Logan re-wrote his entire talk he had worked on for some 60 days, just prior to this TEDx event because he wasn't quite happy with it and asked others for advice. Finally, I have to address this privilege thing you refer to.

I’m having a blogsistential crisis! I am a blogger. And I am an academic. But am I an academic blogger? Lynne Murphy‘s blog began life as a ‘limbering up exercise’ before she wrote work for peer-review. A somewhat accidental academic blogger, she notes that her online presence has become part of her professional profile… even if it occassionally serves as a distraction. Lynne also questions whether she is working for the University when she blogs, but doubts a future model of higher education that involves timetabling blog time for academics. I’m not sure that I would have agreed to write a post for the LSE Impact blog if I had known that it would send me into the depths of a blogsistential crisis. Before I address or sidestep these questions, let me introduce myself. The blog is a success – I’m not going to be particularly modest about that because I do get a kick out of it. I love both of those kinds of blogs -but mine is neither. What I blog is educational, though. I am an academic. This has been an issue for me since I started the blog while on research leave in 2006. So.

A story of education before technology | Pearson Blog I don’t feel I was at school too long ago. I finished in 1997, after sixth-form. But this week I was reminded that people born in 1997 are now legally adults. As I was leaving school, they were entering the world. Cue some weeping and wrinkle checking in the mirror. Then after wondering how I had changed, I began to ponder how education in my lifetime has changed; which is largely the pondering of the impact of technology. While at school (in the UK) I did have access to a computer suite – a room full of BBC computers where we were able to attempt some word processing and basic programming. Off to university in 1997, and surely this would be the step change. But what was this I heard – final dissertations had to be submitted ‘online’. I hope it’s not from a naivety of relative affluence that I presume most new college goers won’t start their studies struggling, like I did, to buy a computer.

Clinton: Moocs may be key to a more efficient US system | News Former president says online courses could drive down costs The way higher education is delivered in the US needs to undergo a “dramatic change”, which could be driven by the accreditation of massive open online courses, according to the nation’s former president Bill Clinton. At public colleges and universities, the cost of tuition has been rising above the rate of inflation for more than a decade, and although the federal government has increased its funding for students in a bid to reduce levels of student debt, this has been negated by a drop in average family incomes. “A lot of people will have student debt that goes beyond the federal student loan programme. “You’re going to see a dramatic change because we simply can’t continue to have the cost of university education go up at twice the rate of inflation every decade when wages are flat and aid programmes are not keeping up.” chris.parr@tsleducation.com Click to rate 0 out of 5 stars

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