nGenera is a major, national sponsor of CoSN. If you have followed the work of Don and frequent collaborator Anthony Williams, you recognize this as consistent with their coverage of education as a key topic of their writing and nGenera’s research. And while I agree with Don and Anthony, that the tools and (in many cases) the conditions are in place for dramatic improvement to take place in the public education system for many a country, my personal opinion for the U.S. is gloomier, in that I think we are in for a decade of frustration.

Maybe I’m a little tired from a week of 18-20 hour days and running my Starbucks card through too many Venti bold cups of coffee. But, the state of public education in our country seems to be awash in contradictions, opposites, and (as the cliché goes) “left hands not knowing what the right hands are doing.”

For instance, on the one hand, it seems that most people understand the transformative potential for IT in learning. We are witness to it literally before our eyes on a daily basis, as my colleague Denis Hancock made the case so well in his post Wednesday, on the subject of the impact of iPhone apps on his daughter’s learning. Yet, on the other hand, few school districts include the CTO at the cabinet level (in other words, as a member of the senior executive team directly reporting to the superintendent) in the district’s leadership.

Part of the issue, which CoSN is working to change, is that the CTOs themselves are not well prepared to be effective at that senior leadership position. Many lack the business vision and strategic leadership skills to operate as effective change agents and equal partners in the running of the district with the other leaders. Thus, an important objective for CoSN’s members and staff is to promote the adoption of an Essential Skills Framework for CTOs, advocating that there is the profession itself can do a better job to equip its members, preparing them to be more effective leaders.

To take a different issue, on the one hand, there was a nearly universal cry for the need for standard approaches to web 2.0 content production, assessment, and platform deployment. Yet, on the other hand, in a panel that closed the morning portion of an international symposium day at the CoSN conference, it was ironic (to me anyhow) that the five speakers – from ePals, Taking IT Global, IEARN-USA, NASA’s GLOBE program, and European Schoolnet – presented their web 2.0 platforms for about 10 minutes each, in succession, but yet by my hearing completely missed the opportunity to address how they were working together.

In every case, each one seemed to be busily building communities of millions of users, thousands of pieces of content, with hundreds of schools and or regions involved. However, except in the case of the European Schoolnet, which is a partnership of multiple European education ministries, there was practically no mention of how any of the presenters were striving towards cross-promotion, standardization, or (god forbid) merger of operations and mission from two into one, or three into two, etc.

On the one hand, you have the President and Secretary of Education setting ambitious and merit-worthy goals of achieving an increase to a college graduation rate of 60% by the year 2020, from our present level of approximately 40%. This means, from the federal perspective, a real focus needs to be on what we can do to impact the success of kids at the 4^th grade level and above, starting now. Yet, on the other hand, data from regional groups like the E3 Alliance in Texas and others shows that frequently the point of greatest leverage is young children and getting them “school ready” by the time they get to kindergarten.

Lastly, the final day of the CoSN conference was billed as an advocacy day, where we spent the morning hearing about the legislative funding priorities for Education, from CoSN and three other education-related partners: ISTE, SETDA, and SIIA. On the one hand, the associations had the data and talking points clearly showing how critical education is to the success of the nation and how important some of the funding streams are to national goals.

Yet, on the other hand, the panel of congressional staffers who spoke to the audience of 100 or so software and CTO/CIO leaders convened to advocate to their various state delegations of senators and congressmen and women were extremely bearish on the chances of the education priorities getting much attention in 2010, due to other pressing U.S. national priorities such as healthcare reform, job creation, and of course, inflexible military and social entitlement program commitments.

It’s like the comment that a senior federal technology official from an agency (not the Department of Education) made to me, on my last day in the city this week, about the especially challenging position for a change agent in the government. He used the example of the military and recounted that it was about 100 years ago that the U.S. Navy determined they would no longer build ships out of wood…that all future vessels must be built using metal.

Without that specific and irreversible requirement – which had an impact, no doubt, of enormous consequences to supply chains, inventories, jobs, and countless other transition costs – one can just imagine that 50, 60, 70 years later, we might still have been building and launching new ships made of wood. The problem, he said, is that in some domains – and I would venture that education is one of them – it’s very hard to recognize the wooden ships.

What do we do in the meantime, given that the status quo isn’t an acceptable option?  That’s where I think the government is at least trying to apply the principles of social entrepreneurship and innovation, with the reauthorization of “No Child Left Behind,” now more benignly named the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (or ESEA), and the “Race to the Top” program.  It’s also where I think we must see more public/private partnerships emerge.  Experimentation must be encouraged and real consequences have got to be at stake for communities, ultimately producing quantifiable, economic value like we describe in the Nexus Economics theme in nGenera’s 2010 research agenda.

So, if you’ve got a “wooden ship” that you want to sink and, more specifically, an education innovation that you want to promote, then tell us about it.  Or better yet, tell us AND tell the Department of Education, through its new Innovation website.  Let’s prevent a decade of frustration in public education.

Given the questions I’ve received about it, that I’ve worked with Don Tapscott et al on a number of things around “growing up digital”, and just general parental concern, I’ve spent a lot of time watching (and helping) my daughter use  it, and thinking about how it might impact how she learns. In general, I think it’s an extremely positive thing – and while much of the stuff I mention below might seem rather simple and obvious (particularly to other iPhone users), I believe they are worthy of discussion – and might point towards how education itself should change in the future.

Obviously, part of the story is that she is going to grow up in a digital world – and being comfortable with technology is going to help in that regard. But that’s not the first thing I focus on. What I tend to hear from skeptics is that they don’t want their kids “playing virtual games” – they’d rather have them building their skills and imagination with real world stuff- building blocks, puzzles, etc. My response is that obviously I want my daughter doing that too – but I find that the touch-screen interface on the iPhone actually helps her in this regard.

The most obvious example of this is what she’s chosen as her favorite app – ShapeBuilder. When I downloaded it however many months ago, she was at a point where she was good at basic puzzles (i.e. put the circle in the circle, etc.), but was having trouble with the harder ones (i.e. trying to get six contoured pieces into place to create something). And of course, since each puzzle costs a fair bit of money, she had relatively limited selection. Shapebuilder has many puzzles, and cost a buck or two – but that is only part of the story here.

She took to Shapebuilder like a duck to water. On the right hand side of the screen, there is an outline of an image, “broken” up into the many pieces that compose it. On the left are the pieces. Importantly, none of them rotate – they just need to be slid into place- which makes it a tad easier than real-world equivalents. And it doesn’t appear she has to get them in exactly the right place – get them close, and they “pop” in (and stay there – also important). When all the pieces get in their proper places, the outline instantly transforms into a “real” picture of something (say, a cow), and the word for it appears (and is said). She can then go onto the next one – and there are many of them.

In turn, I see it as a middle step between the basic “real” puzzles, and the slightly harder ones – she learns important parts of puzzle building I can now see her apply to real ones, in a game she finds very entertaining, with tons of variety, that cost me next to nothing, and doesn’t require clean-up (score!).

That’s just one example, but I think it’s an important one. Here’s her other favorite “games” (and if anyone would like to recommend some new ones, I’m all ears):

First Words Deluxe. Shares some similar properties with ShapeBuilder, but for words. She picks a category, and at the top there is a word, with boxes for each letter (with the actual letter shaded in behind). The letters to make the word – i.e. ” p p y u p” for puppy are below. Each time she touches one, the game says the letter, and when she slides it close to the right spot it stays there. Once the word is formed, the game spells out the word, then says it, an there’s a bit of animation around an image associated with it. In my mind, that has to help her learn words – and to spell. Think it was $1.99, which I’m considering a good investment.

The Toddler Teasers series. I’ve just downloaded a few more of these, but she’s been playing the “shapes” one for awhile. A bunch of shapes appear on the screen, the game says (and has written down) something like “touch the star”. If she touches the wrong one, it vanishes. When she gets it right, the game cheers, the shape flies around, and you go onto the next one. Every 4 or so, she earns a “sticker”, she can put on her sticker page. Again, I think it’s fair to say this helps her learn shapes and words in a fun way (though I didn’t think so at first. After a while, she was always getting them wrong. But then I realized it wasn’t random – she was always picking the right one last. Then one day I noticed when she picks which color to use for play-doh, she does it through a process of elimination – i.e. “not blue! not green! not pink! YELLLLLOWWWW! – and she does the same on the game). $0.99 each I think.

Memory Pro (free). Very simple – classic game of memory. 12 tiles (in the small version), 6 animals, match them up. Again, hard to see how playing this many times can’t help with improving memory and matching skills – and it’s a clear case of where not having the “set-up” time helps (she’ll play this more than the equivalent using “real” matching tiles, which she’s also getting much better at… because of the game, in my opinion).

Five monkeys. One of her favorite songs (I’ve probably sang it to her 500 times by now), but on the iPhone. I find this cool because it has three variations of the song (country, rock, and pop) to help show different musical styles; she has control of it (the monkeys only fall off the bed when she touches them); and there are a variety of other ways she can interact with it (stop/ go button, making the cat run out of the room, etc.). Again, it doesn’t mean I don’t sing it to her anymore – but it seems like a nice addition to that.

Sneezies Light. So it actually took her awhile to learn to stick to her own page, and I’d downloaded this to test and she “stole it”. Less obvious educational value, but I do think there’s some there. The basic idea is there’s a bunch of little critters on the screen. Touch one, it sneezes and blows up – and if the sneeze touches another critter, it does the same, etc. Goal is to make as many disappear as possible. She loves it – and the cause and effect, coupled with learning some patience around waiting for them to get close together, seems useful.

There are more, but I’ll end it there today. In short, I’m amazed when I watch my daughter use the iPhone, and really think it’s helping her learn many important things – particularly as the touch screen interface lies somewhere between the real and “traditional” virtual worlds. In total, I think I’ve invested about $10 in all the apps for her combined – or less than almost any single toy out there. And as she grows, I see so much more potential – such as downloading stories to be read in a language I can’t personally speak, but we want her to learn. Every time I look at that device, I think of different ways it could improve her education in a variety of ways.

And of course, partially since I can’t yet be 100% confident that she won’t “accidently” hit the phone button and call some of daddy’s colleagues, I’m close to her – watching, helping, talking about what she’s doing – the entire time, which most parents would agree is what matters the most.

For fifteen years, we’ve been arguing that the digital revolution will challenge many fundamental aspects of the university. We have not been alone. In 1997, none other than Peter Drucker predicted that big university campuses would be “relics” within thirty years.

Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge — both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people — and as a new generation of students requires a very different model of higher education. The transformation of the university is not just a good idea; It is an imperative, and evidence is mounting that the consequences of further delay may be dire.

Read the full essay here.

While browsing the CoSN website (which, by the way, is loaded with resources for educators looking to bring technology into their schools), I came across a really great video called “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn“.

The video itself is simple, interviewing a handful of young people about the impact of technology on their lives. What’s amazing is some of the insight in their answers.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

“If I didn’t have computers, I would say a lot of my hobbies that make up most of my time, I wouldn’t have. Because, well, I learned Japanese, and I learned a lot of that through the Internet.”

“That’s the cool thing about technology. You can change things whenever you want.”

“When you have access to everything, you learn how to know yourself better because you are forced to decide what to use and what not to use.”

“What we’re doing in gaming – coordination and communication – is very similar to what we’re doing at school. In the game, we have to talk to each other, we have to coordinate what we’re going to do in order to make sure that we do it well.”

And my personal favourite:

“I would say that being able to experiment with technology, is really what makes it technology. If people didn’t sit there and experiment with test tubes back in the days of Newton, nothing would have happened. It’s paving the way for us to move forward as a species and a civilization.”

The video can be seen here.

Don’s post yesterday, “Will universities stay relevant?”, sparked some interesting discussion around the idea that our education system is in crisis. Given Mike’s innovative perspective on teaching, I sent him the article and asked for his feedback. To be clear, Don addressed the university system and Mike’s perspective comes from teaching high school, but I still thought it would be interesting to hear what his experience has been like in the classroom.

With his permission, I’ve posted some of his email response here, which he also published on his blog “Teaching, Technology & More“:

“You must understand that students like yourself are not the norm in terms of being in touch with the digital world and having the passion to use the tools available to them in the pursuit of knowledge.  Most of these students head off to university (and our new inflated grading system is making it easier) with little self-initiative and passion for learning.  I have been using technology in the classroom for 3 years now but I still fall back to the lecture style often because most of my students are not mature enough to embrace student-directed project based learning.

That being said, the first two years of university (as I recall them) are designed to “weed out” those who really do not belong, so to speak.  Although most of my professors in the 80′s and early 90′s used the lecture style, their classrooms became more open to critical thought and discussion after second year.  From what I am told, this is still the case.

Right now, I have reached a point in my classroom where I cannot proceed any further with student-driven methods due to lack of technology and support.  We do not have the bandwidth nor the requisite hardware in place to allow students to develop their critical thinking skills using web based applications.

I sympathize with the universities somewhat.  Many of these professors grew up without technology and are now being pushed to adopt it.  The process will take time and embracing a digital pedagogy does not ensure critical thinking skills will be developed.  The passion for learning must come from the students and that passion is something that transcends generations.

What I mean to say is students, like yourself, who have a passion for learning always embrace the latest technology the world has to offer to enhance their critical thinking skills and understanding of concepts.  The fact that you are using Twitter, etc. to accomplish this is no different than a student in the early 1980′s using one of the first computers to be more productive or a student in the 1950′s using a slide rule to do the same.

We need to work on fueling the passion for learning if we want to produce a generation of critical thinkers.  I try to use technology to inspire students to become passionate about knowledge.  The technology on its own is merely a conduit to critical thinking.  The passion for learning must come from within.”

I argued that is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn. The reaction on Twitter, mainly from students has been enormously positive. So far two academics have written critiques of my views at the Edge.

However because the Edge does not enable readers to comment, I’d like to know what you think. Please read a summary below and then check out the Edge article and let the world know what you think here on Wikinomics.com.

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still common. It’s part of a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education.

Students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities are to remain relevant, they will have to change.

Professors will have to abandon the traditional lecture, and start listening and conversing with the students — shifting from a broadcast style and adopting an interactive one. They should be encouraging students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the professor’s store of information. They need to encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the university. Finally, they need to tailor the style of education to their students’ individual learning styles.

Some leading educators are calling for this kind of massive change; one of these is Richard Sweeney, university librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He says students are smart but impatient. They like to collaborate and they reject one-way lectures. While some educators view this as pandering to a generation, Sweeney is firm: “They want to learn, but they want to learn only from what they have to learn, and they want to learn it in a style that is best for them.”

This is not fundamentally about technology per se. Rather it represents a change in the relationship between students and teachers in the learning process.

In the old model, teachers taught and students were expected to absorb vast quantities of content. Education was about absorbing content and being able to recall it on exams. You graduated and you were set for life – just “keeping” up in your chosen field. Today when you graduate you’re set for say, 15 minutes. If you took a technical course half of what you learned in the first year may be obsolete by the 4th year. What counts is your capacity to learn lifelong, to think, research, find information, analyze, synthesize, contextualize, critically evaluate it; to apply research to solving problems; to collaborate and communicate.
This challenge to the existing order raises a deeper issue — the purpose of the university

“The time has come for some far reaching changes to the university, our model of pedagogy, how we operate, and our relationship to the rest of the world,” says Luis M. Proenza, president of the University of Akron.

He asks a provocative question: Why should a university student be restricted to learning from the professors at the university he or she is attending? True, students can obviously learn from intellectuals around the world through books, or via the Internet. Yet in a digital world, why shouldn’t a student be able to take a course from a professor at another university?

Proenza thinks universities should use the Internet to create a global centre of excellence. In other words, choose the best courses you have and link them with the best at a handful of universities around the world to create an unquestionably best-in-class program for students. Students would get to learn from the world’s greatest minds in their area of interest – either in the physical classroom, or online. This global academy would be also be open to anyone online. This is a beautiful example of the collaboration I described in the book I co-authored, Wikinomics.

The digital world, which has trained young minds to inquire and collaborate, is challenging not only the lecture-driven teaching traditions of the university, but also the very notion of a walled-in institution that excludes large numbers of people. Why not allow a brilliant grade 9 student to take first-year math, without abandoning the social life of his high school? Why not deploy the interactive power of the internet to transform the university into a place of life-long learning?

Share your thoughts here.

Schwarzenegger reasoned that “Textbooks are outdated… For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach the kids exactly the same way.” Having grown up in a lecture-style learning system supported by textbooks, I must agree that it is not the most efficient way to learn given the more interactive tools available today. Universities, which are known for their lecture-based style, are being criticized for failing to adopt new learning models that are student-focused instead of teacher-focused. Many high schools can be accused of the same faults. As secondary education budgets decrease, class sizes increase, and it is increasingly difficult to customize learning or engage the class. Introducing collaborative, web-enabled games that can help students grasp key concepts could be one way to get students involved and interested in learning. Such learning methods would be particularly applicable to geography or cultural studies, in which the class could learn about another culture or geography by engaging in a discussion and exchanging videos with a class from that culture or region.

In support of his plan to abolish textbooks, Schwarzenegger asked, “Why are California’s school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?” This brings to mind the issue of whether it is healthier to strain children’s backs with textbooks or their eyes with computer screens.

It will be interesting to watch how the plan rolls out and see what kind of opposition the government receives from parents that grew up on textbooks. There are some legitimate concerns about digitizing learning, the most troubling of which is how students that do not have the means to own computers at home will be affected. One way this initiative will fail, though, is if schools simply convert textbooks to a digital format and do not implement any changes to make the learning environment more interactive and collaborative.

Widely recognized for creating some of the most brand loyal customers around, Apple has designed an overwhelmingly popular in-store summer camp targeted at 8 – 12 year old children.  The camp features a series of four different workshops: Movies, Music, Photos, and Presentations.  Each is designed to give children exposure to Apple’s hardware and software suite.

While certainly not as exciting as the dinosaur camp that I attended in my childhood, I think that Apple is really onto something here, and all kidding aside, I know many adults  who could benefit from similar workshops.  Here is the ad for the Presentation Workshop: 

Replace kids with employees or executives and school with work and think about how many people you know who should probably be first in line for this workshop.

These sessions are being offered at all U.S. Apple retail locations free of charge and all technology required is to be supplied by Apple (unless you’d like to bring your own gear).  Of note is that if you’re looking to sign your litte one up, you’d better hurry as many sessions are already filling waiting lists and some have been closed for registration due to oversubscription.

I think this is an interesting example of industry creatively stepping in (albeit for self-motivated purposes and on a tiny scale) to help provide training in skill sets that our school systems may not be able to immediately address – advancing the technological skills and comfort level of some of our youngest scholars.

What’s your take on Apple’s attempt to create a little army of I’m a Mac evangelists?  Creative marketing combined with valuable skills training or targeting a market too young for comfort?

There’s a couple really neat elements to this. First, the majority of all translations in this project are staffed by volunteers…

These volunteers have doubtless, seen a particular video and thought, “I want to help share this with the world.” Currently there are video translations in over 40 languages, and more than 1100 volunteer translators. All translations are peer-reviewed for accuracy, and are expected to follow a style guide for consistency across video translations. From an incentive perspective, volunteers are provided with recognition for their work, and can even create translator profiles in order to build up a TED identity, where their contributions are tracked. This is an entirely sustainable project because the workforce/volunteers benefit from getting involved, and this involvement is made easy using technology that simplifies the process. Benefits include the inherent satisfaction from translating a video discussion you’re interested in, as well as the professional reward of contributing to the well known and esteemed TED community.

What impresses me about this project, is not just the scope, but the way in which it uses technology in a simple and effective way to help so many people across the world. From a technical standpoint, here is what is in TED’s first May release (from the TED website):

Along with subtitles, every talk on TED.com now features a time-coded, interactive transcript, which allows users to select any phrase and have the video play from that point. The transcripts are fully indexable by search engines, exposing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately help you find the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter’s talk when she speaks of her green roof project in the South Bronx. Transcripts will index in all available languages.

The initial launch incorporates:

• Subtitles on every talk (available in English and any translated language)
• Interactive transcript (available in English and any translated language)
• Language-specific index pages featuring all the talks translated in that language
• Translations for headlines and talk descriptions
• The Translator Dashboard, allowing a bird’s-eye view on talks available for translation or review
• My Translations: a personalized page within each translator’s member profiles that shows the translations to which a translator has contributed
• Ability to sync user accounts between TED and dotSUB, allowing seamless transfer of data for translators

Perhaps what I like most about this project, is that TED is only the beginning – this ‘opening up’ of the world’s knowledge can only gain momentum and spread in other applicable settings. My colleague, Daniela Kortan, recently discussed Academic Earth in the context of a discussion on how the model for learning is changing. Academic Earth and other similar offerings can look to what TED is doing here, and say “that is the way, this is the direction for the future, so that we too can more effectively share our knowledge.” As we in society begin to better equip people with the tools to more effectively learn, more and more people will gain access to the same wealth of knowledge, inspiration, and a world-changing resource – information. Because, as we all know, knowledge is power.

As an example, a recent study by Skidmore economist Sandy Baum and the College Board, approximates the real lifetime value of a college degree at about $300,000. This estimate is based on the assumption that those with college degrees earn an average of $20,000 more per year than non-graduates, and takes into account the average cost of tuition and books, as well as annual inflation over a forty-year career. This estimate is down from previous calculations of an approximately $1 million payback. Mind you, this is for undergraduate degrees. It begs the question: What about more specialized and more expensive graduate degrees (expensive both in terms of tuition and opportunity costs)?

MBA degrees are a specific point of contention. While conventional wisdom will have people flooding into MBA schools, there is also a sense that maybe professionals should seek to upgrade through less conventional, more productive means. Indeed, the sheen associated with an MBA is tarnished by the fact that many of the financial decision makers that perpetrated the economic downturn were themselves alumni of some of the most respected business schools.

Some recent interviews I’ve done seem to corroborate these findings. Fast Company staff writer and author of Generation Debt, Anya Kamenetz says:

“I’ve never been an advocate of people going back to school and incurring large amounts of educational debt just to have a degree. [...] I’m very interested in what the long term developments are going to be because I think that higher education has been resistant to really fundamental types of innovation and change for far too long. We’ve seen information technology sweep every other industry and raise productivity and raise the potential of what you can accomplish. I think that in higher ed, they’re still working off a 14th century model. It’s lecture classes and it’s seminars and it’s educational requirements that don’t necessarily match where the jobs are these days. So, I think that you’re going to see a lot more students and families re-evaluating the other options out there; whether that be online education, vocational programming, certification programs, or programs that are run by employers. I think it’s actually going to be a fantastic area of growth for the next decade and a half or so.”

Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist is more colorful in her analysis of the value of graduate programs:

“People are going to grad school for stuff that has no bearing on the workplace. It’s not like we have more critical thinking because somebody knows the history of the little War of the Roses, right? And so, who cares? I don’t see any corporation placing a premium on any kind of graduate degree, except a top 25 business school degree. I mean most MBAs are from shitty schools so they don’t place a premium on that. Most law schools are shitty and people have to go into some other profession besides law because their degree is so bad. If you get a Masters in French and then try to get a marketing position, you’re penalized. You’re actually penalized because you look like you don’t have a clue about how to manage your life because you just spent four years learning French and you’re not using it. To me that just screams obsessive with details, scared to go out into the job market, and purposeless. I mean, I just don’t think anyone is placing a premium on graduate degrees.”

From what I’m hearing, it seems as though college age students are making important decisions about where they’re going to invest education dollars. Some of them are backing into junior colleges or community colleges; others are choosing to forgo higher education because of their financial situations. This would be especially true if their Boomer parents are now struggling with layoffs or delayed retirement. On the demand side of the equation, numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that overall, the United States will need 18 million new college degree holders by 2012 to cover job growth and replace retirees but at current graduation rates, the country will be six million short. Will this trend towards delaying or abstaining from higher education reinforce the impending knowledge gap among entry-level workers? Some interesting food for thought…

For many, the answer could be yes, says Kevin Carey, policy director of Education Sector, a Washington think tank.  Writing in the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Carey argues that both industries are in the business of creating and communicating information.

It’s clear that newspapers are in a death spiral. The Tribune Company, owner of the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, is bankrupt, as is the owner of the The Philadelphia Inquirer. The Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are gone, and the San Francisco Chronicle may not last the year. The New York Times’ debt has been downgraded to junk.

All of this is happening despite the fact that the Internet has radically expanded the audience for news. Millions of people read The New York Times online, dwarfing its print circulation of slightly over one million. The problem is that the Times is not, and never has been, in the business of selling news. It’s in the print advertising business. For decades, newspapers enjoyed a geographically defined monopoly over the lucrative ad market, the profits from which were used to support money-losing enterprises like investigative reporting and foreign bureaus. Now that money is gone, lost to cheaper online competitors like Craigslist. Proud institutions that served their communities for decades are vanishing, one by one.

(As I’ve always said, leaders of old paradigms have the greatest difficulty embracing the new.  Why didn’t Gannett create The Huffington Post?  Why didn’t NBC invent YouTube?  Why didn’t AT&T launch Twitter?  Yellow Pages should have built Facebook and Microsoft should have come up with Google.  And Craigslist would have been a perfect venture for the New York Times.)

So far there is no Craigslist equivalent in the education industry, says Carey. That’s because teaching is more complicated than advertising, and universities are sitting behind government-backed barriers to competition, in the form of accreditation. “Anyone can use the Internet to sell classified ads or publish opinion columns or analyze the local news. Not anyone can sell credit-bearing courses or widely recognized degrees.”

Doubtless universities today are as confident as newspapers were ten years ago.  The confidence by some is justified. “Tony liberal-arts colleges and other selective private institutions will do fine, as will public universities that garner a lot of external research support and offer the classic residential experience to the children of the upper middle class.”

But less-selective private colleges and regional public universities, by contrast - the higher-education equivalents of the city newspaper - are in real danger. To survive and prosper, says Carey, universities need to integrate technology and teaching in a way that improves the learning experience while simultaneously passing the savings on to students in the form of reduced tuition.

One thing for sure.  The smartest students want to get an “A” without having ever done to the lectures.  They understand that there are better ways of learning than being the passive recipient of a one-way, one size fits all, teacher-focused model where the student is isolated in the learning process.  When the cream of the crop of an entire generation is boycotting the formal model of pedagogy, the writing is in the wall.

As they note in the article, Southern Ontario has had its share of very successful companies in the creation of new technology tools, such as Waterloo’s own Research In Motion.  Now, it seems that top-level leadership is waking up to the massive growth potential that exists in getting people and companies to actually use all of the newly-available tools, something we’re constantly pushing here at nGenera.

Here’s an excerpt from Ken Coates, Dean of Arts at the University of Waterloo: 

“The new economy will be driven more by the use of technology than the making of technology,” he said, citing companies that are working to adapt the social network technology of Facebook and YouTube to the way they deal with staff and even clients.

“This is the fastest-growing sector the world has ever seen, and we want to bring together people from engineering, the humanities, performing arts and a range of disciplines to work together to solve real-world problems,” Coates said.

“Whoever can figure this out will be the leaders in the new economy. Our goal is to devise made-in-Toronto solutions for i-banking, i-business, i-news, i-industry, i-medicine and i-everything.”

When using government expenditures to help us out of this recession, this is exactly the type of initiative that I think we need.  Coming out of this recession and entering a new age, we need forward-thinking plans to make us economically competitive.  I can’t comment on the viability of this particular plan (I don’t have all of the specific details), but I will say that in principal, this type of thinking is on track. 

With all the front-page media debate surrounding how we can save the auto industry, we often lack the necessary focus on developing the new industries that will drive our growth in the future.  Well done, U of T, Ryerson and Waterloo, I hope this plan lives up to its promise.

The Flat Classroom Project is currently working in partnership with Don Tapscott on the Net Gen Education Challenge, linking students, educators, parents and business leaders around the world. Check out the joint initiative at netgened.grownupdigital.com.)

This blog post is in response to an invitation from Jeff Plaman at International School Beijing’s 7 Steps Towards 21st Century Education Ning, to write about global collaboration in order to raise awareness of possibilities and to share my enthusiasm for making connections and working across boundaries and borders. I often write about connective living as an educator, eg A Day in the Life, and try to emphasise the need to develop a personal learning network in order to make these connections happen. It is through connections and communications using Web 2.0 and other tools that collaboration opportunities can emerge.

I am often asked how I got started in global collaborative projects, and I am then asked how others can come on board as well. My history in classroom Internet-based, global goes back about 12 years with Global SchoolNet and Cyberfair, iEARN, and now more recently co-developing Flat Classroom Projects. However let’s not drag up the past, let’s focus on NOW and how the reader of this blog (You!) can get involved by joining and/or creating a 21st century global project, and all that entails!

Please note this is written specifically from my point of view and includes the work and projects I have been involved in so is therefore fairly narrow, but at the same time I think progressive.

Concept

The ability to connect, communicate and collaborate with educators and students in all parts of the world using common online tools has changed the way I teach in the classroom, as well as changed the way I work as an administrator. A 21st century educator is connected, communicates in a reliable and responsible way, and ‘flattens’ the walls of their classroom in appropriate ways to enhance the educational learning experience of all. Therefore, every topic, every unit of work, every opportunity needs to be reviewed in terms of how it can be made relevant through external contact and collaboration. Gone are the days where it was too difficult to bring the world into the room. You, the teacher, are only limited by your imagination! With tools such as Skype, wikis, blogs, Elluminate etc there is no excuse for not staging a real-time or asynchronous link-up to support your curriculum objectives. There is also no excuse any more for not participating in a global project, a more deliberated, designed, planned and executed approach to collaboration via the Internet.

I have written many times in the past about the concept of global collaboration.

• How to Flatten Your Classroom talks about taking that first step by connecting with others, then taking the next step and implementing a project
• Beyond the ‘wow’: Embed the flat learning experience for sustainability talks about going beyond the ‘wow’ factor and engagement and pedagogical shift
• Our flat classroom workshop outline via this blog post, and via our workshop wiki

Power and Practice

I equate practice with power. If you are practicing collaboration you have the power to change the world, one classroom at a time. The power of learning in a social and extended context, yet in a safe and supportive environment is achievable. I think sometimes schools and teachers give up too easily, put this in the ‘too hard’ basket too readily. Some blog posts about this include:

• My 2020 Vision for Global Collaboration, where I give more of the history of my involvement in global, collaborative projects, and talk about the ideals of embedding this into the curriculum, develop digital citizenship skills, unblock tools etc
• The Year of Global Collaboration 3.0, where I talk about the evolution of global collaboration to the 3.0 status. Let me copy the main points again here:

Global Collaboration 3.0

• Fully engaged teachers who communicate with all participants (other teachers and other students)
• Use of Web 2.0 tools for communication and interaction (networking) and for creation
• Different global classrooms work together on a theme/project and become one classroom
• Common assessment objectives
• High expectations for connectivity and collaboration on teachers and students (it is not enough to email once a week!)
• Extended community partners included in the project (other educators, experts)
• Output may be individual or class/school based but includes input from others
• Output uses multimedia and attempts to make a difference to the immediate or extended environment
• Teacher and/or student initiated, student-centered learning

Further to the idea of practice here are a list of resources for the Flat Classroom Projects over the past 2+ years

• Portal for all Flat Classroom Projects, including Horizon Project, Digiteen and the new Net Generation Educationproject with Don Tapscott
• Flat Classrooms Ning: an educational network for educators
• Flat Classroom Conference Ning

Also, here is a current presentation showing the 7 Steps to a Flat Classroom:

The magic of collaboration comes from seeing students andteachers find their own voice and take charge of their own learning. It comes from being given choices and ownership and empowerment of their learning path. In the blog post “The conference that changed lives” I share the amazing power of bringing together people from around the world, students and teachers who came to Qatar for a face-to-face gathering and the magic that occurred before, during and after this event. This post also shares the 4 student videos that came from the winning teams, and is witness to the power of collaboration of strangers. The video that opens the Flat Classroom Conference, found on the Ning, details the development of a collaboration between myself and Vicki Davis that has changed our lives, created a pedagogically significant body of work, and encouraged others globally to reach out and make this happen.

Finally, I think the recent blog post “Take One Hour to Go Beyond Reflections“, comes towards sharing the impact and true magic of global collaboration, when it shares artifacts and responses to the Flat Classroom Conference event.

There’s no question that homeless youth, like mainstream youth, see a cell phone as a necessity. I’ve spoken to youth shelter workers who have told me that they receive countless calls from bill collectors. Why? The only contact number the youth have to give their service provider is the number for the front desk at the shelter.

What’s interesting to consider is that a cell phone might be far more important to a homeless youth than mainstream youth. Consider being in a job interview and not being able to provide a number at which the potential employer can reach you. Would you want to give the number for the shelter you’re staying at? That probably won’t help you land the job.

There are clear benefits in terms of accessing health information as well. A street kid probably isn’t getting the same health info (for example, STI awareness) as is the kid who gets that spiel at school, not to mention being able to Google any health concern to find a wealth of info on the topic of choice. Shelter operators may consider building a database of the phone numbers of past and present shelter users. The operator could easily text or send a service announcement (of sorts) to hundreds of in-need youth within seconds. The content of the message might be related to anything from STI education, to who in the city is looking for manual laborers, to a notification of when the next meal will be served at the shelter.

Beyond these day-to-day messages, a cell phone could prove to be an important life line, connecting the youth to emergency services. We all proclaim the safety benefits of carrying a cell phone. Who is more likely to be in an emergency situation that requires police or ambulance? The typical middle-class person, or the street kid who is faced with a myriad of health risks and surrounded by a culture of drugs and violence?

Food, clothes, and shelter are clearly any street youth’s top priorities. But let’s condsider how health, safety, and employment outlooks might be augmented by realizing the benefit that basic cell phone technology can have for homeless youth.

Please do share your perspective and related experience!

Why not? They rely on an archaic and inefficient mode of teaching.

Prison education (personal development courses, GED, and post-secondary courses) rely on correspondence via travel (by educators to correctional facilities) and old-school postage. Computers are rare and the use of the Internet, or even Intranets, is prohibited.  

This story suggests that decreased funding for prison education in the United States makes it increasingly  difficult to successfully implement prison education via traditional correspondance. It explains that efficient, interactive prison classes – in which the students and professor interact through live video feeds – have the potential to vastly increase the odds that an inmate will start and complete courses or even an entire degree.

Open University (OU), a largely online-correspondence UK institution, has 1,400 student-inmates in 148 prisons. Officials from the school are calling for greater adoption of technology by prisons to facilitate the inmates’ learning. Anne Pike, Teaching Fellow in OU’s Offender Learning Program believes that, “If (inmates) are going to be rehabilitated into the modern world, offenders must access modern technologies. It is necessary for employment as well as coping with the fast pace of life. ” (Read the rest here).

If we wanted to use modern, common technology to provide enhanced education to prisoners we could (after cutting through all of the red tape). It could be done efficiently and at a high level of quality. The question is, do we want to?

For the inmate on Death Row guilty of the type of crime we try not to think about, the use of a computer or Internet is a priveledge lost, and deservedly so. But think of the marginalized 18 year-old serving a 3 year term for a robbery - a robbery that he committed, perhaps, to get cash to pay for food or health care bills. Assuming that this 18 year-old enrolls in some educational program in prison, should he receive an inefficient and expensive “snail mail education,” or should he have the opportunity to develop himself through an efficient and relevant education that harnesses the power of common computer technology?

I look foward to hearing your take on this issue.

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No longer to content to lay claim to being the world’s largest scientific collaboration, it seems CERN, which operates the Large Hadron Collider, is now flexing its viral marketing muscles. I had a good laugh at this and can barely wait to share it with my son in the morning.  

Maich says that young people are a bunch of shallow, selfish, spoiled good-for-nothings who should just grow up and learn that success can only be achieved through serious effort and discipline.

I disagree, and unlike many of the critics of this generation, my opinions are based on research. I led a survey of 11,000 young people as part of a multi-million research project conducted by the think tank I founded years ago. We also interviewed employers and dozens of experts in North America to paint our portrait of today’s youth.

Our findings refute the headline on Maich’s story: “Spoiled, shallow and selfish: Say hi to the new kid at work.” If they are so spoiled and selfish, why are they setting records for volunteer work — and continue to do so long after it’s no longer required by schools?

What about the “rampant narcissism?” Not true, according to University of Western Ontario researchers who have definitively studied the issue on both sides of the border. See Grown Up Digital for data.

Poor attention span? That may be true in classes led by teachers who are boring. But the evidence suggests the opposite – university performance (which presumably requires attention) is at an all time high. For that matter, take a look at kids playing video games — the media of today’s youth. They don’t have any trouble focusing for hours on end.

Undisciplined? Tell it to James Quigley, the CEO Deloitte, who says his thousands of young employees are much more disciplined and productive than previous generations. His evidence? They bill more and have happier clients.

Shallow? IQ scores have grown year-over-year for two decades; universities are graduating youth at record rates; and SAT scores have gone up or remained stable, despite a huge increase in students taking the tests.

Enough already!

Maich’s article is another example of criticism of young people that is driven by fear — fear that they will use their collaborative tools and instincts to change the world, and dislodge the old hierarchies. That’s exactly what they did on November 4 when their movement brought Barack Obama to power. And in Canada alone there are 8 million of them poised to change every other institution in society – for the better.

Grown Up Digital acknowledges there are real problems to be solved. The top third of the generation performs spectacularly well; the bottom third are dropping out of high school. Young people are blowing their privacy online today. Many parents are oblivious to the challenges of ensuring that young people have balance in their lives, good values and are safe online. Companies have created a “generational firewall” and are missing opportunities to embrace the many positive aspects of youth culture that have been shown to improve innovation, collaboration and productivity.

While sadly, Maich’s cynical attitude confirms my concern about the attacks on today’s youth, I get no comfort, because he is wrong, and his characterization obfuscates the challenge of understanding the generation and acting appropriately.

Well he doesn’t seem to be utilizing any of the web 2.0 tools that he had in the campaign.

His Twitter account has gone quite stale over the last 6 days, just like what happened with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. Do you think he’ll update it? Did he ever actually update it? It looks just like an RSS feed of events that he was broadcasting live from.

Also… the blog on Change.gov looks like a mechanism for glorified press releases.

So, no signs thus far that he’s going to use any of the grass roots community building Web 2.0 tools that he used in the campaign to actually reach out and touch the American people during his presidency.

Justin makes a good point. Now that the campaign is over it would all too easy to figure that the job of engaging the public is over until election time rolls around again in 2012. But it’s also a bit early to rush to judgment so let’s give Obama a few more weeks to get settled.

In this new post I’d like to emphasize the importance of reaching outside the traditional boundaries of government institutions to leverage the skills, knowledge and resources that civic and private sector organizations can contribute to the design and delivery of public services.

Here’s the rationale: In our increasingly networked world, issues and problems easily and quickly spill outside the organizational and even geographic boundaries of governmental institutions. While collaboration technologies have evolved at an incredible rate, the application of these technologies to assist governments in dealing with problems is completely dependent on institutional and organizational learning that is proceeding at a snail’s pace.

So we’ve argued that there’s a growing imperative to seize the new function-rich infrastructure of the Web 2.0 to open-up the government’s approach to public policy-making and service delivery. Rather than have agencies manage everything in-house, public services could be provided by any combination of public agencies, the private sector, a community group, or citizens, using the Web as a mechanism for collaboration, innovation and engagement. And, rather than treat citizens as inert consumers, recipients of government services and benefits could become prosumers – shaping the policy and the structures of program, benefits and services for their individual needs. This in turn will lead to better outcomes that better map onto the needs and behaviors of the people that use them.

As my colleague Maryantonett Flumian put it, “The big question is, what roles and responsibilities will government, citizens, not-for-profits and business assume in a society where knowledge is everywhere, where hierarchies are anachronisms, and where “the state” is no longer king of the jungle, but part of an ecosystem energized by mass collaboration?”

Take education, health care and social security, for example. In most public sector “marketplaces” governments maintain a monopoly on service provision and most services are delivered one-size-fits-all. Even in the shift to e-government, many agencies have largely replicated physical world distribution systems on the Web, thus ignoring one of the most powerful implications of the Internet—the ability to create new forms of value by focusing on and transforming core competencies while creating partnerships for non-core activities. By assembling networks of citizens, private firms, non-profit organizations and other agencies on a Web-based platform, governments can offer greater innovation, choice and variety to citizens. In some areas, it could be advantageous to go one step further by offering citizens a basket of services and providers to “purchase” with their tax dollars and many other possible business models that emphasize choice in service venues, providers and options.

We haven’t see too many great examples of this in government, but the British National Health Service (NHS) recently respond to public demand for choice in health care by implementing what it describes as a “dramatic expansion in patient choice.” The introduction of free choice means, among other things, that patients referred to see a specialist are themselves able to choose where they are treated from any hospital that meets NHS standards (whether publicly or privately operated). Patient choice, in turn, introduces an element of competition that should encourage poor facilities to improve as patients seek out practitioners in the best hospitals.

Obama has called for more creative delivery strategies for public services and emphasized the importance of choice in education and health care. Give us your thoughts: Where else could choice make a difference and how could the Obama administration use the Web to enable a more collaborative and user-driven approach to service delivery?

Enter the Social Media Classroom. The project, created by Howard Rheingold, describes itself as, “an invitation to grow a public resource of knowledge and relationships among all who are interested in the use of social media in learning.” The site is a series of Web 2.0 tools (it offers forums, wikis, blogs, chat, social bookmarking, microblogging, social video, curricular materials, resource repositories and an online community of practitioners – available as an install or SaaS) that help to facilitate collaborative, student-led learning across a distance. The value of this project is not simply the ability to slap a 2.0 paintjob on an existing system but rather as a means to enhance the learning process. Perhaps the website puts it best:

The greatest value that the SMC can add to a learning community is its ability to support a movement away from education as delivery of knowledge toward education as critical, collaborative inquiry—a student-centric pedagogy that engages students in actively constructing knowledge together, rather than passively absorbing it from texts, lectures, and discussions.

In an earlier post, Ian advocated the benefit of meeting the Net Generation where they live (and learn) by designing educational policies that allow for generational differences. Personally, I’m a big fan of whatever works to get kids learning. If social networking, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools form an effective component (yes, component – I happen to think there’s even a place for the old fashioned lecture), then let’s use these tools to make sure kids are learning the knowledge and the skills they need to be successful in the workplace of the future.

In education, there is a focus (and rightly so) on developing life-long learners. For me, this process is about developing a citizenry who are engaged and able enough to use the tools at their disposal to get the information the need to be a contributing member of society.

It seems that a quick way to get the public talking about much needed educational reform may be as simple as pushing back the time of the morning bell.

This week, Toronto’s English language public school board, the TDSB, announced that at least one local high school, Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute, will be starting classes later than ever next September – 10 am – in order to better accommodate students’ learning patterns, biological development and evolving lifestyle demands (such as part-time evening employment).  As you can imagine, the announcement has been met with vocal reaction - both for and against - but one of the most unfortunate side effects to come from the decision has been the amount of generational bias and “in my day” attitude that seems to have emerged against Net Generation students. 

A few choice comments left on The Toronto Star‘s (one of Canada’s largest newspapers) article follow below:

When the cart drives the horse

Why just start classes at 10:00 to accomodate the teenagers? We should adopt other accomodations: teach Facebook instead of Math, play Warcraft instead of studying literature and teach “chilling” instead of Science? Now, seriously, the teenagers have their world and their fun stuff but it is the education system who should teach them values, not the other way around. – petrache

 Discipline is the Difference

I have probably seen 10,000 CV’s, 2.000 interviews and hired 800 people in my career. I have absolutely no time for applicants who demonstrate a lack of discipline. In fact, I seek out evidence of poor self discipline. Most of the employers I know do the same thing. Eastern Commerce is certainly on my DNH (Do Not Hire) list! – Herschell Hollywood

 Work to be done

The work should be done when it is required, not when you feel like working. Due to a deadline of monday, I will be working until the work is done. I do not particularly want to work right now and it is not my optimal work time, but I will work to meet my deadline. This was required when I went to high school, college and university and served me well in the first few years after school when my company (a tech startup in the 90s) loaded me with more work than I could really handle. Deadlines were set and many times my work day started at 7 am, ended at 2am and it was not uncommon for the office to be full in the middle of a Saturday night. My wife (working today) had similar experiences both earlier in her career and now and would tell you (as HR) that informing your manager that it is inconvenient to start early will not get you ahead. This is one reason that I resent so many people who complain about the wealthy.  – Expat in the USA

While I don’t propose to be an expert on adolescent mental health and development, based on my personal experience and nGenera’s research on the Net Generation in the workforce and next generation education delivery, I think it may be time for more Boards to investigate alternative learning strategies, such as the one proposed for Eastern C.I..  A number already have a similar late start system in place and I am encouraged by the Toronto Board’s willingness to experiment with the standard 9am – 3pm day. 

Is 10am – 4pm definitely the right answer?  Likely not, but it presents students with another option, and those who choose to embrace the offering will hopefully be the ones who need it the most – not to surf Facebook for an extra hour in the evening, or to stay up later playing WOW as many opponents fear will happen, but rather to work their part-time job, or even simply to get that extra hour of sleep that so many of us, young and old, crave. (Let alone the benefits that can come from adept Internet usage or the skills that can be gained from MMORPG)

Are we failing our next generation by allowing for a later start, when so many of us have already been at work for number of hours?  Does this mean we’re pushing back “adulthood” and the need to just get used to early morning starts?  Maybe “adulthood” as defined by just learning to deal with it is being delayed - but is that such a bad thing?  Nobody has proposed shorter days, just ones that are rearranged to harness students’ proposed maximum potential. 

I guess only time will tell the merits of the late start for Eastern C.I., but one thing is for sure – having all classes start at 9 am or earlier simply because that’s the way it’s always been done, doesn’t make sense -particularly to the Net Generation, known for their scrutiny of information and who will enter a workforce that features increasingly flexible work arrangements.  I imagine the flexible work day faced similar criticism when it was first proposed, but that seems to be working out just fine (read: one of the fastest growing and most sought after employment trends) for many.

I think Herschell Hollywood might miss out on some top talent with such a brazen attitude, but hey, with 000s of resumes still to go, I’m sure he’ll be fine…unless he ever needs to hire one of those undisciplined Net Geners.

As the voting public digests the results of yesterday’s Federal election, I thought I’d bring it up once again. Viewing the disparate results between young students and those eligible to vote, I have to believe that as this next generation matures, they will elect a fairly different (and greener) Parliament than we did this time around.

Based on our early conversations, I’m already convinced that we’ll surface a whole new set of meaty themes that shed new light on the emerging wiki world. But If the experience is anything like writing the last book, those themes will probably not be apparent until we’re more than 50% through the writing process!  So that’s where you, and the broader the wikinomics community, come in.

Over the next 9 months or so, I’ll be using be using this blog to share some nuggets of insight and intrigue from our ongoing research. Your job is to flood us with comments pointing to related research, people and examples, as well as your thoughts on nascent themes.

I’ll kick things off this week with a tid-bit from Peggy Sheehy, a library media specialist and instructional technology facilitator in Ramapo Central School District at Suffern Middle School. With the help of her colleagues and a “visionary” school administration, Peggy is leading Suffern Middle School into the future of education with a virtual learning space called Ramapo Islands on the Teen Grid in Second Life.

Peggy is just one of a growing community of teachers who believe that immersive virtual environments could provide the foundation for a powerful new pedagogy–a form of learning where, as Educause CEO Diane Oblinger put it, “students participate in and experience the ways a particular discipline thinks about and solves problems—as a scientist, an architect, an artist, an entrepreneur, an engineer, and so on.”

Peggy had a lot of interesting things to share when we spoke (as did all of the other educators we have spoken to recently), but one observation really caught my attention. It seems that when students enter the virtual environment of Second Life they drop many of the inhibitions that might have otherwise have prevented them from participating fully in a real world classroom.  Teachers and students engage in a deeper level of discourse while many of the social and economic divides that often isolate students are set aside, at least for a brief interval. Here’s how Peggy describes it.

“Every single teacher that has participated with his or her class in Second Life, bar none, have reported back to me that the number one thing they noticed is that all their students are now participating. . .

Students say to us, “We like participating in Second Life because we don’t feel like if we say something kids are going to make fun of us later, or you know get that look from somebody across the room . . .

[And] teachers are getting to know their students because of this deeper level of discourse in ways and in levels that they just don’t usually have, they’re seeing whole other sides of their students. . .

When the discussions begin, when collaboration begins, when they’re starting to work on projects, you’ll notice half of the time that the “reluctant participant” is engaged and is participating to the fullest. What the kids say to us is that in Second Life we don’t know who the rich kids are, who the smart kids are, who the football team is, who the kid with the Hollister clothing is …everybody is kind of starting out on equal footing.”

You can see a machinima video documenting their experiences and the ramapo island blog is a good way to keep up with the latest developments. For a nice example, see this post describing how two teachers at Suffern used a virtual flea market in SL to help teach students about budgets and managing their money. The students were given 100 Linden dollars and a list of items they needed to purchase while staying within their budget.

We’d love to hear about any experiences you have had (as an educator, parent, student or administrator) with Second Life or other collaboration tools in an educational setting. Can virtual worlds and other digital communication tools help level the educational playfield by giving students a heightened sense of freedom of expression? Can teachers use these tools to better accomodate a diversity of personalities and learning styles? What new challenges and divides might these technologies raise?

Many of you educators are picking up the Wikinomics standard in your communities and starting grassroots movements to make sure that students are being given better opportunities to learn. So, to extend the olive branch I have decided to write a blog post to try to help you out.

Recently I have come across some pretty cool sites and blogs that might be able to help you as you seek to better understand what needs to happen to make your class education 2.0. I would encourage the other educators that are reading this to share their thoughts and resources in comments.

Ok here goes:

There is an organization known as The Center for Learning and Performance Technologies. It is dedicated to staying up to date on learning trends, technologies and tools and finding ways to implement them into organizations.

The Founder and Head of the center, Jane Hart, also writes a blog called Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day in which she highlights and then breaks down how to use the learning tools.

Epistemicgames.org has developed a variety of videogames that educators can use to teach. Games like Digital Zoo, allows students to develop real-world skills in science and engineering. Journalism.net allows players to become reporters for an online news magazine and The Pandora Project allows players to become high-powered negotiators deciding real-world medical controversy.

classroom20.com is a community of professors and educators that share information, talk and share best practices with one another on how to better help their students.

The Institute of Play, The Digital Media and Learning Center is sponsored by The MacArthur Foundation. The foundation coordinates research programs with other universities and institutions to investigate new methods of education.

So to all you teachers working hard for Wikinomics, am I forgiven?

Personally, I find that the quality of the debate itself runs somewhat counter to the thesis that Google, Digg, blogs, and other social media tools are making us stupider (or stoopider, if you prefer) – it’s pretty hard to read everything that I’ve linked to above and not come out feeling a little smarter for the time invested. However, such articles are by no means representative of what most people typically spend time reading online, so I certainly see value in the debate continuing to evolve – which is where this recent NY TImes piece comes in.

Here’s a selection of my favorite quotes (and I really like the first couple as thought starters in terms of how brains are being wired differently, in a way that could be construed as both good and bad):

Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.

Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

Nadia said she preferred reading stories online because “you could add your own character and twist it the way you want it to be. So like in the book somebody could die,” she continued, “but you could make it so that person doesn’t die or make it so like somebody else dies who you don’t like.” Nadia also writes her own stories. She posted “Dieing Isn’t Always Bad,” about a girl who comes back to life as half cat, half human, on both fanfiction.net and quizilla.com.

Elizabeth Birr Moje, a professor at the University of Michigan who led the study, said novel reading was similar to what schools demand already. But on the Internet, she said, students are developing new reading skills that are neither taught nor evaluated in school.

Though he also likes to read books (earlier this year he finished, and loved, “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand), Zachary craves interaction with fellow readers on the Internet. “The Web is more about a conversation,” he said. “Books are more one-way.” The kinds of skills Zachary has developed — locating information quickly and accurately, corroborating findings on multiple sites — may seem obvious to heavy Web users. But the skills can be cognitively demanding.

Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/) about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.

I kept thinking there was a twitter joke in here, but I couldn’t come up with it… can you? As always, you can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.