Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Corallorhiza maculata: Computer History Museum "BACK to SCHOOL" event today about American Digital Learning, History of Educational Media Successes?

The Computer History Museum's (and Common Sense Media's) "BACK to SCHOOL" event today (in California near Silicon Valley) about American Digital Learning, with Federal Communications' Commision Chairman and a head of the Department of Education among other educators, holds great promise. OPEN information technological RESOURCES and BANDWIDTH are ahead. It's a CREATIVE OPPORTUNITY in history for Open, Helpful, Interactive and Multimedia TEACHING and LEARNING RESOURCES ... World University and School http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ is one of many opportunities.

What will we make of it?



What about FUN MOTIVATION ("Flow" per Csikszentmihalyi), and generating a culture of curiosity / learning, with so many resources now available? How can students come to want to learn, and especially with the emerging resources (apart from in the family)? (Kids generally want to learn, and do so through playing. Give kids in the emerging world OLPCs, as Nick Negroponte suggests, and let them play?)



In terms of an history of successful U.S. educational media - from, say, "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood" to "Sesame Street" to contemporary, interactive, FREE, digital "SUPER WHY!" (http://pbskids.org/superwhy/) and "CYBERCHASE" (http://pbskids.org/cyberchase/) - how to build on these, so that kids learn because the media is fun - learning from the lessons of educational history - and apart from family or teachers, in these instances?

(What's a better, simple history than this above? - This was my own constructed-on-the-spot history which I mentioned in conversation with PBS Kids' vice president. Another would be from an ABC Primer to MIT Open Course Ware. I'm not an historian of successful, educational media in American, especially the transition from T.V. to digital).



There's support for educational innovation today in the U.S. at the governmental level, but perhaps not, somehow, culturally!


(I would hypothesize that the culture of learning in this country will change due to conversation between kids and adults, where the adults value and model learning (with perhaps, in part, the knowledge in, and standards of, MIT OCW in mind - http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm), and talk about ideas and learning. I would further postulate that the cultures of learning are different in Sweden and Singapore, for example, and are comparable, - that the U.S. has much to learn from their practices and, particularly, the LANGUAGE of learning in those countries. Both may offer more structured ways of thinking than in the U.S. I also think there are so many experts with rigorous views of learning in the the U.S. that change of culture is almost impossible. Families and subcultures/identities will develop their own languages for successful learning and teaching, and that information technology may disseminate some of this, but that culture will change only due to conversation / talking ... this is only hypothesis. What's the evidence and history?).



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World Univ & Sch - like Wikipedia with MIT OCW, Berkeley Webcast & other great Open Course Ware - is planning to offer free, online BA, Law, MD and PhD degrees to some matriculating classes beginning in 2014. There's one free Doctoral Degree at Harvard on-the-ground here now - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses. Interactivity in virtual worlds.





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Here's the Education subject at World University & School: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Education








(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/09/corallorhiza-maculata-computer-history.html - September 21, 2010)

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