I really enjoyed last night’ s lecture by Stephen Downes! I have to admit that I was a little confused with some of the terminology, but overall I think I got some of the points he was making in relation to the future of education. I was particularly impressed with his means of explaining his point through the “fishing rod” story. I look forward to that type of learning. I also liked his analogy of the lego block way of building upon previous learning. I have always been like the video game learner who learns as he plays the game. This in my opinion is a great approach to learning. I very much subscribed to this when I was a physics teacher. I liked learning in action that often built upon the previous day’s experiences. I also have never been much for huge instruction manuals. The one question I had that I didn’t have the courage to ask was related to how teacher supervision and evaluation will evolve as the delivery of education changes over the next generation. I wonder if it will be similar to his comments relating to pilot efficiency, whereby a person can just look up data relating to flight simulations, etc. In any case I did walk away from this lecture with somewhat of a sense of what education will look like in the future.
Stephen Downes Lecture
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February 27, 2009 at 2:53 am
I am not sure if Stephen would have been able to answer that question directly, although I am sure he would have had some insight. That’s a tough one, and something that I don’t know if anyone has really pondered. Thanks for making me think about that.
I’m glad you got something out of this, and I’m hoping there will be other aha moments next week.
Cheers.
March 11, 2009 at 1:16 am
You talked about what education will look like in the future and I too have had this on my mind almost every week after we do an Elluminate session. With respect to supervision, I think the current models utilized in the schools will have to change with the times.