[P2P-F] Fwd: Wired : learner centered movement

Mon Oct 21 00:22:46 CEST 2013

http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Education

On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 5:54 AM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <
dante.monson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thank you June for correcting my apparent mis-interpretation of your reply.
>
> I believe it can be part of an equipotential approach , defined in this way
>
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Equipotentiality
>
> a non-credentialist approach :
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Anti-Credentialism
>
> I remember the story of medieval universities emerging around libraries,
> as a convergence amongst peers ?
>
> Furthermore, I personally have the tendency to discourage the usage of the
> word "education", preferring the concept of "learning".
>
> A further potential I hope we can explore further is one of nomadic
> learning.
> Learning via contexts and situations, in interaction with a diverse set of
> realities , encounters, influences.
>
> Cordially,
> Dante
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 7:14 PM, June Gorman <june_gorman at sbcglobal.net>wrote:
>
>> Hi Dante,
>>
>> I was in no way suggesting that you saw this as replacing humans with
>> machines.  My caution is that there are several very powerful forces in the
>> current models of education being promoted, many under the rubric of
>> "education for sustainable development", that very much do have that exact
>> long-term goal.  This in the US, is part of the issue on both sides of the
>> eventual benefit/destruction controversy of public university models
>> promoting the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) by some of the top private
>> universities in the US.  Currently offered many times for
>> free.....but......in the future?  And at what loss to the basic premise of
>> universities -- that people from different worlds, views and backgrounds
>> come together in a "combustion" of these different ideas?  That often
>> necessitates interpersonal listening and dynamics I haven't seen often well
>> exemplified in truly difficult conversations, on the computers alone.
>>
>> In the individual case, like yours, many valid points do exist such as
>> you say,
>>
>> "Such approaches have been central in my own learning - up to a point
>> where I felt I could learn faster / feel less alienated in my learning by
>> leaving school."
>>
>> Multiple modalities and ways of learning need to be open wide to all to
>> access their preferred way of doing so, and the computer is among these.
>>  Even Marco mentions an important one of these with the Boy Scout more
>> Dewyan -- "learn by doing" -- model.  But all of these systematic models
>> embody the mostly un-excavated and un-examined prejudices of their dominant
>> instigators and thus in the clear case of the Boy Scouts -- discrimination
>> against girls (handled by funding a separate sex organization in the Girl
>> Guides) and the latest, against homosexuals.
>>
>> There are also some dominant Western "Enlightenment" and
>> entitlement-based ideologies that systemized certainly sexist models of
>> defining ways of most productive thinking and evening
>> feminine/humanities/irrational/nature vs.
>> masculine/science/rational/technology dichotomies with Father-Force and
>> technology having the thus naturally accepted right to dominate and
>> subjugate "Mother-nature".
>>
>> This is one reason many females under that system found it very difficult
>> to proceed in their most productive-to-learn ways and style of learning,
>> and one reason many "others" of different groups also find the computer
>> less judgmental of what "intelligence" most mattered in these limited ways
>> found in our standard educational "systems" and thus found it easier to
>> learn on their own.  But my concern is that these still underlying
>> judgments of the technological-dominant view of the world prevail and often
>> remain, now with no dissenting "teachers" at all, and will thus be the only
>> view children are "exposed to" at all, to what is most important to learn.
>>
>> That computers can add to this connecting and learning from others at all
>> ages -- that I think is where your argument is very much more powerful.  I
>> completely agree on that point, but it is still necessary to learn the most
>> critical emotional/social/cultural intelligences for a sustainable
>> (healthy, peaceful, caring and more equitable) world only interpersonally
>> with others and critically when children are mostly "emotional" learners
>> and thinkers -- when they are young and until the age of 10 -- before just
>> letting the machines take over.
>>
>> Which again, is where some "educational policy leaders" are definitely
>> headed, so much more "cost-effective" for getting "test-takers" taught on
>> easily measurable quantitative and thus inherently reductive tests of what
>> that "education" should encompass.  I was only arguing that despite its
>> advantages, technology as systematic education can have some very negative
>> outcomes and certainly cautions to consider as well.
>>
>> Warmly,
>> June
>>
>>   ------------------------------
>>  *From:* Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
>> *To:* June Gorman <june_gorman at sbcglobal.net>; P2P Foundation mailing
>> list <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
>> *Cc:* Myra Jackson <mljack19 at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Friday, October 18, 2013 9:20 AM
>> *Subject:* Re: [P2P-F] Fwd: Wired : learner centered movement
>>
>>
>> Hi June,
>>
>> Thanks for your reply,
>>
>> I personally do not see this as a replacement of humans by the machines.
>>
>> I rather see the internet as a powerful tool for access to information,
>> both supporting and facilitated by dynamics between learners.
>>
>> I believe that the pedagogies it can be inspired of are that of Piaget,
>> Montessori, ...
>>
>> And as Marco underlined, hardly any new self learning ( or mutual
>> learning ) approaches.
>>
>> What is new, is possibly broader mainstream recognition, possibly
>> supported by the more widespread usage and interconnection of information
>> technologies globally, and in peoples lifestyles, facilitating a shift away
>> of "the expert", or "the teacher" as monopoly in terms of knowledge.
>>
>> Such approaches have been central in my own learning - up to a point
>> where I felt I could learn faster / feel less alienated in my learning by
>> leaving school.
>>
>> The challenge, then, for me at least, is to build up recognition through
>> networked approaches, with peers, rather then through top down ,
>> centralized certification programs and education environments.
>>
>> Although one may argue that the tests could at some point confirm the
>> acquired ( self ) learning, the self learner ( or rather, the mutual
>> learners in self organizing approaches ) does not, contrary to official
>> enrolled students, benefit from such "student" status, and at least in my
>> experience, faces pressures from society, even if only in terms of lack of
>> support.
>>
>> Cordially,
>> Dante
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 1:37 PM, June Gorman <june_gorman at sbcglobal.net>wrote:
>>
>>  Dante-Gabryell --
>>
>> This is wonderful stuff.  I know of Mitra's work and find it exciting.
>>  Some of us in the UN Commons Cluster are working on these ideas as well
>> and how they fit into education of and about all the Commons.
>>
>> But as a 30+ year (Western-US) teacher and the founder of the *<http://209.172.54.115/>MailScanner
>> has detected a possible fraud attempt from "209.172.54.115" claiming to be Transformative
>> Education Forum *, I would caution at the over-enthusiasm of the
>> computer-focused translation of this idea of "learner-centered".  It is
>> clearly an amazing and freeing tool in countless ways besides providing the
>> "Library of the World" to any child, nearly anywhere with access to one.
>>  But it reduces dangerously the historical, pedagogical and epistemological
>> theories of learning and the human child themselves, down to dangerously
>> reductive concepts of what in fact is most important "to learn".  Whose
>> "information" gets processed and with what underlying results?
>>
>> It is one of my deepest concerns with the over-promotion of STEM
>> (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in the Western world,
>> dramatically by "education promoting companies" who want to sell this model
>> to everyone else as the US is currently doing promoting "No Child Left
>> Behind" worldwide through the World Bank and Brookings Institute.  But for
>> those of us in the education field all our life, there is definite need to
>> examine these issues, like certain brain theory results accompanying early
>> child exposure to computers as their dominant learner - interaction.  The
>> TEF tries to address this issue of needed complete intelligence development
>> with arts, humanities and especially the social/cultural/emotional learning
>> not developed with this priority or technological "default".
>>
>> Anyway, more is available on this on the TEF website, but particularly
>> the *MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from
>> "209.172.54.115" claiming to be* TEF Principles<http://209.172.54.115/web/guest/principles>.
>>  There is a serious caution here about just how much and what exactly, the
>> "machines" can and do teach when used primarily? So much cheaper though,
>> for those trying to go into the field of education for their own profit and
>> on top of it, leaves out those more philosophical, even human justice and
>> equity arguments that actually really matter for children around the world
>> to ultimately make sense of their lives and societies.
>>
>> Best,
>> June
>> *June Gorman, Educator and Educational Theorist*
>> Co-founder*, ** <http://209.172.54.115/>MailScanner has detected a
>> possible fraud attempt from "209.172.54.115" claiming to be Transformative
>> Education Forum (note website re-work, so ignore "non-standard"
>> notification :-)*
>> Education Advisor,  <http://www.safepla.net/>
>> *UN SafePlanet Campaign *
>> *Board Project Director for Outreach, I**nternational Model United
>> Nations Association* <http://imuna.org/>* *
>> *Steering Committee, (UNESCO/Global Compact) **K-12 Sector for
>> Sustainability Education *<http://www.uspartnership.org/main/view_archive/1>
>> Member, UN Education Caucus for Sustainable Development
>> Member, UN Commons Cluster
>>
>>
>>   ------------------------------
>>  *From:* Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net>
>> *To:* p2p-foundation <p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>
>> *Sent:* Friday, October 18, 2013 4:03 AM
>> *Subject:* [P2P-F] Fwd: Wired : learner centered movement
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: *Dante-Gabryell Monson* <dante.monson at gmail.com>
>> Date: Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 2:16 AM
>> Subject: Wired : learner centered movement
>> To: "econowmix at googlegroups.com" <econowmix at googlegroups.com>, "
>> netention-dev at googlegroups.com" <netention-dev at googlegroups.com>, "
>> global-survival at googlegroups.com" <global-survival at googlegroups.com>
>>
>>
>> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/*
>> *
>> *a new breed of educators, inspired by everything from the Internet to
>> evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and AI, are inventing radical new
>> ways for children to learn, grow, and thrive. To them, knowledge isn’t a
>> commodity that’s delivered from teacher to student but something that
>> emerges from the students’ own curiosity-fueled exploration.*
>> entire article : http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/all/
>> *student centered movement :
>> http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movement/*
>> " TED has created a toolkit full of ideas for jumpstarting
>> student-centered learning in your home, local community, or school. It’s
>> called SOLE: How to Bring Self-Organized Learning Environments to Your
>> Community. Download it here <http://www.ted.com/pages/sole_toolkit> and
>> share your story afterward on the SOLE Tumblr<http://tedsole.tumblr.com/>
>> ."
>> further large excerpts :
>> Teachers provide prompts, not answers, and then they step aside so
>> students can teach themselves and one another. They are creating ways for
>> children to discover their passion—and uncovering a generation of geniuses
>> in the process.
>> ...
>> “If you put a computer in front of children and remove all other adult
>> restrictions, they will self-organize around it,” Mitra says, “like bees
>> around a flower.”
>> A charismatic and convincing proselytizer, Mitra has become a darling in
>> the tech world. In early 2013 he won a $1 million grant from TED, the
>> global ideas conference, to pursue his work.
>> He’s now in the process of establishing seven “schools in the cloud,”
>> five in India and two in the UK. In India, most of his schools are
>> single-room buildings. There will be no teachers, curriculum, or separation
>> into age groups—just six or so computers and a woman to look after the
>> kids’ safety. His defining principle: “The children are completely in
>> charge.”
>> Mitra argues that the information revolution has enabled a style of
>> learning that wasn’t possible before.
>> ...
>> Mitra’s work has roots in educational practices dating back to Socrates.
>> Theorists from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi to Jean Piaget and Maria
>> Montessori have argued that students should learn by playing and following
>> their curiosity.
>> ...
>> In recent years, researchers have begun backing up those theories with
>> evidence. In a 2011 study, scientists at the University of Illinois at
>> Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa scanned the brain activity of
>> 16 people sitting in front of a computer screen.
>> ...
>> The study found that when the subjects controlled their own observations,
>> they exhibited more coordination between the hippocampus and other parts of
>> the brain involved in learning and posted a 23 percent improvement in their
>> ability to remember objects. “The bottom line is, if you’re not the one
>> who’s controlling your learning, you’re not going to learn as well,” says
>> lead researcher Joel Voss, now a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.
>> ...
>> A similar study at UC Berkeley demonstrated that kids given no
>> instruction were much more likely to come up with novel solutions to a
>> problem. “The science is brand-new, but it’s not as if people didn’t have
>> this intuition before,” says coauthor Alison Gopnik, a professor of
>> psychology at UC Berkeley.
>> Gopnik’s research is informed in part by advances in artificial
>> intelligence. If you program a robot’s every movement, she says, it can’t
>> adapt to anything unexpected. But when scientists build machines that are
>> programmed to try a variety of motions and learn from mistakes, the robots
>> become far more adaptable and skilled. The same principle applies to
>> children, she says.
>> ...
>> Evolutionary psychologists have also begun exploring this way of
>> thinking. Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College who studies
>> children’s natural ways of learning, argues that human cognitive machinery
>> is fundamentally incompatible with conventional schooling. Gray points out
>> that young children, motivated by curiosity and playfulness, teach
>> themselves a tremendous amount about the world. And yet when they reach
>> school age, we supplant that innate drive to learn with an imposed
>> curriculum. “We’re teaching the child that his questions don’t matter, that
>> what matters are the questions of the curriculum. That’s just not the way
>> natural selection designed us to learn. It designed us to solve problems
>> and figure things out that are part of our real lives.”
>> Some school systems have begun to adapt to this new philosophy—with
>> outsize results. In the 1990s, Finland pared the country’s elementary math
>> curriculum from about 25 pages to four, reduced the school day by an hour,
>> and focused on independence and active learning. By 2003, Finnish students
>> had climbed from the lower rungs of international performance rankings to
>> first place among developed nations.
>> ...
>> Juárez Correa had mixed feelings about the test. His students had
>> succeeded because he had employed a new teaching method, one better suited
>> to the way children learn. It was a model that emphasized group work,
>> competition, creativity, and a student-led environment. So it was ironic
>> that the kids had distinguished themselves because of a conventional
>> multiple-choice test. “These exams are like limits for the teachers,” he
>> says. “They test what you know, not what you can do, and I am more
>> interested in what my students can do.”
>> ...
>> But these examples—involving only thousands of students—are the
>> exceptions to the rule. The system as a whole educates millions and is slow
>> to recognize or adopt successful innovation. It’s a system that was
>> constructed almost two centuries ago to meet the needs of the industrial
>> age. Now that our society and economy have evolved beyond that era, our
>> schools must also be reinvented.
>> ...
>> *Want to help teachers like Sergio Juárez Correa make a difference?
>> Here’s how you can get involved in the student-centered movement<http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/student-centered-movement/>
>> .*
>>
>>
>>
>> --
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>>
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