School walls are disappearing. Probably anybody who's raising or teaching young digital media users has noticed this. For more than a decade and a half (in developed countries, anyway), schools have been opening up to the world just as more and more of the planet has joined the wired and wireless global network. Less and less can learning – formal or informal – be compartmentalized into rooms, … [Read more...] about Schools’ disappearing walls: Explore the benefits!
Marc Prensky
Prensky’s thoughts for 21st-century teachers
Marc Prensky, who coined the term "digital natives" and a few years ago moved on to write about digital wisdom, called on educators to show the courage to do what "they know is right" and wisely embrace the technology that will increasingly help all of us, including students, solve the world's complex problems. This was in his 10-min. portion of a collective keynote at this summer's International … [Read more...] about Prensky’s thoughts for 21st-century teachers
No ‘God complex’ in Net safety, please
In his TED Talk, author Tim Harford tells the story of World War II prisoner of war Dr. Archie Cochrane and the start of his life-long observation about "the God complex" – the idea some people have that, no matter how complex the problem or conditions, they understand the way it all works and are "infallibly right" in what the solution should be. Problematic, if not dangerous in this … [Read more...] about No ‘God complex’ in Net safety, please
New media monsters II: From digital people to ‘digital wisdom’
I'm using "digital people" as shorthand for "digital natives" and "digital immigrants," which together have become one of the "new media monsters" I wrote about, gosh, last April. This long overdue post is Part 2, because I want to be sure you know that even the person who coined "digital natives," Marc Prensky, himself has moved beyond this term that suggests children are alien life forms that … [Read more...] about New media monsters II: From digital people to ‘digital wisdom’
PBS Frontline’s ‘Digital Nation’: Presenting our generation with a crucial choice
Seems to me, Gever Tully's Tinkering School would be the perfect antidote for all the concern about kids and digital media expressed in PBS Frontline's "Digital Nation" – hands-on problem-solving, lots of tools, collaboratively learning by doing, giving kids time to work the problem, celebrating and analyzing failures, teaching that success is embedded in the process (watch his TED Talk about … [Read more...] about PBS Frontline’s ‘Digital Nation’: Presenting our generation with a crucial choice