Hi Jim
Here are quick answers to the questions from your students.
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1. What will be the major differences, if any, between today on-line adult learners and future on-line adult learners, for example, 5 years and 10 years from now? Olga Shinkareva
Hopefully it will be much richer interaction and involve more collaborative knowledge building.
The form
I suspect that it will be a bit like asking what it will be like to talk on the phone vs to someone in person. We don't make a current distinction between the when, where or how we talked to someone. I think that the same will be true for learning. We will not care if it was online or in class, just that we were able to share in the process of knowledge building. So the form is not the critical issue, it is the activity. I think it is likely to be more directed by the person and we will be encouraged to major in different areas in different time periods. Students will be able to and hopefully be encouraged to take more initiative in the things that they study.
Activity
But the activity is likely to change. I suspect that we will work towards more "useful" ways of learning. What is now called service-learning. We will find ways of making learning serve more than a simple process of automatizing skills.
2. What influences distance learning could or could not make on such structure as a team in educational setting?--Olga Shinkareva
I think that we will have many more teams, as working in teams is part of the education that students need. I think that relationship mediation is a skill that needs some attention in our society. The schools might end up taking on yet another responsibility...that of helping students learn how to value what others say and offer in a process of making sense of their environment. We live in a social world, not one only of facts. Knowing how to make sense of each other is a part of the learning that needs to take place in schools.
1. From reading your article, it appears to me that you are implying that the teaching profession will still exist and the number of teachers needed will remain constant. However, the field will subdivide into various areas of expertise, such as instructional design, curriculum development etc. You also state that there will be learning communities of students and teachers who stay together over a number of years. This would mean that teachers would be responsible for smaller groups of students. Do you think that our present educational system can sustain these kinds of costs? Paulette Wall
The paper that I wrote does cost out the new design within the same ballpark figure that we now spend. It is not more expensive although I think we could afford to spend more on education. It also gives more than we currently get. there is a teacher who task is to assess individual learners. We don't have that know.
But to the other part of the question, yes I think we will continue to group students in units at places called schools. I hope that they look a different but I think that there are good reasons for the social arrangements of schooling.
2. You use the term "resource teachers." After reading your perception of this position, is this what you believe the library media specialist will evolve into? Paulette Wall
I think that the library medial specialist will have central roles in teaching in the curriculum.
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1. Regarding Future Learning Spaces, how does she predict the time of a school day may change if students are working internationally with differing time zones? Is this a concern? Jill McCue
It is only a concern for real time communication. If you are using systems that allow people to come in and leave their work for others to build on, co-temporal existence in the space is not necessary.
2. From The Future of Teaching where does she foresee placing multiply disabled students in these learning centers? Will we go back to a segregated environment for students who cannot read or work independently? Jill McCue
No, I think not, I think that there is space for students of all skill levels to participate in the community. Especially if students see it as their role to help be inclusive. How will we grow a society that is inclusive of special needs individuals if we don't start the training from the earliest of times. There is a great thinkQuest site about what a fourth grade class learned by having a Downs Syndrome child in the class.
Jill McCue
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One question I have for the chat tomorrow night is - Are there any good websites or resources on the web that outline ideas for teachers to implement more computers into projects or lessons? They really want some one to tell them exactly what to do. (at least get them started) I'm talking about really basic places they could go for a good starting point. I was in a small rural high school in the Southern part of the state last week and a teacher asked about how she might begin to integrate technology more when she has only one computer in the classroom - how can she impact students with this limited amount of available technology? Jane Blanton
There are so many great sites and many people who are willing to answer that question. I have gathered some of them together in the web publications that I have on the web but each link in there leads to more links and more people all of whom are willing to respond to this question in their own way. We are in a an "ask and you will receive world"
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1) What kind of prerequisite knowledge or skill we should need to construct a web-learning page like MBARI? Pei Szu Chou
new forms of literacy
2) How can we evaluate the learners' learning attitudes and effect in MBARI? Pei Szu Chou
We have become the process of documenting students' learning. But the tools are there to help us with the memory overload process of evaluation. If a teacher could remember what happened everyday and review it, then they would have the means for assessment.
3) How to help teachers maintain highly motivation to grow their professional abilities which I mention is about the technology skills? Pei Szu Chou
You get what you reward and there are at least two kinds of rewards...money and fame.
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Currently in education, many communities and states use standardized testing to evaluate the quality of education. During my student teaching experience in Indianapolis 4 years ago, I was fortunate enough to be placed in a year-round school that had a similar philosophy to the one you stated in your vision. Learning was project-based, students were in multiaged classrooms, and assessment was much like what you described. However, when the year-round school was compared to the other schools in the district for standardized test scores, their scores were significantly lower. I felt many of the students had a difficult time adjusting to the parameters that come with standardized testing. How can we ensure that this won't continue to happen in the future? What steps do we need to take as educators to make this vision a successful reality in the area of standardized testing? Muffy Pacey
We need new and better ways of assessing learning. The standardized tests are there because we haven't done a good enough job of tracking students. If students are learning, if teachers can demonstrate that they are learning, if they are moving on to college and doing well at universities then it will not be a issue. That testing is secondary problem of inability to keep good information on each student.
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Margaret Riel, Ph.D. Associate Director <mriel@uci.edu>
Center for Collaborative Research in Education
http://www.gse.uci.edu/ccre
University of California, Irvine,
2001 Berkeley Place, Irvine, CA 92697
Phone: 949 824 1230 or 760 943-1314 Fax 949 824 2965
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