The future figured prominently in my reading this week. Janet Clarey questions the future of physical classrooms based on Elliot Masie's question of Classrooms of the future. She asks: do we need physical classrooms for learning. While the comments to her (and Elliot's) post range significantly, a tone of classrooms are dead is obvious. I disagree. All tools in context. Narrow, one-approach thinking brought us to where we are. Now, as "revolutionaries" sense some traction for change through the development of technology, the desire to see the future through a single lens is becoming obvious (revolutionaries seek to conserve once the revolution is finished). As trends in learning and technologies become more divergent, "and thinking" becomes more important. Classrooms and the web. Blogs and LMS. Collaborative learning and blogging.
A few additional resources: Learning technologies and schools of the future (.pdf)...and predictions for 2008 (coming in a bit late - it's cheating if your predictions aren't made at the end of the year or within the first few days of the new year :)).
Cheating? I think if we posted predictions for 2008 in the fall of 2008 it would be cheating but not January 23. However we will try for earlier next year!
Lisa
Posted by: Lisa Neal at January 24, 2008 6:20 PMHi Lisa - just so you know, it was a tongue-in-cheek comment. I understand putting a list like that together requires time...
George
Schoolroom changes won't make much difference until the textbooks take a different course. Politically correctiness, Darwinism, Al Gore and "One World Thinking" greatly restrict caring but ill-trained teachers who prepare their tedious daily lesson plans according to this crap. This is especially true in the sciences and mathematics books.
Posted by: John Beck at January 29, 2008 11:58 PM