[elearning] Question submission for eLearning list

[ken price]

A very interesting question - in fact it's probably hard enough to describe
what teaching looks like in 2011, as it varies so much within and between
schools :-)

Certainly there are opportunities made available through technology, and
some supported/enforced by legislation (eg the DER 1:1 initiative here, and
Florida's requirement that a student do at least one online course to
qualify for high school graduation, and the growth of state funded virtual
schools in the US (HB 1797 and SB 1620 ) ). These will increasingly affect
how schools and teaching make use of technology.

There may be some changes to teaching to provide flexibility, eg schools
employing online teachers on call from 8am to 8pm weekdays and fixed hours
on weekends as per one current (and popular) US model.

One area that might interest Jenny (whose email address indicates she works
for one of the world's largest online learning providers) is the extent to
which schools might be using commercial elearning solutions in 2015,
vs those who move into free services for email, storage, social networking,
learning management, online audio-, video- and data- conferencing, and
educational content. For example - how many education systems offer all
students 8GB of email storage? That's what Gmail gives me, for free - why
would I expect less from a school? And perhaps more serious - why would a
school pay to provide a lesser service?

In Australia, there is an interesting situation emerging where national
services are providing in the space traditionally filled by
States/Territories. Tools like Scootle/Australian Curriculum Connect have
potential to displace some of functions of jurisdictional portals and
repositories: with a national curriculum, the argument for separate
jurisdictional systems is not as clear as it may have been 5 years ago. Or
perhaps the role of jurisdictional systems will change radically.

The "year" paradigm may well change - the ability to undertake assessment at
any time, rather than the set assessment times, and the ability to study in
any curriculum area at a time suited to the learner, suggest that it becomes
less relevant to group students on chronological age. This will probably
impact more on secondary students and teachers than primary.

We already see virtual schools with over 1,000 teachers and 100,000 students
eg http://goo.gl/eueTA and growing.

Personally, I'd bet that in 2015 there will still be some schools and
teachers doing exactly what they are doing now, probably even using the same
textbooks and notes. But there will also be many more schools that are using
technology to provide flexibility for students, wider access to more diverse
curriculum, and with corresponding changes in teaching practice.

Interesting times indeed...

ken


Ken Price
TASITE

On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 3:17 PM, Walsh, Jenny <Jenny.Walsh at pearson.com.au>wrote:

>  Hi ****
>
> ** **
>
> I’d like to ask the group the question “What will teaching look like in
> 2015? How will technology change the face of teaching?”****
>
> ** **
>
> *Jenny Walsh*
>
> ****
>
> ** **
>
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