Keeping up with our changing society is important for everyone, whether you're the lifelong learner or the teacher.
In Brad Allenby's article for GreenBuzz entitled Schooling Ourselves on Sustainability, he writes that education in general isn't keeping up with social change, especially where technology is concerned.
[Courses are] taught by professors who are clueless about the way today's students -- many of them digital natives who are intimately familiar with synthetic realities, social networking sites, and mashups that their elders may not even know exist -- think, interact, and learn. The cognitive processes, systems, and mechanisms by and through which students learn have changed dramatically, yet for many professors it is still 1950.
How much do you know about new technologies? Personally, I don't know what a mashup is...but I'm off to find out as soon as I finish here. Maybe it's time to get ourselves back in the classroom, we the ageless learners and teachers.
Allenby says:
University curriculum should ensure that basic skill levels are present, and that students are able to absorb new information about social, environmental, technological, economic, and other relevant domains; it should not end with graduation. Rather, coursework, training, production and practice should continue, albeit with different emphases over time, as the individual continues whatever career path he or she chooses. This is not simply "continuing education;" it is life as education -- for, in a rapidly evolving world, there is no such thing as adequate knowledge; there is only continuing learning.
I've been planning on writing about the best technologies for adult learners. I'll get on it. Thanks for the shove, Brad.
There's a learning technology thread in the forum. Join us.
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