Davidson & Goldberg: The Future of Learning Institutions
12.23.06 | Youth today have opportunities to learn in exciting new ways, where information-gathering is intimately linked to social networks and peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing is the norm. Now (at least potentially), they can customize the media on which they spend much of their free time. Yet very few of our schools of education or universities are addressing the challenges of new modes of learning that move across traditional disciplinary boundaries and or even across the traditional divide between “science” and “the humanities.”
Our MacArthur project entails imagining “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.” We will post drafts of the document to a collaborative website, soliciting feedback from policy makers, administrators, researchers, teachers, and students (of all ages). We will host face-to-face meetings to discuss both our evolving document and the feedback.
One session will take place at the international conference of HASTAC (“haystack,” an acronym for Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). HASTAC is a virtual institution devoted to advancing humane and humanistic digital technologies and the knowledge they make possible through collaborative work between humanists, artists, scientists and engineers (http://www.hastac.org). We are committed to envisioning and co-developing learning institutions for the future. We look forward to your joining us in this process.
Leave a comment
Comments are moderated to ensure topic relevance and generally will be posted quickly.
Comments
Fred Bartels (Rye Country Day School)
12/27/06
4:54pm
The URL above links to a series of models I’ve been developing for a 21st century school. The models are stored on Google’s wonderful new 3D-Warehouse, where anyone can upload 3D models developed in the CAD program SketchUp. The 3D-Warehouse is a resource you may want to consider as a location for collaborators in your project to store design ideas.
I also maintain a website about learning with laptops. If you search for “learningwithlaptops” in any search engine it should show up in the first few links.
Very much looking forward to following the development of your project.
Christian Long (DesignShare)
12/29/06
4:04am
I’d greatly appreciate the opportunity to learn more about the work you are doing in terms of tying the evolution of digital learning/media with school design, as well as exploring what the long-range implications may be for school design teams here in the US and globally.
DesignShare works with school design teams, educators, and related stake holders around the world. We’ve just begun to introduce the “School 2.0” phrase with architects, as well as shared resources such the DML blog (et al) and other front-end 2.0 conversations. I have no doubt that the work you are doing will need to quickly be added to our list of go-to resources.
Additionally, as a starting point we added a blog post at DesignShare highlighting a few snippets of what you are doing here. Link:
http://www.designshare.com/index.php/archives/674
Perhaps in early January we could get some time—Skype or call—to share ideas. And for me to definitely learn more about what you are doing.
Best to you both in the meantime. And thanks for working in this vital intersection of technology and school design. I have no doubt it will be a key conversation for architects and educational leaders alike in the coming years!
Cheers,
Christian
President & CEO
DesignShare
http://www.designshare.com
http://thinklab.typepad.com/