As we have to leave Friday early afternoon my presentation was moved to the speedgeeking session. I was happy to be moved as I really loved these kind of elevator speeches even at Online Educa where they had the first live and parallel software presentations of competing products with 3 minute timeslots for each vendor for each task to complete.
Now we had groups of people rotating each 5-10 minutes at different stations, I was one of the stations. I made a short explanation of my paper then I tried to confabulate with the “audience” on how they can imagine a day in the life of a teenager, namely a baby just born in 2006 when she’ll be 14. (Just to have an easy comparison possibility with Tuomi – opens PDF -, and my reflections.)
Here follows how we interviewed each other and prototyped the ideas. Names withheld to protect the innocent – if you participated in the speed-geeking and think that I missed some points or misspelled your name, let me know!
- flexible class, you’re in 2nd grade physics while 3rd grade in math, teachers come from not an existing faculty (humanities, science, even medical goes to case-based), teacher has to be holistical, “bilder”, mother, authority in ethics and moral, kulturfahrplan, competence up, it’s more than skills (skills are more manual, competence is using skills in an appropriate way), knowledge down, learn from experience, more expensive, good quality, American way (Andrea, Alexander)
- learning is life, learning is change (reminds to the Kruder remix of Koop – me), family and local community-based, there’s gonna be a unit instead of a class, mobile access to the web, like myspace, there will be leaders, wishfully there could be alternate options, accreditation outside school system (I think it’s likely that the basic services of a ‘school’: discipline, socialization, access to knowledge and acknowledging knowledge will be separated, these functions regrouped and perhaps it’s gonna come top-down from adult education thru higher to the basic levels. update: Stephen Downes just said that someone will be multimillionaire doing this – me), new teachers will be crossbred, it’s already hard and unattractive to be a teacher, teachers have to teach literacy, symbol systems, a bit of math, takes time and trained people, an educator, erziehung, social codes and hygiene, families do not fulfill (Monika, Sebastian, Martin)
- class and classroom is a sticky structure, same metaphors for old structure, bad compromises, strange effects, children will be texting under the desk, there will be a hidden structure (there is already a hidden structure of xeroxing notes, tutoring each other and sharing cheat sheets – me), strength of peer will stay, system is likely to crack, who lag behind are more likely to jump the divide without cracking, can “muslim countries” in Europe evolve their own system? (islam is more cell-based, application of sharia is think global act local for a thousand year – me) those who lag behind are faster to change and adopt. the crack will be a bad crack (two Martins)
- big gap in knowledge, shattered process, no narrative, classroom till K12, universities also have houses, no sitting, more active, engaged and emotional, nature of learning experience, storytelling, learning space for knowledge sharing, efficient use of classroom, Diana Oblinger @ Educause (George, David, Mario)
- classroom still there, learning will be blended, classroom is not the only place where learning takes place, open, experience, mobile devices, activity-based, teacher will become a sports coach (closest metaphor), competition, group-based activities, being part of a group, and not just winner takes all, but participation is the key (objectives, measurement, feedback could be important – me), sport spirit (David)
still reading 
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