The Net Gen Education Challenge deadline has been extended to midnight, June 6. This is the second year for the Challenge, where students are asked to produce a video illustrating how the social web nurtures teaching, learning, collaboration, and innovation for the 21st century. Read my post from March 13th for the Challenge details. The submissions so far have been excellent, and I look forward to announcing the winners in the near future.
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Introducing: Global Solution Networks
Don Tapscott: There is a fundamental change underway regarding how global problems can be solved, and perhaps how we govern.
I just learned about this challenge and made sure to submit a video that I hope lands me the win!
I came across the challenge today and it is too late to compete but I do have some ideas. For the high school and university levels (maybe earlier depending on student interest), I would like to see education stress projects and flexibility to a greater degree.
What does that mean in practice? Regarding the formal curriculum, I would like to see a model where students can set their own pace. For example, I took an absolutely fantastic course in a public high school called the History of World Religions. Students earned course credit through projects they came up; you could read a book (and write a report), attend a religious service and reflect on the experience, meet with a priest and converse about the topic etc. There were minimum requirements as well to insure that everybody understood the basics of the major world religions. It was certainly the most innovative course I ever did. Setting a minimum standard and then setting the conditions for students to explore on their own strikes me as a very promising model.
The other way I would like to see the project ethic would involve having students start organizations, publications and perhaps even companies. As an undergraduate, I learned a great working on student newspapers as a writer and editor. I also had the experience of founding an academic journal. Other students might prefer to found companies and they should be encouraged to try that. Artistic students would be encouraged to create a portfolio of paintings, novels, ads, posters, stories or whatever else they wish.
Just think about how students could describe their educational experience on a resume then? Rather than “attending x school, 2010-2014,” one could write something discuss organizations founded, projects run and so forth.
That all said, this model of education assumes that students have already learned literacy, math and other foundational skills.