Where is Education Going?

Will there really be school buildings in the future? Will all of education be like RiverCity or SecondLife?

Is it years away or is it just around the corner?

My opinion is that the new "schoolhouse" is in development now and pieces and parts of it have been put together for our kids, already, if we are ready to see it. That's what my goal is, now is to incorporate as much of this new stuff as I can. Reminds me of Thomas Friedman's book, "The World is flat"; that is, Friedman keeps referring to, "While I slept..." the world changed on him. Realistically, he was one of the few who was awake. For me, I'm supposed to be in the middle of the tech world as a teacher, but, I've been asleep, too, and the world has changed. "Web 2.0" has taken over, and left me behind. Also, true visionaries in education, like Chris Dede of Harvard and his "River City" project, certainly has nudged me toward the new and better direction of education and I find that it will be a place where "No child will be left behind" because the "distributed learning" concept of Dr. Dede's will become the norm.

Imagine a virtual world where every country has created learning environments for all of the subject areas deemed important for societies to live and grow; music, math, science, languages, art, history, geography, and others. Imagine the opportunity for any student of any age to visit and be immersed into those areas of choice where he or she will be challenged to collaborate with others, learn new things, develop new knowledge, and share discoveries. What an engaging, virtual world we live in. And, to continue with Chris Dede's philosophy of new learning styles, with the power of handhelds, laptops, and other technological advances that we might not be aware of yet, teachers will have open to them a plethora of real and virtual learning tools available to them in there 21st century toolbox for teaching. After all, we still have all the educational teaching tools from the 20th century. Not that all of them are outdated, but we certainly have to be selective in what we choose to utilize and aware that, no matter what types of teaching tools that we use, we still have to find the blend of tools that will work best.

Here's a great video of Chris Dede as a keynote speaker being presented by Alan November. Please watch.

http://nlcommunities.com/podcasts/1798/blc06/entry84465.aspx