109 Ideas for Virtual Learning How Open Content Will Help Close the Digital Divide

by Breck, Judy; Brown, John Seely

• ISBN13: 9781578863723
• ISBN10: 1578863724
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-12-30
• Publisher: R&L Education

Summary

109 Ideas For Virtual Learning reveals the online knowledge venue that today's generation uses to learn. Calling today's online venue "the virtual knowledge ecology," Judy Breck describes the networking of open content for learning online, where knowledge is fresher, authoritative, and more compelling than at school. Breck details how information from traditional resources makes its way onto the Internet and explains how network mechanisms interconnect that information once it gets online. She says the resulting knowledge ecology helps students worldwide study from the same virtual page. Virtual knowledge ecology opens the way for a global golden age of education in which students learn more and teachers are respected professionals. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Foreword	xvii
SECTION 1: APPROACH
Idea 1 The Most Important Idea	1	(7)
Idea 2 Ideas in Common	8	(4)
Idea 3 Ideas Are Open	12	(7)
SECTION 2: ATTITUDE
Idea 4 Attitude of Avoidance	19	(1)
Idea 5 Call a Kid to Fix It	20	(2)
Idea 6 I Don't Understand the Internet	22	(2)
Idea 7 The Internet Is a Big Encyclopedia	24	(5)
Idea 8 Why Only Open Content Will Endure	29	(2)
Idea 9 Children Need Cultural Comfort	31	(4)
Idea 10 Is There a Conspiracy?	35	(2)
Idea 11 The Education Establishment Ogre	37	(1)
Idea 12 Knowing the Bad Stuff	38	(4)
Idea 13 The Education Establishment Attitudes toward the Internet	42	(3)
Idea 14 Attitude: Wire the Schools	45	(1)
Idea 15 Attitude: Technology Cannot Replace Human Teachers	46	(3)
Idea 16 Attitude: Books Are Better	49	(6)
Idea 17 Attitude: Ignore the Internet	55	(2)
Idea 18 Attitude: Reposition Present Education Techniques Online	57	(3)
Idea 19 Attitude: Control Internet Access to Protect Children	60	(5)
Idea 20 Attitude: Educators Must Choose What Students Use	65	(2)
Idea 21 Attitude: Education Must Retrieve Control of Open Content	67	(3)
Idea 22 Attitude: The Education Industry Creates Superior Content	70	(3)
Idea 23 Attitude: Curriculum Standards Rule	73	(2)
Idea 24 Attitude: Wire the Schools, Not the Kids	75	(2)
Idea 25 The Response of the American Public	77	(2)
Idea 26 The Kids' Attitude	79	(2)
Idea 27 The College Level Clearer Course	81	(2)
Idea 28 The Extra-Education Little-Noticed Morph	83	(2)
Idea 29 Distant Learning Is Many Things	85	(3)
Idea 30 Responses of Various Countries	88	(2)
Idea 31 The Accurate Attitude about Technology	90	(7)
Idea 32 Can Pedagogy Be What It Teaches?	97	(6)
Idea 33 The "It's Only Access" Mental Block	103	(2)
SECTION 3: ACCESS
Idea 34 The Great Content Cascade onto the Internet	105	(1)
Idea 35 The Author's Vantage Point	106	(4)
Idea 36 Hewlett Foundation Initiative	110	(1)
Idea 37 Technology Was the First Necessary Step for Access	111	(1)
Idea 38 What Knowledge Is	112	(2)
Idea 39 Knowledge Moved	114	(2)
Idea 40 Why Knowledge Accessed in the Virtual Knowledge Ecology Is Superior	116	(2)
Idea 41 Open Content Only Is Accessed from the Virtual Knowledge Ecology	118	(2)
Idea 42 Why Open Content Is a Bargain	120	(3)
Idea 43 Literacy and Language	123	(4)
Idea 44 The Container Is Not the Content	127	(1)
Idea 45 Direct, Individual Access	128	(2)
Idea 46 Search Engines as Access	130	(3)
Idea 47 Repositioned Old Kinds of Access	133	(1)
Idea 48 Open Content for Learning That Is Not Part of the Virtual Knowledge Ecology	134	(1)
Idea 49 Content That Cascades Into the Virtual Knowledge Ecology Becomes Global	134	(4)
Idea 50 Content for Small Children and Other Learner Levels	138	(3)
Idea 51 Definition and History of the Virtual Learning Cascade	141	(1)
Idea 52 Eyewitness Account of the Subject Cascade	142	(25)
Idea 53 Eyewitness Account of the Cascade Sources	167	(14)
Idea 54 How Open Content Is Paid For	181	(1)
Idea 55 The Movement Toward a New Ecology of Learning	182	(3)
Idea 56 The Increasing Level of Detail	185	(3)
Idea 57 Ubiquitous Wireless Computing	188	(3)
SECTION 4: AGGREGATION
Idea 58 It Takes a Network for Knowledge to Emerge	191	(1)
Idea 59 Early Glimpses of the Virtual Knowledge Ecology	192	(2)
Idea 60 Cyberspace Cognitive Explosion	194	(3)
Idea 61 Why It Takes Chaos and Complexity	197	(1)
Idea 62 The Cambrian Explosion	198	(6)
Idea 63 Highway to Network to Ecology	204	(2)
Idea 64 The Center of Everything	206	(5)
Idea 65 Seeing Wholes	211	(2)
Idea 66 Opening the Universe of Human Learning	213	(2)
Idea 67 Open Content Only	215	(2)
Idea 68 Complexity and the Emergence of Meaning	217	(2)
Idea 69 Minimalization	219	(1)
Idea 70 Networks	220	(2)
Idea 71 Small-World Networks	222	(4)
Idea 72 Dynamic Networks	226	(3)
Idea 73 The 80-20 Rule	229	(2)
Idea 74 The Network Effect	231	(5)
Idea 75 Open Content Vets Spontaneously	236	(4)
Idea 76 The Darwinian Effect	240	(1)
Idea 77 Virtual Content Creatures	241	(2)
Idea 78 Why Aggregated Virtual Knowledge Is Superior	243	(2)
Idea 79 How to Find Something on the Internet	245	(1)
Idea 80 The Grand Idea	246	(5)
SECTION 5: ADAPTING
Idea 81 Making Learning Suit the New Knowledge Location	251	(1)
Idea 82 The Knowledge Itself Is Not Isolated but Connected	251	(4)
Idea 83 The Education to Expect	255	(2)
Idea 84 The Adaptation of Technology	257	(1)
Idea 85 The Adaptation of Content	258	(3)
Idea 86 The Adaptation across Cultures	261	(2)
Idea 87 Letting Kids Really Learn Something	263	(2)
Idea 88 How Kids Adapt to the Virtual Knowledge Ecology	265	(1)
Idea 89 The Gift of the Virtual Knowledge Ecology to Teaching	266	(3)
Idea 90 How the Education Establishment Could Adapt	269	(6)
SECTION 6: ACTION
Idea 91 Embrace the Main Idea	275	(1)
Idea 92 Don't Try to Fix the Schools	275	(2)
Idea 93 Get the Virtual Knowledge Ecology to the Kids	277	(1)
Idea 94 Use Cell Phone Screens Now	278	(1)
Idea 95 Give Each Child of Yours W!-FI	279	(2)
Idea 96 Get Laptops to School Students	281	(1)
Idea 97 Develop Devices for Ubiquitous Mobile Computing	281	(2)
Idea 98 Give Other People's Kids W!-FI	283	(1)
Idea 99 Paint the Planet with Access	284	(1)
Idea 100 Transmit a Lily Pad	285	(1)
Idea 101 Press Forward on Language Tools	286	(1)
Idea 102 Take Open Content into the Future	287	(1)
Idea 103 Accept Obsolescence	288	(1)
Idea 104 Think Share Not Copyright	289	(2)
Idea 105 Make Open Content and They Will Come	291	(1)
Idea 106 Open Your Own Content	292	(2)
Idea 107 Sprout Language Lily Pads	294	(1)
Idea 108 Rethink Assessment	294	(1)
Idea 109 Be a Pixel Pedagogue	295	(4)
Appendix 1: The Cyberschool Cascade	299	(12)
Appendix 2: URLs for Web Pages Mentioned in the Ideas	311	(16)
Index	327	(4)
About the Author	331