Teachers must structure learning experiences that highlight how new ideas can provide insights in intriguing, challenging situations … In order to create a learner-centered environment in which students can take full advantage of information infrastructures, it is vital that educators augment the traditional curriculum with collaborative, learning-through-doing activities based on linked, online materials and orchestrated across classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings.
Predictor: Dede, Chris
Prediction, in context:In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology commissioned a series of white papers on various issues related to networking technologies. The department convened the authors for a workshop in November 1995 to discuss the implications. The following statement is taken from one of the white papers, “The Evolution of Learning Devices: Smart Objects, Information Infrastructures, and Shared Synthetic Environments,” by Chris Dede of the graduate school of education at George Mason University. Dede writes:”To move students beyond assimilating inert facts and toward generating better mental models, teachers must structure learning experiences that highlight how new ideas can provide insights in intriguing, challenging situations. The curriculum is already overcrowded with low-level information; teachers frantically race through required material, helping students memorize factual data to be regurgitated on mandated, standardized tests. Using information infrastructures as a fire hose to spray yet more information into educational settings would make this situation even worse. Without skilled facilitation, many learners who access current knowledge webs will flounder in a morass of unstructured data. A vital, emerging form of literacy that educators ought to be communicating is how to transform archival information into personal knowledge. Moving students from access through assimilation to appropriation is no simple process, however. Teachers must provide unsophisticated learners with educational experiences that enable them to construct their own knowledge and make sense of massive, incomplete, and inconsistent information sources. In order to create a learner-centered environment in which students can take full advantage of information infrastructures, it is vital that educators augment the traditional curriculum with collaborative, learning-through-doing activities based on linked, online materials and orchestrated across classrooms, workplaces, homes, and community settings.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: E-learning
Name of publication: The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning
Title, headline, chapter name: The Evolution of Learning Devices: Smart Objects, Information Infrastructures, and Shared Synthetic Environments
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney