ICT in Education Matters

By Marc Rosenberg:

"10 important implications and recommendations arise for training managers and designers:

1. One size does not fit all. A consistent instructional strategy across the differing capabilities of a worker population may be a mistake.
2. Pass control to learners. As learners become more knowledgeable and skillful, they can benefit from taking more control of their own learning.
3. Entry-level learners are unique. Putting too little structure on entry-level learners may make learning more difficult, confusing, and demoralizing for them.
4. Advanced-level learners are also unique. Putting too much structure on advanced-level learners may make learning boring, frustrating, inefficient, and off-target for them.
5. Learn how to learn. We must give learners the skills and tools to learn on their own or they will become too dependent on more-structured learning programs when they should be evolving to independent learning. Focus on this as early in the learning path as possible.
6. Learning technology usage evolves with increasing mastery. How learning technology is used changes as learners become more masterful, and control of the learning technology should be increasingly placed in the hands of the learners themselves.
7. Learning evaluation is not the same across the model. Evaluation strategies for learning increasingly take their cues from the learner’s level of performance. From testing to observations to work products to organizational contribution and innovation, people at different stages of the model should be evaluated differently.
8. The workplace environment is critical. The more skillful a learner becomes the more important positive and supportive workplace and supervisory environments are in learning design, implementation, and effectiveness.
9. The definition of eLearning is expanding. The nature of eLearning changes as learners move up the mastery ladder. Performance support, knowledge management, mobile apps, social media, and more augment synchronous and asynchronous eCourseware.
10. Instructional design must become more flexible. As learning designs shift when learners move up the mastery ladder, the role of instructional design also changes. Course development yields to information design, collaboration, performance support development, job design, knowledge management, and so on. Instructional designers would be wise to move up their own ladder of skills as well."

1. Define the Learning Objective

2. Describe the Learning Mechanic

3. Imagine What Students are Thinking

4. Pick a Game Mechanic

5. Create a Theme Where the Mechanic Can Exist

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When I think about the “ethics and responsibilities of the 21st century classroom,” I think not only about our ethical responsibilities toward students but about our ethical responsibilities toward teachers. I am very concerned that the drop-out rate of K-12 teachers is even higher than the drop-out rate of K-12 students in the U.S. and in many other countries around the world.

As I’ve gone around the U.S. and abroad talking with teachers, I’ve seen over and over how beleaguered they are: by (a) too many rules, (b) too many constantly-changing systems and theories, by (c) too many “learning objectives,” by (d) too much pressure to deliver “content,” by (e) too many expectations about high test scores (on standardized tests that often do not measure real learning and content), by (f) ever-escalating and rigid standards of “accountability,” and, added to all of this, by (g) too much faddish, expensive new technology dumped not only on kids but on teachers as if the technology itself magically will take care of a, b, c, d, e, and f.

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