Mobile Learning at ACU

Mobile Learning at ACU

The analysis of this video is that  there is a return to the origins in the way we communicate and learn.  It starts talking about the way the learning happened in the XV century, in a close relationship with the teacher, even living with him. Then it was about learning by doing, (hands on, as we will see that is the same way we are teaching and learning these days). The process took years but the student could approach mastery. The problem was that it was a local way of learning and it only happened with the privileged  ones that could make it in the masters workshop. So how to share the knowledge with others and how to have the learning beyond geographic limitations? The answer was with the books (invented by Guttenberg), so it became easy to share the knowledge and for more people and people from everywhere to have the knowledge the master used to share with only a few and inside his limited space.  The lecturer emphasizes the idea of that a new technology transforms the way of learning  of its time (as the book transformed the way of learning established in the XV century) but then this new technology generates its own problems that only another new technology may fix. So the problem with the technology of the book was that you needed to look for the information, and that by there being so many books in the libraries it was difficult to find the information timely. So the new technology changing this was the Internet. With the Internet you can access information at any time any where and we would be expecting another technology to change this in a future.

Adora Video “What Adults can Learn from Kids”

Adora Video “What Adults can Learn from Kids”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-bjOJzB7LY

Adora Svitak (eleven years old lecturer) talks about how children have a special power on the people in difference to adults and that they could bring more inspiring ideas to the world and benefits than adults have had over the years with their wars and crisis. She talks about how irrationality, often criticized on children, is may be necessary as an utopia, an about believing in the possibilities of dreams. She talks how by kids just thinking big and with no limitations on the possibilities of their dreams they prove getting BIG results, as an example she gives of a workshop on glass sculpture with fabulous results. So as kids have this ability not to restrain the possibilities they can actually teach their teachers for doing greater projects in education. She says that the only problem seems to be the “trust”. Adults don’t trust children. They set rules and never let the children participate in this process. Adora even points out her experience writing articles and stories in the computer and getting rejection when trying to get them published by even children books publishing houses. The worst part, she says is that children get to turn into adults. The point she says, is not becoming children again, but becoming better adults. She asks adults to trust children more and to take children more into consideration for decision taking into the education for tomorrow.