It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I've been exploring the nature of learning and motivation in a variety of formats - in my work, in my studies, and in my personal life. I ran across Coursera while looking for online learning object repositories, and began to realize that learning is starting to happen more and more outside of education. At work, in discussing a student who completed a certification program but didn't bother to do the final step of creating a portfolio, a colleague said, "she was more interested in the learning, not the certification." The ascendancy of learning as facilitated by technology is striking, and it raises some fascinating questions about the purpose and future of education.
The video below showed up in my blog roll to reinforce the entire set of lessons I've been learning this week. My favorite quotes from the video:
- "There is a very big difference between access to information and school - they used to be the same thing." ~Seth Godin
- "It is the teacher's job to point young minds toward the right kind of question. The teacher doesn't need to give any answers, because the answers are everywhere." ~Sugata Mitra
- "Learning prepares you to cope with the surprises. Education prepares you to cope with certainty. There is no certainty." ~Stephen Heppell
For the complete video, please visit http://youtu.be/quYDkuD4dMU. It's 20 minutes, but well worth the time.
