Bridging our Future - Building a Bridge project - Intel #edcmooc

The picture was picked up from Microsoft web page.

Watched this weeks first video, a commercial video Bridging our Future.

• how is education being visualised here? what is being learned and taught?
• what is the nature of communication in these future worlds?
• are these utopian or a dystopian visions to you? In what way(s)?

The learning activity was totally high tech - but presented gadgets that are already available. Tablets, smartboards, 4G, 3D skanner, webconferencing, on-line Quizz, mobile with pictures and video etc. All seemed to work seemlessly... and this is where my frustration woke up.In real life nothing seems to work seemlessly...unless you buy your own equiptment and use it outside the work organization and its infra and firewall.

And also the bridge example reminded of my sons Montessori playschool years, practical projects that puzzle the mind. I quess you could build a low tech bridge and test its strenghts with some other building materials like straws or twiggs?

The assignment was teacher lead, but he could quickly react to what the pupils where working at. A nice thing was the possibility to bring in an expert from real life via videoconferencing .. an opportunity which teachers seldom use presently.Our teachers are also just beginning to start using something like Socrative response system to engage f2f lecture audiences.

In Helsinki University we have some projects in this area.. In the Faculty of Medicine a tablet loaded with coursebooks was to give each new students....and the faculty is learning now what else could be done with them? Students have been interviewed about the experience, but couldn't find anything in english, sory folks.

And in a Learning Lab - a team with professor Kirsti Lonka have built a new  fysical innovative learning space and talks about changing our social and knowledge practises. She also believes that the children today in Finland have advanteges to learn since they are more skillfull in languages esp in english, they have better social skills than the previous generations and they are not afraid to pick up and adopt new technology. You can listen to her speaking in an interview in this YouTube video.

Probably it will not go as Intell anticipates, that the school provides everyone one set of gadgets but more in the line of bring your own equiptment (mobile and tablets) with you and the software is somewhere in the cloud where everyone connects to. Personal learning enviroments? PLE ?

The video falls in between utopia and dystopia. In many ways I feel some literary speaking hands on engagement also out of school is important for the brain to develop. But yes, many of these gadgets are already available .. but not used in schools ... yet.

Microsoft: Innovative Schools World Tour
Metsokankaan school belongs to the International Partners in Learning Network.