New Learning’s Updates

National Dialogue on Education, Greece

Mary and I are just back from Athens, having participated in the National Dialogue on Education.

Here's the text of a newspaper report in Greek, and this is a slightly tidiedp-up version via Google Translate:

Participation is a key tool in cognitive process

Focusing on the microdynamics of knowledge, the Bill Cope, a professor at the College of Education at the University of Illinois, focused on the elements that trigger the cognitive process. "Participation is a key," he said in his speech.

"Even the architecture of classes reproduce specific relations teacher - pupil. These microdynamics must change, "he added. Focusing on how they can provide the technological tools in education, he explained that the issue is not the technology, but the pedagogy, of creating intensive and well structured learner-to-learner peer interactions.

"Textbooks condense the world in a few pages, giving knowledge to the student," he said analyzing traditional, didactic teaching model. "How can technology change the teacher's-teaching," he wondered, adding that "the students build their own knowledge, working using new technological tools." He reported even more radical changes such as the digital school. "When the teacher has at his disposal all the student work through digital platforms, then comes the end test as we know it," he said. "They can see into all the work that students as they do it, and have a progress record at the end."

Moreover, Bill Cope said "technology is pedagogically neutral." He referred particularly to the ways in which experiment he and M. Kalantzis have developed, works to overcome the traditional "process used in the classroom." "We have teachers, but they are referred to as digital community admins. We do not have students but community members", he said on digital literacy platform they have created.

"We can overcome the four walls of the classroom and the limits of the school time table," he said.

When referring not to the crisis in Greece he said that you can still implement the education reform, adding: "In Illinois we have a debt crisis and cuts in education, resulting in some universities and schools having to close. So we live in similar situations to you."

 

 

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