Tuesday, April 20, 2010

TED talks on new media in education

TED is a fantastic resource for inspiring talks on all aspects of life and I would just like to recommend a special TED event that took place in New York 6 March 2010, TEDxNYED (click here for access to all material). The idea was to invite leading figures in educational technology to present their ideas on the changes taking place in education today; "examining the role of new media and technology in shaping the future of education."

The line up at TEDxNYED was impressive with for example George Siemens, Henry Jenkins, Lawrence Lessig, Mike Wesch, Amy Bruckman, Gina Bianchini and Jay Rosen among the speakers. Since I'm particluarly interested in open learning resources at present and am part of a Swedish national project in that field I was particularly inspired by David Wiley's talk Open Education and the Future and embed it here as a taster from the meeting.

I particularly liked the idea that education is inherently about openness and sharing and that without sharing there is no education. Why then are so many people dedicated to locking it away and protecting it? According to Wiley we have a situation where we have unprecedented capacity to share knowledge and ideas as well as a massive interest in doing so but this movement is in conflict with "outdated thinking reinforced by law." So far we have used new technology to reinforce a closed system locking knowledge away behind password-protected gateways.

The talks in this series provide some glimpses into what the future may hold.

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