Dr. Larry Johnson
Bill Gibson was right. A communique from the future present.
Join Dr. Larry Johnson, founder of the NMC Horizon Project, in an exploration of the road ahead for e-learning and its surrounding landscape of educational technology. The future of ed tech, in Johnson's view, is not going to be like the past. How do we know? As William Gibson famously observed, the future is already here. It is just unevenly distributed?
It is here now, and if we are not proactively seeking it, it is unlikely we will be an important part of it.
That future looks nothing like the technologies, networks, software, or systems we've all spent our careers building. It is pervasive, open, ubiquitous, always on, always near, always connected. PCs are dying, and clearly on the way out. Among major manufacturers, PCs are a low-margin, low-profit business. Commodities almost.
The traditional PC, with its keyboard and tracking device is already part of a bygone era. We live today in the Post-PC era. At the same time, virtually every assumption we have about the use of technology in education is based on how we have done things in the past. We were good. We fought the hard battles, and built amazing networks and tools - but as successful as we have been, our own experience limits our future success.
The 'e' in 'e-Learning' is usually defined as 'electronic' but as Bernie Luskin famously wrote, what it really needs to mean for today's students to engage with it is 'exciting, energetic, enthusiastic, emotional, extended and excellent.' People in college see the Internet on a small creen most of the time. To them it's mobile, easy to access, and always there. They want their learning to fit the same mold, and are exposed to so much well-designed content, they have come to equate bad design with triviality. They deeply want to learn, but they want to learn in ways that are everything Luskin describes. They want learning to be open, sharable,
social, mobile' and clearly relevant.
As this future unfolds, we are the ones charged with managing these times and those ahead. We are the ones who will be celebrated or judged on how well we manage this sea change. It is up to us to turn the grand ship of education to meet it. It is up to us to respond, and the expectations are high.
Join Johnson in an exploration of that challenge, and of what we need to thinking about now if we mean for ed tech and e-learning to continue to matter in the PostPC world.
Dr. Larry Johnson serves as Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium, an international not-for-profit consortium dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. Its hundreds of member institutions constitute an elite list of the most highly regarded universities, museums, and research centers in the world. The NMC's dozen-year exploration of technology use in education, the Horizon Project, informs strategic technology planning for educational institutions in more than 175 countries. As the project's founder, Johnson works with visionaries and thought leaders from across the globe to define new ways of thinking about technology, and explore emerging trends and issues.
Zeit: Der Vortrag findet am 3.9.2013 von 11:00-12:00 Uhr im Hörsaal H1, OSZ statt.
Informationen: www.nmc.org