Being a student of Chinese, I have learned many great lessons from my studies. One I will always remember is attributed to Confucius, China’s most famous teacher, philosopher, and political theorist. He said “If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.” (Confucius Quotes) I have found that I can learn from everyone around me. The wider the variety of people I associate with, the larger the number of lessons that I harvest. I have learned to look for training, education and lessons in all directions rather than just focus on the formal education channels. The formal education channels are being greatly challenged by all we see around us.
“In an era where it is possible to photoshop images, facebook people, and access an endless stream of knowledge by googling, the Internet Age offers both great promise and enormous challenges for educators.” (www.openeducation.net) The challenge is for educators and learners as well.
According to the Carnegie Foundations, “Everything is up for grabs—from the design of new curriculum; to who teaches; to how individual educators are prepared, enter the field of teaching and are rewarded for their work; to even who actually gets to run the schools. In response, we need to consider fundamental changes in the ways in which we support the development of school professionals and the tools, materials, ideas and evidence with which they work at every level of the education spectrum.” (Carnegie Foundation 1)
I applaud the great thinkers and educators for their effort at redefining the educational experience of this and future generations. As they continue to conceptualize twentieth century education models, we at LearningZen are engaged in creating the tools that will open portals of learning to the masses. We agree with the authors of Opening Up Education when they stated that too many innovative educational endeavors still remain in isolated and closed domains, rarely shared across classrooms, disciplines, or institutions. “Thus, educators find it difficult to advance their pedagogical practice and knowledge as a community.” (Iiyoshi and Kumar, MIT Press, 2008)
John Seely Brown, a visiting scholar and advisor to the provost at the University of Southern California and independent co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for Edge Innovation said “The unrelenting velocity of change means that many of our skills have a shorter shelf life, suggesting that much of our learning will need to take place outside of traditional school and university environments. We need to reconceptualize twentieth-century education models, and at the same time reinforce learning outside of formal schooling.” (Carnegie Foundation 2).
LearningZen will continue to build the premier site for study, education and collaboration. We realize our expertise is in the creation of free and easy to use tools for delivery of educational content. To return to my initial theme of Chinese wisdom, Lao Tzu, another great Chinese philosopher said “an ant on the move does more than a dozing water buffalo.” (Lao Tzu) Though we are small, we are definitely on the move. We welcome your comments and suggestions and will take them seriously, that is our commitment to the community.
Dennis Phillips, Ph.D.
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