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This is the Main Page of an Information Age Education Wiki named IAE-pedia. The Wiki name is pronounced "eye-pedia" or "I A E pedia."


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Contents


IAE in a Nutshell

Most Recently Published IAE-pedia Documents

The IAE Blog

Click here to learn more about virtual math manipulatives and two new free virtual math manipulatives from the Math Learning Center.

The IAE Blog includes a number of entries about brain science and cognitive neuroscience. Click here to access a Blog entry that has been recently updated to include 15 links to brain science and cognitive neuroscience short articles.

The IAE Blog is starting a "think piece" series of entries on improving our informal and formal educational systems.

Summary of Current Ongoing IAE Activities

  • Other Free IAE documents. A "miscellaneous" collection of materials. This includes 137 Editor's Messages written by David Moursund while he was Editor-in-Chief of the International Society for Technology in Education.
  • The David Moursund Legacy Fund. If you would like to show your appreciation for the free materials being made available through Information Age Education, please consider making a contribution to help support the University of Oregon Department of Mathematics endowment fund titled the Science of Teaching and Learning Mathematics.

IAE-pedia Purpose and Philosophy

The Information Age officially began in the United States in 1956. In that year, the U. S. first had more "white collar" workers than "blue collar" workers. This Information Age movement away from agricultural and manufacturing employment continues. The U. S. educational system is struggling to appropriately accommodate the ensuing rapid progress in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Our educational system also faces a wide range of other challenges such as inadequate budgets, growing poverty in our country, and growing political pressures for higher educational performance outcomes.

IAE-pedia exists to aid in this struggle. Some components of IAE’s underlying ideas and philosophy are:

  1. Humans face very challenging problems, individually and collectively. The most important problems concern preserving and improving the sustainability and quality of life on our planet Earth.
  2. The intact human brain is naturally curious, is always involved in processing data, and is a lifelong learner. All people know how to learn and get better at learning through practice and through informal and formal education. All people, intentionally or not, teach themselves and others. All our lives, we learn and we teach.
  3. The Information Age is bringing us powerful aids to learning and to communicating and processing information. It is also bringing us a very rapid increase in the totality of information that one might want to learn and use. We each face an information overload and an environment of rapid change.

Improving Our Educational System

Historically, educational systems have been quite conservative and slow to change.

However, it is clear that educational systems can and do substantially change over time. One issue our current educational systems face is whether they can change fast enough and in an appropriate manner to meet future needs of children growing up in our rapidly changing world.

For example, ICT is producing major changes in the way people interact, conduct business, get their education, entertain themselves, etc. Furthermore, our increased understanding of biology (especially genomes), cognitive neuroscience (brain science), computer technology, medicine, nanotechnology, and other disciplines are powerful, ongoing change agents. At the same time, we are gaining an increased understanding of the challenges of ecological and environmental sustainability. Informal and formal education plays a major role in our dealing with such changes. This raises the very difficult questions, what shall the role be and how shall it be played?

Just about everybody has ideas about how to improve education. The task is huge, and there are many plausible approaches to accomplishing pieces of the task. The problem is not one of having enough good ideas. The problem is one of having the resources and the will to adequately research plausible ideas and widely implement good ideas.

Individually and collectively, people solve problems and accomplish tasks by using their physical and mental capabilities. Research and development in science and technology is providing us with a rapid increase in the capabilities of tools that boost our physical and mental capabilities.

Consider this example: A significant part of the collected human information and knowledge is being digitized and stored in computerized information storage and retrieval systems. These computerized systems are designed to help users find information they are looking for. They are also designed to solve or help to solve many different problems on command. Modern factories automate many physical tasks; many computer programs automate designated mental tasks.

Such uses for computer systems are now commonplace—except in curriculum content, teaching, learning processes, and assessment in our schools. If you doubt this assertion, think about whether students are routinely allowed to make use of ICT:

  • when taking tests
  • as a routine aid to learning in each discipline they study, and
  • as a routine aid to solving problems, accomplishing tasks, and producing products based on what they are learning.

To conclude this subsection, consider another example. Highly Interactive Intelligent Computer-Assisted Learning (HIICAL) is proving to be a powerful aid to students learning faster and better in many different disciplines and levels of education. Why isn’t this powerful aid to teaching and learning routinely available to students at all grade levels and in all curriculum areas?

Searching the IAE-pedia

Notice that the left column contains a variety of menu items. One is a search box. Key in one or more words and click on Search. The search engine will find every page that contains every word in your search expression.

Another approach is to find all articles that are in a particular Category. Look at the current list of Categories. In that list, click on a Category to go to a page containing all IAE-pedia articles assigned to that Category.

Another approach is to look at the list of most popular pages.

Still another approach is to make use of a Google search that is restricted to the two IAE Websites and two other Websites created and maintained by David Moursund.

Note to Potential Authors and Editors

The IAE-pedia was originally designed as an Open Source document, with readers being able to freely use and edit the contents. However, we have received sufficient spam so that we have currently stopped reader writing or editing articles.

Thus, please send your articles, corrections, and comments directly to moursund@uoregon.edu.

Please note when writing or editing:

  1. Be respectful of other authors and their writings.
  2. Be respectful of the overall goal to help improve the informal and formal education of students of all ages and from all parts of the world.

All readers and authors should be aware that there are widely differing views as to what constitutes a good education and good ways to help students to achieve a good education. Informal and formal education are very complex, intertwined field. They are made still more complex by the rapid pace of many different technologies. Examples of technologies that are changing our world include:

  • Information and communication technology, including computers and robotics.
  • The study of genomes, and applications from what is being learned.
  • Nanotechnology.

IAE-pedia Documents

The IAE-pedia contains documents of varying lengths, from short snippets to articles to books. There are a few pages that are Protected against change. The rest of the articles can be edited by readers. Readers are also encouraged to add documents to the IAE-pedia.

Each IAE-pedia document is designed to meet needs of one or more categories of potential readers such as students, parents, teachers, educational leaders, business people, government employees, politicians, and so on. (In educationalize, these are often called stakeholder groups.)

It is assumed that a reader approaches an IAE-pedia document with a purpose in mind. The purpose might be to gain a better understanding of a particular problem area. The purpose might be to gain information needed to help solve a problem or accomplish a task. From a reader point of view, a "good" document is one that does a good job in meeting the needs of the reader.

Of course, the needs of readers—as well as their backgrounds, points of view, and interests—vary tremendously. One of the advantages of an open source, Wiki-type document is that readers can help to make the documents "better." They can edit existing documents and add new documents.

To edit or author a document in the IAE-pedia, you must be logged into the IAE-pedia. Take a look at the menu line at the top of an IAE-pedia page. Near the right end of this menu are buttons for logging in and logging out. In you want to write a new article or edit an existing article, you must b logged in. The first time you log in you will need to provide a user name, a password of your own choice, and an email address. After this first log in has been successfully completed, than subsequently you will be able to log in by just using your user name and password.

The IAE-pedia documents are of varying length. However, shorter tends to be better than longer. Authors should assume that the audience is not an expert in the topic area of a document or in the general area of Information Age Education. "Deep" research articles are more suited for publication in a research journal than they are for publication in this IAE-pedia.

Additional Advice to Authors and Editors

Before you start doing heavy editing of existing IAE-pedia documents or adding your own documents, I hope that you will read Meeting IAE Information Needs. This document contains some insights into writing books, articles, and snippets to help meet the learning and information needs of others.

If you want to write an article for the IAE-pedia, take a look at almost any book or article that you or others have already written. Analyze it from a point of view of people living in our current world and who are preparing themselves for life in what this changing world will bring during their lifetimes. Then write about what informal and formal education might be helpful, and how to help people achieve this education.

When specifically asked about it, most people are able to respond with ideas about how to improve our educational system. In addition, there has been a lot of informal and formal research. Funding agencies have funded lots of research studies that have led to scholarly reports and to articles in peer reviewed journals.

I have spent my entire professional career working as a teacher, teacher of teachers, researcher, writer, and in other related activities. I have given considerable thought about ways to improve out educational system. My orientation is toward ideas that make effective use of educational research, make effective use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) results and tools, and make effective use of our growing knowledge and understanding of brain science.

It is obvious that ICT hardware and software cost money. Indeed, many of the successful ideas for improving education cost money. For example, ongoing and extensive staff development is expensive. Cutting class sizes is expensive.

Thus, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about what we can do with our current level of educational resources. One idea that appeals to me is changing our overall educational system so that it gives more power and responsibility to students and to teachers.

To continue this example, suppose that starting in the earliest levels of formal education, we included a major goal of helping students learn that what they are learning empowers them, that they need to learn to make responsible use of this steadily increasing power, and that they need to take increasing responsibility for their learning. These are simple ideas, and we already devote some efforts to achieving this goal. We could be doing much better.

In thinking about empowering teachers, I am reminded of the following tidbit that I see from time to time:

“Rule No. 1: Use your own good judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules." (Bruce, Jim, and John Nordstrom, co-presidents of Nordstrom department stores, in the employee handbook.)

Contrast this with the myriad of rules, regulations, requirements, and other dis-empowering aspects of the work environment that teachers face. Our society is willing to give teachers the very high responsibility of educating our children. However, we intervene (usually with good intentions) in ways that I believe decrease the power and effectiveness of teachers.

ICT provides knowledge and tools that empower its users. I have spent much of my professional career exploring roles of ICT in teaching and learning. There is huge potential for better empowering both students and teachers through use of ICT. This is a continuing theme in the books and articles that I write, and in the presentations that I give. I hope that people adding to and editing this IAE-pedia will pay special attention to the steadily increasing potentials of ICT to empower students, teachers, and all other people.

Template for an Article

Here is a suggested general outline or template for an article-length document. You are not required to use this outline. Moreover, may documents do not readily fit into this format. Feel free to use your own best common sense!

  1. Title. Keep it short, but make it descriptive. Note that the title of an article, or a shortened form of it, will typically be used in the name of the file containing the article. Thus, for example, the article name British Library of Political and Economic Science is accessed in the Wikipedia using the filename http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library_of_Political_and_Economic_Science.
  2. Page heading and Table of Contents. Open a typical existing page for editing. Copy the three lines of code from the top of this page and paste it into the top of the page you are creating.
  3. Abstract or short summary, typically not exceeding 100 words in length. If the document has a quite specific targeted audience (such as parents who are home schooling their children or teachers of preservice elementary school teachers), then include this in the abstract or short summary. A great many readers will not read beyond this initial part of the document.
  4. Introduction. This includes the purpose of the document—the problem or situation it addresses and why this topic is being addressed. (This information might also be in the Abstract. A certain amount of redundancy is certainly all right.) It also briefly discusses background knowledge that is being assumed. Remember, readers construct new knowledge and understanding based on what they already know and understand.
  5. Body of the document. This may be divided into sections and subsections.
  6. Conclusions and recommendations. Your document should tend to be action oriented—helping the readers to do things that will improve our overall informal and formal education system. Conclusions and recommendations can be built in throughout the document. Even then, it is desirable to include a summary section.
  7. References. It is both appropriate and desirable that the document include built-in links to supportive material. In addition, commonly a document will include citations to materials that may or may not happen to be available on the Web. All of these citations should be collected together in the references section and presented in some commonly accepted citation style. If a citation is to material not available on the Web, it is often desirable to include a "See also" link to Web-based relevant material written by the author cited.
  8. At the bottom of the article, you are strongly encouraged to put in a section titled Author or Authors and list your name.

If you have questions, feel free to contact David Moursund: moursund@uoregon.edu.

Some Suggestions to Educational Philanthropists

Here are two quite different approaches to improving our educational system:

1. Do more of what we have been doing, and do it better.

This approach has served us well in the past hundred years. Compared with the beginning of the 20th century or compared with the middle of the 20th century, we are educating many more students to a much deeper level. We have made progress in addressing problems of discrimination against women and minorities. We have greatly increased the number of students going on to post secondary education. WE have made progress in setting standards for teacher certification. We have also made great progress in schooling special needs children and under served populations. The Head Start program provides a good example.

Special education has received a substantial amount of increased attention during the past century. The work of various stakeholder groups involved with children having special needs has led to U.S. Federal legislation, funding at the federal level, and funding at the state levels to help address some very important educational problems.

This can be compared and contrasted with how the United States has done in addressing the needs of Talented and Gifted (TAG) students. There has been no Federal legislation and little federal funding for this group. States vary widely in their definitions of what constitutes a TAG student and their levels of funding for TAG students.

A large amount of philanthropic giving is direct toward doing "more of the same" in our educational system. There are huge unmet needs. The ongoing unmet needs are great enough so that they easily can use many times the yearly philanthropic contributions to education.

Philanthropists can find many resources that help them contribute wisely to our "traditional" informal and formal educational systems. Improving Public Education: A Guide for Donors to Make a Difference, provides an excellent example. It includes a primer on the U.S. education system and a list of eight principles for effective educational grant making.

Many philanthropic organizations have done their own studies and developed their own recommendations on opportunities to improve education in their own communities. An excellent example is provided by the 2007 Oregon Community Foundation document Opportunities and Options in Oregon Education Philanthropy.

2. Push the envelope; think outside the box.

This approach is a deliberate effort to break out of the current paradigms of informal and formal education. Wise innovators do research on and pilot implementation of new ideas, and then do wide-scale implementation of those that show the most promise. This work includes reducing or eliminating barriers to such improvements.

If such ideas interest you, I recommend that you read about The natural Learning Research Institute. It is a not for profit organization dedicated to researching and introducing natural learning into education at all levels. Its Website includes a report on a special project How To Make Educational Philanthropy More Productive.

In addition, spend some time reading Information Age Education materials. A number of the articles and books point to new directions to better prepare students for their futures in our rapidly changing world. For example, see:

Many people feel that the best approaches to improving education include a combination of ideas from (1) and (2) given above.

A 2005 video (19 minutes) from the George Lucas Foundation provides an excellent example of combining the two approaches. As the years go by, some of the technology you see in this video will appear quaint. However, the basic ideas endure.

Note to Potential Donors

See Donors.

Author or Authors

The Information Age Education Wiki was set up by Ken Loge with content provided by David Moursund at the end of July 2007.

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