PierreAntoine Ullmo

Tag: open education

  • Opening up education

    'Opening up Education'
    ‘Opening up Education’

    Last week, the European Union launched its “Opening up Education” initiative.

    But what does Europe mean exactly by “opening up”? Words are sometimes worth looking at.

    Looking in the dictionary, we could understand “opening up” education to mean “spreading out” or “unfolding” education, as if the walls that constrained our classrooms for so long were about to fall down or be removed. A larger classroom should come out of the initiative, and a whole new education perspective would then open up before us.

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  • I am an education entrepreneur. I work in a garage near you.

    Education_Chalkboard

    The changes we are envisioning for the classroom may take place at this very moment, in a garage near us, and no longer in the Ministry of Education offices.

    The notion of “education entrepreneur” challenges our understanding of an education system, ruled by core curriculum standards and a cohort of dedicated civil servants that decide on behalf of the teachers, students and families what is good to be taught in the classroom and how it should be taught.

    In recent years, we have seen acclaimed professors jumping from their “academic pedestal” and into to the start-up world. Udacity – one of the reference points for MOOCs –was cofounded by a research professor at Stanford University. So was Coursera. We could read these stories as fairy tales where the professor we once knew was almost magically transformed into a CEO. But fairy tales aren’t real.

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  • When formal education turns non-formal: How big is the hole in the wall?

    Hole in the Wall Project in India
    Hole in the Wall Project in India – photo by Philippe Tarbouriech

     

    During a vision workshop held in Seville a couple of weeks ago, we had a chance to reflect upon the future of schools at the horizon 2030. Among the many topics that were addressed, two retained my attention: the degree of learner autonomy and the role of informal / non-formal education in the overall learning process. For the sake of reflection, we were asked to think creatively about the learner’s behaviour in a fully autonomous situation and in a totally informal/non-formal educative environment.

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  • Open education: “c’est du bricolage”

      Teachers’ workshop, Hanoch Piven

    Last week, I was invited to a vision workshop where experts gathered from all over Europe, organised by the European Commission’s prospective think tank – Institute for Prospective Technological Studies. It addressed the issue of school education and Open Education Resources (OER) at the horizon of 2030.

    One of the participants – Alex Beard – argued in his intervention that “teachers will be bricoleurs” and that by 2030 “adaptations, mash-ups and bricolages will be the norm”. It helped me to understand OER in a different way than its usual technology-oriented definition. I was challenged by Alex’s description of the teachers-bricoleurs “continuously using, adding to or adapting new resources for new learning needs, inviting peer-review and providing evidence of learning results”.

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  • MOOCS: from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter

     

    No time to say hello, goodbye
    No time to say hello, goodbye

    MOOCs from a historical – and magical – perspective

    “No time to say hello, goodbye”. Innovators in education are these days like the white rabbit in Alice’s adventures in Wonderland: they jump from one innovation to the other and have no time to look backwards to validate their ideas and find inspiration from the past.

    Let’s take the example of MOOCs, these “massive open online courses” that are presented as “the” solution for opening up education to all. We used to count students by the tens or hundreds in classrooms or amphitheatres. We are now designing a universal classroom with hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of students. Universities, students, professors, business angels, and policy makers have embarked on an adventure that should transform the way we learn and the way we teach.

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  • Children will revolt

    - Please teacher what did I learned today - That's a peculiar - They will ask me when I get home
    Boy – “Please, teacher, what did I learn today?”
    Teacher – “That’s a peculiar question”
    Boy – “They will ask me when I get home”

    While preparing a contribution on the future of Open Education, I discovered a dialogue between Seymour Papert and Paulo Freire that took place at the end of the 1980’s.

    Papert mentioned in his conversation with Freire a cartoon from the Punch Magazine that gives much to think about the  importance of learning vs. teaching. Papert links it to what he understands school is about, i.e.  “learning by being told” or better said “by being taught” as opposed to  “learning by exploring”. According to him, “many children are destroyed by that, strangled”. 20 years later we keep arguing upon the ways for creativity to enter the classroom. (more…)