Ernie at Webliminal blogged Monday about the Pew report released this week. The document is essential reading, I think, but the Predictions Database at Elon University is the real cabinet of wonders: a beautifully arranged database that not only maps the development of thought concerning networked computing but does it in a way that can’t help being inspiring and provocative. Think of it as a facebook for Internet intellectuals. I add my congratulations on the great work Janna Quitney Anderson, assistant professor of communications, and students in Elon’s School of Communications have done on this project. I’ll be looking forward to Professor Anderson’s forthcoming Imagining the Internet, a book based on the the Predictions project.

You’ll find a bunch of interesting pull quotes from the Pew Report in Ernie’s blog. Here are a couple of my own favorites from the Report:

“The next decade should see the development of a more thoughtful internet. We’ve had the blood rush to the head, we’ve had the hangover from that blood rush; this next decade is the rethink” (Rose Vines. technology journalist).

Unpleasant surprises: The experts are startled that educational institutions have changed so little, despite widespread expectation a decade ago that schools would be quick to embrace change.

Startled indeed. Along those lines, it’s worth quoting some of Part 8 of the Pew Report, on “Formal Education”:

Prediction: Enabled by information technologies, the pace of learning in the next decade will increasingly be set by student choices. In ten years,
most students will spend at least part of their “school days” in virtual classes, grouped online with others who share their interests, mastery, and skills….

Many of the respondents who have had experience with teaching online said only highly motivated, mature students exhibit the ability to be successful in a learning environment in which so much responsibility is placed upon a student. Moira K. Gunn, host of public broadcasting’s Tech Nation, wrote, “I do not now, and have never, witnessed successful benefits in virtual classrooms. While the role of the teacher will change from authority figure with all the information to one-on-one educational coach, the one-teacher-one-student paradigm will remain the most effective.” Indeed, children in elementary school “still need a watchful eye and human attention,” according to one expert.

I’m not quite so pessimistic as Gunn, but I agree wholeheartedly that there’s no substitute for an attentive teacher in close contact with a student, which is why I think the idea of scalability in online learning needs careful consideration. Gains in “productivity” with commodified forms of online learning are in my view chimerical. A cognitive apprenticeship is much more than delivery and mastery of content, though they are important. Real school can’t happen unless one mind is inspired by the workings of another mind as it observes that working in process. There’s nothing like having an expert think aloud when you and the expert are in real-space together and all the channels of communication are open and ready. We need to work together to ensure that benefit is available to all citizens, not just to those who can afford it.

I’m still mulling over the idea of “student-centered learning.” At this point, I’m thinking student-centered learning is not so much about student choices as it is about genuine dialogue in which both student and teacher are invited to learn from their mutual thinking aloud. Information technologies can broaden and amplify the opportunities for mutual thinking aloud by giving us richer access to multiple modes of shared cognition. I guess.