Thursday, October 1st, 3:30-5:00pm in 252 Erickson
All around us people are learning with the aid of new technologies:
children are playing complex video games, workers are taking online
courses to get an advanced degree, students are taking courses at
commercial learning centers to prepare for tests, adults are consulting
Wikipedia, etc. New technologies create learning opportunities that
challenge traditional schools and colleges. These new learning niches
enable people of all ages to pursue learning on their own terms. People
around the world are taking their education out of school into homes,
libraries, Internet cafes, and workplaces, where they can decide what
they want to learn, when they want to learn, and how they want to learn.
The developments described above are changing how people think about education। This rethinking will take many years to fully penetrate
our understanding of the world and the society around us। To be successful,
leaders will need to grasp these changes in a deep way and bring the
government’s resources to bear on the problems raised by the changes
that are happening. They will have to build their vision of a new
education system around these new understandings. The rethinking that is
necessary applies to many aspects of education and society. We are
beginning to rethink the nature of learning, motivation, and what is
important to learn. Further the nature of careers are changing and how
people transition back and forth between learning and working. These
changes demand a new kind of educational leadership and changing roles
for government. New leaders will need to understand the affordances of
the new technologies, and have a vision for education that will bring
the new resources to everyone.
Bio: Allan Collins is Professor Emeritus of Education and Social Policy at
Northwestern University. He is a member of the National Academy of
Education, and a fellow of the American Association for Artificial
Intelligence, the Cognitive Science Society, the American Educational
Research Association, and the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. He served as a founding editor of the journal Cognitive
Science and as first chair of the Cognitive Science Society. He has
studied teaching and learning for over 30 years, and written extensively
on related topics. He is best known in psychology for his work on how
people answer questions, in artificial intelligence for his work on
reasoning and intelligent tutoring systems, and in education for his
work on situated learning, inquiry teaching, design research, and
cognitive apprenticeship. From 1991 to 1994 he was Co-Director of the US
Department of Education’s Center for Technology in Education.
