Reshaping Learning Frontiers of Learning Technology in a Global Cont
This edited volume presents selected papers from distinguished experts and professors in learning technologies and related fields, all of them pioneers with innovative approaches to the development of learning technologies. This book will address the main
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Emerging Dimensions of Learning Erkki Sutinen
Abstract Within the current global financial crisis, education has seemingly conflictive expectations as a producer of experts that can bring the globe back on track. One of the tensions lies between the formality and informality of education. While the formal approach emphasizes strict goal settings, accreditation and quality management, the proponents for informal learning call for flexibility and organic competence creation. Cases from K12 technology education with robots, contextual Information and Communication Technology education in developing countries and context-aware mobile learning games help to take the two approaches into real contexts. These examples open a scheme where technology can serve as a vehicle to combine the assets of formal and informal learning into a creative tension towards transformational learning.
2.1 Introduction Learning and education are generally understood as the main drivers for wealth creation and poverty reduction—the problems that the developing countries need to solve in order to progress. The motivation for developing functional education is to reach the next one billion of particularly young, illiterate, unemployed people. Ordinary methods or conventional education do not suffice for the effort. At the same time, developed countries are struggling with the aging population. With a fast changing society, the elderly need to learn to cope with the surrounding
E. Sutinen (&) School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland e-mail: [email protected]
R. Huang et al. (eds.), Reshaping Learning, New Frontiers of Educational Research, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-32301-0_2, Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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changes and new digital services that they are dependent on, and the rare young people need to get education that matches almost one-to-one with their future jobs. Much too often, the solutions for educational challenges have been hunted for using the dimensions of formal and informal learning. Formalists have believed in multiplying what they call ‘‘the best practices’’. They are a synonym to introducing quality management systems to follow up their implementations devising national tests based on standards for school achievements and using technologies for streamlining learning outcomes and even processes. An informalist develops solutions that match authentic problems, and an extremist in their field could not care less about how the students can apply their skills in foreign settings. Standardization of qualifications is not an issue. The problem is that informal and formal perspectives are not independent dimensions but represent the extremes of one dimension. In fact, the dichotomy maps the landscape of education in terms of forms. Even the contents or the spirit of learning are understood in terms of forms. From the viewpoint of integrating technology into education, the formal/informal division calls for technologies that manage a formal learning process or facilitate an inf
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