“Giant Campus, the nationally recognized leader in innovative technology education programs for youth and adults, today announced the availability of full-time enrollment with Giant Campus of Washington, a public and tuition-free online school program of Columbia Tech High School in the White Salmon Valley School District. Giant Campus of Washington is accredited with the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools (NAAS), and is the first online school in Washington state to offer both core curriculum and elective concentrations in digital arts, computer science, and business & innovation to Washington high school students statewide.”

Full Giant Campus Press Release can be downloaded here…

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I just finished viewing a very intriguing presentation by Jesse Schell. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and he runs a game design/development firm as well. The main point of the video talks about why social gaming like Facebook’s FarmVille and Mafia Wars is so popular. Roughly 19 minute into the presentation he mentions Lee Sheldon, a professor at the Indiana University. Instead of giving grades for every assignment he gives experience points (XP) and you can “level up” to an A.

I find this thinking absolutely fascinating. For me, my undergrad program was not very interesting and you have to figure out how each graded items. What IF university was one big point system? Then the students could use those points for items from the school’s bookstore or an apple from the cafe. I think this could really add an interactive and engaging element that hasn’t traditional being in higher education.

Watch the video for yourself…

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While this may not be a popular idea among the majority of educators, I think many should take note and consider many of the ideas Leo presents here.

Our culture lies. They say they want to encourage and reward individuality and creativity, but in practice they try to hammer down the pointy parts, and shame off the different parts.” – Sandra Dodd

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

Going through the traditional school system (in California, Washington and Guam) was never my favorite thing as a kid, but as a parent, I’ve grown to realize that the whole system is upside down.

Not the system of any particular state or nation, but system of education as a concept.

Traditionally, schools use this model:

1. Decide on what kids need to know to prepare them for adulthood.
2. Prepare a curriculum based on this.
3. Give students a schedule based on this curriculum.
4. Have educated teachers hand them the info they need, and drill them in skills.
5. The student reads, memorizes the info, learns the skills, and becomes prepared.
6. Students must follow all rules or be punished. This is actually more important than the info and skills, although it’s never said that way.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a great model. Mostly because it’s based on the idea that there is a small group of people in authority, who will tell you what to do and what you need to know, and you must follow this obediently, like robots. And you must not think for yourself, or try to do what you want to do. This will be met with severe punishment.

This is ideal if you’re going to be a corporate employee, and need certain skills in order to work for the corporation — mostly skills of obedience, actually. This isn’t ideal for the workplace of the coming decade, when people are less likely to be employed by a large corporation, and more likely to work for themselves. And have to think for themselves. And figure out, for themselves, what they want to do. And learn new things for themselves, without a teacher.

Things are changing faster than ever before. Every month, new technology is announced that alters the way people work, or will work in the future, and we need to be able to learn and adapt to this ever-changing landscape.

How are we to do that, or how are our children to learn that, if they have no authority telling them what they need to know, or how to learn, or what to do?

People often grow up to be competent learners, and achieve great things, after going through the traditional school system. But this is in spite of the system, not because of it. We are pretty adaptable people, inherently curious, and we can learn without an authority, but the current school system tries to beat this down. It usually fails to some degree, but to the degree it succeeds, it harms people.

Schools fail not because they don’t impart knowledge or skills, but because they kill curiosity, smother excitement for learning, club down with a furious brutality our desires to be independent, to think for ourselves, to learn about things that actually interest us.

“I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays, and have things arranged for them, that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.” - Agatha Christie

But Teachers are Great
Yes, I agree, they are. My wife was a middle school teacher, of English, and she worked tirelessly with her students’ interests at heart. She really wanted to teach them to love reading, and did everything in her power to do so. Unfortunately, she was frustrated by the authoritarian nature of school administration, and left. She now homeschools our kids, and is trying to give them the freedom to learn on their own.

My grandmother was a teacher for decades. My aunt is a teacher, first of elementary and middle schools, now of children in a juvenile detention center, and is wonderful at getting kids to love reading. My father is an artist teaching others to love art, and to do it well. I love teachers, and have the highest respect for them.

I just think they’re in a system that doesn’t work. That cannot work, given the nature of what the world has become.

How can we prepare children for a future we cannot foresee? How do we know what skills they will need, what knowledge will be important, in 10 years, or 15? We have no idea what the world will be like then. I sure don’t. Do you? Does anyone know how people will be working 15 years from now?

I submit this is impossible. And what’s more, it always has been impossible. The workplace now is vastly different than it was when I was a lad in shortpants three decades ago running around in the schoolyard, wiping snot from my nose and learning about the Cold War. People then didn’t have computers in the workplace, at least not most of them, and those who did have computers didn’t have anything resembling what we have today. Most people used electric typewriters, and fax machines weren’t in offices yet. Fax machines.

So yes, I love teachers, and think they are incredible at what they do. What I think they need to do, though, is not be teachers, but facilitators.

Don’t direct learning, because when students grow up they won’t be directed in their learning, they’ll be self-taught. Think about it: when you learn things today, as an adult, do you learn from a teacher, or do you learn things on your own? And isn’t learning on your own more fun? Don’t you love learning new things? Doesn’t that make the learning stick with you for longer than when you had to memorize things in school?

What we learn in school isn’t nearly as important as how we learn, because how to learn is the lesson of school.

“The founding fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on their parents. So they provided jails called school, equipped with tortures called education.” - John Updike

How to Learn
And the way we’re taught to learn is as receivers of information, non-thinkers. Follow the rules. Read pages 100-132. Do the exercises. Memorize the information. Spit it out in a test. Do this project, because we tell you to, not because it’s fun or interesting.

The way we need to be taught to learn is completely different. It’s this: learn about what interests you, gets you curious, gets you excited. Figure out where to get the information you need. Read about it, talk to someone about it, find out about it. Try it. Do it, make mistakes. Figure out how to correct the mistakes. Figure out how to solve the problems you encounter. Repeat.

In other words, find problems that interest you, and figure out how to solve them.

Sometimes, you’ll have to solve problems that aren’t so interesting, just to solve problems that do interest you. That’s OK. That’s how things work.

And here’s a secret: we already know how to do this. From birth. This method of learning is innate in all of us. It’s built in.

When a toddler wants to do something, like get a stash of chocolate you’ve hidden on top of the fridge, he’ll figure it out. He’ll find ways to move a chair to the fridge, or climb up onto a counter near the fridge, in order to get the candy. Along the way he’ll learn a thing or two about cabinet doors and fridge doors and why you shouldn’t lean too far in one direction on a chair if you don’t want to fall and get bruises.

When a kid wants to play a video game, she’ll learn things like how to set up and turn on the PS3, how to navigate menus, how to get started with the game, how to convince mother that she’ll clean her room later and that her homework is pretty much all done so that she can play the game now.

Kids know how to solve problems, when they want to do something.

We don’t need to teach them to learn. We need to get out of their damn way.

And that’s the problem with schools. They can’t motivate kids to learn, because they’re forcing it. They’re trying to impart on them a rigid system of authority that kids naturally rebel against. In fact, this is the main problem kids face, and they come up with all kinds of incredibly creative ways to solve it, from skipping school and smoking pot to drawing incredible doodles in notebooks instead of listening to a history lecture to finding ingenius ways to communicate with peers, through technologies like texting and iPhones and through old technologies like passing notes and so on.

Creativity isn’t dead in our kids. It’s alive, but it’s being marshaled to beat the forces that are beating them down.

“No use to shout at them to pay attention. If the situations, the materials, the problems before the child do not interest him, his attention will slip off to what does interest him, and no amount of exhortation of threats will bring it back.” - John Holt

Turn Education on Its Head
So how to prepare our kids for tomorrow? Better people than I have written on this. Look up Unschooling — it’s already been invented, and it’s what I’d recommend.

It’s pretty much just getting out of the way of kids. Let them learn about what they want to learn about, and you know what? They’ll actually care about what they’re learning, because they chose it themselves. They’ll get excited about things, something schools usually fail to achieve.

They’ll learn how to deal with the delicious problem of freedom, a problem most kids don’t have these days. They’ll get some hands-on, down-and-dirty experience with autonomy, something they’ll have in spades as adults.

But what if they watch TV or play video games all day? What if they aren’t interested in math or science and never learn them? What if they’re totally unprepared for the workplace?

These are newbie questions in the world of unschooling, and I won’t answer them all here. You’ll have more, in the comments, I’m sure. I’m not the guy to answer those questions. Google unschooling and read up, because many smarter people have answered all your questions and more.

I’ll just say a couple things. One, we need to relax and not look at childhood as a time when every minute needs to be filled up with rigid rules and learning. It’s a time that should be enjoyed, and kids should play, and in playing they’ll learn. They’ll learn to play well and work well with each other. They’ll learn how to figure things out for themselves. They’ll learn to love the lovely freedom and its associates, autonomy and responsibility and choice and time management and, yes, passion.

Two, remember what we talked about above: we have no idea what the workplace of the future will be, so stop worrying about preparing them for that. In fact, stop worrying so much. Let kids learn how to learn, and learn how to be excited about things. That will prepare them for the future.

Three, also realize that we don’t need to be hands-off. We can be hands-on, if we’re facilitators instead of directors or dictators. We can help kids find things they’re interested in, expose them to worlds of fun (like science and math), teach them games that they might like, help them solve problems so they’ll learn how to do it on their own, guide them to resources and people who will give them mountains of information. Be there for them, as guides.

This is a huge topic, and one that I can’t adequately cover in one post. I’ll do another post sometime, talking about homeschooling and unschooling, and how we do it and how to make it work for you. But for today, I just wanted to throw out some thoughts on schooling, and get you riled up a bit perhaps. We could all use some good riling now and then, I think.

“To trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves…and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” - John Holt

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Last night I stumbled across are very useful (if you are learning Japanese) eLearning AIR app called, NihongoUp. While I’m not learning Japanese, I installed the free trial version of the app and discovered it has a few of educational mini-games to help improve your typing speed on a Japanese keyboard, sentence structure and vocabulary.

They have a free trial version as well as a full version (only $5).

Quality educational tools like NihongoUp are the future of eLearning 3.0 and the price point couldn’t be any better.

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Rapid eLearning is training that can be designed, developed and distributed quickly. Tony Karrer on his blog eLearning Technology says it is, “rapid creation of courseware by people who are less experienced with courseware development particularly subject matter experts” and he is completely right on the money.

Most organizations turn to rapid eLearning to quickly fill a need for training or replacing classroom instruction. But keeping in line with my eLearning 3.0 Wish List for 2009… What is the TRUE cost of Rapid eLearning?

Lets do a brief evaluation of the Pros v. Cons:

PROS:

• Fast time to market.
• Usually pretty cost effective.
• Can be created by subject matter experts (SMEs) instead of teams.

CONS:

• 99% of the time its not very engaging.
• SMEs are not always the best trainers.
• SMEs are usually not designers and their presentations show this.

Now ask yourself the question, “What is the TRUE cost Rapid eLearning?”

I’m a firm believer in Quality over Quantity. Yes the price point and timing are incredibly important but if the training is hurriedly slammed together and its not very engaging… how much do you think the users will retain?

Knowledge retention is the primary goal of training.

Granted, there are a few good examples of rapid eLearning, but the majority of people using these tools don’t have the first clue about quality/engaging eLearning.

What are you plans to make your training programs better in 2009?

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So I’ve decided my goal for 2009 is to try to create a working demos of each of the items on my eLearning 3.0 Wish List and post them here on this blog.

Also in 2009, you will start seeing interviews with creative and innovative people in eLearning leaders, sharing their concepts and ideas with you as well.

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So here is my Wish List for 2009:

1. Quality verse Quantity – I’m hoping people/companies get away from the crappy voice-over-powerpoint training and focus on more engaging and better quality eLearning.
2. Edutainment – I think the US military is actually doing something right… they are using video game like systems to train their troops, saving a good amount of money and time.

• Air Force Uses Interactive Gaming Technology for Training
• Army is to Spend $50 Million in Edutainment for Troops

3. Confidence-based Learning – I would like to see better testing methods rather than just quizzes/tests. People can memorize facts all day long in their short term memory and recall them, but what if we actually made them learn and apply.
4. Social/Collaborative Learning – as Michael mentioned web-conferencing and tools like Yammer, Twitter, Ning, Facebook, etc… I think we are going to be a very large part of eLearning over the next year. A nifty example is Supercool School… people volunteer to teach a class and then member of this Facebook app/group take the class.
5. Mobile eLearning – With the iPhone, Blackberrys, Android and other mobile devices becoming more popular the next logical step is to turn these into on-the-go training resources. Over the next year I think we will see more of this.
6. Distance Education – With the global economic downturn, I think traditional universities are going to be pushed more to eLearning/Distance Education. Distance education is more profitable than traditional methods, but the quality is much lower. So if the quality was up-to-par with classroom training I think it would be a logical and viable solution for more universities.
   • Why Distance Education in a Rough Economy?

2009 is going to be an exciting year for the digital education realm.

Tell me your predictions or wish list!

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“Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio — Air Force Research Laboratory’s researchers at Mesa, Ariz., unveiled the technological potential of its gaming research and development project publicly Dec. 1 during the 2008 Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in Orlando, Fla.”

This is another great example of military using video gaming technology for training purposes. It cost 100’s of millions of dollars to fuel planes and teach pilots how to fly, acquire targets, etc… whereas it may cost a couple of million to build a training game that is just as effective.

These types of flight simulators have been around for a long time in the gaming environment, but its very positive that the Air Force now see the value of eLearning.

Does this classify as eLearning 3.0? I think its a nice fit.

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“World of Warcraft, move over. The Army is preparing to invest millions into combat training games and systems, in a move to prepare its soldiers for battle.

The Army is investing $50 million into video combat training games and gaming systems over the next five years, in a move to prepare soldiers for battle.

Darwars Ambush is one of the games currently used by the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, and Homeland Defense.”

Its amazing that the military sees the value in edutainment in a collaborative learning enviroment and is will to spend top dollar on it, but when you get to the corporate world people don’t necessarily see the value in investing in these type of technologies.

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3. eLearning 3.0 = “Edutainment”

Want a solution?
In the next version of eLearning its going to be more about “edutainment”.

3 Suggestions for eLearning 3.0:

• Add humor
• Make the training interactive.
• Build a training community, so that learning continues after the training is done.

If you need some help with this or want to bounce some ideas off me, feel free to contact me.

Image courtsey of videocrab on Flickr.

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A few of the topics that will be covered in this blog collaborative learning, edutainment, social learning, the history of eLearning, and so much more. We will post interviews with industy leaders, as well as help keep you up-to-date on news and events happening in the eLearning world.

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