There is a university that most of us have never heard of, unless you have reason to, or come from a place near by; it is called the University of Moratuwa. At one point in time it was known as the Ceylon College of Technology. If from Sri Lanka, certainly if from Sri Lanka, you will know of the many prizes students from this university have won in international competitions organised by the likes of Google and Microsoft. And one reason for it is Arthur C Clarke, who was the
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Across the world, educators and thought leaders in education as asking themselves what is in store for education at all levels – from kindergarten through K12 and on to higher education. There are websites for all kinds of occasions and concerns. There are policy debates. Concerns with technology combine with concerns for organizational learning. One thing is that educators are faced with invitations and pressures to change; “innovation” is the going term. But innovate what? Your own teaching practice? Your institution? Your institute? Your institution’s collaborative culture? No one really
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A beagle – aka The Red Baron – often gets it right without even trying. Unlike the blues brooder himself – Charlie Brown – the beagle beats with an attitude — he knows how not to spend time or a dime on what you can´t change. So, here is one for me; yesterday at a meeting in Oslo, my research group Future Learning Lab got the endorsement of the ABELIA in the Norwegian Trade Organisation for our June 2016 generally rather ambitious conference. It was a good meeting. It mattered to us that Abelia
Read More[fb_button] As the Paris talks on climate change receives global media attention, I am reminded by the New York Times this morning of how powerful a news narrative can be once the global frame of reference is melded with the personal accounts of people hit by consequences.In this particular NYT story, three features stand out, one obviously being the theme of climate change itself. The second theme is the way the New York Times breaks new ground as a US newspaper by following the unfolding of a post-Barack Obama political
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Last year living close by, I found this place because they play classical music. It’s the usual set-up in Berkeley, as in a lot of other places across this country: A bunch of people sitting at tables with one computer each, hacking away, and drinking coffee or tea while enjoying the benefits of free internet. Traffic on the outside. Traffic on the inside. It’s not your internet cafe of the 1990’s. Everyone brings their own computer these days. All these kids have broadband at home, so it’s something else. It has to
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About a week into my current trip to Palo Alto and Berkeley, I find myself sitting in a place I know all too well: Peet’s Coffee House on University Avenue in Palo Alto — the heart of Silicon Valley. The first one for me, way back in 2008 when I first came here. And countless visits since moving home, moving back, and then moving home again, in the summer of 2015. Here today, in Berkeley tomorrow — and most likely I will find my way to the original Peet’s Coffee
Read MoreNotes from the classroom: The importance of being there A lecture with my international students sums up this week, for me. I teach a course in global political communication. I have about eight different nationalities in my class. And this week we were to talk about how the international media frame and cultivate the theme of “global survival issues”; like poverty, climate change, ethnic class division and locked-in despair. Does it matter how the news media report on these challenges? Europe is on fire with refugee challenges. We all sort of tend
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Exited to plan for the upcoming BETT conference in Mexico City, where I will be doing two plenary talks to an audience unfamiliar to me: Spanish-speaking teachers and education managers. The notes are here, and by way of a few small points: [dg ids=”898,899″] How can one link the discussion of learning, technology and globalisation to the UN Global Development Goals? How should we think about that? From the rosy red to the realistically reliable – what does the research literature really say about these sorts of things? Is there
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Coming to California, and then just never leaving…. The story repeats itself all the time: You live here in the Bay Area and you meet nice people, talkative people. As today, when I walked with my family down by the Alameda beaches in the Bay, looking at the occasional swimmer, surfer and bird celebrating the last days of April. This is a wonderful place to do so. But I approach this guy working on his gear to get ready for the mounting winds. He´s from France, it appears. He is
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