Here’s a quick summary of interesting things that I’ve been posting on my facebook page recently that are no less relevant to this blog.

Here’s an interesting article looking at the Summerhill School through the experiences of former students. The Summerhill School was opened 90 years ago by A. S. Neill and is still operating today. The school is based on the notion that learners do best when they are in control of their learning. This is widely recognized today and many educators try to find ways to integrate that thinking in their classrooms. The Summerhill School, however, uses this thinking as their point of departure and is still regarded as very innovative in that regard.

I have often complained that people writing about the Finnish approach to education, in particular US authors, fail to identify the real significance of what sets Finnish education apart from education in other countries. This is primarily because of the apparent tendency of these authors to adopt a defensive, and often apologetic, stance regarding education in their own countries. For example, US authors have often dismissed the notion that the US can gain something from studying Finnish education because in the US they have to deal with such significant diversity as opposed to the largely homogenous Finns. Here is a remarkably objective article on Finnish education that especially highlights the fact that Finns do, indeed, have to deal with considerable diversity in some schools and regions. What the article fails to mention, and I have often emphasized, is that despite these instances of schools and regions that differ from the norm in Finland, the most remarkable aspect of Finland’s outcomes on international student assessments is that there is almost no variation between schools and regions.

It’s been almost ten years since Marc Prensky coined the term “digital natives” to describe modern youth who have grown up not knowing a society without the Internet and other information and communication technologies that affect societies today. Prensky contrasted this generation with the “digital immigrants” who have had to adapt to a world that is very different than the one they grew up with, including most adult teachers. The suggestion is that our youth are being taught by people who are not nearly as technologically savvy as their students. While this is an undeniably astute observation by Prensky, the problem is that he didn’t really offer up much empirical evidence to support his categorization. More recent research suggests that the so-called “digital natives” display far less technological prowess than Prensky suggests (see for ex. Bennet, Maton & Kervin, 2008). Here is a link to new research that suggests that digital natives lack rudimentary Internet-based information seeking skills, which raises anew questions about how tech-savvy they really are.

References:
Bennett, S., Maton, K. & Kervin, L. (2008). The “digital natives” debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5), 775-786.