|
August 15, 2001
Convergent Learning: Redefining The Education Experience
By Susan McLester
Poised between the past and the future, the industrial and the technological, the familiar and the unknown, educators are being challenged to reinvent, redesign, and reshape the learning experience. What will it look like?
Setting: Julia Perez's middle school science classroom. A group of students is testing the salinity of pond water using handheld devices with probe attachments and software that allows them to input data from the field. Later, they'll analyze the information back in their school's computer lab.
Meanwhile, another group clusters in comfortable chairs in a corner of her classroom, reading a textbook chapter on adaptation. Others wear headphones with microphone attachments as they navigate a CD on tropical fish and pronounce terms they're learning from an interactive glossary that toggles among three different languages. Across the room, two special-needs students use a touch screen and joystick to manipulate text and multimedia elements as they create presentations on the impact of pollution on coral reef environments.
Read more on Perez's class > > >
Read other articles from the August Issue
Send a letter to the Editor in response to this article.
|
