Mind on Fire Critical Thinking Exercise

Introduction

Due to high demand for a well educated generation, Brown and Alder emphasizes on the implication of education from Thomas Friedman’s word ‘flat world’ where it is clearly pointed out that all societies in the globally have the potential to interconnect with each other and be competitive. They give some examples from a well educated workforce with advanced skills that will be able to create new ideas (Brown and Alder 2008). This well trained, and skilled work force has to be created from university, and as Sir John Daniel points in Brown and Alder (2008), there is a need to increase the number of universities. This move is supported by Brown and Adler (2008) where they address the same issue by suggesting that, in the 21st, it is not only the issue of building more physical campuses that will ensure a well educated society is created but also there is a need to improve on teaching and learning methods. This clearly shows that the education system has to change drastically not just by putting up buildings but expanding and introducing modern learning methods.

Initiatives

Several measures have been put in places to meet the demands in the evolving education system. These include use of internet as a global platform (West and West, 2009). According to Brown and Adler (2008), this involves creating an Open Educational Resources Movement that was started by MIT in 2001, and Open Courseware initiatives in which there will be a culture of open sharing of the content, which will be freely contributed and distributed with few restrictions (2008). This move aimed at ensuring that there is complete interaction where student can work in groups rather than individually and end up learning from each other. Apart from these, several other social networks’ such as Wikipedia, blogs and many others have vastly grown.

Learning 2.0

Learning 2.0 can be seen as a form of internet based education programs where a collective community based education system is applied where there is mutual sharing between student, teachers and administrator. This type of learning is said to be internet based where one can access information though websites tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging system among others where professional learning community (PLC) is applied. This form of learning gives an open opportunity where a student can easily get the required information without necessary making any physical appearances in a classroom. One can access information at any time and at any place if he/she is connected to the internet and has an access to digital systems and machines (Brown and Adler, 2008). These sites are user friendly, and we can see this from Brown and Adler (2008) where they state that these learning materials can be found be found by just “joining niche communities where there are distributed cognitive apprenticeship opportunities”.

Social learning

In using a social network tool like twitter, facebook, classmates, blogs among others, one is able to post a message to the intended group through which it is delivered electronically, and an immediate response is possible is also being applied in the education system. This is referred social learning. According to brown and Adler (2008), a teacher can bring out full legitimate participation by creating a site where student subscribed and interlinked each other works. Today, “many people read to student blog and subscribed…indicating that students are plugging into the international community…”. This shows how the learning 2.0 and social learning has grown and expanded globally in the recent past (Brown and Adler, (2008).

References

Brown. S. L. and Adler. P. R. (2008). Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 43, no. 1 (2008): 16–32

West, J. A. & West, M. L. (2009).Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write web. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.