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Being Global in the Information Age

(This entry is part of a series by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's VP of education strategy, in which he reflects on technology and education as he travels around the world to meet with innovative education leaders and researchers, government leaders, and Blackboard clients who are experimenting in e-Learning and changing the education landscape.)

Unfortunately, being global in the information age seems to require way too much travel.  For those of us coming into consciousness about our carbon footprint, staying out of the skies is a good thing.  When the chance arose to participate in a global higher education conference in my hometown, I was overjoyed.

Monterey, California is an unusual place by Western U.S. standards.  As early as 1542, Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo was dispatched from New Spain, now Mexico, to map the California coastline.  He was followed 60 years later by Sebastián Vizcaíno, who named Monterey and Carmel.  In subsequent years, Monterey, in succession, was a Spanish, Mexican and then U.S. town.  In 1846, it became California’s original state capital, the site of the first brick structure in California, adjacent to the Spanish style Custom’s House and the State’s first theater.

With this fitting European, Latin American and North American setting, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, www.miis.edu, and its new affiliate, the internationally minded Middlebury College, held the first Connect-Ed international education conference, www.connectedconference.org.  With attendees from 24 nations and Monterey’s own higher education institutions – the Defense Language Institute*, the Naval Post Graduate School* and California State University Monterey Bay* – the conference became a soul-searching experience, to find out what the heart of higher education should be in the globalized world.

The New Education Agenda

(This entry is part of a series by Gordon Freedman, Blackboard's VP of education strategy, in which he reflects on technology and education as he travels around the world to meet with innovative education leaders and researchers, government leaders, and Blackboard clients who are experimenting in e-Learning and changing the education landscape.)

E-Learning is part of a larger set of changes in higher education globally, both in practice and in policy formation.  In this entry, “The New Education Agenda,” I aim to examine these changes from a traditional education point of view, and toward an education point of view that is more flexible, transportable, and interactive.

One can argue that the first level of technology revolution is simply to automate or translate what existed in a previous form into newer technologies.  The next level is often described as a departure, where more efficiency is brought to the previous form, but the functions are similar.  The final level, the level of innovation, is where the original objectives are met and, hopefully, substantially exceeded, but the means, or technology, is no longer the same.

E-Learning, in the first instance, was very much the conversion of distance or correspondence courses translated into Web-based courses or the extension of class-based materials onto the World Wide Web.  It was a matter of taking text and graphics and adding minimal functionality and moving these online.

Today’s e-Learning is in the second phase, that of efficiency and expediency, where what was done in the traditional classroom is expanded into e-Learning formats that either, one, extend the classroom; two, create a blended model of courses a student attends physically while studying, collaborating, and building projects online; or, three, move to fully online distance education courses.  These are the three common online modalities.

However, we are now on the border of the third level, that of innovation and departure from previous forms.  How will this final level materialize and in what ways?

Reflections on eLearning Lisboa 2007

(This journal covers my travels, meetings, and reflections about technology and education around the world with education and government leaders, education researchers and innovators, and Blackboard clients experimenting with changing the education landscape.)

Lisboa, Portugal | October 15, 2007

It was 10 a.m. in the ancient capital of Portugal.  Several kilometers from the place on the river where Vasco de Gama and others launched their voyages of discovery centuries ago, eLearning Lisboa 2007 was about to launch.  In a modern glass and steel structure, the Congress Center, a conference with well over 1,000 people attending from Portugal and across Europe came to life.  This was the fourth major European Union conference on education.

eLearning Lisboa 2007 was planned as Portugal takes over the presidency of the European Union.  Across the EU, there are a handful of important initiatives that allow the European members to coordinate and integrate discussions about innovation in education.  E-Learning is seen as a part of the important process of bringing together learning standards and processes, using technology as a lever for social change.