Our education policy should be shiftable

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Posted on 10th March 2009 by Judy Breck in Emerging Online Knowledge, Golden Age of Learning, Mobile Learning and Open Content

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Siftables Music Sequencer from Jeevan Kalanithi on Vimeo.

We need to walk away from the pathos of 20th century education’s demise and get every kid a pocket full of siftables. What a wonder it would be if every siftable was interfacing the internet, showing related nodes of science, history, literature — whatever a student was working on learning as he shifted incoming ideas, thinking about their relationships. For now, kids with smart phones can browse the internet for these and other subjects — though educators usually don’t let them do that at school.

The siftables are a project headed by David Merrill at the MIT Media Lab. Merrill describes them to the TED audience on a page linked other coverage. The siftables are not browsers yet, but already are powerful pedagogic devices.

A new global education that embraces the internet’s knowledge and connectivity is within our grasp. Am I being too visionary? Or is the ongoing dumping of resources into very 20th century ideas something that does not see reality?

Thanks Matt for the siftables