The following blog entry has been compiled for educators dealing with the implementation of digital CPD-programs in Higher Education. This script is a summary of experiences and thoughts during my past two years as a digital education consultant at the University of Oldenburg. Introduction One of my key insights from getting started in digital education was that digital education is not primarily about technology or providing sufficient staff training on hard- and software (which is,…
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Why Educators need to join the Fight for our Planet
“This world demands the qualities of youth, not a time of life, but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination. (…) Everywhere new technology and communications bring men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becoming the concerns of all. (…) Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. It is the one essential, vital quality, for those who seek to…
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How the Key-Challenge in Digital Education Is Not Primarily About Technology, but the Digital Scaffolding of Social Spaces and Self
Picture Credit: Flickr/Stanford Center for Internet and Society, CC BY-NC-SA Looking for a deeper understanding The effect of digital media on learning is the pervasive power behind the current revolution in education. Ranging from Open Educational Resources (OER) to Blended Learning Models, media profoundly transform key topics of education. Subjects such as media literacy, media education, media pedagogy, the acquisition of digital competences, the digital divide, media socialization, and e-learning, among many others, dominate educational…
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Why I left Facebook: A Letter to My Friends
Dear Friends, When I joined Facebook about eight years ago, the more tragic consequences of social networks had not arrived yet. There were no Russian trolls, there was no US voter manipulation, rigging the system for a complete madman, no Cambridge Analytica, no support of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar and no tolerating of other hate-groups since political echo chambers had not visibly arrived yet. Mark Zuckerberg never realized how he had been living in…
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John Hattie: Invisible Learning – Visible Amateur Science
A critical review on John Hatties work on 'Visual Learning'
The TPCK Model of Technological Education: Explaining Everything, Achieving Little
A critical discussion about the usefulness of the TPACK model for digital education
Why Solidarity? Notes on Social Justice
Our Natural Sense of Solidarity is Both Necessary and Compromised Our natural sense of solidarity with others is situationally compromised, no matter how self-glorifying we perceive ourselves. While we generally feel great empathy for the suffering of others such as e.g., on TV as we see children ripped apart by bombs in war zones or scrapping for food on third-world garbage landfills, we also close our eyes with ease once we are asked to pay…
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What the OECD Findings on Students’ Collaborative Problem-Solving Skills Tell Us … And What Not
Congratulations, Singapore! As one of the pioneers that have championed Problem-Based learning (PBL) in Singapore, I was delighted to see Singapore on the No.1 spot in collaborative problem-solving when the OECD (OECD, 2017) presented its results on November 21, 2017. Many years of hard work by consultants like myself and government investment into a more student-centered pedagogy have, obviously, paid off. Still, we need to be prudent on how to interpret the results since there…
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About the Methodology of Social Change
The limitations of traditional empirical research and the prospect of participatory study design
The Creative Mind: Kant, Hegel and the Complexity of Life in the 21st Century
Artwork: Through spirit’s gaze by Andrew James Campbell. Acrylic on torn paper. A4 1982. With kind permission of the artist. The source of the title is “The Spirit shall look out through matters gaze, and matter shall reveal the Spirits face” Sri Aurobindo Kant and Hegel, 2.0 When Kant postulated in a Cartesian manner that we are the children of two distinct worlds, the cognitive and the empirical, and that we can derive clear-cut conclusions…
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