TICS Educaci贸n
9 DE FEBRERO DE 2016 LAS TECNOLOGIAS APLICADAS EN LA EDUCACION TEMA DE ACTUALIDAD V铆ctor Miguel Pasten Blancas
Contenido How the Internet will disrupt higher education’s most valuable asset: Prestige ............................... 2 MIT Announces Spate of Digital Education Initiatives ........................................................................ 6 El mundo en 50 colegios innovadores ................................................................................................ 8
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How the Internet will disrupt higher education’s most valuable asset: Prestige By Michael Kinsley February 5 The writer is a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine and a contributing columnist for The Post.
A tour group walks through the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in 2012. (Elise Amendola/Associated Press)
It happened to newspapers. It happened to magazines. It happened to books. Now it’s happening to higher education: another industry thrown into turmoil and shock because its business model has been overturned by the Internet. Fifteen or 20 years ago, the newspaper industry was just awakening to the implications of moving online. At first, those implications seemed miraculous. Newspapers were already more or less monopolies in all but a half-dozen U.S. 2
cities. Now, some of their biggest expenses — for printing, for delivery, for the paper itself — were about to disappear. But as newspapers put their content online, the industry changed virtually overnight from a collection of separate geographical monopolies into one giant competitive market in which every English-language outlet competed with all the others in the entire world. Something not identical but similar is going on in the prestige corner of the highereducation industry. Start with an uncomfortable truth: The prestige of a diploma from a prestige university comes not from graduating but from getting in. Almost no one who applies to, say, Yale University is admitted, but almost everyone who gets in graduates. To maintain their prestige, these universities must limit the number of people who are admitted. The Internet makes this harder. To take the most mundane example, the biggest lecture hall on campus may hold 900 seats. That used to put a ceiling of 900 on the number of students who can take the Great Man’s famous lecture course on Jane Austen. Now, though, many thousands can watch this lecture on video. It’s not the same? Perhaps not. But it’s awfully close. Is the difference worth $200,000? Or is most of your $200,000 for four years of college tuition actually buying something else, like status, like connections, like prestige? As MOOCs (short — but not very — for massive open online courses) become more common, it will become easier and easier to get something awfully close to an Ivy League education through the Web, and it will be harder and harder for Yale to explain what it offers for all that money except a piece of paper that says you went to Yale. As the Internet chips away at the practical reasons for limiting the student population, the real reason Yale limits the size of its classes will become more obvious. The analogy to newspapers isn’t perfect. Among other things, the universities have realized from the beginning that “shovelware” — just shoveling their content onto 3
the Internet — isn’t enough. They must offer interactivity, podcasts, hyperlinks, lots of bells and whistles, including some things that probably haven’t been thought of yet. Then there are those for-profit universities with the implausible names that advertise on television and take full advantage of email, e-textbooks, online tutoring, etc. “Southern New Hampshire University” may be no threat to Yale today, but over the next decade, one or two of these companies is bound to get good, which will further raise the question of what the point of Yale is. We are much concerned these days, and rightly so, about inequality. And the focus is turning from economic inequality to broader social inequality. Frank Bruni of the New York Times wrote a column recently brandishing a study from somewhere showing — no surprise — that admission to prestigious universities is skewed to favor a self-perpetuating elite. (You know who you are.) Bruni and the report call on the United States’ elite universities to show more imagination and diversity in their admissions policies. But why reform the admissions office when you can dismantle it? Decisions about admissions to highly selective colleges are a guess about the future: Which of these kids will turn out best under our guidance? But why guess? Why not wait a few years and see? A 2014 report by a provost-convened committee at Columbia University declares in its introduction that the university’s “primary commitment” should be to “provide educational opportunities of the highest quality to students who meet our admissions standards.” By that measure, Columbia is deeply failing, since it provides educational opportunities of the highest quality to only a small fraction of those who meet its admissions standards.
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If you take one of its courses online, Columbia may give you something it calls a “Statement of Accomplishment.” Congratulations. But don’t hold out hope for a diploma. Those are for people who really went to Columbia, if you know what I mean.1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-web-will-disrupt-higher-educationsmost-valuable-asset-prestige/2016/02/05/6bddc1ee-c91e-11e5-a7b25a2f824b02c9_story.html 1
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MIT Announces Spate of Digital Education Initiatives
In an announcement made by MIT President L. Rafael Reif, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is expected to expand research programs that explore online and digital education at all levels, from pre-K through higher education, as the result of a 2014 institute-wide task force focused on the future of education. “Guided by the task force recommendations and seizing the new opportunities of integrated learning science, today we announce significant advances in several areas, under a new leadership structure,” Reif said in his letter. Expected to be included in the initiative are the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative (MITili, pronounced “mightily”), the pK-12 Action Group, an initiative geared toward the improvement of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning from pre-K through the 12th grade, as well as a program looking to improve upon faculty support within residential education and a program meant to improve continuing education programs offered by the school, reports Joshua Bolkan for The Journal. 6
The MIT pK-12 Action Group was created in an effort to offer help to existing K-12 programs at the school to increase their reach and impact. In addition, it will create new research meant to change the way in which students learn, and increase the understanding of how learning takes place. MITili will be led by Professor John Gabrieli from Brain and Cognitive Sciences in an effort to expand the school’s global online efforts. The initiative will use science to better understand how people learn, which will benefit not only students on campus, but also teacher training and those around the world learning through digital platforms. “MITili will combine research in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, economics, engineering, public policy and other fields to investigate what methods and approaches to education work best for different people and subjects,” according to a news release. “The effort will also examine how to improve the educational experience within MIT and in the world at large, at all levels of teaching.” The MITx Digital Learning Lab was also announced. A team made up of 16 MIT lecturers and postdoctoral researchers who have been trained in digital learning and acting as digital learning ambassadors within their departments, the group will collaborate with other faculty members interested in including digital content within their curriculum. The team will be expected to become liaisons to aid in the translation of MITili research into practical insights that will help to create more effective teaching methods. The school has created a new position to oversee the initiatives, the Vice President of Open Learning. Professor Sanjay Sarma, dean of digital learning, will fill the position and will report directly to Reif. Sarma will be expected to aid in the growth of the science of learning and to help to enrich education at the school through a partnership with Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart, the Office of the Dean for Undergraduate Education, and the Office of the Dean for Graduate Education. Sarma will also offer support for the program through independent funding sources. He will also be expected to continue his duties overseeing the Office of Digital Learning.2 2http://www.educationnews.org/online-schools/mit-announces-spate-of-digital-education-
initiatives/#sthash.E7mnF68w.dpuf
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El mundo en 50 colegios innovadores El psicólogo Alfredo Hernando ha viajado de España a Japón para descubrir cuáles son los mejores proyectos educativos
El niño que fue Alfredo Hernando no se parece en nada al alumno que él mismo ha encontrado, indefectiblemente, en todas las escuelas que ha visto. En su primer día de clase, con dos años, lo sacaron a un patio en el que solo vislumbraba tres grandes muros y una alcantarilla enorme sobre la que él levantaba apenas tres palmos. “¿Pero qué es esto? ¿Cómo nos pueden traer aquí?”, recuerda que pensó. Ese otro alumno, el que encuentra siempre, ni siquiera repara en el recreo. “Me ha llamado mucho la atención. En un colegio, en otro, en otro... siempre hay alumnos que se quedan en el aula y no distinguen entre el tiempo libre y el de clase”, explica.
Alfredo Hernando, investigador y creador del proyecto Escuela21. Jaime Villanueva EL PAÍS
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Hernando, de 34 años, es un investigador que ha dado la vuelta al mundo visitando colegios con proyectos innovadores, centros donde profesores a solas, con las familias o con respaldo de sus gobiernos han conseguido enseñar y apasionar a sus alumnos. Durante casi un año —con alguna pausa— este psicólogo de Aranda de Duero (Burgos) paseó por escuelas en Estados Unidos, Colombia, Perú, Chile, Brasil, Ghana, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Japón, Italia, Finlandia, España... Todo empezó, rememora, “como surgen este tipo de proyectos que unen lo vital con lo profesional”. Mientras estudiaba Psicología pensó que le interesaba más la educación que montar una clínica. También sus viajes tenían otro tono vital. En lugar de un mapa de monumentos o montañas, Hernando hizo uno de colegios innovadores a los que quería asistir. “La primera semana que pasé en Nueva York iba todas las mañanas a las ocho a ver una escuela. Y el sábado, me preguntaba: ¿Pero qué estoy haciendo?”, recuerda entre carcajadas.
Aprovechó congresos y vacaciones para visitar por su cuenta todos los seleccionados. Los llama Escuelas21 y están recopilados en un libro recién editado con la Fundación Telefónica, Viaje a la escuela del siglo XXI. Así trabajan los colegios más innovadores del mundo, que el miércoles presentó en Madrid y este jueves en Barcelona. El documento, que se puede bajar gratis en Internet y lleva ya más de 25.000 descargas, es un manual para transformar los centros y “ayudar a que todos los alumnos tengan éxito”, promete Hernando.
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El profesor danés Morten Smith-Hanse. Jaime Villanueva
En su libro recoge la experiencia de centros españoles como el centro de formación Padre Piquer de Madrid, que utiliza aulas cooperativas en las que colaboran profesores y alumnos. O elconcertado Montserrat de Barcelona, que aplica la teoría de las inteligencias múltiples de Howard Gardner, entre otras innovaciones. Es con el que Hernando se quedaría si tuviera que elegir solo uno de todos los que ha visto. Si la cuestión fuera señalar un solo docente de los cientos conocidos, elegiría a Morten Smith-Hansen, profesor de Español e Historia en Bachillerato en el centro Ørestad Gymnasium de Copenhague. Smith-Hansen, también de visita en Madrid por la presentación del libro, explica cómo trabaja. “Tengo una clase con 28 chicos, desde hijos de inmigrantes en paro a alumnos con muchos recursos por parte de la familia. Y todo lo que hay entre ambos. No tiene sentido que yo esté en mi pizarra divulgando una verdad académica que es para tres personas”. La 10
solución que encontró fue convertirse en una especie de profesor particular de cada uno de sus estudiantes con ayuda de las nuevas tecnologías. Para enseñar gramática, por ejemplo, cada alumno debe abrir un documento en la nube (un escrito compartido en red al que pueden tener acceso distintos usuarios). Allí le cuentan lo que sabe de gramática, él les responde, se abre un diálogo y consigue que cada cual mejore sobre su propia base. ¿Es fácil cambiar una escuela? Hernando considera que sí. “Hay muchos colegios con inmensas ganas de hacer cosas que te abren sus puertas. Los profesores se sienten atraídos por otros que tienen éxito con sus alumnos… Los que están generando el cambio en España son docentes que tienen interés. Mucha gente se ha dado cuenta de que necesitamos otra escuela. Ese es el primer paso. El segundo es saber cómo la queremos y esto es imparable”, explica. Y concluye con una sonrisa: “La educación está de moda”.3
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http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2016/02/03/actualidad/1454527093_941804.html
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