Strategic Initiative #3 of the College of Education Strategic Plan at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign calls for establishing the Ubiquitous Learning Institute: New Education Ecologies.
The proposed institute … will take an innovative approach to research on and development of teaching-learning paradigms suited to new learning ecologies, and will explore the implications of these paradigms for formal schooling, for online communities, for evolving definitions of public knowledge, and for global interconnectedness (p. 10-11).
Mary Kalantzis, Dean, and faculty propose:
To develop models of knowledge production that are context-driven, problem-focused, interdisciplinary, and application-oriented.
To examine the production of public knowledge in the academy specifically in terms
of electronic journals with the ultimate aim of making UIUC a model for the practices of academic publishing in a world of knowledge without boundaries.
To create and operate a Virtual Laboratory School (VLS) as a test bed for new pedagogies.
To explore the impact of new ways of teaching and learning on the changing ecologies of knowledge consumption and production.
To provide a dynamic, problem-focused learning environment for preparing students for jobs as researchers, consultants, and industry technicians who will continue to shape and transform the technologically mediated, socially networked environment.
The strategic plan reads more like one a business CEO would report than a traditional academic dean.
This is an aggressive reassertion of front line thinking about ways to blend advancing technologies with learning.
I’m relatively confident that this college of education will implement their strategic plan. It contains the let’s-do-it spirit that propelled that college to first rank in education in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
As they proceed, public and private education will increasingly know that this college is again a major supporter of formal learning and a designer of contemporary global ubiquitous learning.
Hang on to your Tablet PC and UMPC. Watch for progress reports. This looks like another giant step in the grand adventure of educators.