THIS WEEK IN THE NEWS

This weeks edition of NGGE's paper:
Two articles are from edutopia, a site every educator (yes, that includes parents) who are interested in the direction of education in the 21st century.  
The first article, "The Role of PBL in Making the Shift to Common Core", shows how Project Based Learning (PBL) can support the Common Core Standards.  It is well known that NGGE supports the learner leading their education, not the standards.  Learners are not shy about challenging a teacher if the subject has no relevance to their learning.  Real-time, hands-on, collaborative problem solving such as PBL is such a powerful learning AND assessing tool.
The second article,  "An Unprecedented Opportunity for Educational Equity", points out what NGGE has been advocating for 2 years.   "The technological advances of online game-based instruction and the breakthroughs in neuroscience learning research bring us an unprecedented opportunity for achieving this equity and quality education nationally and internationally."  We have all the resources necessary to turn learning back over to the students, to support and mentor them as they forge their personal learning pathway.  However, these resources are scattered all over the world.  It takes much time and energy to pull the pieces together so they are organized and available to all learners.  That is the goal of NGGE and the "Universal Library for Learning".
Another article posted by Global Partnership for Education entitled "It Takes a Community to Learn" points out "250 million children – or around 40 % of all primary school age children in the world – either, never enroll in school, fail to make it to the fourth year of their education or, if they do manage this, are not learning to read even basic sentences." Schools are no longer today's learning environment, the world is.  And as such, it takes the world working together to support all learners.

Gaming Education: What stands in the way?

Who or what is standing in the way of changing education for the learners and using their tools to do it? Not the parents of today, and perhaps not the teachers either. It all comes back to the testing. As long as testing continues to lead learning, learning will continue to decline. But it doesn't have to be this way. NGGE.org supports John Holt 's concept of "unschooling".  Read this article from EmergingEdTech.
Next Generation Global Education believes the learner should drive his/her instruction by developing a Personalized Learning Plan that educators and parents can support, coach, mentor each to achieve their individual success.

Saving Students From A Shattered System: The agenda of children, or how to piss off everyon...

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