Distance Learning Alternative for Mandarin Chinese

Yesterday, we met with Carol Woolbright, Greenbush IDL coordinator, to discuss distance learning needs. During the meeting Carol mentioned President Bush’s ‘Strategic Language Initiative’ and the push to teach these languages K-12. Currently, Mandarin Chinese is offered over the IDL network for high school students. Greenbush will be adding an after school program geared towards 3rd thru 5th graders this year.

For those wishing to learn Chinese on their own, there are podcasts available – ChinesePod. Additional resources are available for those willing to pay a subscription fee.

• ChinesePod: Great Example of Small Niche Web Business — Read/Write Web Blog

In the Midst of Change

We are living in the midst of change – change from an industrial society to one built on information – information that is being created and transmitted faster than we can imagine. This ability to quickly transmit information has allowed China, India and other countries to develop businesses and industries that capitalize on this, thus removing boundaries. In his book, The World is Flat, Ian Jukes discusses the implications of a boundary-less society. Using concepts from the book, Karl Fisch developed a powerpoint for a back-to-school inservice in August 2006 titled “Did You Know.” This thought-provoking video should spur discussion on how education needs to move into the 21st century – or become Education2.0 or Learning2.0. Below are excerpts from the end of version 2 of the video:

We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking when we created them.” Albert Einstein

Did you know there are students in China, Austria, Bangladesh and the USA who remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create, communicate, collaborate on projects everyday.

• Are our students doing this?
• How are we helping our students become literate in the 21st century?
• Do we have the resources and training necessary to prepare our students for the 21st century? If not, what do we need?

Additional questions from the Dangerously Irrelevant blog:

• What should we expect high school graduates to be able to do in this new era?
• What should we be doing to help K-12 educators make the transition to this new world?
• How can we tap into students’ existing knowledge and skills in this area?
• What kinds of supports are schools going to need to become 21st century learning organizations and how are we going to provide them?

So where do we start?