One of the characteristic features of 21st century learning (and yes, this applies to physiotherapy too), is a distrust of authoritative voices that once told us what was true and what was false, who to believe and why. It seems todays generation of learners - saturated with so many competing claims on their attention and perspective - are much less comfortable with authoritative voices that were once happy to be so authoritarian. So Dave Cormier's recent post challenging our thoughts about the word 'content' and its meaning in education are very much in keeping with this trend. Cormier raises some really interesting questions directly applicable the learning often offered to health … [Read more...] about Arguments against content
How 21st century (higher) education can, and must change
There are many critical thinkers interested in education, particularly since the advent of the internet; distributive learning technologies like Google, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter; and personal computing. This video will resonate with a lot of CPN members and others who work with students, in university and college programmes, and with the challenges of thinking 'otherwise' about learning and teaching in physiotherapy, medicine, health care, and elsewhere. In this video, Gardner Campbell from Baylor University talks about why it is that the widespread availability of the Internet and social media haven't yet managed to really penetrate the university. We're not talking here about … [Read more...] about How 21st century (higher) education can, and must change
New: Anatomy
These 30 Days of September posts are supposed to be provocative. Not the kinds of provocation that comes from empty gestures and tired clichés (hopefully not, at least). But the kind of provocation that contain grains of truth (cliché-related humour). So, fair warning, what I'm about to say may upset some people. But I'm really only trying to articulate what should be reasonably obvious by now to anyone with a mobile device and an Internet connection. So here goes. A day will come soon, when students will no longer need anatomy taught in the traditional way: with endless lectures full of mind-numbing names and abstract mechanics. Students will no longer need to stay up late into … [Read more...] about New: Anatomy
New: Open badges
Some people reading this blog may be old enough to remember a time when physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other professions allied to medicine were trained in colleges and schools attached to large teaching hospitals. Others will have only known the university system. For most of us though, the university holds a special significance. It is where knowledge is acquired and one discovers the rudiments of one's future practice. (Of course, we all know the real learning takes place in the clinical environment, but this only serves to enhance the ivory tower image of the university and the people working within it). You used to go to university to acquire an education and a … [Read more...] about New: Open badges
Physiotherapy education for the 21st century
Guest post by Michael Rowe The beginning of the 21st century has seen more technological advances than any other time in our history, at an accelerating rate of change. At the time of writing, we are seeing the introduction of robotics, gene therapy and nanotechnology into larger and larger aspects of health care which, when combined with advances in computing power that will soon exceed the processing power of the human brain, we seem poised on the brink of a shift in our understanding of what it means to be human. In addition to the obvious influence of information and communication technology on social structures, we are also experiencing a shift from vertical communication structures … [Read more...] about Physiotherapy education for the 21st century
Posts worth reading – update on interesting posts and ideas from around the web
Here is an update on some recent posts from around the Internet that may be of interest: What scientific idea is ready for retirement? From Brian Christian at Edge.com Scientific Knowledge Should Be Structured as "Literature" In my view, what's most outmoded within science, most badly in need of retirement, is the way we structure and organize scientific knowledge itself. Academic literature, even as it moves online, is a relic of the era of typesetting, modeled on static, irrevocable, toothpaste-out-of-the-tube publication. Just as the software industry has moved from a "waterfall" process to an "agile" process—from monolithic releases shipped from warehouses of mass-produced disks to … [Read more...] about Posts worth reading – update on interesting posts and ideas from around the web
Teaching and learning has always been subjective
"It seems easier to far too many teachers to imagine that students do work the way machines do — that they can be scored according to objective metrics and neatly compared to one another. Schools, and the systems we’ve invented to support them, condition us to believe that there are always others (objective experts or even algorithms) who can know better than us the value of our own work. I’m struck by the number of institutions that for all intents and purposes equate teaching with grading — that assume our job as teachers is to merely separate the wheat from the chaff. And I find myself truly confused when anyone suggests to me that there is a way for us to do this kind of work … [Read more...] about Teaching and learning has always been subjective