Silver Lining for Learning

Night schools are a critical and valuable educational option offered to students around the world and yet information asymmetry exists in the role they play in the social, cultural, educational, and emotional development of the students who attend it. Night schools are aimed at adults who did not have the opportunity to attend high school at an earlier age. These adults are from low-income backgrounds including single mothers who often work during the day picking coffee, cleaning houses, selling their wares in fruit stands, or are employed in various factory jobs. During the evening, they attend Nigh School as a means of gaining literacy skills and bettering their lives.Hania Morales Arroyo and Natalia Ramirez-Casalvolone, two experienced teachers from Colegio Nocturno de Naranjo of Costa Rica talk about the particularities of the student population, academics, and her experience teaching English at the school.  Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

Mary Jo Madda is the Growth & Engagement Strategy Lead for several diversity + education initiatives at Google, and a doctoral student at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. Her work with Code Next, a Code with Google Program provides informal after-school training for high school freshmen of color (Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Native/Indigenous) in the most quickly-growing industries, including cloud computing and data science. Chelsey Roebuck is a mechanical engineer who leads ELITE, a community-based youth development organization that utilizes STEM education as a vehicle to empower low-opportunity students to realize their academic and career potential. He leverages his Columbia degree to create meaningful impact toward addressing STEM education inequality as a means to close the achievement gap and provide opportunities for economic mobility for thousands of youth across the Americas and Africa. Both Mary and Chelsey, recipients of Forbes's “30 Under 30” talk about the importance of social capital and networks to achieve success. The need to model and actively practice diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, creating safe places of belonging, becomes all the more important. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

Hosts Curt Bonk, Punya Mishra & Yong Zhao gather to reflect on the past five episodes (#67-#70) and provide commentary.Episode 70 | Lessons Teacher Educators Should Have Learned from the PandemicEpisode 69 | Untangling Adaptive Learning on the Way to Tangelo Park: Taking a Road Trip to Central FloridaEpisode 68 | There’s a New Horizon for Higher Education: Make that Three HorizonsEpisode 67 | Educational Alchemy: Time to Restore, Adapt, Evolve, or Transform?Conversation topics include the next education workforce, rethinking teacher education, and the importance of putting theory into action. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

In the midst of living through the pandemic, 46 authors from around the world paused, reflected, and wrote chapters for an open access book on lessons that teacher educators should have learned from 2020.  In this episode, Dr. Rick Ferdig, lead editor of “What Teacher Educators Should Have Learned From 2020”  provide an initial discussion of the impetus for the book, some general lessons learned, and how such reflective activities can be continued beyond the pandemic.  Dr. Rebecca Nelson provides an overview of her co-authored chapter titled, “The Four Pillars of Digitally Infused Education: Transcending Modalities in a Post-COVID Learning Environment.”  She will talk specifically about the importance of instructional design, flexibility, building relationships, and a pedagogy of care. Dr. Aimee Barber will then discuss ways to use effective pedagogy to design online learning experiences.  She draws on examples from her co-authored chapter, “Using Knowledge of Effective Pedagogy to Design Online Learning Experiences: Restructuring Teacher Education Coursework to Reflect Virtual Learning Shifts,” pointing to ways she and her team restructured teacher education coursework during the shift to virtual learning. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

In Episode #69, Chuck Dziuban and Patsy Moskal from the University of Central Florida (UCF) have spent decades conducting research on blended and fully online learning, resulting in several edited research volumes on blended learning. Their paper, Adaptive Learning in Psychology: Wayfinding in the Digital Age, was recipient of the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) quality research paper award in 2017.  The episode discusses the history of faculty training programs for blended and online instruction at UCF, case for personalizing learning, as well as their research on a scholarship program for low income communities in Central Florida called the Tangelo Park Program. This program has seen significantly reduced crime and has resulted in 100% high school graduation rates as well as high levels of college attendance. It also unpacks key components of this program as well as its potential sustainability, replicability, and scalability. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

The annual EDUCAUSE Horizon Report on emerging learning technologies and trends is widely anticipated, cherished, and read by thousands worldwide. Topics like AI, blended and hybrid learning, learning analytics, micro credentialing, open educational resources, and quality online learning dominate the most recent 2021 report (PDF). This year’s report offers overviews on technological trends as well as social, economic, environmental, and political ones. In 2020, the report began including short implications essays. In 2021, there were five such essays including ones on higher education in South Africa by Laura Czerniewicz of the University of Cape Town; on Australia by Jon Mason of Charles Darwin University; and Turkey by Aras Bozkurt of Anadolu University. The three authors of those reports are the Silver Lining or Learning guests for Episode #68. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

Gilly Salmon is a leader in online learning, e-learning, and blended learning, having spent 30 years in the university sector in the UK and Australia as Professor and Pro Vice-Chancellor.  She is founder and C.E.O of Education Alchemists Ltd; a company formed around her life’s work of Carpe Diem learning design methodology, pedagogical transformation, online teaching, technology enhanced learning, the 5 stage model, and e-tivities.  In this episode Dr. Salmon discusses four possibilities for an education world post-pandemic, including (1) restore, (2) adapt, (3) evolve, and (4) transform as well as her five stage model of online teaching and e-moderating. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

Hosts reflect on the past 4 episodes (#62-65) with special guest Scott McLeod.  Episode 62 | Participatory creativity with Vlad Glaveanu & Edward ClappEpisode 63 | Let children play with Pasi Sahlberg & Alex HarperEpisode 64 | Self-directed learning with Peter Gray and Bria BloomEpisode 65 | Innovative Learning at Massive Scale: Let’s nQuire about the Future of FutureLearnDiscussion topics include the halo effect, creativity in schools, deeper learning, as well as the future of learning. Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

FutureLearn from the Open University (OU) in the UK offers a unique example of how massive open online courses (MOOCs) can be designed for active and engaging learning.  Mike Sharples, the former Academic Lead of FutureLearn, joins us to discuss the purposeful design of FutureLearn toward social learning, which involves inquiry and discussions as central to the pedagogical design of the platform.  We additionally talk about citizen inquiry, mobile learning, online learning, science education, human-centered design of personal technologies, innovative pedagogy, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, MOOC design, and much more.    Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org 

Children come into the world with an instinctive drive to play, explore, and learn. These drives are shaped by our evolutionary past to make us who we are. Schooling, in contrast, suppresses these drives through one-size fits all curricula and a predetermined age-constrained progression. This begs the question, what would learning look like if the emphasis were on students driving the learning, setting their own goals, and working towards achieving them? This is the idea of self-directed learning. A self-directed education encourages students to play and explore, allowing their natural instincts, curiosity, and drives to flourish.In this episode, we will speak with Peter Gray, research professor of psychology at Boston College as well as contributor to Psychology Today  blog Freedom to Learn, and Bria Bloom, a born and raised unschooler as well as the Executive Director of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education to explore the theories of human nature and evolution that drive this approach, whether self-directed learning can work for all learners, and understand  what unschooling looks like and how it can function in the world we live in today.   Join the conversation at silverliningforlearning.org