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Learning Objects in Global Leapfrog

By David Worlock - London, UK - on October 7, 2008

Here is a thought prompted by the recent announcement that Cambridge University Press’s Global Grid for Learning has partnered with the Obeikan Research and Development group and both Arizona State and Dublin City universities to develop object-based personalized learning in the Arab world. Perhaps it is easier to go quicker in learning innovation if you carry less legacy baggage, and don’t have to untrain teachers before you retrain them. All over the so-called developed world, learner-centred education is stuck up to its axels in the mire of inherited teaching practices , and more often than not standards-based and accountability-focussed regulation (No Child Left Behind) simply re-inforces failed orthodoxies that frustrate experimentation . Thinking that begins with the learner’s perception is rare, and publisher-inspired innovation even rarer in K-12: publishers lament the fact that they cannot go faster than teachers, and claim that all teachers will take is coursework lightly dusted with technology, textbooks replicated for the electronic whiteboard, and no interaction with the mobile world in which students are increasingly located. In other words, blended learning rules OK because it makes teachers feel safe and makes few demands of average learners.

So at least two cheers for Cambridge University Press, for bringing its Global Grid for Learning initiative into the Obeikan context. The Global Grid contains a huge range of searchable, databased learning objects from sources like Reuters, Corbis and Encyclopaedia Britannica – and many others. The project is run by Dublin City and sponsored by, amongst many others, Intel and Microsoft. The idea is that teachers planning lessons, and learners discovering progressive pathways between resources, can use this material, download it under subscription licence to their virtual learning environments, and develop learning journeys that make sense at the level of an individual. Obeikan, which in a few short years has become an important force in Arab world education, will translate, localize, and market in the region. All of this adds hugely to Obeikan’s strong regional positioning – from this will emerge an Arab Grid for Learning which could well become a leadership project for change in learning practises. Add to this mix the Applied Learning Technologies Institute at Arizona State, and the potential for a tool-based portal with real impact becomes clear.

But, of course, the world is one, and players like Cambridge, arguably the world’s oldest educational publisher and working in 200 counties, and Obeikan, who besides seeking Arab world dominance is a major partner and important shareholder in HM Riverdeep, see the global nature of things. But they also see that the pace of change in global learning is no longer set in the northern hemisphere alone. Once innovation in K-12 individualized learning gets into Asia-Pacific as well, blended learning will start to look like pre-Sputnik science and math in the US.

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