ICLS 2012 Sydney - Keynote 1 :: Janet Kolodner
Janet's keynote is titled "Learning Scientists Changing the World: Opportunities and Challenges". Back in 1990, when I founded The Journal of the Learning Sciences, I expressed the hope, in my opening editorial, that what we learned about learning as learning scientists would make a real difference in the world. That hasn't happened as fast as I was looking forward to. On the other hand, we know a lot more about learning and promoting learning some two decades later, and in the past few years, we've seen a proliferation of new technologies that may make it easier to transition what we have been learning about learning into real use. In this talk, I will present some of the promise I see in what our community has been doing over the past two decades, some opportunities I see for increasing and transforming the opportunities people have for learning, and some of the challenges to making real‐world contributions through our research. Some of those challenges have to do with systems in place in the world, and some have to do with how we organize ourselves as a community of researchers. The vision I will present is drawn from my personal experiences as Editor in Chief of JLS for 18 years, as a pedagogy designer and curriculum creator (who co‐authored a wonderful science curriculum that is not selling as well as we'd like), as a developer of learning technologies (who could never manage to get any of them used), and most recently, as a program officer at the US National Science Foundation. Note, however, that I won't give away any NSF secrets, and my talk will not in any way represent plans for support of learning sciences and learning technologies at NSF. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISLS is a professional society dedicated to the interdisciplinary empirical investigation of learning as it exists in real‐world settings and how learning may be facilitated both with and without technology. ISLS sponsors two professional conferences, held in alternate years. The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), first held in 1991 and held bi‐annually since 1996, covers the entire field of the learning sciences. http://www.isls.org/
Janet's keynote is titled "Learning Scientists Changing the World: Opportunities and Challenges". Back in 1990, when I founded The Journal of the Learning Sciences, I expressed the hope, in my opening editorial, that what we learned about learning as learning scientists would make a real difference in the world. That hasn't happened as fast as I was looking forward to. On the other hand, we know a lot more about learning and promoting learning some two decades later, and in the past few years, we've seen a proliferation of new technologies that may make it easier to transition what we have been learning about learning into real use. In this talk, I will present some of the promise I see in what our community has been doing over the past two decades, some opportunities I see for increasing and transforming the opportunities people have for learning, and some of the challenges to making real‐world contributions through our research. Some of those challenges have to do with systems in place in the world, and some have to do with how we organize ourselves as a community of researchers. The vision I will present is drawn from my personal experiences as Editor in Chief of JLS for 18 years, as a pedagogy designer and curriculum creator (who co‐authored a wonderful science curriculum that is not selling as well as we'd like), as a developer of learning technologies (who could never manage to get any of them used), and most recently, as a program officer at the US National Science Foundation. Note, however, that I won't give away any NSF secrets, and my talk will not in any way represent plans for support of learning sciences and learning technologies at NSF. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ISLS is a professional society dedicated to the interdisciplinary empirical investigation of learning as it exists in real‐world settings and how learning may be facilitated both with and without technology. ISLS sponsors two professional conferences, held in alternate years. The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), first held in 1991 and held bi‐annually since 1996, covers the entire field of the learning sciences. http://www.isls.org/