Zulama’s top three takeaways from 2010:
1) In the digital age, students are equipped more now than ever to take responsibility and control of their own learning.
The “teacher knows best” paradigm is evolving. Students can look up the facts online, on their phones, on their tablets. Rather than requiring students to memorize facts, we need to encourage them to think and reflect. Our most effective teachers facilitate student learning by allowing (and encouraging) students to use readily-available, and many times free, tools such as:
2) Collaboration is becoming more and more important for learning.
The Zulama online application is designed to support and encourage rich experiences, with more features to come. We are creating an on-line community, a conversation, a media publisher, and a data publisher where teachers, scientists, researchers, and students can share their knowledge, ideas, research, and goals. Giving students the ability to connect with like-minded students not only in their school, but worldwide, opens opportunities to make meaningful connections and learn more collaboratively than what is possible individually.
3) Motivation is key!
. . . especially for successful online learning! We start by offering engaging, interactive, and interesting course topics. Our authors utilize a variety of media and digital tools to make their content relevant and meaningful to students. Many of our courses combine online resources with offline project-based, hands-on learning. In the works for 2011 is a revolutionary point-based grading system, based on achievements and accumulating tokens and badges, similar to how many video games are scored.
That summarizes (some of) what we learned in 2010, . . . what’s next?
Our motto gives a glimpse into what you can expect to see from Zulama in 2011:
