Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

A conversation with David Thornburg about designing a better classroom

“Of all the places I remember from my childhood,” David Thornburg writes, “school was the most depressing.”  The now award-winning educational futurist and creator of the “educational holodeck,” Thornburg’s early experience in the classroom prompted him to help others rethink traditional classroom design. In his latest book, From the Campfire to the Holodeck: Creating Engaging and Powerful 21st Century Learning Environments, Thornburg outlines four learning models: the traditional “campfire,” or lecture-based design; the “watering hole,” or social learning; the “cave,” a place to quietly reflect; and “life”—where ideas are tested.

When I wrote Blogging with Freire, I was speculating on what that great Brazilian educator and theorist might have made of educational blogging - a concept he never knew, because he died before the Internet and social media came in to common use. Another great theorist who did much to reform the education system around the globe, is the lesser known French educator Celestin Freinet. He died in 1966, when we were only just beginning to realise that computers could be more than mere calculating machines. If he had seen them, what might Freinet have made of digital technology, and what would he have said about social media in education? He certainly believed in using technology to enhance learning.

Some of these concepts are not yet taught in teacher training centres and are not encapsulated in rigorous pedagogical volumes on teaching methodology yet their preponderance among netizens and digital natives have made them the new learning currency we should urgently learn to use in order to stay pedagogically oriented.