A Brief History of Education

Education is the process of facilitating learning. Knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits of a group of people are transferred to other people, through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, or research.

Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves in a process called autodidactic learning. Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.

Education is commonly and formally divided into stages such as preschool, primary school, secondary school and then college, university or apprenticeship. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.

A right to education has been recognized by some governments. At the global level, Article 13 of the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to an education. Although education is compulsory in most places up to a certain age, attendance at school often isn’t, and a minority of parents choose home-schooling, sometimes with the assistance of modern electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). Education can take place in formal or informal settings.

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A Brief History of Education

Education is the process of facilitating learning. Knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits of a group of people are transferred to other people, through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, or research.

 

Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves in a process called autodidactic learning. Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.

 

Education is commonly and formally divided into stages such as preschool, primary school, secondary school and then college, university or apprenticeship. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.

A right to education has been recognized by some governments. At the global level, Article 13 of the United Nations’ 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to an education.

 

 

Although education is compulsory in most places up to a certain age, attendance at school often isn’t, and a minority of parents choose home-schooling, sometimes with the assistance of modern electronic educational technology (also called e-learning). Education can take place in formal or informal settings.

Read more

Does handwriting matter?

Does handwriting matter?

Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep.

Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer. They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.

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Why Open Education Matters

Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.

Open Education combines the traditions of knowledge sharing and creation with 21st century technology to create a vast pool of openly shared educational resources, while harnessing today’s collaborative spirit to develop educational approaches that are more responsive to learner’s needs.

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