Ever sense the first five Tablet PCs arrived for resale in the U.S., educators have ventured forward to figure out and demonstrate how learners could use them to advantage. I’ve looked unsuccessfully for existing ways to identify these people.
Subsequently, I started referring to them and similar risk takers as venture educators (VEs). They are to learning what venture capitalists (VCs) are to commercial enterprise. With calculated and at other times estimated risks, they invest time, energy, and other resources into creating ways that make learning easier and more efficient in and out of schools.
In short, they have shown us how we can learn whatever we want to learn, anywhere and anytime for whatever reason we choose at that moment.
Interestingly, most early adopters have not held teaching certificates, college of education majors, or other common indicators of educators. Rather, they developed the hardware and software that allows mobile learning in and out of classrooms.
These developers followed the same detailed steps as teachers in preparing lessons: they both figure out what results they want to accomplish and then work through a detailed plan to yield those outcomes.
Tablet PC VEs joined with VCs to launch a new era of almost ubiquitous mobile learning, a reality previously only inferred from earlier dreams of the most forward looking educators. As a result, probably, conservatively speaking, uncounted hundreds of millions of learning transactions occur with mobile PCs daily worldwide. (Now there’s an interesting exercise for someone to calculate! Perhaps it could be included in the proposed Tablet PC Research Agenda.)
To recognize their accomplishments, I propose a nomination process to a virtual Collection Of Venture Educators (COVE), starting with the earliest developers, evangelists, and adopters of and about Tablet PCs and other mobile Ink devices.
To each, they shall be known as Five Star Learning Efficiency Holders.
I’m assembling my list and will post it soon. I’ve been fortunate to know and learn from many of these people. Oh my goodness, they are smart!
Please let me know your nominees so we can add them to the list.