Draft:
The mission of shiftlearning.com is to inspire change from within:
- within the minds of today's and tomorrow's students
- within the classrooms of today's and tomorrow's teachers
- within the learning institutions that make our country and world a vibrant place to live
The purpose of shiftlearning.com is to illustrate a new model for delivering education that:
- enhances the teacher's role as learning architect
- curator and aggreator of available materials into a unified learning experience
- chief collaborator with students
- and manager of student collaborations
- emphasises the nature of class as a "community"
The vision of shiftlearning.com is of a higher education experience that offers an incredible value through:
- optimal use of "class time"
- fluid and frequent collaboration among teachers and students, regardless of class size
- a continuous stream of student feedback and ideas that can be tapped by educators for a responsive and entrepreneurial environment
- customized student experience that allows a single class to nourish the curiosity and talents of a diverse student community
- a flexible and modular structure that encourages students' differening needs for prescribed activities
- a cost-effective way of offering online learning management
The unmet need and unrealized opportunities that inspired shiftlearning.com are:
- an abundance of freely available educational materials, expert information, and public domain curricula and other learning resources
- a generation of students who are digital natives, versed in social technologies and collaboration, and increasingly visually literate
- a generation of educators -- who are gradually proceeding the Boomer generation -- that are versed in the skills of digital natives and intuitively instruct in different ways than traditional lecture formats
- the increasing cost of education placing pressure on higher education institutions to deliver additional value for the student customer
- the fact of disruptive technologies, collaborative relationships, and cultural/social shifts demanding a more nimble, adaptive and efficient educational system
