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Our understanding of what constitutes ""a new culture of learning"" requires us to share several basic assumptions about the world and how learning occurs. Thomas’ presentation, based on his book, will guide your audience through his basic principles, including:
• The changing world and its relationship to skill sets
• Understanding how play is critical to understanding learning
• How our connected world can be a resource to learning
• The importance mentorship and meaning
• The multi-faceted challenges that requires systems for thinking
• The importance of mind set and dispositions
• The importance of innovation and an understanding of how it turns on the ability to cultivate imagination
• How the new culture of learning must leverage social and technical infrastructures in new ways
• The importance of play in cultivation imagination and innovation
 

Educational Futurist Douglas Thomas is Associate Professor in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Minnesota in Communication in 1992 and specializes in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies of Technology. He is founding editor of Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, a quarterly international journal that aims to publish innovative theoretical and empirical research about games and culture within the context of interactive media. He is author of Reading Nietzsche Rhetorically (Guilford Press, 1998), an examination of the role of representation in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and Hacker Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), a study of the cultural, social, and political dimensions of computer hacking. He is co-editor of Technological Visions: The Hopes and Fears that Shape New Technologies (with Marita Sturken and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Temple UP, 2004) and Cybercrime: Law Enforcement, Security and Surveillance in the Information Age (with Brian D. Loader; Routledge, 2000). He has testified before the U.S. Congress on issues of computer hacking, cyberterrorism, and critical infrastructure protection. Professor Thomas is a founding member of the Critical and Cultural Studies division of the National Communication Association and has served as Chair of the division, and serves on the advisory board for the Research Center for Cyberculture Studies at the University of Washington.

Check out his written work on Amazon.com

Video services provided by California State University, Fullerton, OASIS/UEE Distance Education