About Future Learning Lab
The Future Learning Lab was set it up in 2009 and launched in 2010, through a collaboration between a small group at the University of Agder and peers at Stanford University organized around the MediaX and H-Star institutions. Our first two conferences were modest in size and ambition but were well represented across the UiA campuses. Workshops at Stanford, several with high-profile delegations from South Norway and the Norwegian capitol region, consolidated the network. Our common concern is reflected in the name: An attempt to create an arena where educators, entrepreneurs, teachers and others interested can share insights and seek to look a little bit ahead into the future, by exploring new educational technologies in use. A key concern was – and remains – the accelerating speed of change in communications technology, media and information flows, impacting on culture and social relations.
2015 marked a shift, in the beginning of our second five-year period which we inaugurated with a joint conference at Stanford University drawing attendees from as diverse places as Stanford and UC Berkeley, Yale, MIT, Columbia U, UN, Gates Foundation, EdCast, universities from three Nordic countries, Australia and more. Since 2015 our conferences have been labeled “summits” and they have taken place in South Norway with the intent of forging more and deeper interactions in research and entrepreneurship amongst Nordic stakeholders in the future of learning and education.
Our goal for the coming 2020-2025 period is to forge a networked Nordic center of notable weight and ambition, to step up exactly the same goal: Meeting the “google paradigm” of education, at all levels including training at work, head on is an aspect of looking past the Ed Tech to the cultural and social relations at work, with a focus on the creative spaces that can help foster a new sense of self-driven learning in an age where information access is no longer the problem – where cultivating critical thinking is a major challenge and need.
Network timeline in brief
List below is limited to main conferences and open workshops
- 2010: Our first workshops
- 2011: Our first Nordic project collaboration
- 2012: Our first workshop at Stanford University
- 2013: Our first Nordic conference
- 2014: Our first international conference, beyond the Nordic region
- 2015: Our first international conference, this time at Stanford University
- 2015: New partnership with EdCast, Palo Alto
- 2016: Our first World Learning Summit
- 2o17: World Learning Summit
- 2018: World Learning Summit
- 2018: Oslo Roundtable
- Partnership with Open Innovation Lab of Norway
- 2019: World Learning Summit