REVIEW: Anywhere Anytime Learning by @bruceadixon and @susaneinhorn

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I remember when I first came upon the work of Bruce Dixon. An article in Education Today titled ‘Whatever Happened to the Revolution?‘ was raised as evidence as to why educational technology had failed. What stood out then and what runs throughout Anywhere Anytime Learning is that it all comes back to planning, preparation and vision.

Written by Bruce Dixon and Susan Einhorn, the book is a compilation of their work with Anywhere Anytime Learning Foundation supporting schools with the integration of technology to aide learning. It is split into three sections: planning, implementation and resources. Planning encapsulates setting a vision, knowing what is possible and developing a culture of change. While implementation involves addressing the various steps and stakeholders that need to be considered.

Rather than a ready made ‘step-by-step methodology’, Dixon and Einhorn provide a framework that is as much about asking the right questions as anything else. As they explain:

This is not a textbook or a checklist. Nor is it an Ikea®-like set of instructions to build an easy-to-assemble 21st century school. This guide delves deep with the expectation that you and your team understand a transformation of this size takes effort and an investment of not only money, but time and commitment to an outcome that will be reflected in the learning experiences of your students, not simply as a number that reflects device ratio or density.

To support this commitment, the book is littered with a wide range of references and resources.

Anywhere Anytime Learning could easily have been a tome full of solutions, instead it is priceless provocation providing the starting point to a collegiate conversation. Many of the ideas seem to be common sense, however they are all collected in one place. The strength in the end is that it is one of those resources you could come back to again and again to support further investigation and inquiry. To me, it is the one book which every technology integrator, let alone school leader, should read and reflect on.

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REVIEW: Anywhere Anytime Learning by @bruceadixon and @susaneinhorn by Aaron Davis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.