Quotes from Cathy N. Davidson

schools-how we teach, where we teach, who we teach, who teaches, who administers, and who services-have changed mostly around the edges.

who supports it, what does it do? We know that informal learning happens, constantly and in many new ways, because of the collaborative opportunities

It is often noted that, of all existing institutions in the West, higher education is one of most enduring. Oxford University,

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Report is a redaction of the argument in our book-in-progress, currently titled The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age. That book, to be published in 2010, is merely the concrete (paper and online) manifestation and culmination of a long, complex process that brought together dozens of collaborators, face to face and virtually.

Given this history, it is certainly hard to fathom something as dispersed, decentralized, and virtual as the Internet being a learning institution in any way comparable to, say, Oxford. We know, given these long histories, what a learning institution is-or we think we do. But what happens when, rivaling formal educational systems, there are also many

combining, probing, and developing insights online together.

This puts education and educators in the position of bringing up the rearguard, of holding desperately to the fragments of an educational system which, in its form, content, and assessments, is deeply rooted in an antiquated mode

The School of the Future: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania The School of the Future in Philadelphia is unique in that it is the first urban high school to be built in a working partnership with

secondary or insufficiently individualistic to warrant merit.