'It's quite fashionable to say that the education system is broken - it's not broken, it's wonderfully constructed. It's just that we don't need it any more. It's outdated.'

These are the radical thoughts of Professor Sugata Mitra, the doyen of innovative education and a figure of some controversy. Sugata Mitra recently won a $1 million TED prize to develop his ideas around his 'School in the Cloud' and building on his notion of minimally invasive education. Mitra told me the phrase 'minimally invasive education' came from his interest in medical procedures, where keyhole surgery was the least invasive method for surgical intervention, and caused the least amount of trauma.

Just what is so special about games playing? Why is it so popular with all ages? And what is it that divides opinion so deeply about whether games have a place in the curriculum? Never has there been so much opportunity for schools, colleges and universities to capitalise and exploit the power of games to inspire, engage and enliven learning. And yet a straw poll taken amongst any group of teachers will reveal some strong polemic views.

This morning, here in Oslo, it was all about the kids. And why not? Too often we gather to discuss education, to expound on learning theories and to congratulate ourselves for our pedagogical prowess, and yet we miss the crucial element, the context which should be central to everything we do. The learner. Where is the learner voice at learning conferences? This was addressed today at EDEN, and I'm glad I was there to witness it.

This is the first post in a new series. I'm going to present retrospective reviews of a dozen seminal books that I think should be on the reading list of anyone who wants to learn more about the social and cultural impact technology is having on learning and education. Here's the first, one for those who wish to understand how media and culture influence each other:

Henry Jenkins (2006) Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press.

The future may be bright. But the future may also be dark and disturbing. GRIN is an acronym that represents the four big emerging technologies of our times. Many believe them to be the defining technologies of the age and their speed of development will determine how far we decide to travel down the road of post-humanism to the point where humans are physically and intellectually enhanced - Human 2.0.

In the July 2013 edition of Wired magazine, Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard Law Professor and author of The Future of the Internet) warns of the danger of censorship now we are moving to the cloud. Zittrain is worried about the possibilities of 'censoring, erasing, altering or restricting access to books', and argues that digital texts are 'increasingly coming under the control of distributors and other gatekeepers rather than readers or libraries.' He has a point.
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