Classroom of 2020: The future is very different than you think Imagine: you wake up at 9:23 a.m. one September morning in 2020. Your alarm failed to sound and now you’re late. But don’t fret. Your commute to school consists of carrying your laptop to the kitchen table. When you load today’s lecture video you don’t see your professor; instead, a classmate appears on the screen. Your classmate uses the word “atavistic” and you pause the lecture to look it up. After a while, your eyes wander to the window. If the above seems like a far-fetched prediction of what a classroom might be like in 2020, you’re behind the times. This is the brave new world of higher education, where students teach professors, technology enables digital note-passing and online courses enroll thousands of students. In an era when a student can access more information through her cellphone than a professor can consume in a lifetime, is the university as a physical place obsolete?
The attention paradox Online, where you can't buy attention as easily as you can with traditional advertising, most commercial media has the imperative of interestingness built in. The assignment is to make it viral, make it something people will watch or click on or even better, share. This is hard for mass marketers, marketers who are used to making average stuff for average people and promoting heavily in media where they can buy guaranteed attention. And so, we see organizations buying likes and pageviews, pushing for popovers and popunders and all sorts of new ways to interrupt online. Smart advertisers, though, are realizing that they have to make content that people decide is worth watching. The challenge is that all those hoops you need to jump through to attract attention might be precisely the opposite of what you need to do to cause action, to get someone to change her mind or to connect. And, alas, you have to do both.
The mLearning Revolution Blog » 8 Things we MUST do in 2013 to seize the potential of mLearning 2012 has been an amazing year for mobile! This year we have seen technology companies introduce a myriad of mobile devices of all sizes, prices and operating systems. In 2012 Apple announced the iPhone 5, two new iPads and the new iPad mini; Google unveiled their first tablet, the nexus 7 and later the 10″ version; Amazon gave us three Kindle Fire HD tablets. Not to be outdone, Samsung announced the Galaxy Note II and the Tab Tablet, and of course Microsoft announced the Surface Tablet. Earlier this year Comscore reported that 2014 will be the year in which the number of mobile users will surpass desktop users for the first time. Here’s another statistic that bodes well for mobile, Apple sold more iPads in Q4 2011 than any individual PC manufacturer sold PCs. One final statistic I would like to include here is the fact that as of September 2012, Android alone accounted for 1.3 million activations a day, that’s roughly 39 million activations a month. Charles Darwin said it best:
How To Write A Mind Blowing Headline For Twitter So People Will Read Your Blog The latest Twitter statistics show that Twitters growth last year was over 1,300% with the latest numbers revealed by Twitter at their Chirp conference for developers in April showing Total number of users at 105 million (12 months ago that number was 8 million) Twitter received 180 million unique visitors a month to its website. Twitter is a great way to promote and market your content and the challenge with Twitter for business marketers is that you only have 140 characters to get your message across and your link clicked on. The most important element to make that happen is a great headline to make people click on that link. So in essence Twitter has brought back the art of the headline which has never gone away but Twitter has highlighted its importance. So what are the important elements in creating and writing a “great headline” and why is it so important? Why is a headline important? 1. Example: “The Secret To Getting More Money For Your Property!” 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 506inShare
Does Mobile Learning Work? With more than 700,000 apps in Apple’s app store, mobile content is here to stay. But the jury remains out on just how effective mobile learning is. Todd Richmond, director of advanced prototype development and transition at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies, said his gut feeling is that what a user gets out of mobile learning depends on the user. “If you have a user that is comfortable with a tablet or a smartphone, they will be more willing to put up with issues and engage with the content,” he said. Among mobile devices, desktops and laptops, there will always be tradeoffs in convenience, computing power and multimedia capabilities. Jan Cannon-Bowers, research director of University of South Florida’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation, said the convenience of mobile learning makes it useful for refresher training in rare procedures. But is it possible to have too much of a good thing? “We do this all the time.
How to Tell a Visual Story (Even You, B2B): A Marketer's Guide As storytelling becomes more and more part of marketing, another trend is coming into focus: Brands are becoming more visual. They're using emerging image-driven networks such as Pinterest and Instagram, and they're making compelling visual updates to venerable platforms such as Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Businesses that aren't ready for this visual revolution will get left behind. How can you prepare your brand to benefit from the power of visual content such as photos, slides, infographics, cartoons, and more? What kind of content works best for telling a visual story that packs a punch? During our recent keynote at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing World online program on content marketing, we (along with Mikes Hayes of Ben & Jerry's) offered our insights into the power of visual content marketing for brands. What follows are some highlights from that talk—including the visual opportunity for brands, and how they should embrace it. New Social Media Platforms Google+. Facebook.
How The Nearpod iPad App Changed An Entire School I have been wanting to write a post for a while about the amazing tool that we came across last year, that has truly changed the way we use iPads in our classrooms, but haven’t had a venue to do so. Now that I have my new website, I decided it was a must! If you aren’t familiar with this groundbreaking Nearpod iPad app , I want to take a minute to share it with you and explain how it changed our school. Nearpod is an App that allows teachers to share presentations; but wait, there’s more! Needless to say, it is a presenter’s dream come true. Starting Out With Nearpod I’ll never forget my first experience with Nearpod. At Pine Crest, we differentiate instruction, and the iPad is great for that, but we still also provide whole group instruction. Felipe came to me to share this revolutionary App and he walked me through the experience. Feedback Becomes Reality So, what are you using now that we suggested? Seeing this App grow from the very beginning has been a very rewarding experience.
Seven Habits of Highly Effective Tweets Effective tweets have characteristics that are easy to spot. You’re going to want to take advantage of that and utilize some of the practices that make for popular tweeting if you want to become a reliable tweeter that people can turn to. Here are some Twitter traits that make for effective tweets: 1. I have one person I follow who might as well be tweeting in a different language. 2. Twitter only allows for 140 characters, and you may think that’s concise enough. 3. You want your tweets to be searchable because that’s how people are going to find you and what you’re tweeting about. 4. With those 140 characters being so valuable, you don’t want to waste space by putting an entire hyperlink into your tweet. 5. People want to know how you can provide value to them. 6. For some reason, people really like to read lists. 7. When you ask questions, you’ll sometimes feel like you’re just shouting into an empty room. Jay Adams Jay Adams is a graduate student at the S.I.
Using technology in the classroom the right way SmartBlogs One of the things that I see happen far too often is people stressing over how they are going to create lessons around the new piece of technology they have in their classroom. It is this approach that is causing headaches to many and giving tech tools a bad reputation in the classroom. There is a right way and a wrong way to infusing technology in education. The wrong way The absolute wrong way to deal with educational technology is to look at a tool and try to build a lesson around it. The right way The right way to deal with educational technology is to not worry about it until after the lesson is planned. That’s it. Some of my best lessons were created years ago that did not involve technology in anyway. Nicholas Provenzano is a high-school English teacher and a technology-curriculum specialist for the Grosse Pointe Public School System in Michigan. Related Posts
Blubbr - Create Interactive Quizzes Using YouTube Clips Blubbr is a neat quiz creation service that I recently learned about on Danny Nicholson's blog. Using Blubbr you can create interactive quizzes that are based on YouTube clips. Your quizzes can be about anything of your choosing. To create a quiz on Blubbr start by entering a topic for your quiz. Applications for Education I think of Blubbr as being like TEDEd but with short video clips. College Students To Tweet Even More In Class As Social Media Becomes A Major Retweet this if you want extra credit. That idea may not be too farfetched because according to the local Fox channel 57 in Columbia, SC, South Carolina's Newberry College is pushing the envelope of tech education, and will allow its students to major in social media. The kids will learn all about it, and how to use it, apparently...because all that time spent on their iPhones or home PCs using Facebook and Twitter and Instagram isn't enough of an education all of its own. Check out the news clip below to have your social world turned as upside down as a keg stand: Now, we agree that Web 2.0 (if we can use so outmoded a phrase) is all about the social experience of the web, with a side serving of revolution in mobile social Net access. The college, for its part, explains that this is one of the first interdisciplinary social media majors. So...last time we looked, the QR code was frowned upon by almost everyone, everywhere (though it does linger in the U.S.).
App Spotlight: eClicker Jeff sits down with the Big Nerd Ranch to talk about their app eClicker. Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed Developed for smartphones and laptops, eClicker leverages the hardware already in the hands of many students providing a lowcost polling solution for the classroom. All you need to get started is the eClicker Host app running on an iOS device, a Wi-Fi network, and students with internet-enabled devices to participate. Features Wi-Fi based classroom response system for up to 64 clients*Students can participate with any internet-enabled deviceEdit questions on your computer or iOS deviceAdd images to questions or draw your ownShare question sets with other teachers via Bluetooth**Poll questions one-at-a-time or back-to-backReview historical polling data and email reports * 32 clients on the iPhone or iPod touch ** feature not supported on the first generation iPhone and iPod touch The eClicker system is made up of of two parts: the host and the client(s).
How To Connect With Digitally Distracted Students 10 Ways To Become A Better Online Learner 5.43K Views 0 Likes There are some quick and easy ways to become a better online learner. Whether you're taking a class or just researching, here are the DOs and DON'Ts.