4 Things That Totally Suck About Using Technology In School [Opinion] I’ve read that e-books are the future of books, and it’s not a matter of if they’ll surpass print books but when. Being still in college, I wondered if that was the case for e-textbooks. There’s certainly more buzz on e-textbooks as they’re cheaper and it means that students don’t have to break their backs with heavy physical books. This whole semester I’ve been dealing with e-textbooks and using just an Android tablet (Acer Iconia A500) to digitize all of my schoolwork to answer these questions. Have An e-Textbook? The argument of e-books versus traditional textbooks books goes beyond whether you prefer the look and feel of an actual book to the more unnatural book-on-a-screen experience. Having e-books and web-enabled devices also limit forms of testing, which is a just a headache for instructors. Students could solve this by printing segments of their textbooks for the exams, but this is usually not permitted per the textbook publisher. Yes, Benefits Do Exist Agree or disagree?
Five Ways to Bring High-Tech Ideas into Low-Tech Classrooms By Sara Nolan Even the most wired classrooms know the screeching silence of that great technological dis: “Unable to Connect to Server.” It’s the 21st century classroom’s equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. But whether you’re trying to connect kids to learning in a fully loaded classroom or one with no technology – or even if it’s at the kitchen table during homework time – high-tech ideas can translate and be relevant in low-tech environments. More than just stop-gap measures for tech-less teaching environments, these no-tech ideas can actually help students deepen their digital literacy by giving them an opportunity to see, explore, and understand the parts and purpose of the digital media they take for granted – tweets and status updates, for example – by recreating them in an analog context. Put the Facebook page on paper. Sara Porto Nolan is a writer and Language Arts teacher who has worked with Bay Area students in high-need schools.
Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play in Education Just a Blog I texted a fellow nominated colleague yesterday that I just might head into the Edublog Award ceremony. She texted back scoffing, not realizing there was a ceremony. She said, “I mean it’s great people take pride in what they do but it’s a blog. No offense to you. I just mean there are way bigger things going on in the world.” True, there are. Well, I don’t feel I am currently in a place right now that I can impact any kind of change in those realms. So, just a blog? This is a vast world with many issues to ponder. Ocean by Matthew S. Like this: Like Loading... Listening to Themselves: Podcasting Takes Lessons Beyond the Classroom Broadcasting Learning: Using Apple's GarageBand, Brent Coley records what his student Joey says into his headset for a ColeyCast, their classroom podcast. Brent Coley's fifth-grade students' eyes light up when they learn that their schoolwork can be heard in Apple iTunes, the program that allows them to compile their favorite artists' music. Although the Tovashal Elementary School students, in Murrieta, California, won't be jamming on guitars or drums in Coley's class, their studies of poetry, the solar system, and the early English settlements in North America become exciting when they're posted on a class Web site and saved in iTunes as ColeyCasts, room 34's take on podcasting. (Download the latest version of iTunes here.) Web distribution of their work motivates students to put their best foot forward. With minimal technology, Coley gives his students a global audience. Access to digital educational content at school, at home, and on the go is growing. Podcasting Defined Story Time
venspired I have seen the poem “Here’s to the kids who are different...” and have always thought that no matter what field of education you teach in, it will apply in some way. It’s not about just seeing the differences, but in really seeing the child. When you see a child with autism, do you just see their inability to communicate? When you watch a child throwing a tantrum, do you assume they are “spoiled” and fail to see their environment it overstimulating? When you see a child struggling to walk do you assume that their parents did not get them to see the doctors or specialists that might have been able to help? When a child cannot behave in your class, do you fail to see that those behaviors are actually far better and he has come a very long way? When a child is brilliant in math, do you fail to acknowledge it because he cannot tie his shoes? When a child is highly-sensitive, do you complain that she is ‘whining’ and not see the fact that she’s so full of anxiety she needs to talk about it?
9 Ideas for Reinventing America’s Language Education System Early last month I put together a blog post called Sage Advice from 20 Amazing People for the Beginning Language Learner. I asked host of folks to participate and in the end received a lot of really great responses and it was well recieved and an encouragement to many readers. One thinker I respect is Seth Godin and so was extremely pleased to get an insightful and rather Sethesque response just moments after I sent him an email. I did very poorly in language in school. Seth’s response reminded me of a conversation I had had with another friend in the language acquisition field a few years prior and set me to thinking about what it would mean for the public school systems of America to “reinvent” language education. Reinventing Language Education In today’s post then, I want to offer a few of my thoughts as to how we might reinvent the system. Nine Ideas I am not putting forth ideas to ‘reform’ the present system. 1 – The Only Goal 2 – Scrap The Way It’s Been Done 4 – Teachers as Coaches
RT, MT, HT, via: Giving credit on Twitter | Social Media Certificate Author’s note: Be sure to read my follow-up post to this topic from August 2011. Moreso than other social media, Twitter embraces an ethic of sharing credit. In fact, the more you recognize the work of others, the more you are engaging with the Twitterverse. It began with the simple RT, or retweet. If you liked what someone wrote or posted, you’d copy the tweet in its entirety, add RT along with his or her @name at the beginning, and post to your followers. The retweet became so popular that Twitter eventually incorporated a built-in automatic retweet function. The problem with the manual method is it truncates the original tweet if the message is already 140 characters long. That editing outrages some users, especially when the trimming changes the meaning of the original tweet. If it’s edited for length, MT (modified tweet) is used by some users (thanks to @mathewi, @ljthornton and @JeremyLittau for confirming my interpretation). The issue with MT: It has multiple meanings online.
How to reinvent Language Education - Or is it already? | Disrupt Education Aaron G Meyers, a language coach, living and teaching in Istanbul since 2008 shared some interesting thoughts on his blog: 9 Ideas for Reinventing America’s Language Education System. As Aaron and I share a similar background, I left Germany to teach languages in France, his post made me think, and so I reflected on the past four years that I have spent in online language learning. What did change and do we need to reinvent the system? It also reminded me of my first post for Disrupt Education “The Power of Communities in Modern Language Learning”. In 2007/08 and early 2009 the belief amongst startups and online language teachers was that the real revolution lies in the live teaching over VoIP services like Skype or virtual classrooms. “… inconvenient, more expensive and don’t seem to attract many students compared to self paced offers in the language learning space.” One thing I am thinking about for quite a while now is the curation of learning tools, services and applications.
Become an educational innovator & disrupt! 5 key skills to develop This week I briefly spoke to our key leaders about innovation, an integral part of the DNA at SCIL. A culture of innovation is essential to achieving our vision and values. Our 21stC life is a result of innovation. School education is currently being disrupted. Physical design of the schoolMethods of learningThe role of the teacherExams and assessmentThe day – timetable, durationLibraries, books and other resources How do I know that this innovation is working toward positive outcomes? I have met too many passionate educators who are seeking change for the right reason: They put the need of the learner at the heart of all they do. How can we bring innovation to education? 1. At SCIL, we seek inspiration outside schools. 2. At SCIL we ask: Why do we have textbooks’? Innovators challenge common wisdom, imagine opposites and embrace constraints. ‘Embrace constraints’ seems counter-intuitive, however, great design and innovation comes from working to constraints. 3. 4. 5. Like this:
On the So-Called Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching Text of my presentation to SURF Education Days, 13 November 2007, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Slides, audio and video are also available. 1. Introduction I don’t have fancy slides today. For those of you who are familiar with my work you’ll know that a great deal of the work that I’ve done is constructivist discovery problem-based experiential inquiry based teaching. This sort of paper and the criticisms associated with that sort of paper raise questions. So I worry when I see papers like this. And for you who are listening to this task today, what you’ll be able to take away from this, I believe, is, first of all, an outline an idea of the theory of learning that underlies learning with blogs and wikis and other web 2.0 technologies, but also, more importantly, a way to respond to people who think that instructional technology and the use of the Internet in online learning ought to be nothing more than the presentation of instructions to students telling them what to do. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
21st Century Skills are so last century! The new mantra, the next big thing, among educators who need a serious sounding phrase to rattle around in reports is ‘21st Century Skills’. I hear it often, almost always in some overlong, text-heavy, Powerpoint presentation at an educational conference, where collaboration, creativity and communication skills are in short supply. Thank god for wifi! But does this idee fixe bear scrutiny? Collaboration & sharing Young people communicate and collaborate every few minutes – it’s an obsession. Communication Again, we live in the age of abundant communication. Problem solving Problem solving is a complex skill and there are serious techniques that you can learn to problem solve such as breakdown, root-cause analysis etc. Creativity Beware of big, abstract nouns. Critical thinking Digital literacy Across the Arab world young people have collaborated on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube to bring down entire regimes. Conclusion
Society and Higher Education Part 5 [This piece repeats some of what an earlier one said, but is revised and with a diffferent follow up and ending] A commodity is a relatively inexpensive, widely available product or service. After an initial period in which goods and services are expensive and owned by only a few, modern technologies usually drive them to become commodities. Computers, HD televisions, and cell phones are current examples. Because commodities are the source of stiff price competition and low profit margins, companies often attempt to market their products and services as “special” in some way and not just as commodities. Today most college degrees are commodities. It is true, of course, that colleges and universities can and do distinguish themselves by size and status. Until recently, there were basically two types of colleges: inexpensive low status colleges and expensive high status ones. Old style commodity colleges will be caught in a bind. So beer and bodies are not enough. Let me be clear.