Background to the 4E's — Digisim - A Flipped Academic A highly experienced mentor once told me that there are 3 main groups of staff with regards to influencing change around technology use. These are the evangelists, those who will naturally be inquisitive and try new technology; the resistors, those to whom the change model applies (there is a sliding scale for resistors as some will resist for longer than others) and finally the naysayers, those who just don't want to change and are excessive complainers. (This final group I have renamed as C.A.V.E.s - Colleagues Against Virtually Everything.) My mentor also suggested that it's a waste of time and effort to focus attention on the "naysayers" as they very rarely change their minds. So what's all this got to do with the 4E Framework? I began to realise that as part of the change process staff had to take ownership for the rationale behind the use of technology.
The LA School iPad Scandal: What You Need To Know : NPR Ed Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy exchanged multiple emails with executives at Pearson PLC about the potential for working together. Damian Dovarganes/AP hide caption itoggle caption Damian Dovarganes/AP Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy exchanged multiple emails with executives at Pearson PLC about the potential for working together. Damian Dovarganes/AP A massive expansion of classroom technology has come to a grinding halt in Los Angeles. The LA Unified School District had planned to buy some 700,000 iPads for its students and teachers. The decision comes on the heels of an investigation by NPR member station KPCC, which obtained emails between Deasy and tech executives that bring into question whether the initial bidding process was fair. The goal of the expansion was simple yet ambitious: to equip every student in the nation's second-largest school district with a tablet computer. Then came the emails.
The Smartest Kids in the World, and What They Can Teach Us A journalist's look at three different systems producing remarkable results. The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way Amanda Ripley Simon & Schuster (2014) The title is misleading: they're not the smartest kids, just the best educated. And it's how they got that way that should interest North American teachers, parents and students. Amanda Ripley is a very good guide. Americans, and to a lesser extent Canadians, love to beat themselves up about their education failings as compared to the Finns or Koreans or whatever country is currently thriving economically. It's a dubious policy to continue the beatings until scores improve, especially since we also love to rationalize about the "otherness" of the foreign: those ice-eyed Finns with their phonetic alphabet, those Asian kids driven to top grades or suicide -- nothing like our own kids. Ripley disarms that argument by using three young Americans as her surrogates, experiencing different systems from the inside.
A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned The following account comes from a veteran HS teacher who just became a Coach in her building. Because her experience is so vivid and sobering I have kept her identity anonymous. But nothing she describes is any different than my own experience in sitting in HS classes for long periods of time. And this report of course accords fully with the results of our student surveys. I have made a terrible mistake. I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching my own classes; I am the High School Learning Coach, a new position for the school this year. As part of getting my feet wet, my principal suggested I “be” a student for two days: I was to shadow and complete all the work of a 10th grade student on one day and to do the same for a 12th grade student on another day. The schedule that day for the 10th grade student: 7:45 – 9:15: Geometry 10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
The Best Resources for Free Online Classes 3 reasons your kids are bored in Computing lessons, and 9 solutions — ICT & Computing in Education Are your students yawning, checking their email, launching paper aeroplanes in your lessons? Perhaps you’re making one of these mistakes. "Boring", by Cristiano Betta First off, let me just say that I don’t think it’s a teacher’s job to entertain kids: you can get a professional comedian or magician to do that. Also, at the risk of sounding hopelessly old-fashioned, I believe in good discipline, good behaviour and good manners. You’re not an expert in coding Actually, neither are the majority of people. First, it means you are unlikely to stretch the kids as much as they should be. Second, not having the knowledge you need has a deleterious effect on self-confidence, which the kids will pick up on straight away. Solutions Read Computing without computers. Your challenges are not challenging Set the bar too low, and kids will get bored. Set the kids a test to see where they are in terms of prior knowledge, skills and understanding. Advertisement
“18th-c studies” meets “digital humanities” | The Long Eighteenth This post by George Williams. The CFP for ASECS 2010 is out, and I can’t help but notice that several of the panel proposals (including one being organized by Lisa Maruca and me) deal explicitly with digital humanities topics. Details regarding these panels are available after the jump, but before you make that jump, dear reader, please indulge me for a few sentences. Does it seem to you that the various academic disciplines concerned with the humanities are at a turning point with regard to integrating digital tools into their research and teaching methodologies? It certainly seems that way to me: And yet, does it perhaps also feel to you that the benefits of these developments have not yet filtered down to our day-to-day academic lives? This is not meant to be a list of complaints, mind you. Is this new phase a good thing? ASECS 2010 and the Digital Humanities Below are the CFPs for ASECS 2010 panels that explicitly deal with the digital humanities. George H. Like this: Like Loading...
Kids, Teachers, Schools Using Social Media at Different Pace At this point, social media is an enduring part of our culture. Schools, however, are still struggling with the many new issues it can generate for students in and out of the classroom, from more frequent bullying to easier college admissions. Educational institutions are finding it difficult to determine the lines between invading student privacy, protecting students, and keeping the benefits of the medium. Now that electronic devices are becoming a staple in middle and high schools, schools realize that social media comes, too. Educators say they do not monitor social media when kids are out of school, unless prompted by a threat such as one made against a teacher in Huntsville, Alabama. The Huntsville City School district started a social media-monitoring program called Students Against Fear (SAFe) which resulted in the expulsion of 14 students after the NSA received a threat involving a teacher, reports Deangelo Mcdaniel for Deseret News. This is a smart move.
Report highlights 10 trends set to shake up education Massive open social learning and dynamic assessment on the Open University’s list The Open University has published the Innovating Pedagogy 2014 report, which explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment. It proposes 10 innovations that, although already established to some extent, have not yet had what it describes as “a profound influence” on education. To produce the report, academics at the university’s Institute of Educational Technology proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories and practices, which were then boiled down to 10 that it deems to “have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice”. 1. This is all about bringing the benefits of social networks to massive open online courses (Moocs). “Possible solutions include linking conversations with learning content, creating short-duration discussion groups made up of learners who are currently online, and enabling learners to review each other’s assignments,” the report says. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Salem College professor Spring-Serenity Duvall banned students from emailing and got more engagement from class. Screenshot courtesy of Outlook/Photo illustration by Slate This article originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed. A Salem College faculty member last semester took an uncompromising approach to curbing syllabus and inbox bloat: Why not ban most student emails? “For years, student emails have been an assault on professors, sometimes with inappropriate informality, sometimes just simply not understanding that professors should not have to respond immediately,” Spring-Serenity Duvall, assistant professor of communications at Salem College, wrote in a blog post last week. “In a fit of self-preservation, I decided: no more. This is where I make my stand!” Duvall’s frustration is shared by many in academe—or anyone with an email account—from faculty members beset by questions they have answered both in class and in writing to students inundated by university email blasts. “I did think ‘this is ridiculous—I’ll never get away with it,’ ” Duvall said.
7 Insider Tips for Parenting an Instagram-Crazed Teen | McAfee If you see your teen repeatedly tapping her phone screen twice in a semi-hypnotic state, chances are she is using Instagram. Instagram is a social networking platform that allows a user to snap, edit, and share photos and 15-second videos either in a public photo feed or with a closed network of friends. And, it’s one of the only mediums that has been able to snag kids’ attention like this since the invention of the television. So why in the world do kids love Instagram? Yup. Here are a few of the potential Instagram hot spots parents need to keep on their radar: Instagram Direct. Privacy Settings. What potential danger zones have you noticed on Instagram?
Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment? Building on research of individuals’ modes of engagement with the web (Visitors and Residents4), and the JISC-funded Digital Information Seeker report5, this project is exploring what motivates different types of engagement with the digital environment for learning. The investigation focuses on the sources learners turn to in order to gather information, and which ‘spaces’ (on and offline) they choose to interact in as part of the learning process. It is using the Visitors and Residents6 framework to map learner’s modes of engagement in both personal and institutional contexts. The project is assessing whether individual’s approaches shift according to the learners’ educational stage or whether they develop practices/literacies in early stages that remain largely unchanged as they progress through their educational career. The pilot phase focused on the ‘Emerging’ educational stage which spans late stage secondary school and first year undergraduates. Objectives Reports Video: Blog posts: