Group items tagged

How many of the teachers we work with on a daily basis understand the foundational elements of connectivisim? VERY, VERY few in my estimation. Why don’t they understand? Because they have not EXPERIENCED connectivisim. It is not enough to show or be told. One must EXPERIENCE the power of networked learning to understand it and appreciate its potentials.

blended learning conference event which is K-12 Online.

participate and share the upcoming K-12 Online Conference which starts next week with our pre-conference keynote. The conference is free, it’s global, and the co-learners involved (that includes YOU as well as presenters and other participants) are all providing a rich context for experiential, connectivist learning.

if your local educational organization agrees, you can even earn professional development credit for your participation and time!

we are not limited in our access to expert teachers and co-learners if we want to learn

Ken challenges me by thoughtfully connecting his educational practice with learning theories which build on and powerfully extend those which I’ve studied in graduate school.

We can take, ourselves, an online blended course on a topic of interest so that we can personally EXPERIENCE and therefore appropriate / claim for ourselves / understand with depth some of the benefits as well as drawbacks of online learning contexts.

Blended learning, because it offers the possibility of appropriating best practices from BOTH face-to-face as well as online/virtual learning contexts, can provide greater opportunities for authentic learning and meaningful connections than any other educational modality.

What’s happening with universities in this knowledge age is that the boundaries between the university and the rest of the world have pretty much dissolved. We are now a learning culture, or a knowledge culture.

In Forsyth, the district uses radius servers for centralized network management. This device identifies the districts’ computers, allowing them access to the network according to their status. Laptops that don’t pass this test are put on the district’s virtual lan. This gives them online access while keeping the user behind the district’s firewall and within its Internet filters. It keeps these computers—and their users—away from the district’s network.

Murray’s Pennsylvania district scans each notebook before it can connect to the school server. Clean Server antivirus software is one of the tools it uses to avoid “malware” and worms. Also, the district’s scans point users to free patches and service packs that are needed to keep security up to date.

Compatibility seems to be less of an issue each day as more online applications become available.

schools can turn to the growing number of free online tools available to all.

Classroom management is another potential worry. If college professors feel like students sometime use their lectures as a quiet place to fool around or get other work done (see sidebar), then what chance do K–12 teachers have of getting—and keeping—25 students on task?Teachers in Pennsylvania use classroom management software (a small software download) to keep control. Murray says this program allows teachers to take complete control of each laptop if they want, pushing out their lesson to each screen, blocking all work with a single button, and even using the pcs as glorified personal response devices.

The last big hurdle to make this policy a reality in more districts is one that can’t be cleared with a simple software program. It is instilling the idea that teachers will no longer be the dominant information delivery for each class.

“How do you get teachers prepared to teach in a classroom where everyone is a teacher?

“Professional development is key. We have instructional technology specialists at every school. These folks are not the fix-it people but certified teachers [usually from that same building]. It’s a peer.”

“There’s an explosion of social activities” that computers enable, Murray says,  from talking with people worldwide to keeping in touch with like-minded groups through Twitter to having students take virtual field trips halfway around the world, or just down the street. Science students can do an online dissection with step-by-step analysis, or math problems where a simulation can help illustrate a difficult-to-grasp concept, he adds.

Teachers need to think about teaching in a different way,” he says. “If you’re doing that, a lot of these [problems] go away.”

Having kids bring in their own computers can help bring 1:1 a lot closer to reality, especially in poorer districts. Klingler says Forsyth can channel its existing computer stock to students without personal computers and help reduce tech disparity.

While his state’s Classrooms for the Future program brought 550 pcs into the district, the technology coordinator realizes he won’t have the funding needed to replace these machines in three or four years.

“The cell phone is their thing,” Walery says. “Communication is the main [goal]. They constantly text back and forth.”

Forsyth has even looked into using Sony Playstation handhelds in class, noting that they have a “decent Web browser.”“We want to support whatever kids bring in,” he adds.

“It’s much more likely in a few years all students will have their own smartphones,” he says.

Fair use is critical to understand, say the code's developers, because copying, quoting, and reusing existing cultural material can help generate new cultural treasures.

Here are the code's five principles:

Educators' reliance on fair use therefore will be helped by this code of best practices, which will serve as a documentation of common understandings drawn from the experience of educators themselves and supported by legal analysis.

Cohen also likes the project because it was a simple way for teachers to "get their toes wet" with collaborative technology with a shallow learning curve and a high return on investment. For the spring semester, he said, teachers would actually have to sit and field calls for scheduling parent-teacher appointments.

Demonstrating the value of collaborative technology, while teaching how to use it, is the hardest challenge in its adoption, said Zeus Kerravala, a Yankee Group analyst. "The success depends more on the utilization of the tools than the tools themselves," Kerravala said. Keeping it simple and easy to access increases the chance of success.

Much of the essential documentation for teachers is now on wikis at the school, but Cohen still fields requests for how to do this, or for hard copies of those forms. He regularly denies such requests and points the users to the appropriate wiki page.

"Kids only use technology for the things they want to use it for," Cohen said. "They won't necessarily check the website for their homework."