Group items tagged

Mobile devices have some unique affordances: They offer location-sensors (e.g., GPS, RFID, WLAN) and they can deliver multimedia content that is time- and place-relevant. Opportunities for embedded assessment can also be used to assess and fine-tune mlearning design.

Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”

Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.

“If they can learn to read, then they can read to learn.”

Rethinking data in the classroom

Adaptive learning algorithms

Experimentation with new learning models (including flipped classroom, sync learning, blended learning, etc.)

The Levels of Teaching Innovation (LoTi) Framework was first conceptualized by Dr. Chris Moersch in 1994 as a research tool to assess authentic classroom technology use.

measure classroom teachers implementation of the tenets of digital-age literacy

The LoTi Framework focuses on the delicate balance between instruction, assessment, and the effective use of digital tools and resources to promote higher order thinking, engaged student learning, and authentic assessment practices in the classroom--all vital characteristics of 21st Century teaching and learning.

Typical instructional design and pedagogy focus on breaking down a subject into component parts, gaining mastery of those parts, whether they are steps in a process or techniques or parts of the anatomy, and then reassembling them in the learner's mind and in practice so that the result is overall mastery of the broader subject. That may be oversimplified, but this basic approach goes back to Aristotle, at least. It's not debated in education, it's assumed that this is the best approach for learning anything, including complex processes or highly nuanced behaviors in shifting contexts.

Centola's conclusions. He studied positive changes in people's behaviors regarding health care, changes that resulted directly from placing subjects in carefully designed social networks with the goal of improving their health decisions. What he concluded was that smaller, tighter social groups had more success improving health behaviors than larger, looser social groups (ie, the typical Facebook connections). Maybe you already see what it took me a while to notice. Both of them had success. Social networks designed for a specific purpose can do something pretty amazing: They can change people's behaviors. Any educator or trainer whose goal is actually to impact both thinking and behaviors (to change lives!) rather than just getting people to pass a test or check a box, should be paying close attention. And maybe getting a little excited.Researchers in education have long known the power of social groups to alter behavior. Brown, Collins, and Duguid made this case a while back

these three went on to say that highly complex behaviors are picked up, absorbed, through relatively informal social exchange more quickly than they could be if they were "taught" in the usual break-it-down sense. We're talking about complex behaviors. Processes. Highly nuanced interpersonal interactions. Centola's study suggests to me that we now have an online tool, the social network, that is fully capable of carrying the power of culture to shape behaviors and establish norms. And it can be done on purpose.

The paper proposes a model for e-education in instruction, training, initiation and induction based upon the concept of extended teaching spaces involving execution, facilitation and liberation, and extended learning spaces used for acquisition, application and construction cemented by dialogue and reflection.