Group items tagged

What Do We Mean by Learning?

allowing students to pursue their interests in the context of the curriculum

Teachers must be colearners with kids, expert at asking great, open-ended questions and modeling the learning process required to answer those questions. Teachers should be master learners in the classroom

If blended learning is one of the biggest trends in education, it should offer a way for teachers to practice the approach themselves.

Professional development for educational technology has to move away from its historical focus on technical training and toward a broader focus on what educational approaches work best.

In other words, teachers not only need to be proficient at integrating virtual experiences into the classroom, they must also be confident in why they're doing so.

A classroom that has successfully integrated technology into the curriculum would be one where you would not really notice it because it would be so second nature. The teacher would not have to think up ways to use whatever tools were available, but would seamlessly use them to enhance the learning of whatever content was being covered. Technology [would be] used to assist in acquiring content knowledge, and the acquisition of technology skills [would be] secondary. Contrast this depiction with what the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S; ISTE, 2002) say about technology integration: Curriculum integration with the use of technology involves the infusion of technology as a tool to enhance the learning in a content area or multidisciplinary setting….Effective integration of technology is achieved when students are able to select technology tools to help them obtain information in a timely manner, analyze and synthesize the information, and present it professionally. The technology should become an integral part of how the classroom functions—as accessible as all other classroom tools.

his urging to shift the focus from the learning tools to what is being learned and how that learning happens still needs to be heeded—almost 20 years later.

Integration is defined not by the amount or type of technology used, but by how and why it is used.

Critical thinking reduces the power of advertisers, the unscrupulous and the pretentious, and can neutralize the sway of an unsupported argument. This is a skill most students enjoy learning because they see immediately that it gives them more control.

People believe stories because they are the ones available.

we are surrounded by illusions, many of them deliberately created.