Group items tagged

learning management systems (Exhibit 1).

The reality, however, is that today's students demand greater control of their own learning and the inclusion of technologies in ways that meet their needs and preferences (Prensky 2005)

Tools like blogs, wikis, media-sharing applications, and social networking sites can support and encourage informal conversation, dialogue, collaborative content generation, and knowledge sharing, giving learners access to a wide range of ideas and representations. Used appropriately, they promise to make truly learner-centered education a reality by promoting learner agency, autonomy, and engagement in social networks that straddle multiple real and virtual communities by reaching across physical, geographic, institutional, and organizational boundaries.

"I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create” (2000, 216). Social software tools make it easy to contribute ideas and content, placing the power of media creation and distribution into the hands of "the people formerly known as the audience" (Rosen 2006).

the most promising settings for a pedagogy that capitalizes on the capabilities of these tools are fully online or blended so that students can engage with peers, instructors, and the community in creating and sharing ideas. In this model, some learners engage in creative authorship, producing and manipulating digital images and video clips, tagging them with chosen keywords, and making this content available to peers worldwide through Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube

Student-centered tasks designed by constructivist teachers reach toward this ideal, but they too often lack the dimension of real-world interactivity and community engagement that social software can contribute.

Pedagogy 2.0: Teaching and Learning for the Knowledge Age In striving to achieve these goals, educators need to revisit their conceptualization of teaching and learning (Exhibit 2).

Pedagogy 2.0: Teaching and Learning for the Knowledge Age In striving to achieve these goals, educators need to revisit their conceptualization of teaching and learning

Pedagogy 2.0 is defined by: Content: Microunits that augment thinking and cognition by offering diverse perspectives and representations to learners and learner-generated resources that accrue from students creating, sharing, and revising ideas; Curriculum: Syllabi that are not fixed but dynamic, open to negotiation and learner input, consisting of bite-sized modules that are interdisciplinary in focus and that blend formal and informal learning;Communication: Open, peer-to-peer, multifaceted communication using multiple media types to achieve relevance and clarity;Process: Situated, reflective, integrated thinking processes that are iterative, dynamic, and performance and inquiry based;Resources: Multiple informal and formal sources that are rich in media and global in reach;Scaffolds: Support for students from a network of peers, teachers, experts, and communities; andLearning tasks: Authentic, personalized, learner-driven and learner-designed, experiential tasks that enable learners to create content.

Instructors implementing Pedagogy 2.0 principles will need to work collaboratively with learners to review, edit, and apply quality assurance mechanisms to student work while also drawing on input from the wider community outside the classroom or institution (making use of the "wisdom of crowds” [Surowiecki 2004]).

A small portion of student performance content—if it is new knowledge—will be useful to keep. Most of the student performance content will be generated, then used, and will become stored in places that will never again see the light of day. Yet . . . it is still important to understand that the role of this student content in learning is critical.

This understanding of student-generated content is also consistent with the constructivist view that acknowledges the learner as the chief architect of knowledge building. From this perspective, learners build or negotiate meaning for a concept by being exposed to, analyzing, and critiquing multiple perspectives and by interpreting these perspectives in one or more observed or experienced contexts

This understanding of student-generated content is also consistent with the constructivist view that acknowledges the learner as the chief architect of knowledge building. From this perspective, learners build or negotiate meaning for a concept by being exposed to, analyzing, and critiquing multiple perspectives and by interpreting these perspectives in one or more observed or experienced contexts. In so doing, learners generate their own personal rules and knowledge structures, using them to make sense of their experiences and refining them through interaction and dialogue with others.

Other divides are evident. For example, the social networking site Facebook is now the most heavily trafficked Web site in the United States with over 8 million university students connected across academic communities and institutions worldwide. The majority of Facebook participants are students, and teachers may not feel welcome in these communities. Moreover, recent research has shown that many students perceive teaching staff who use Facebook as lacking credibility as they may present different self-images online than they do in face-to-face situations (Mazer, Murphy, and Simonds 2007). Further, students may perceive instructors' attempts to coopt such social technologies for educational purposes as intrusions into their space. Innovative teachers who wish to adopt social software tools must do so with these attitudes in mind.

"students want to be able to take content from other people. They want to mix it, in new creative ways—to produce it, to publish it, and to distribute it"

Furthermore, although the advent of Web 2.0 and the open-content movement significantly increase the volume of information available to students, many higher education students lack the competencies necessary to navigate and use the overabundance of information available, including the skills required to locate quality sources and assess them for objectivity, reliability, and currency

In combination with appropriate learning strategies, Pedagogy 2.0 can assist students in developing such critical thinking and metacognitive skills (Sener 2007; McLoughlin, Lee, and Chan 2006).

We envision that social technologies coupled with a paradigm of learning focused on knowledge creation and community participation offer the potential for radical and transformational shifts in teaching and learning practices, allowing learners to access peers, experts, and the wider community in ways that enable reflective, self-directed learning.

. By capitalizing on personalization, participation, and content creation, existing and future Pedagogy 2.0 practices can result in educational experiences that are productive, engaging, and community based and that extend the learning landscape far beyond the boundaries of classrooms and educational institutions.

In 2007, The Report of the NEW Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: Tough Choices or Tough Times made our nation hyperaware that "World market professionals are available in a wide range of fields for a fraction of what U.S. professionals charge." Guess what? While U.S. educators stuck learned heads in the sand, the world's citizens gained 21st century skills! Tough Choices spares no hard truth: "Our young adults score at “mediocre” levels on the best international measure of performance." Do you think it is an accident that the word "mediocre" is used? Let's see, I believe we saw it w-a-a-a-y back in 1983 when A Nation At Risk warned of a "tide of mediocrity." Tough Choices asks the hard question: "Will the world’s employers pick U.S. graduates when workers in Asia will work for much less? Then the question is answered. Our graduates will be chosen for global work "only if the U.S. worker can compete academically, exceed in creativity, learn quickly, and demonstrate a capacity to innovate." There they are

“Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."

move from being simply knowledgeable to being knowledge-able

“information revolution”

new ways of relating

discourse,

social revolution, not a technological one

new forms of

Wikis, blogs, tagging, social networking

nspired by a spirit of interactivity, participation, and collaboration.

new ways of interacting, new kinds of groups, and new ways of sharing, trading, and collaborating.

“spirit” of Web 2.0

important

technology is secondary.

empowers us to rethink education and the teacher-student relationship

dea of learning as acquiring information is no longer a message we can afford to send to our students, and that we need to start redesigning our learning environments to address, leverage, and harness the new media environment now permeating our classrooms.

first address why, facilitate how, and let the what generate naturally from there.

mportance of the form of learning over the content of learning

teaching subjects but subjectivities: ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world.

We can't “teach” them. We can only create environments in which the practices and perspectives are nourished, encouraged, or inspired (and therefore continually practiced).

love and respect your students and they will love and respect you back. With the underlying feeling of trust and respect this provides, students quickly realize the importance of their role as co-creators of the learning environment and they begin to take responsibility for their own education.

The new media environment provides new opportunities for us to create a community of learners with our students seeking important and meaningful questions. Questions of the very best kind abound, and we become students again, pursuing questions we might have never imagined, joyfully learning right along with the others. In the best case scenario the students will leave the course, not with answers, but with more questions, and even more importantly, the capacity to ask still more questions generated from their continual pursuit and practice of the subjectivities we hope to inspire. This is what I have called elsewhere, “anti-teaching,” in which the focus is not on providing answers to be memorized, but on creating a learning environment more conducive to producing the types of questions that ask students to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions and see their own underlying biases. The beauty of the current moment is that new media has thrown all of us as educators into just this kind of question-asking, bias-busting, assumption-exposing environment. There are no easy answers, but we can at least be thankful for the questions that drive us on.

21st century learning materials and assessment

teacher training and digital arts

“learn by doing” through coursework focused on helping students make connections between ideas and skills in real world contexts. Enhanced literacy and math instruction occurs daily and all students have opportunities to gain expertise in reading, writing, and designing with digital media, including taking courses in computer programming, media arts, and game design. A fully integrated Wellness curriculum supports students in achieving healthy hearts, minds, and bodies.

based on research on how students today learn best

daily workshops in numeracy and literacy for struggling students,

cues from the media-rich learning kids are engaged in outside of school

expect a school that is all about beauty, science, thinking, learning, excitemen

First, a technology must be evident to the user as potentially useful in making his or her life easier (or more enjoyable). Second, a technology must be easy to use to avoid rousing feelings of inadequacy. Third, the technology must become essential to the user in going about his or her business. This “Three-E Strategy,” if applied properly, has been at the core of every successful technology adoption throughout history.

Technology must be easy and intuitive to use for the majority of the user audience—or they won’t use it.

Complexity, however, remains a potent obstacle to realizing the goal of making technology easy. Omnivores (the top 8 percent of users) revel in complexity. Consider for a moment how much time some people spend creating clothes for their avatars in Second Life or the intricacies of gameplay in World of Warcraft. This complexity gives the expert users a type of power, but is also a turnoff for the majority of potential users.

Web 2.0 and open source present another interesting solution to this problem. The user community quickly abandons those applications they consider too complicated.

any new technology must become essential to users

Finally, we have to show them how the enhanced communication made possible through technologies such as Web 2.0 will enhance their efficiency, productivity, and ability to teach and learn.

As part of their own intellectual retooling in the era of the media collage, teachers can begin by experimenting with a wide range of new media to determine how they best serve their own and their students' educational interests. A simple video can demonstrate a science process; a blog can generate an organic, integrated discussion about a piece of literature; new media in the form of games, documentaries, and digital stories can inform the study of complex social issues; and so on. Thus, a corollary to this guideline is simply, "Experiment fearlessly." Although experts may claim to understand the pedagogical implications of media, the reality is that media are evolving so quickly that teachers should trust their instincts as they explore what works. We are all learning together.

Both essay writing and blog writing are important, and for that reason, they should support rather than conflict with each other. Essays, such as the one you are reading right now, are suited for detailed argument development, whereas blog writing helps with prioritization, brevity, and clarity. The underlying shift here is one of audience: Only a small portion of readers read essays, whereas a large portion of the public reads Web material. Thus, the pressure is on for students to think and write clearly and precisely if they are to be effective contributors to the collective narrative of the Web.

The demands of digital literacy make clear that both research reports and stories represent important approaches to thinking and communicating; students need to be able to understand and use both forms. One of the more exciting pedagogical frontiers that awaits us is learning how to combine the two, blending the critical thinking of the former with the engagement of the latter. The report–story continuum is rich with opportunity to blend research and storytelling in interesting, effective ways within the domain of new media.

The new media collage depends on a combination of individual and collective thinking and creative endeavor. It requires all of us to express ourselves clearly as individuals, while merging our expression into the domain of public narrative. This can include everything from expecting students to craft a collaborative media collage project in language arts classes to requiring them to contribute to international wikis and collective research projects about global warming with colleagues they have never seen. What is key here is that these are now "normal" kinds of expression that carry over into the world of work and creative personal expression beyond school.

Students need to be media literate to understand how media technique influences perception and thinking. They also need to understand larger social issues that are inextricably linked to digital citizenship, such as security, environmental degradation, digital equity, and living in a multicultural, networked world. We want our students to use technology not only effectively and creatively, but also wisely, to be concerned with not just how to use digital tools, but also when to use them and why.

Fluency is the ability to practice literacy at the advanced levels required for sophisticated communication within social and workplace environments. Digital fluency facilitates the language of leadership and innovation that enables us to translate our ideas into compelling professional practice. The fluent will lead, the literate will follow, and the rest will get left behind.

Digital fluency is much more of a perspective than a technical skill set. Teachers who are truly digitally fluent will blend creativity and innovation into lesson plans, assignments, and projects and understand the role that digital tools can play in creating academic expectations that are authentically connected, both locally and globally, to their students' lives.

Focus on expression first and technology second—and everything will fall into place.

While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation. In short, they tell us that our walls no longer mark the boundaries of our classrooms.

And that’s what has been wrong all along. Some time ago we started taking our walls too seriously – not just the walls of our classrooms, but also the metaphorical walls that we have constructed around our “subjects,” “disciplines,” and “courses.” McLuhan’s statement about the bewildered child confronting “the education establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules” still holds true in most classrooms today. The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called “the real world” which is foreign and set apart from our schools. When somebody asks a question that seems irrelevant to this real world, we say that it is “merely academic.”

We can use them in ways that empower and engage students in real world problems and activities, leveraging the enormous potentials of the digital media environment that now surrounds us. In the process, we allow students to develop much-needed skills in navigating and harnessing this new media environment, including the wisdom to know when to turn it off. When students are engaged in projects that are meaningful and important to them, and that make them feel meaningful and important, they will enthusiastically turn off their cellphones and laptops to grapple with the most difficult texts and take on the most rigorous tasks.

At the root of your question is a much more interesting observation that many of the styles of self-directed learning now enabled through technology are in conflict with the traditional teacher-student relationship. I don’t think the answer is to annihilate that relationship, but to rethink it.

Personally, I increasingly position myself as the manager of a learning environment in which I also take part in the learning. This can only happen by addressing real and relevant problems and questions for which I do not know the answers. That’s the fun of it. We become collaborators, with me exploring the world right along with my students.

our walls, the particular architectonics of the disciplines we work within, provide students with the conversational, narrative, cognitive, epistemological, methodological, ontological, the –ogical means for converting mere information into knowledge.

Classical music from the baroque period causes the heart beat and pulse rate to relax to the beat of the music. As the body becomes relaxed and alert, the mind is able to concentrate more easily. Furthermore, baroque music decreases blood pressure and enhances the ability to learn. Music affects the amplitude and frequency of brain waves, which can be measured by an electro-encephalogram. Music also affects breathing rate and electrical resistance of the skin. It has been observed to cause the pupils to dilate, increase blood pressure, and increase the heart rate.

Mozart's music and baroque music, with a 60 beats per minute beat pattern, activate the left and right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action maximizes learning and retention of information. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. Also, activities which engage both sides of the brain at the same time, such as playing an instrument or singing, causes the brain to be more capable of processing information.

According to The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, learning potential can be increased a minimum of five times by using this 60 beats per minute music.

Dr. Lozanov's system involved using certain classical music pieces from the baroque period which have around a 60 beats per minute pattern. He has proven that foreign languages can be learned with 85-100% efficiency in only thirty days by using these baroque pieces. His students had a recall accuracy rate of almost 100% even after not reviewing the material for four years.

Group 1 was read the words with Handel's Water Music in the background. They were also asked to imagine the words. Group 2 was read the same words also with Handel's Water Music in the background. Group 2 was not asked to imagine the words. Group 3 was only read the words, was not given any background music, and was also not asked to imagine the words. The results from the first two tests showed that groups 1 and 2 had much better scores than group 3. The results from the third test, a week later, showed that group 1 performed much better than groups 2 or 3.

One simple way students can improve test scores is by listening to certain types of music such as Mozart's Sonata for Two Piano's in D Major before taking a test. This type of music releases neurons in the brain which help the body to relax.

William Balach, Kelly Bowman, and Lauri Mohler, all from Pennsylvania State University, studied the effects of music genre and tempo on memory retention. They had four groups learn vocabulary words using one of four instrumental pieces - slow classical, slow jazz, fast classical, and fast jazz.

Surprisingly, the results showed that changing the genre had no effect on recall but changing the tempo decreased recall.

One key ingredient to the order of music from the baroque and classical periods is math. This is realized by the body and the human mind performs better when listening to this ordered music.

George recognized that Saul overcame his problems by using special music. With this story in mind King George asked George Frederick Handel to write some special music for him that would help him in the same way that music helped Saul. Handel wrote his Water Music for this purpose.

Dr. Ballam goes on to say that, "The human mind shuts down after three or four repetitions of a rhythm, or a melody, or a harmonic progression."

Bob Larson, a Christian minister and former rock musician, remembers that in the 70's teens would bring raw eggs to a rock concert and put them on the front of the stage. The eggs would be hard boiled by the music before the end of the concert and could be eaten. Dr. Earl W. Flosdorf and Dr. Leslie A. Chambers showed that proteins in a liquid medium were coagulated when subjected to piercing high-pitched sounds

Rock music was played in one of the boxes while Bach's music was played in the other box. The rats could choose to switch boxes through a tunnel that connected both boxes. Almost all of the rats chose to go into the box with the Bach music even after the type of music was switched from one box to the other.

She found that the plants grew well for almost every type of music except rock and acid rock. Jazz, classical, and Ravi Shankar turned out to be the most helpful to the plants. However, the plants tested with the rock music withered and died. The acid rock music also had negative effects on the plant growth.

One cannot deny the power of music. High school students who study music have higher grade point averages that those who don't. These students also develop faster physically. Student listening skills are also improved through music education. The top three schools in America all place a great emphasis on music and the arts. Hungary, Japan, and the Netherlands, the top three academic countries in the world, all place a great emphasis on music education and participation in music. The top engineers from Silicon Valley are all musicians. Napoleon understood the enormous power of music. He summed it up by saying, "Give me control over he who shapes the music of a nation, and I care not who makes the laws" .