Group items tagged

en up working on a math problem because you couldn’t figure out the next step? Wolfram|Alpha can guide you step by step through the process of solving many mathematical problems, from solving a simple quadratic equation to taking the integral of a complex function.

But the Web is different; it's everyman's encyclopedia. "I gave them specific questions to look up," says MacLean, noting that she had already searched to make sure the answers were there and were understandable and accurate. "They could open their laptops and get it right then, and I would move on to the next activity."

When coupled with professional development, the one-to-one laptop program demonstrably improves student learning. But the amount of instruction that teachers receive is also lopsidedlopsided. The state offers webinars and a training staff, but not all schools make use of them.

One final comment, a funny one.  On Monday, in my "Twenty-First Century Literacies" class where laptops are required for a whole range of experiments and inclass collaborative work, I caught one of my students with his laptop open and with a book propped secretly inside it, reading away in his book when he should have been paying attention.   So maybe that's the next class, "Should Professors Allow Students to Use BOOKS in the Classroom Devised for Computer Learning?"   I'm being facetious but that's the point.  A book is a technology too.   How and when we use any technology and for what purpose are the questions we all need to ask.

Do you see the difference?   "Computer learning" doesn't exist.   In 2011, it exists less than it did a decade ago and, in a few years, that phrase won't exist at all.   Students learn.  Computers are tools for all kinds of things, from checking the Facebook page, to making notetaking easier, to being fact checking or calculating devices that can take a class to a more sophisticated level to interactive social networking devices that can either distract a class or allow for new forms of group collaboration.   There are many other uses as well.   The point is that most profs have (a) simply "adapted" (as a colleague told me recently) to computers without understanding the intellectual and pedagogical changes they can enable; or (b) resigned themselves to their present, gleefully or resentflly; or (c) made them into a pedagogical tool; or (d) all of the above.    

In more detail, he did the following: He created a free wiki using PBworks. For each course, he created a page on the wiki for the next exam. After each lecture, he put aside time to add the relevant notes to his wiki.  To do so, he would create a subpage for each topic, and then list the main points, add snippets of sample code, or summarize any other information relevant for the exam. Following the stealth studying philosophy, he would then access his wiki using his iPhone while walking to class and waiting for the lecture to begin, doing quick bursts of review. (PBworks plays nicely with iPhones, making it easy to browse the wiki on the run.)