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Barbara Lindsey

Fluid Learning | the human network - 0 views

  • There must be a point to the exercise, some reason that makes all the technology worthwhile. That search for a point – a search we are still mostly engaged in – will determine whether these computers are meaningful to the educational process, or if they are an impediment to learning.
  • What’s most interesting about the computer is how it puts paid to all of our cherished fantasies of control. The computer – or, most specifically, the global Internet connected to it – is ultimately disruptive, not just to the classroom learning experience, but to the entire rationale of the classroom, the school, the institution of learning. And if you believe this to be hyperbolic, this story will help to convince you.
  • A student about to attend university in the United States can check out all of her potential instructors before she signs up for a single class. She can choose to take classes only with those instructors who have received the best ratings – or, rather more perversely, only with those instructors known to be easy graders. The student is now wholly in control of her educational opportunities, going in eyes wide open, fully cognizant of what to expect before the first day of class.
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  • it has made the work of educational administrators exponentially more difficult. Students now talk, up and down the years, via the recorded ratings on the site. It isn’t possible for an institution of higher education to disguise an individual who happens to be a world-class researcher but a rather ordinary lecturer. In earlier times, schools could foist these instructors on students, who’d be stuck for a semester. This no longer happens, because RateMyProfessors.com effectively warns students away from the poor-quality teachers.
  • If we are smart enough, we can learn a lesson here and now that we will eventually learn – rather more expensively – if we wait. The lesson is simple: control is over. This is not about control anymore. This is about finding a way to survive and thrive in chaos.
  • The battle for control over who stands in front of the classroom has now been decisively lost by the administration in favor of the students.
  • That knowledge, once pooled, takes on a life of its own, and finds itself in places where it has uses that its makers never intended.
  • This one site has undone all of the neat work of tenure boards and department chairs throughout the entire world of academia.
  • When broken down to its atomic components, the classroom is an agreement between an instructor and a set of students. The instructor agrees to offer expertise and mentorship, while the students offer their attention and dedication. The question now becomes what role, if any, the educational institution plays in coordinating any of these components. Students can share their ratings online – why wouldn’t they also share their educational goals? Once they’ve pooled their goals, what keeps them from recruiting their own instructor, booking their own classroom, indeed, just doing it all themselves?
  • the possibility that some individuals or group of individuals might create their own context around the lectures. And this is where the future seems to be pointing.
  • the shape of things to come. But there are some other trends which are also becoming visible. The first and most significant of these is the trend toward sharing lecture material online, so that it reaches a very large audience.
  • Why not create a new kind of “Open University”, a website that offers nothing but the kinds of scheduling and coordination tools students might need to organize their own courses?
  • In this near future world, students are the administrators.
  • Now since most education is funded by the government, there will obviously be other forces at play; it may be that “administration”, such as it is, represents the government oversight function which ensures standards are being met. In any case, this does not look much like the educational institution of the 20th century – though it does look quite a bit like the university of the 13th century, where students would find and hire instructors to teach them subjects.
  • The lecturer now helps the students find the material available online, and helps them to make sense of it, contextualizing and informing their understanding. even as the students continue to work their way through the ever-growing set of information. The instructor can not know everything available online on any subject, but will be aware of the best (or at least, favorite) resources, and will pass along these resources as a key outcome of the educational process. The instructor facilitates and mentors, as they have always done, but they are no longer the gatekeepers, because there are no gatekeepers,
  • The classroom in this fungible future of student administrators and evolved lecturers is any place where learning happens.
  • At one end of the scale, students will be able work online with each other and with an lecturer to master material; at the other end, students will work closely with a mentor in a specialist classroom. This entire range of possibilities can be accommodated without much of the infrastructure we presently associate with educational institutions. The classroom will both implode – vanishing online – and explode – the world will become the classroom.
  • Flexibility and fluidity are the hallmark qualities of the 21st century educational institution. An analysis of the atomic features of the educational process shows that the course is a series of readings, assignments and lectures that happen in a given room on a given schedule over a specific duration. In our drive to flexibility how can we reduce the class into to essential, indivisible elements? How can we capture those elements? Once captured, how can we get these elements to the students? And how can the students share elements which they’ve found in their own studies?
  • This is the basic idea that’s guiding Stanford and MIT: recording is cheap, lecturers are expensive, and students are forgetful. Somewhere in the middle these three trends meet around recorded media. Yes, a student at Stanford who misses a lecture can download and watch it later, and that’s a good thing. But it also means that any student, anywhere, can download the same lecture.
  • Every one of these recordings has value, and the more recordings you have, the larger the horde you’re sitting upon. If you think of it like that – banking your work – the logic of capturing everything becomes immediately clear.
Clif Mims

Squidoo - 0 views

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    I'm sharing this resource because, in the right context, I see true potential in its integration with teaching and learning. You can read about my ideas for teaching and learning with Squidoo at http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/197.
Dean Mantz

Tumblebooks - eBooks for eKids! - 0 views

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    Online resource for books.
drew polly

WWild Team Homepage - 0 views

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    Homepage of the WWILD Database-- free online resources (games and applets) for K-12 education.
April H.

Wissahickon School District's eToolBox - 0 views

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    Wiki with resources for integrating technology into the classroom: blogs, comic life, digital portfolios and scrapbooks, google docs, google earth, iMovie, etc.
anonymous

Concord.org - Software - 0 views

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    Free model-based learning resources and software We are delighted to be able to offer a growing collection of free software and student materials that use this software. Finding it is a bit of a treasure hunt. Sorry. The software is being developed in different projects, so we have not collected it all in one place. The following describes the major places to look. * Three powerful modeling environments * Activity authoring * Algebra interactives * Sustainable development education * VideoPaper builder * License and copyright You may also wish to visit our complete Software Download Center.
Dean Mantz

Tequipment's Educator Resource Center: Downloads - 0 views

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    Templates for SMART Board Technologies and classroom integration.
Dean Mantz

Visual Understanding Environment - 0 views

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    The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The VUE project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. VUE provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information.
Clif Mims

Voicethread for Educators Ning Group - 0 views

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    Looking to create, build and keep resources for people using http://voicethread.com in their classrooms.
drew polly

Bounded Fraction Pointer - 0 views

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    Identify the numerical value of fractions using a number line model. Lesson plan resources and assessment ideas are all lincluded.
drew polly

Digital Story Telling - 0 views

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    Digital storytelling resource- articles, examples
Dean Mantz

Science Online - 0 views

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    K-8 Science resources, lessons, interactive activities, links, and worksheets.
drew polly

Planet Green : Sustainable Living, Energy Conservation, Earth Day - 0 views

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    Information on living green and conserving natural resources
drew polly

NASA Image eXchange (NIX) - Home - 0 views

shared by drew polly on 31 Jul 08 - Cached
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    Share, exchange and examine images from NASA- great solar system and space resource!
Clif Mims

ESPN - 0 views

shared by Clif Mims on 04 Aug 08 - Cached
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    This resource will help you gather data for our study of percentages, ratios, proportions, fractions, etc.
Dean Mantz

Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, Music, Art and PE Interactive Sites - 0 views

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    Interactive websites and resources for all curriculum areas.
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