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Journeys: Technology - 0 views

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    Things to think about when selecting instructional technology tools and resources.
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Tech-Ease! - 0 views

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    Quick answers to real classroom technology questions. An online service of the Educational Technology Clearinghouse.
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From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments | Academic Commons - 0 views

  • The message of Wikipedia is not “trust authority” but “explore authority.” Authorized information is not beyond discussion on Wikipedia, information is authorized through discussion, and this discussion is available for the world to see and even participate in. This culture of discussion and participation is now available on any website with the emerging “second layer” of the web through applications like Diigo which allow you to add notes and tags to any website anywhere.
  • Many faculty may hope to subvert the system, but a variety of social structures work against them.
  • Our physical structures were built prior to an age of infinite information, our social structures formed to serve different purposes than those needed now, and the cognitive structures we have developed along the way now struggle to grapple with the emerging possibilities.
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  • The physical structures are easiest to see, and are on prominent display in any large “state of the art” classroom. Rows of fixed chairs often face a stage or podium housing a computer from which the professor controls at least 786,432 points of light on a massive screen. Stadium seating, sound-absorbing panels and other acoustic technologies are designed to draw maximum attention to the professor at the front of the room. The “message” of this environment is that to learn is to acquire information, that information is scarce and hard to find (that's why you have to come to this room to get it), that you should trust authority for good information, and that good information is beyond discussion (that's why the chairs don't move or turn toward one another). In short, it tells students to trust authority and follow along.
  • at the base of this “information revolution” are new ways of relating to one another, new forms of discourse, new ways of interacting, new kinds of groups, and new ways of sharing, trading, and collaborating. Wikis, blogs, tagging, social networking and other developments that fall under the “Web 2.0” buzz are especially promising in this regard because they are inspired by a spirit of interactivity, participation, and collaboration. It is this “spirit” of Web 2.0 which is important to education. The technology is secondary. This is a social revolution, not a technological one, and its most revolutionary aspect may be the ways in which it empowers us to rethink education and the teacher-student relationship in an almost limitless variety of ways.
  • Even in situations in which a spirit of exploration and freedom exist, where faculty are free to experiment to work beyond physical and social constraints, our cognitive habits often get in the way
  • Most of our assumptions about information are based on characteristics of information on paper.
  • Even something as simple as the hyperlink taught us that information can be in more than one place at one time
  • Blogging came along and taught us that anybody can be a creator of information.
  • Our old assumption that information is hard to find, is trumped by the realization that if we set up our hyper-personalized digital network effectively, information can find us.
  • Taken together, this new media environment demonstrates to us that the idea 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.
  • Nothing good will come of these technologies if we do not first confront the crisis of significance and bring relevance back into education. In some ways these technologies act as magnifiers.
  • Usually our courses are arranged around “subjects.” Postman and Weingartner note that the notion of “subjects” has the unwelcome effect of teaching our students that “English is not History and History is not Science and Science is not Art . . . and a subject is something you 'take' and, when you have taken it, you have 'had' it.” Always aware of the hidden metaphors underlying our most basic assumptions, they suggest calling this “the Vaccination Theory of Education” as students are led to believe that once they have “had” a subject they are immune to it and need not take it again.5
  • As an alternative, I like to think that we are not teaching subjects but subjectivities: ways of approaching, understanding, and interacting with the world. Subjectivities cannot be taught. They involve an introspective intellectual throw-down in the minds of students. Learning a new subjectivity is often painful because it almost always involves what psychologist Thomas Szasz referred to as “an injury to one's self-esteem.”6 You have to unlearn perspectives that may have become central to your sense of self.
  • We can only create environments in which the practices and perspectives are nourished, encouraged, or inspired (and therefore continually practiced).
  • So while the course is set up much like a typical cultural anthropology course, moving through the same readings and topics, all of these learnings are ultimately focused around one big question, “How does the world work?”
  • Students are co-creators of every aspect of the simulation, and are asked to harness and leverage the new media environment to find information, theories, and tools we can use to answer our big question. Each student has a specific role and expertise to develop. A world map is superimposed on the class and each student is asked to become an expert on a specific aspect of the region in which they find themselves. Using this knowledge, they work in 15-20 small groups to create realistic cultures, step-by-step, as we go through each aspect of culture in class. This allows them to apply the knowledge they learn in the course and to recognize the ways different aspects of culture--economic, social, political, and religious practices and institutions--are integrated in a cultural system.
  • The World Simulation itself only takes 75-100 minutes and moves through 650 metaphorical years, 1450-2100. It is recorded by students on twenty digital video cameras and edited into one final "world history" video using clips from real world history to illustrate the correspondences. We watch the video together in the final weeks of the class, using it as a discussion starter for contemplating our world and our role in its future. By then it seems as if we have the whole world right before our eyes in one single classroom - profound cultural differences, profound economic differences, profound challenges for the future, and one humanity. We find ourselves not just as co-creators of a simulation, but as co-creators of the world itself, and the future is up to us.
  • I have often found myself writing content-based multiple-choice questions in a way that I hope will indicate that the student has mastered a new subjectivity or perspective. Of course, the results are not satisfactory. More importantly, these questions ask students to waste great amounts of mental energy memorizing content instead of exercising a new perspective in the pursuit of real and relevant questions.
  • When you watch somebody who is truly “in it,” somebody who has totally given themselves over to the learning process, or if you simply imagine those moments in which you were “in it” yourself, you immediately recognize that learning expands far beyond the mere cognitive dimension. Many of these dimensions were mentioned in the issue precis, “such as emotional and affective dimensions, capacities for risk-taking and uncertainty, creativity and invention,” and the list goes on. How will we assess these? I do not have the answers, but a renewed and spirited dedication to the creation of authentic learning environments that leverage the new media environment demands that we address it.
  • The new media environment provides new opportunities for us to create a community of learners with our students seeking important and meaningful questions.
  • 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.
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Teacher Challenge - 11 views

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    Technology integration challenges for teachers from Edublogs.org. Ideas on how to kick-start you technology integration in your classroom. Good resource for teachers that like the DIY approach to self-development.
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Survey reveals educators' must-have technologies | 21st Century Education | eSchoolNews... - 14 views

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    Teacher survey shows educators feel there are must have technologies.
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Digital Citizenship - 23 views

  • Digital Citizenship is a concept which helps teachers, technology leaders and parents to understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately. Digital Citizenship is more than just a teaching tool; it is a way to prepare students/technology users for a society full of technology.
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Cool Tools to Curate Content - 0 views

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    Content curation is one way to find and share useful knowledge efficiently. There are plenty of user friendly push-button digital tools to help you collect, organize and store web content in flexible ways to allow for shared resources that are accessible online.
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Top 10 Tech Tools: An Interactive Graphic Packed with Resources - 0 views

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    I created a ThingLink graphic to feature the top 10 free and user friendly tech tools I use the most. Explore the graphic by scrolling over the colored nubbins, then choose topics the resources that interest you the most.
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Twiddla - Online Whiteboard Tool | Technology 4 Teaching - 0 views

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    Twiddla meetings allow users to interact in real time with drawing tools, chat, voice, images, videos, plain text, documents, emails, and GoogleMaps.
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Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009 - 0 views

  • Here's the emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009  list, where you can compare the rankings of the tools with the last two years.  Note, by "learning" we mean both formal and informal learning .
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Google For Educators - 5 views

  • From search games to presentations on how to use Docs & Spreadsheets with your students, here you can find real-world examples of innovative ways that teachers and librarians are using Google tools to help students learn.
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    "From search games to presentations on how to use Docs & Spreadsheets with your students, here you can find real-world examples of innovative ways that teachers and librarians are using Google tools to help students learn"
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The Ultimate Google Wave Guide for Students: 100 Tips, Tools, and Tricks - Online Degre... - 5 views

  • a powerful collaboration tool that lets you manage projects, swap files and communicate in real-time, with no delay.
    • Zhang Luke
       
      good, have a try
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Digital Differentiation ~ Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners - 1 views

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    Technology is a tool that can be used to help teachers facilitate learning experiences that address the diverse learning needs of all students and help them develop 21st Century Skills. At it's most basic level, digital tools can be used to help students find, understand and use information.
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An Updated Digital Differentiation Model - Cool Tools for 21st Century Learners: - 0 views

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    Technology is a tool that can be used to help teachers facilitate learning experiences that address the diverse learning needs of all students and help them develop 21st Century Skills, an idea supported by the Common Core. 
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Ten great content creation tools for elearning | TrainingZone.co.uk - 0 views

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    "When it comes to elearning, traditional teaching methods do not work. Although online learning doesn't place students into the conventional classroom that inspires discussions, the entire process is still based upon interactio"
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Education Week's Digital Directions: Digital Tools Expand Options for Personalized Lear... - 13 views

  • latest technology tools
  • promise to ease the challenges
  • differentiating instruction more creatively and effectively
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  • flexible and dynamic working environment
  • computer-based and face-to-face learning options customized for each student
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20 Mobile Learning Tools in 60 Minutes - 14 views

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    B.J. Schone's presentation at mLearnCon 2010
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