In a growing number of simulations, ranging from the off-the-shelf SimCity and to Muzzy Lane's Making History to MIT's experimental Revolution and Supercharged, students -- even elementary school children -- can now manipulate whole virtual systems, from cities to countries to refineries, rather than just handling manipulatives.
Shaping Tech for the Classroom | Edutopia - 0 views
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In Education Simulations's Real Lives, children take on the persona of a peasant farmer in Bangladesh, a Brazilian factory worker, a police officer in Nigeria, a Polish computer operator, or a lawyer in the United States, among others, experiencing those lives based on real-world statistical data. Riverdeep's School Tycoon enables kids to build a school to their liking.
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The missing technological element is true one-to-one computing, in which each student has a device he or she can work on, keep, customize, and take home. For true technological advance to occur, the computers must be personal to each learner. When used properly and well for education, these computers become extensions of the students' personal self and brain.
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But new technology still faces a great deal of resistance. Today, even in many schools with computers, Luddite administrators (and even Luddite technology administrators) lock down the machines, refusing to allow students to access email. Many also block instant messaging, cell phones, cell phone cameras, unfiltered Internet access, Wikipedia, and other potentially highly effective educational tools and technologies, to our kids' tremendous frustration.
Educational Leadership:Technology-Rich Learning:Our Brains Extended - 0 views
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When my 2nd grader needs to know the meaning of a word, I tell him to use my iPhone to ask Siri, an artificial intelligence program that's always happy to look it up for him. Siri, in turn, uses the free online program Wolfram Alpha, one of the most powerful data analysis tools in the world. If you enter into the Siri (or Wolfram Alpha) search box, by text or voice, "arable land in world divided by world population," in less than a second the phone or computer will find the relevant data; do the calculations; provide the answer—in square miles, acres, square feet, and hectares per person—and cite you its sources.
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The only way to do almost all science today is with technology. No human can handle or analyze the volumes of data we now have and need. Ditto for the social sciences. The research study of the past focusing on 10 graduate students has been replaced by sample sizes of millions online around the world. Being perfect at language translation, spelling, and grammar is becoming less important for humans as machines begin to understand context and can access almost every translation ever done. Those who laugh at the mistakes that machines make today will no longer be laughing in a few short years.
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call the process of envisioning such technically enhanced possibilities imag-u-cation. It's something every teacher and class should spend some time doing.
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