Most projects and social networks encourage users to upload a personal ID or photograph. Student safety, however, is paramount to shelter identities. Clever and quirky avatars, therefore, can help students distinguish their profiles and still remain incognito. An avatar is a customized online icon that represents a user's virtual self. A signature avatar can give a child great pride in his or her masterpiece. Among the many cartoony or creative avatar generators available on the web, many require accounts or email addresses or are not safe for school. To take advantage of all that the Web affords, workarounds can be used to protect privacy but still allow for a personalized identity. A few ways to do this include generating avatars, setting-up username conventions, creating email shortcuts, and screencapping of content.

The education-approved social networks and cartoon avatars will work on elementary and perhaps some middle school students, but high school kids are a whole different ballgame. Yes, content-filtering solutions can prevent students from accessing social media while they’re connected to school networks, but once they’re on their personal devices, it’s out of the school’s hands.

In the article, Cutler outlines five questions that he advises his students to ask themselves when engaging in social media activity: Do I treat others online with the same respect I would accord them in person? Would my parents be disappointed in me if they examined my online behavior? Does my online behavior accurately reflect who I am away from the computer? Could my online behavior hinder my future college and employment prospects? How could my online behavior affect current and future personal relationships?

In 2011, game designer Jane McGonigal published Reality is Broken, where she outlined four simple rules that define a game: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. Both Jeopardy and The History of Biology fit this definition, but clearly there is a difference between games that teach the recall of facts and those that teach higher-order thinking skills.

esame Workshop, published a paper in 2011 called “Games for a Digital Age.” They distinguish between short-form games, “which provide tools for practice and focused concepts,” and long-form games, “which are focused on higher order thinking skills.” This is a useful first distinction teachers can use when evaluating games for use in the classroom.

A theme that comes up with teachers who use long-form video games is teaching empathy. “When I first started teaching natural disasters in Grade 7, there were case studies in the textbook, or videos,” says Mike Farley, a high-school teacher at the University of Toronto Schools (UTS). “When we invite students to play a simulation like Stop Disasters or Inside the Haiti Earthquake, they are more immersed; there’s more of an emotional learning.”

The SAMR model provides a perfect lens for looking at the implementation of technology. After spending some time with the model and reflecting on the current raft of technologies – I have to say we have barely moved past the enhancement stage.

You’re all probably familiar with the Gartner hype cycle - “the graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies”. If I was to put EdTech on the graph somewhere right now in February 2013 it would be at the very pit of the “trough of disillusionment”. In the diagram above I’ve tried to to illustrate the my view of the current state by combining the SAMR and Hype Cycle. The technological solutions that we put our faith in have failed to meet expectations and have quickly become unfashionable. The LMS has dropped off the page despite it underwriting most institutions online presense and being the foundation of technological progress so far. While we can wallow in the downturn the fact is that the next phase – the Slope of Enlightenment – is just around the corner. The climate is right to move forward, beyond the hype and beyond simple enhancement. Its time for transformation.

The big issue with EdTech at the moment is the lack of real solutions. The vendors and the products they are peddling are carry overs and do little more that enhance and keep the status quo. They don’t move very far down the SAMR line, and they barely get close to the real transformation that is possible (and needed). The fact is that there is no solution on the market that can provide the technical transformation required in the education sector. And it’s a shared problem across sectors and industries – from news, to broadcast and publishing. So lets work this out together rather than paying someone else to silo off yet another years content.

What’s so striking is how much this accords with the analysis we released last week in our paper, “Is K–12 blended learning disruptive?,” which introduced the theory of hybrids. The data is supporting that theory.

In contrast, in high school, and to a lesser extent middle school, we said that in the long run, the disruptive models of blended learning will substantially replace traditional classrooms because there are so many areas of nonconsumption for online learning to plant itself.

As teachers we understandably believe that it is the ‘teaching’ that causes learning. But this is too egocentric a formulation. As I said in my previous post, the learner’s attempts to learn causes all learning.

From this viewpoint, the teacher is merely one resource for learning, no different from a book, a peer, an experience, or an experimental result.

It is the learner who decides to try to learn (or not) from what happens.

Don't feel the need to know everything.

Don't need someone to plan, organize, and lead their professional development.

Don't fear making mistakes.

Cultural - We need to pay attention to the culture in which the literacies are situated Cognitive - We can’t just consider the procedural ways in which we use devices and programs. It’s the way we think when we’re using them Constructive - We can’t be passive consumers of technology/information. We should strive to use digital tools in reflective and appropriate ways Communicative - Digital tools and power structures change the way we communicate. An element of digital literacy is how we take command of that structure and use it to communicate effectively and contribute meaningfully Confident – in order to be a proficient user of technology, one must have the courage and confidence to dive into the unknown, take risks, make mistakes, and display confidence when “messing around” with new tools Creative – from his research, Doug says “…..the creative adoption of new technology requires teachers who are willing to take risks… a prescriptive curriculum, routine practices… and a tight target-setting regime, is unlikely to be helpful.” Conlon & Simpson (2003) Critical - Digital literacy involves an understanding of how to deal with hyperspace and hypertext and understanding it’s “not entirely read or spoken.” Can we critically evaluate the technologies we’re using? Civic - many schools are beginning to embrace technology to improve our lives and the lives of others in the world