Here is the list of things that every productivity application should have:
Integration with iCal / Google Calendar - for those who rely on Google SMS texts as reminders
Powerful search – so I don’t have to waste time looking for the things that I need
Available on all platforms (Mac, PC, Android, iOS, Black Berry…) – so if I change the device, I don’t need to be left apart
Sharing options (Facebook, Twitter, @mail) – so I can share my thoughts with my friends without writing it twice and copy pasting
Tagging – so we can organize ourselves better
Reminders – so we can setup alarms without finding the native app
Offline access – so we don’t have to rely on internet in order for our system to work.
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Workflowy, example of bad productivity app and 7 features that would make it awesome - 3 views
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Revisiting a previous conceptulisation of pedagogy « Ackygirl - 55 views
ackygirl.wordpress.com/...s-conceptulisation-of-pedagogy
pedagogy learning thinking metaphor education
shared by Roland Gesthuizen on 12 Aug 12
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The online learning paradigm grid from Stephenson and Coomey’s meta-analysis of online learning research articles identifies 4 quadrants where the opportunities for learning range from teacher-controlled to learner-managed and from specified tasks through to open-ended and strategic activities.
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Dark Side of the iPad ~ Collecting student projects is difficult! | John Larkin - 3 views
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Dear Administrators, Please Don't Forget About the Little Things | Blogging Through the... - 2 views
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But before you get too far in your dreams, think small first, please. Before you roll out all of the new initiatives, the changes that you know will make everything so much better for everyone, yourself included, make me a promise first; promise to take care of the little things as soon as possible.
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An amazing school doesn’t just come from dreams. It is built upon a foundation of trust, of accountability, of feeling respected. And all three of those are built on getting the management side of your job done for those who need it.
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So this year, please do dream big. Please do work for change. Get excited about the big things. But don’t forget the little things, those boring to-do tasks that don’t seem pressing.
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elearnspace. Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age - 17 views
www.elearnspace.org/...connectivism.htm
connectivism MEMOIRE learning elearning theory collaboration technology community
shared by Christophe Gigon on 09 Dec 08
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Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn.
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I aggree that as teachers we need to realize that technology has changed instruction and the way that our students learn and the way that we learn and instruct.
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Technology has always changed the way we live. How did we respond to changes in the past? One thought is that some institutions, some businesses disappeared, while others, who took advantage of the new tech, appeared to replace the old. It will happen again and we as educators need to lead the way.
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With technology our students brains are wired differently and they can multi-task and learn in multiple virtual environments all at once. This should make us think about how we present lessons, structure learning and keep kids engaged.
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Rubbish. The idea that digital native are adept at multitasking is wrong. They may be doing many things but the quality and depth is reduced. There is a significant body of research to support this. Development of grit and determination are key attributes of successful people. Set and demand high standards. No one plays sport or an instrument because it is easy rather because they can clearly see a link between hard work and pleasure.
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Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
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Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories.
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Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions. Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources. Learning may reside in non-human appliances. Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill. Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
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Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness”
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John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
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The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today.
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To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
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a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world”
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Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning, not with the value of what is being learned.
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Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements that initially defy order.
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If the underlying conditions used to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct as it was at the time it was made.
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principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole.
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Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual
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Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.
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The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.
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This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.
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This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.
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An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy surviva
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As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
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School Would Be Great If It Weren't for the Damn Kids - 95 views
www.alfiekohn.org/...damnkids.htm
school alfie kohn students edreform education interest current commentary
shared by Jason Schmidt on 17 Nov 10
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It simply doesn’t make sense to try to “purge ‘ineffective’ teachers and principals.” His listener, almost giddy with gratitude now, prepares to chime in, as Samuelson, without pausing, delivers the punch line: That’s right, it’s time to stop blaming teachers and start . . . blaming students!
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His focus is not on students’ achievements (the intellectual accomplishments of individual kids) but only on “student achievement” (the aggregate results of standardized tests)
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As I’ve noted elsewhere, we have reason to worry when schooling is discussed primarily in the context of “global competitiveness” rather than in terms of what children need or what contributes to a democratic culture
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Upon hearing someone castigate students for being insufficiently motivated, a noneconomist might be inclined to ask two questions. The first is: “Motivated to do what, exactly”? Anything they’re told, no matter how unengaging, inappropriate, or, well, demotivating?
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Whenever I see students made to cram facts into their short-term memories for a test, practice a series of decontextualized skills on yet another worksheet, listen passively to a lecture, or inch their way through the insipid prose of a corporate-produced textbook, I find myself thinking of a comment made by Frederick Herzberg, a critic of traditional workplace management: “Idleness, indifference, and irresponsibility,” he said, “are healthy responses to absurd work.”
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The more you reward people for doing something, or for doing it well, the less interest they typically come to have in whatever they had to do to get the reward.
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People who blame students for not being “motivated” tend to think educational success mean little more than higher scores on bad tests and they’re apt to see education itself as a means to making sure our corporations will beat their corporations. The sort of schooling that results is the type almost guaranteed to . . . kill students’ motivation.
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one thing that’s happened is a concatenation of rewards and punishments, including grades, which teach students that learning is just a means to an end.
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inner-city kids get the worst of the sort of schooling that’s not about exploring and discovering and questioning but only about working hard (often at rote tasks) and being nice (read: obedient).
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“Motivation is weak because more students…don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well.” But why don’t they like school (which is the key to understanding why, assuming his premise is correct, they don’t succeed)? What has happened to their desire to figure out how things work, the hunger to make sense of things, with which all children start out?
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if you want to see (intrinsically) motivated kids, you need to visit classrooms or schools that take a nontraditional approach to education, places where students are more likely to be absorbed and frequently delighted, where what they’re doing is not merely “rigorous” (a word often applied to very difficult busywork) but meaningful.
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Alfie Kohn's commentary on an article written by Robert J. Samuelson. Samuelson argues in his article that the problem with education reform is not the usual suspects like ineffective teachers, but kids who are lazy and unmotivated. Interesting read with thoughtful information about student motivation.
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Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenge... - 119 views
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Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been components of human progress throughout history
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What's actually new is the extent to which changes in our economy and the world mean that collective and individual success depends on having such skills
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Many reform efforts, from reducing class size to improving reading instruction, have devolved into fads or been implemented with weak fidelity to their core intent. The 21st century skills movement faces the same risk.
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some of the rhetoric we have heard surrounding this movement suggests that with so much new knowledge being created, content no longer matters; that ways of knowing information are now much more important than information itself. Such notions contradict what we know about teaching and learning and raise concerns that the 21st century skills movement will end up being a weak intervention for the very students—low-income students and students of color—who most need powerful schools as a matter of social equity.
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First, educators and policymakers must ensure that the instructional program is complete and that content is not shortchanged for an ephemeral pursuit of skills
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Second, states, school districts, and schools need to revamp how they think about human capital in education—in particular how teachers are trained
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At other times, we know that we have a particular thinking skill, but domain knowledge is necessary if we are to use it.
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if skills are independent of content, we could reasonably conclude that we can develop these skills through the use of any content. For example, if students can learn how to think critically about science in the context of any scientific material, a teacher should select content that will engage students (for instance, the chemistry of candy), even if that content is not central to the field. But all content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.
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Another curricular challenge is that we don't yet know how to teach self-direction, collaboration, creativity, and innovation the way we know how to teach long division.
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But experience is not the same thing as practice. Experience means only that you use a skill; practice means that you try to improve by noticing what you are doing wrong and formulating strategies to do better. Practice also requires feedback, usually from someone more skilled than you are.
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We must plan to teach skills in the context of particular content knowledge and to treat both as equally important.
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education leaders must be realistic about which skills are teachable. If we deem that such skills as collaboration and self-direction are essential, we should launch a concerted effort to study how they can be taught effectively rather than blithely assume that mandating their teaching will result in students learning them.
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Even when class sizes are reduced, teachers do not change their teaching strategies or use these student-centered method
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These methods also demand that teachers be knowledgeable about a broad range of topics and are prepared to make in-the-moment decisions as the lesson plan progresses.
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Unfortunately, there is a widespread belief that teachers already know how to do this if only we could unleash them from today's stifling standards and accountability metrics. This notion romanticizes student-centered methods, underestimates the challenge of implementing such methods, and ignores the lack of capacity in the field today.
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measures that encourage greater creativity, show how students arrived at answers, and even allow for collaboration.
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When students first encounter new ideas, their knowledge is shallow and their understanding is bound to specific examples. They need exposure to varied examples before their understanding of a concept becomes more abstract and they can successfully apply that understanding to novel situations.
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Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as "Third Places" - 52 views
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"bowling alone" hypothesis (Putnam, 2000), which suggests that media are displacing crucial civic and social institutions
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According to Putnam, time spent with relatively passive and disengaging media has come at the expense of time spent on vital community-building activities.
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A core problem on both sides of the debate is an underlying assumption that all Internet use is more or less equivalent
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It would be more plausible and empirically rigorous, then, to consider how specific forms of Internet activity impact civic and social engagement as a result of their particular underlying social architectures
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combining conclusions from two different lines of MMO research conducted from two different perspectives—one from a media effects approach, the other from a sociocultural perspective on cognition and learning.
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By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of a new "third place" for informal sociability much like the pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts of old.
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They are known for their peculiar combination of designed "escapist fantasy" and emergent "social realism"
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from two research projects: one an examination of the media effects of MMOs, the other an ethnographic study of cognition and culture in such contexts.
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the assumption that the most fruitful advances are sometimes made when congruent findings are discovered through disparate means
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as a way to tease out what happens in the virtual setting of the game and how the people involved consider their own activities, the activities of others, and the contexts in which those activities takes place
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a reasonable level of generalizability (random assignment to condition in the first study) and contextualization (ethnographic description of existing in-game social networks and practices in the second)
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brick-and-mortar "third places" in America where individuals can gather to socialize informally beyond the workplace and home
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virtual environments have the potential to function as new (albeit digitally mediated) third places similar to pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts.
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the default assumption is that no one person is compelled to participate legally, financially, or otherwise.
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Unless one transforms the virtual world of the game into a workplace (e.g., by taking on gainful employment as a virtual currency "farmer" for example, Dibbell, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006a) or enters into such agreement, no one person is obligated to log in
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Yee's (2006) interviews also reveal that individuals who game with romantic partners or family find that such joint engagement in the "other world" of MMOs allows them to redefine the nature and boundaries of their offline relationships, often in more equitable terms than what may be possible in day-to-day offline life
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the relationships that play-partners have with one another offline are often "leveled" within the online world
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appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness
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"In all such systems, linguistic interactions have been primary: users exchange messages that cement the social bonds between them, messages that reflect shared history and understandings (or misunderstandings) about the always evolving local norms for these interactions" (p. 22).
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such that "one may go alone at almost any time of the day or evening with assurance that acquaintances will be there"
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accessible directly from one's home, making them even more accommodating to individual schedules and preferences
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"What attracts a regular visitor to a third place is supplied not by management but by the fellow customer,"
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"It is the regulars who give the place its character and who assure that on any given visit some of the gang will be there"
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As one informant satirically commented in an interview, "You go for the experience [points], you stay for the enlightening conversation.
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Oldenburg argues that third places are characteristically homely, their d�cor defying tidiness and pretension whenever possible. MMOs do not fit this criterion in any literal sense
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In neither of our investigations did the degree of formality exhibited by players within the game bear any relation to the degree of visual ornamentation of the players' immediate vicinity.
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Thus, while the visual form of MMO environments does not fit Oldenburg's (1999) criterion of "low profile," the social function of those environments does.
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Oldenburg (1999) argues that seriousness is anathema to a vibrant third place; instead, frivolity, verbal word play, and wit are essential.
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The playful nature of MMOs is perhaps most apparent in what happens when individuals do bring gravity to the game.
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Participation becomes a regular part of daily life for players and, among regular gamemates such as guild members, exceptional absences (i.e., prolonged or unforeseen ones) are queried within the game or outside i
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create an atmosphere of mutual caring that, while avoiding entangling obligations per se, creates a sense of rootedness to the extent that regularities exist, irregularities are duly noted, and, when concerning the welfare of any one regular, checked into
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Anderson (1991), who suggests that geographic proximity itself is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the emergence and preservation of "community."
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Social capital (Coleman, 1988) works analogously to financial capital; it can be acquired and spent, but for social and personal gains rather than financial
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This form of social capital is marked by tentative relationships, yet what they lack in depth, they make up for in breadth.
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On the one hand, bridging social capital provides little in the way of emotional support; on the other hand, such relationships can broaden social horizons or worldviews, providing access to information and new resources.
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shows that bridging and bonding social capital are tied to different social contexts, given the network of relationships they enable.
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Virtual worlds appear to function best as bridging mechanisms rather than as bonding ones, although they do not entirely preclude social ties of the latter type.
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One could argue that, if the benchmark for bonding social capital is the ability to acquire emotional, practical, or substantive support, then MMOs are not well set up for the task:
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While deep affective relationships among players are possible, they are less likely to generate the same range of bonding benefits as real-world relationships because of players' geographic dispersion and the nature of third places themselves.
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Despite differences in theoretical grounding and methodologies, our conclusions were remarkably similar across complementary macro- and micro-levels.
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It is worth noting, however, that as gamers become more involved in long-term social networks such as guilds and their activities become more "hardcore" (e.g., marked by participation in large-scale collaborative problem-solving endeavors such as "raids" into difficult territories or castle sieges), the function of MMOs as "third places" begins to wane.
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It may be, then, that the structure and function of MMOs as third places is one part of the "life cycle" for some gamers in a given title.
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In such cases, MMOs appear to enable a different kind of sociability, one ostensibly recognizable as a "community" nonetheless.
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However, our research findings indicate that this conclusion is uninformed. To argue that MMO game play is isolated and passive media consumption in place of informal social engagement is to ignore the nature of what participants actually do behind the computer screen
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Perhaps it is not that contemporary media use has led to a decline in civic and social engagement, but rather that a decline in civic and social engagement has led to retribalization through contemporary media (McLuhan, 1964).
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Such a view, however, ignores important nuances of what "community" means by pronouncing a given social group/place as either wholly "good" or "bad" without first specifying which functions the online community ought to fulfill.
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Moreover, despite the semantics of the term, "weak" ties have been shown to be vital in communities, relationships, and opportunities.
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In light of Putnam's evidence of the decline of crucial civic and social institutions, it may well be that the classification "lacking bridging social capital" best characterizes the everyday American citizen. T
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Without bridging relationships, individuals remain sheltered from alternative viewpoints and cultures and largely ignorant of opportunities and information beyond their own closely bound social network.
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it seems ironic that, now of all times, we would ignore one possible solution to our increasingly vexed relationship with diversity.
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