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Welcome, Anthony Giannini, today is Friday, December 6, 2019
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Cycle day B in Emanuel Axelrod Education Center - John A. Flannery High School and John A. Flannery Middle School
Cycle day B in Regional Education Center At Arden Hill - Marguerite A. Flood Middle School, Marguerite A. Flood High School, Academy at Arden Hill High School and Academy at Arden Hill Middle School
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According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order
thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that
enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge,
and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy
and not the technology tha
According to Bonk and Reynolds (1997), to promote higher-order
thinking on the Web, online learning must create challenging activities that
enable learners to link new information to old, acquire meaningful knowledge,
and use their metacognitive abilities; hence, it is the instructional strategy
and not the technology that influences the quality of learning.
However, it is not the computer per se that makes students learn,
but the design of the real-life models and simulations, and the students'
interaction with those models and simulations. The computer is merely the
vehicle that provides the processing capability and delivers the instruction
to learners (Clark, 2001).
Online learning allows for flexibility of access, from anywhere
and usually at anytime—essentially, it allows participants to collapse time
and space (Cole, 2000)—however, the learning materials must be designed properly
to engage the learner and promote learning.
Cognitive psychology claims that learning involves the use of
memory, motivation, and thinking, and that reflection plays an important part
in learning.
The development of effective online learning materials should
be based on proven and sound learning theories.
Early computer learning systems were designed based
on a behaviorist approach to learning. The behaviorist school of thought,
influenced by Thorndike (1913), Pavlov (1927), and Skinner (1974), postulates
that learning is a change in observable behavior caused by external stimuli
in the environment (Skinner, 1974).
Therefore, before any learning materials are developed, educators must, tacitly
or explicitly, know the principles of learning and how students learn.
Constructivist
theorists claim that learners interpret information and the world according
to their personal reality, and that they learn by observation, processing,
and interpretation, and then personalize the information into personal knowledge
(Cooper, 1993; Wilson, 1997).
The design of online learning materials can include principles
from all three. According to Ertmer and Newby (1993), the three schools of
thought can in fact be used as a taxonomy for learning. Behaviorists' strategies
can be used to teach the “what” (facts), cognitive strategies can be used
to teach the “how” (processes and principles), and constructivist strategies
can be used to teach the “why” (higher level thinking that promotes personal
meaning and situated and contextual learning).
The behaviorist school sees the mind as a “black box,”
in the sense that a response to a stimulus can be observed quantitatively,
totally ignoring the effect of thought processes occurring in the mind.
Learners should be told the explicit outcomes of
the learning so that they can set expectations and can judge for themselves
whether or not they have achieved the outcome of the online lesson.
2. Learners must be tested to determine whether or not
they have achieved the learning outcome. Online testing or other forms of
testing and assessment should be integrated into the learning sequence to
check the learner's achievement level and to provide appropriate feedback.
3. Learning materials must be sequenced appropriately
to promote learning. The sequencing could take the form of simple to complex,
known to unknown, and knowledge to application.
4. Learners must be provided with feedback so that they
can monitor how they are doing and take corrective action if required.
Cognitivists see learning as an internal process that
involves memory, thinking, reflection, abstraction, motivation, and meta-cognition.
Online instruction must use strategies to allow learners to attend
to the learning materials so that they can be transferred from the senses
to the sensory store and then to working memory.
Online learning strategies must present the materials and use
strategies to enable students to process the materials efficiently.
information should be organized or chunked
in pieces of appropriate size to facilitate processing.
Use advance organizers to activate an existing cognitive
structure or to provide the information to incorporate the details of the
lesson (Ausubel, 1960).
Use pre-instructional questions to set expectations
and to activate the learners' existing knowledge structure.
Use prerequisite test questions to activate the prerequisite
knowledge structure required for learning the new materials.
To facilitate deep processing, learners should be asked to generate
the information maps during the learning process or as a summary activity
after the lesson (Bonk & Reynolds, 1997).
The cognitive school recognizes the importance of individual differences,
and of including a variety of learning strategies in online instruction to
accommodate those differences
The Kolb Learning Style Inventory
(LSI)
(Kolb, 1984) looks at how learners perceive and process information, whereas
the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers, 1978) uses dichotomous scales to measure
extroversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus
feeling, and judging versus perception. In the following discussion, we consider
the Kolb Learning Style Inventory.
Attention: Capture the learners' attention
at the start of the lesson and maintain it throughout the lesson. The online
learning materials must include an activity at the start of the learning session
to connect with the learners.
Relevance: Inform learners of the importance
of the lesson and how taking the lesson could benefit them. Strategies could
include describing how learners will benefit from taking the lesson, and how
they can use what they learn in real-life situations. This strategy helps
to contextualize the learning and make it more meaningful, thereby maintaining
interest throughout the learning session.
Confidence: Use strategies such as designing
for success and informing learners of the lesson expectations. Design for
success by sequencing from simple to complex, or known to unknown, and use
a competency-based approach where learners are given the opportunity to use
different strategies to complete the lesson. Inform learners of the lesson
outcome and provide ongoing encouragement to complete the lesson.
Satisfaction: Provide feedback on performance
and allow learners to apply what they learn in real-life situations. Learners
like to know how they are doing, and they like to contextualize what they
are learning by applying the information in real life.
Online strategies that facilitate the transfer of
learning should be used to encourage application in different and real-life
situations.
Constructivists see learners as being active rather
than passive.
it is the individual learner's interpretation and processing of what
is received through the senses that creates knowledge.
“the process
of using a prior interpretation to construe a new or revised interpretation
of the meaning of one's experience in order to guide future action” (p. 12).
Learning should be an active process. Keeping learners
active doing meaningful activities results in high-level processing, which
facilitates the creation of personalized meaning. Asking learners to apply
the information in a practical situation is an active process, and facilitates
personal interpretation and relevance.
Learners should construct their own knowledge rather
than accepting that given by the instructor.
Collaborative and cooperative learning should be
encouraged to facilitate constructivist learning (H
When assigning learners for group work, membership should
be based on the expertise level and learning style of individual group members,
so that individual team members can benefit from one another's strengths.
Learners should be given control of the learning
process
Learners should be given time and opportunity to
reflect.
Learning should be made meaningful for learners.
The learning materials should include examples that relate to students, so
that they can make sense of the information.
Learning should be interactive to promote higher-level
learning and social presence, and to help develop personal meaning. According
to Heinich et al. (2002), learning is the development of new knowledge, skills,
and attitudes as the learner interacts with information and the environment.
Interaction is also critical to creating a sense of presence and a sense of
community for online learners, and to promoting transformational learning
(Murphy & Cifuentes, 2001). Learners receive
the learning materials through the technology, process the information, and
then personalize and contextualize the information.
Figure 1-6. Components of effective online learning.
Behaviorist strategies can be used to teach the facts (what); cognitivist
strategies to teach the principles and processes (how); and constructivist
strategies to teach the real-life and personal applications and contextual
learning. There is a shift toward constructive learning, in which learners
are given the opportunity to construct their own meaning from the information
presented during the online sessions. The use of learning objects to promote
flexibility and reuse of online materials to meet the needs of individual
learners will become more common in the future. Online learning materials
will be designed in small coherent segments, so that they can be redesigned
for different learners and different contexts. Finally, online learning will
be increasingly diverse to respond to different learning cultures, styles,
and motivations.
Online instruction occurs when learners use the Web to go through the sequence
of instruction, to complete the learning activities, and to achieve learning
outcomes and objectives (Ally, 2002; Ritchie & Hoffman, 1997).
"Joyce Valenza Ph.D
On the librarian: What's the point . . ? The Twitter conversation
April 30, 2009
@karlfisch: What's the point of having a media specialist if they aren't specialists in the media forms of the day?
I was nearly finished copying and pasting, figuring out how best to post Tuesday's Twitter conversation, when I discovered that Karl Fisch (@karlfisch), who kinda started it all, already took care of that. (You likely know of Karl's very popular and provocative videos.)
I am still not sure how best to frame this conversation on the place of the information/media specialist in today's school.
What is clear is that a lot of smart people--people who are out there teaching, speaking, moving, and shaking--are disappointed in what they see when they see school librarians. Either we have a perception problem or we need to do some serious retooling. I'd say we have to deal with both. In a hurry.
Being an information (or media) specialist today means being an expert in how information and media flow TODAY! It is about knowing how information and media are created and communicated. How to evalute, synthesize, and ethically use information and media in all their varied forms. It is about being able to communicate knowlege in new ways for new audiences using powerful new information and communication tools.
Forgive me if it hurts.
In my mind, if you are not an expert in new information and communication tools, you are NOT a media specialist for today.
Tuesday's conversation happened in the open, on Twitter. We need to be aware that these conversations are happening where we cannot hear them--at conferences, at Board and cabinet meetings. We also need to make sure that our voices are heard and that we hear the voices of others in places like Twitter, where so many educational leaders and thinkers are chatting about us and many other things.
I've selected the remarks that resonated loudest for me. (I've shuffled a bit, but you can visit Karl'
1. "The book is dead." Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year. One million new titles will appear worldwide in 2011. In one day in Britain—"Super Thursday," last October 1—800 new works were published.
2. "We have entered the information age." This announcement is usually intoned solemnly, as if information did not exist in other ages. But every age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time.
3. "All information is now available online." The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives. Only a tiny fraction of archival material has ever been read, much less digitized. Most judicial decisions and legislation, both state and federal, have never appeared on the Web. The vast output of regulations and reports by public bodies remains largely inaccessible to the citizens it affects. Google estimates that 129,864,880 different books exist in the world, and it claims to have digitized 15 million of them—or about 12 percent.
4. "Libraries are obsolete." Everywhere in the country librarians report that they have never had so many patrons. At Harvard, our reading rooms are full. The 85 branch libraries of the New York Public Library system are crammed with people.
5. "The future is digital." True enough, but misleading. In 10, 20, or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean that printed material will cease to be important. Research in the relatively new discipline of book history has demonstrated that new modes of communication do not displace old ones, at least not in the short run.
I mention these misconceptions because I think they stand in the way of understanding shifts in the information environment. They make the changes appear too dramatic. They present things ahistorically and in sharp contrasts—before and after, either/or, black and white. A more nuanced view would reject the common notion that old books and e-books occupy opposite and antagonistic extremes on a technological spectrum. Old books and e-books should be thought of as allies, not enemies.
Last year the sale of e-books (digitized texts designed for hand-held readers) doubled, accounting for 10 percent of sales in the trade-book market. This year they are expected to reach 15 or even 20 percent. But there are indications that the sale of printed books has increased at the same time.
Many of us worry about a decline in deep, reflective, cover-to-cover reading. We deplore the shift to blogs, snippets, and tweets. In the case of research, we might concede that word searches have advantages, but we refuse to believe that they can lead to the kind of understanding that comes with the continuous study of an entire book. Is it true, however, that deep reading has declined, or even that it always prevailed?
Writing looks as bad as reading to those who see nothing but decline in the advent of the Internet. As one lament puts it: Books used to be written for the general reader; now they are written by the general reader. The Internet certainly has stimulated self-publishing, but why should that be deplored? Many writers with important things to say had not been able to break into print, and anyone who finds little value in their work can ignore it.
One could cite other examples of how the new technology is reinforcing old modes of communication rather than undermining them. I don't mean to minimize the difficulties faced by authors, publishers, and readers, but I believe that some historically informed reflection could dispel the misconceptions that prevent us from making the most of "the information age"—if we must call it that.
Encoding of working memory involves the spiking of individual neurons induced by sensory input, which persists even after the sensory input disappears (Jensen and Lisman 2005; Fransen et al. 2002). Encoding of episodic memory involves persistent changes in molecular structures that alter synaptic transmission between neurons. Examples of such structural changes include long-term potentiation (LTP) or spike-timing-dependent plasticity (STDP). The persistent spiking in working memory can enhance the synaptic and cellular changes in the encoding of episodic memory (Jensen and Lisman 2005).
Recent functional imaging studies detected working memory signals in both medial temporal lobe (MTL), a brain area strongly associated with long-term memory, and prefrontal cortex (Ranganath et al. 2005), suggesting a strong relationship between working memory and long-term memory. However, the substantially more working memory signals seen in the prefrontal lobe suggest that this area play a more important role in working memory than MTL (Suzuki 2007).
Consolidation and reconsolidation. Short-term memory (STM) is temporary and subject to disruption, while long-term memory (LTM), once consolidated, is persistent and stable. Consolidation of STM into LTM at the molecular level presumably involves two processes: synaptic consolidation and system consolidation. The former involves a protein synthesis process in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), whereas the latter transforms the MTL-dependent memory into an MTL-independent memory over months to years (Ledoux 2007). In recent years, such traditional consolidation dogma has been re-evaluated as a result of the studies on reconsolidation. These studies showed that prevention after retrieval affects subsequent retrieval of the memory (Sara 2000). New studies have shown that post-retrieval treatment with protein synthesis inhibitors and many other compounds can lead to an amnestic state (Nadel et al. 2000b; Alberini 2005; Dudai 2006). These findings on reconsolidation fit with the behavioral evidence that retrieved memory is not a carbon copy of the initial experiences, and memories are updated during retrieval.
Physical exercise, particularly continuous aerobic exercises such as running, cycling and swimming, has many cognitive benefits and effects on the brain. Influences on the brain include increases in neurotransmitter levels, improved oxygen and nutrient delivery, and increased neurogenesis in the hippocampus. The effects of exercise on memory have important implications for improving children's academic performance, maintaining mental abilities in old age, and the prevention and potential cure of neurological diseases.
At the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State University, researchers have found that memory accuracy of adults is hurt by the fact that they know more, and have more experience than children, and tend to apply all this knowledge when learning new information. The findings appeared in the August 2004 edition of the journal Psychological Science.
Interference can hamper memorization and retrieval. There is retroactive interference, when learning new information makes it harder to recall old information[59] and proactive interference, where prior learning disrupts recall of new information. Although interference can lead to forgetting, it is important to keep in mind that there are situations when old information can facilitate learning of new information. Knowing Latin, for instance, can help an individual learn a related language such as French – this phenomenon is known as positive transfer.[60]
Methods to optimize memorization[edit]
Memorization is a method of learning that allows an individual to recall information verbatim. Rote learning is the method most often used. Methods of memorizing things have been the subject of much discussion over the years with some writers, such as Cosmos Rossellius using visual alphabets. The spacing effect shows that an individual is more likely to remember a list of items when rehearsal is spaced over an extended period of time. In contrast to this is cramming which is intensive memorization in a short period of time. Also relevant is the Zeigarnik effect which states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. The so-called Method of loci uses spatial memory to memorize non-spatial information.[72]
A critical conclusion to be realized that can inform our assumptions as educators.
When teens are involved in friendship-driven practices, online and offline are not separate worlds—they are simply different settings in which to gather with friends and peers
these dynamics reinforce existing friendship patterns as well as constitute new kinds of social arrangements.
Homophily describes the likelihood that people connect to others who share their interests and identity.
One survey of Israeli teens suggests that those who develop friendships online tend toward less homogenous connections than teens who do not build such connections
Teens frequently use social media as additional channels of communication to get to know classmates and turn acquaintances into friendships.
Some teens—especially marginalized and ostracized ones—often relish the opportunity to find connections beyond their schools. Teens who are driven by specific interests that may not be supported by their schools, such as those described in the Creative Production and Gaming chapters, often build relationships with others online through shared practice.
there are plenty of teens who relish the opportunity to make new connections through social media, this practice is heavily stigmatized
the public myths about online “predators” do not reflect the actual realities of sexual solicitation and risky online behavior (Wolak et al. 2008). Not only do unfounded fears limit teenagers unnecessarily, they also obscure preventable problematic behavior
As she described her typical session on Photobucket, it became clear that a shared understanding of friendship and romance was being constructed by her and other Photobucket users:
The fact that they draw from all of these sources suggests that youth’s friendship maintenance is in tune with a discourse of love and friendship that is being widely displayed and (re)circulated.
“It’s like have you noticed that you may have someone in your Top 8 but you’re not in theirs and you kinda think to yourself that you’re not as important to that person as they are to you . . . and oh, to be in the coveted number-one spot!”
Taking someone off your Top 8 is your new passive-aggressive power play when someone pisses you off.
Top Friends are persistent, publicly displayed, and easily alterable. This makes it difficult for teens to avoid the issue or make excuses such as “I forgot.” When pressured to include someone, teens often oblige or attempt to ward off this interaction by listing those who list them
Other teens avoid this struggle by listing only bands or family members. While teens may get jealous if other peers are listed, family members are exempt from the comparative urge.
to avoid social drama with her friends:
The Top Friends feature is a good example of how structural aspects of software can force articulations that do not map well to how offline social behavior works.
teens have developed a variety of social norms to govern what is and is not appropriate
The problem with explicit ranking, however, is that it creates or accentuates hierarchies where they did not exist offline, or were deliberately and strategically ambiguous, thus forcing a new set of social-status negotiations. The give-and-take over these forms of social ranking is an example of how social norms are being negotiated in tandem with the adoption of new technologies, and how peers give ongoing feedback to one another as part of these struggles to develop new cultural standards.
While teen dramas are only one component of friendship, they are often made extremely visible by social media. The persistent and networked qualities of social media alter the ways that these dramas play out in teen life. For this reason, it is important to pay special attention to the role that social media play in the negotiation of teen status.
primarily a continuation of broader dramas.
social media amplify dramas because they extend social worlds beyond the school.
Gossip and rumors have played a role in teen struggles for status and attention since well before social media entered the scene
social media certainly alter the efficiency and potential scale of interactions. Because of this, there is greater potential for gossip to spread much further and at a faster pace, making social media a culprit in teen drama. While teen gossip predates the Internet, some teens blame the technologies for their roles in making gossip easier and more viral
That’s what happened with me and my friends. We got into a lot of drama with it and I was like, anyone can write anything. It can be fact, fiction. Most people, what they read they believe. Even if it’s not true (C.J. Pascoe, Living Digital).
finds the News Feed useful “because it helps you to see who’s keeping track of who and who’s talking to who.” She enjoys knowing when two people break up so that she knows why someone is upset or when she should reach out to offer support. Knowing this information also prevents awkward conversations that might reference the new ex. While she loves the ability to keep up with the lives of her peers, she also realizes that this means that “everybody knows your business.”
Some teens find the News Feed annoying or irrelevant. Gadil, an Indian 16-year-old from Los Angeles, thinks that it is impersonal while others think it is downright creepy. For Tara, a Vietnamese 16-year-old from Michigan, the News Feed takes what was public and makes it more public: “Facebook’s already public. I think it makes it way too like stalker-ish.” Her 18-year-old sister, Lila, concurs and points out that it gets “rumors going faster.” Kat, a white 14-year-old from Salem, Massachusetts, uses Facebook’s privacy settings to hide stories from the News Feed for the sake of appearances.
While gossip is fairly universal among teens, the rumors that are spread can be quite hurtful. Some of this escalates to the level of bullying. We are unable to assess whether or not bullying is on the rise because of social media. Other scholars have found that most teens do not experience Internet-driven harassment (Wolak, Mitchell, and Finkelhor 2007). Those who do may not fit the traditional profile of those who experience school-based bullying (Ybarra, Diener-West, and Leaf 2007), but harassment, both mediated and unmediated, is linked to a myriad of psychosocial issues that includes substance use and school problems (Hinduja and Patchin 2008; Ybarra et al. 2007).
Measuring “cyberbullying” or Internet harassment is difficult, in part because both scholars and teens struggle to define it. The teens we interviewed spoke regularly of “drama” or “gossip” or “rumors,” but few used the language of “bullying” or “harassment” unless we introduced these terms. When Sasha, a white 16-year-old from Michigan, was asked specifically about whether or not rumors were bullying, she said:
I don’t know, people at school, they don’t realize when they are bullying a lot of the time nowadays because it’s not so much physical anymore. It’s more like you think you’re joking around with someone in school but it’s really hurting them. Like you think it’s a funny inside joke between you two, but it’s really hurtful to them, and you can’t realize it anymore.
Sasha, like many of the teens we interviewed, saw rumors as hurtful, but she was not sure if they were bullying. Some teens saw bullying as being about physical harm; others saw it as premeditated, intentionally malicious, and sustained in nature. While all acknowledged that it could take place online, the teens we interviewed thought that most bullying took place offline, even if they talked about how drama was happening online.
it did not matter whether it was online or offline; the result was still the same. In handling this, she did not get offline, but she did switch schools and friend groups.
Technology provides more channels through which youth can potentially bully one another. That said, most teens we interviewed who discussed being bullied did not focus on the use of technology and did not believe that technology is a significant factor in bullying.
They did, though, see rumors, drama, and gossip as pervasive. The distinction may be more connected with language and conception than with practice. Bianca, a white 16-year-old from Michigan, sees drama as being fueled by her peers’ desire to get attention and have something to talk about. She thinks the reason that people create drama is boredom. While drama can be hurtful, many teens see it simply as a part of everyday social life.
Although some drama may start out of boredom or entertainment, it is situated in a context where negotiating social relations and school hierarchies is part of everyday life. Teens are dealing daily with sociability and related tensions.
Tara thinks that it emerges because some teens do not know how to best negotiate their feelings and the feelings of others.
Teens can use the ability to publicly validate one another on social network sites to reaffirm a friendship.
So, while drama is common, teens actually spend much more time and effort trying to preserve harmony, reassure friends, and reaffirm relationships. This spirit of reciprocity is common across a wide range of peer-based learning environments we have observed.
From this perspective, commenting is not as much about being nice as it is about relying on reciprocity for self-gain
That makes them feel like they’re popular, that they’re getting comments all the time by different people, even people that they don’t know. So it makes them feel popular in a way (Rural and Urban Youth).
Gossip, drama, bullying, and posing are unavoidable side effects of teens’ everyday negotiations over friendship and peer status. What takes place in this realm resembles much of what took place even before the Internet, but certain features of social media alter the dynamics around these processes. The public, persistent, searchable, and spreadable nature of mediated information affects the way rumors flow and how dramas play out. The explicitness surrounding the display of relationships and online communication can heighten the social stakes and intensity of status negotiation. The scale of this varies, but those who experience mediated harassment are certainly scarred by the process. Further, the ethic of reciprocity embedded in networked publics supports the development of friendships and shared norms, but it also plays into pressures toward conformity and participation in local, school-based peer networks. While there is a dark side to what takes place, teens still relish the friendship opportunities that social media provide.
While social warfare and drama do exist, the value of social media rests in their ability to strengthen connections. Teens leverage social media for a variety of practices that are familiar elements of teen life: gossiping, flirting, joking around, and hanging out. Although the underlying practices are quite familiar, the networked, public nature of online communication does inflect these practices in new ways.
Adults’ efforts to regulate youth access to MySpace are the latest example of how adults are working to hold on to authority over teen socialization in the face of a gradual erosion of parental influence during the teen years.
learning how to manage the unique affordances of networked sociality can help teens navigate future collegiate and professional spheres where mediated interactions are assumed.
articulating those friendships online means that they become subject to public scrutiny in new ways;
This makes lessons about social life (both the failures and successes) more consequential and persistent
make these dynamics visible in a more persistent and accessible public arena.
co-constructing new sets of social norms together with their peers and the efforts of technology developers. The dynamics of social reciprocity and negotiations over popularity and status are all being supported by participation in publics of the networked variety as formative influences in teen life. While we see no indication that social media are changing the fundamental nature of these friendship practices, we do see differences in the intensity of engagement among peers, and conversely, in the relative alienation of parents and teachers from these social worlds.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Information development was slow.
Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated
fields over the course of their lifetime.
Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience.
Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime.
Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains.
Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network,
and complexity and self-organization theories.
Principles of connectivism:
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.
So what does this look like? I feel that when I attempt this, evaluators and administrators don't necessarily understand. They want a neat, quiet, well-managed, orderly classroom.
If new learning approaches are required, then why are we still being evaluated in a linear way?
John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages
the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few.
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.
Knowledge
is growing exponentially
amount of
knowledge
is doubling
every 18 months
To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations
have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”
(the
understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
know-where
learning
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”
Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning,
not with the value of what is being learned.
The ability to synthesize and recognize connections
and patterns is a valuable skill.
knowledge is no longer acquired
in the linear manner
What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process
on learning
An entirely new approach is needed.
Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements
that initially defy order.
Meaning-making and forming connections
between specialized communities are important activities.
Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything.
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.
principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected
to create an integrated whole.
Connections between disparate
ideas and fields can create new innovations.
Learning is a process that
occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements –
not entirely under the control of the individual
decisions are based
on rapidly altering foundations
The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant
information is vital.
Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism
do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and
transference.
The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends
on effective nurturing of information flow.
This cycle of knowledge development (personal
to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their
field through the connections they have formed.
This amplification of learning, knowledge
and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome
of connectivism.
Diverse
teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely
exploring ideas
An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts
of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy surviva
As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what
is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.
Access is not enough. Prior knowledge and understanding is needed. Processing is needed. Evaluation of processing and outputs is needed. Feeding that back into the "system" is needed.
learning is no longer an internal, individualistic
activity
learning is no longer an internal, individualistic
activity
What if every student (and educator) was a good online researcher? I know, you don't have the time to teach information fluency skills. What if you could get a significant advance is skills with just a 2 -3 hour time commitment?
Here's a great Prezi 'fly by" of the new Information Investigator 3.1 online self paced class. Watch the presentation carefully to find the link to a free code to take the class for evaluation purposes.
I couldn't agree more. Library Media Specialists, especially when they can collaborate with classroom teachers, are the best resource for teaching these skills. However the problem of access to a Librarian and the issue of scale are real barriers. I've been creating content for Librarians for a decade. They are the best! You'll find years of free resources at: http://21cif.com
This resource will help them reach more students. We had 1000 teens take this course at the Center for Talent Development. It really does work. We're hoping to reach teachers and librarians everywhere so we can pass along the skills and the opportunity.
If American education was marginally rational there would be professionally staffed library media centers in every school. Since that isn't the case, I hope Internet based resources can keep the lights on for a new generation that really needs information fluency.
Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines. More about transdisciplinarity.Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team. More about virtual collaboration.Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed. More about sense-making.Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions. More about social intelligence.Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings. More about cross-cultural competency.Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques. More about cognitive load management.Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based. More about novel and adaptive thinking.Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning. More about computational thinking.New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication. More about new media literacy. More about new media literacy.Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes. More about design mindset.
"Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines. More about transdisciplinarity.
Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team. More about virtual collaboration.
Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed. More about sense-making.
Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions. More about social intelligence.
Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings. More about cross-cultural competency.
Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques. More about cognitive load management.
Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based. More about novel and adaptive thinking.
Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning. More about computational thinking.
New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication. More about new media literacy. More about new media literacy.
Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes. More about design mindset."
The web is a space whose very abundance of information - and whose very informational infrastructure - trains our attention to follow our interests. And vice versa. In that, it's empowering information as a function of interest. It's telling Vishal that it's better to spend time with video than with Vonnegut - simply because he's more interested in editing than in reading. Vishal needs needs no other justification for his choice; interest itself is its own acquittal.
And we're seeing the same thing in news. While formal learning has been, in the pre-digital world, a matter of rote obligation in the service of intellectual catholicism - and news consumption has been a matter of the bundle rather than the atom - the web-powered world is creating a knowledge economy that spins on the axis of interest. Individual interest. The web inculcates a follow your bliss approach to learning that seeps, slowly, into the broader realm of information; under its influence, our notion of knowledge is slowly shedding its normative layers.
Web application(networked studentcomponent)
Tool usedin test case
Student activitylevel of structure
Social bookmarking (RSS)
Delicioushttp://delicious.com/
Set up the account
Subscribe to each others accounts
Bookmark and read 10 reliable websites that reflect the content of chosen
topic
Add and read at least 3 additional sites each week.
News and blog alert (RSS)
Google Alerthttp://www.google.com/alerts
Create a Google Alert of keywords associated with selected topic
Read news and blogs on that topic that are delivered via email daily
Subscribe to appropriate blogs in reader
News and blog reader (RSS)
Google Readerhttp://reader.google.com
Search for blogs devoted to chosen topic
Subscribe to blogs to keep track of updates
Personal blog (RSS)
Bloggerhttp://www.blogger.com
Create a personal blog
Post a personal reflection each day of the content found and experiences
related to the use of personal learning environment
Students subscribe to each others blogs in reader
Internet search (information management, contacts, and synchronous
communication)
Google Scholarhttp://scholar.google.com/
Conduct searches in Google Scholar and library databases for
scholarly works.
Bookmark appropriate sites
Consider making contact with expert for video conference
Podcasts (RSS)
iTunesUhttp://www.apple.com/itunes/whatson/itunesu.html
Search iTunesU for podcasts related to topic
Subscribe to at least 2 podcasts if possible
Video conferencing (contacts and synchronous communication)
Skypehttp://www.skype.com
Identify at least one subject matter expert to invite to Skype with
the class.
Content gathering/ digital notebook
Evernotehttp://evernote.com/
Set up account
Use Evernote to take notes on all content collected via other
tools
Content synthesis
Wikispaceshttp://www.wikispaces.com
Post final project on personal page of class
wiki
The process and tools are overwhelming to students if presented all at once.
As with any instructional design, the teacher determines the pace at which the
students best assimilate each new learning tool. For this particular project, a
new tool was introduced each day over two weeks. Once the construction process
was complete, there were a number of personal web page aggregators that could
have been selected to bring everything together in one place. Options at the
time included iGoogle, PageFlakes, NetVibes, and Symbaloo. These
sites offer a means to compile or pull together content from a variety of web
applications. A web widget or gadget is a bit of code that is executed within
the personal web page to pull up external content from other sites. The students
in this case designed the personal web page using the gadgets needed in the
format that best met their learning goals. Figure 3 is an instructor example of
a personal webpage that includes the reader, email, personal blog, note taking
program, and social bookmarks on one page.
The personal learning environment can take the place of a traditional
textbook, though does not preclude the student from using a textbook or
accessing one or more numerous open source texts that may be available for the
research topic. The goal is to access content from many sources to effectively
meet the learning objectives. The next challenge is to determine whether those
objectives have been met.
Figure 3: Personal web page compiles learning tools
Table 2: Personal learning environment toolset
Web application
(networked student
component)
Tool used
in test
case
Student activity
level of
structure
Social bookmarking (RSS)
Delicious
http://delicious.com/
Set up the account
Subscribe to each others accounts
Bookmark and read 10 reliable websites that
reflect the content of chosen
topic
Add and read at least 3 additional sites each
week.
News and blog alert (RSS)
Google Alert
http://www.google.com/alerts
Create a Google Alert of keywords associated with selected topic
Read news and blogs on that topic that are
delivered via email daily
Subscribe to appropriate blogs in
reader
News and blog reader (RSS)
Google Reader
http://reader.google.com
Search for blogs devoted to chosen topic
Subscribe to blogs to keep track of
updates
Personal blog (RSS)
Blogger
http://www.blogger.com
Create a personal blog
Post a personal reflection each day of the
content found and experiences
related
to the use of personal learning environment
Students subscribe to each others blogs in
reader
Internet search (information management,
contacts, and synchronous
communication)
Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/
Conduct searches in Google Scholar and library databases for
scholarly
works.
Bookmark appropriate sites
Consider making contact with expert for video
conference
Podcasts (RSS)
iTunesU
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
whatson/itunesu.html
Search iTunesU for podcasts related to topic
Subscribe to at least 2 podcasts if
possible
Video conferencing (contacts and synchronous
communication)
Skype
http://www.skype.com
Identify at least one subject matter expert to invite to Skype with
the class.
Content gathering/ digital notebook
Evernote
http://evernote.com/
Set up account
Use Evernote to take notes on all content collected via other
tools
Content synthesis
Wikispaces
http://www.wikispaces.com
Post final project on personal page of
class
wiki
The process and tools are overwhelming to
students if presented all at once.
As with
any instructional design, the teacher determines the pace at which the
students best assimilate each new learning tool.
For this particular project, a
new tool
was introduced each day over two weeks. Once the construction process
was complete, there were a number of personal
web page aggregators that could
have been
selected to bring everything together in one place. Options at the
time
included iGoogle, PageFlakes, NetVibes, and Symbaloo. These
sites
offer a means to compile or pull together content from a variety of web
applications. A web widget or gadget is a bit of
code that is executed within
the
personal web page to pull up external content from other sites. The
students
in this case designed the personal web page
using the gadgets needed in the
format
that best met their learning goals. Figure 3 is an instructor example of
a
personal webpage that includes the reader, email, personal blog, note
taking
program, and social bookmarks on one
page.
The personal learning environment can take the
place of a traditional
textbook, though does not preclude the student
from using a textbook or
accessing one or more numerous open source texts
that may be available for the
research
topic. The goal is to access content from many sources to effectively
meet the learning objectives. The next challenge
is to determine whether those
objectives have been met.
AssessmentThere were four components of the assessment process for this
test case of the Networked Student Model: (1) Ongoing performance
assessment in the form of weekly assignments to facilitate the construction and
maintenance of the personal learning environment, (2) rubric-based assessment of
the personal learning environment at the end of the project, (3) written essay,
and (4) multimedia synthesis of topic content.
Points were earned for meeting the following requirements:
Identify ten reliable resources and post to social bookmarking account. At
least three new resources should be added each week.
Subscribe and respond to at least 3 new blogs each week. Follow these blogs
and news alerts using the reader.
Subscribe to and listen to at least two podcasts (if available).
Respectfully contact and request a video conference from a subject matter
expert recognised in the field.
Maintain daily notes and highlight resources as needed in digital notebook.
Post at least a one-paragraph reflection in personal blog each day.
At the end of the project, the personal learning environment was
assessed with a rubric that encompassed each of the items listed above.
The student's ability to synthesise the research was further evaluated with a
reflective essay. Writing shapes thinking (Langer & Applebee, 1987), and the
essay requirement was one more avenue through which the students demonstrated
higher order learning. The personal blog provided an opportunity for regular
reflection during the course of the project. The essay was the culmination of
the reflections along with a thoughtful synthesis of the learning experience.
Students were instructed to articulate what was learned about the selected topic
and why others should care or be concerned. The essay provided an overview of
everything learned about the contemporary issue. It was well organised,
detailed, and long enough to serve as a resource for others who wished to learn
from the work. As part of a final exam, the students were required to access the
final projects of their classmates and reflect on what they learned from this
exposure. The purpose of this activity was to give the students an additional
opportunity to share and learn from each other.
Creativity is considered a key 21st century skill (Partnership for 21st
Century Skills, 2009). A number of emerging web applications support the
academic creative process. Students in this project used web tools to combine
text, video, audio, and photographs to teach the research topics to others. The
final multimedia project was posted or embedded on the student's personal wiki
page.
Analysis and assessment of student work was facilitated by the very
technologies in use by the students. In order to follow their progress, the
teacher simply subscribed to student social bookmarking accounts, readers, and
blogs. Clicking through daily contributions was relatively quick and efficient.
Scholarly and important but also practical. Scroll down for an incredible chart of ideas that challenges older students to take charge of their own learning.
According to Putnam, time spent with relatively passive and disengaging media has come at the expense of time spent on vital community-building activities.
The evidence to date is mixed
A core problem on both sides of the debate is an underlying assumption that all Internet use is more or less equivalent
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
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.
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.
loosely structured by open-ended narratives
They are known for their peculiar combination of designed "escapist fantasy" and emergent "social realism"
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.
the conclusions of both studies were remarkably aligned.
the assumption that the most fruitful advances are sometimes made when congruent findings are discovered through disparate means
demonstrate the "effects" of game play vs. no game play.
first project was a traditional effects study
second project, a qualitative study of cognition and learning in MMOs (
ethnography
sociocultural perspective
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
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)
but I wonder why he chose these games -- this is not specified. Only their success in US and abroad?
brick-and-mortar "third places" in America where individuals can gather to socialize informally beyond the workplace and home
the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals.
In what ways might MMOs function as new third places for informal sociability?
virtual environments have the potential to function as new (albeit digitally mediated) third places similar to pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts.
in this section we analyze the structural form of MMOs that warrants this "third place" assertion.
eight defining characteristics of third places
there is no default obligation
To oblige any one person to play requires that explicit agreements be entered into by parties
the default assumption is that no one person is compelled to participate legally, financially, or otherwise.
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
and this is why, in my opinion, you will never see games in school. The game cannot be the Third Place because school is a Second Place.
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
the relationships that play-partners have with one another offline are often "leveled" within the online world
an individual's rank and status in the home, workplace, or society are of no importance
appeal to people in part because they represent meritocracies otherwise unavailable in a world often filled with unfairness
conversation plays an analogous role
"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).
third places must also be easy to access
such that "one may go alone at almost any time of the day or evening with assurance that acquaintances will be there"
accessible directly from one's home, making them even more accommodating to individual schedules and preferences
barriers to initial access.
"What attracts a regular visitor to a third place is supplied not by management but by the fellow customer,"
"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"
affective sense
As one informant satirically commented in an interview, "You go for the experience [points], you stay for the enlightening conversation.
engendering a sense of reliable mentorship and community stability.
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
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.
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.
Oldenburg (1999) argues that seriousness is anathema to a vibrant third place; instead, frivolity, verbal word play, and wit are essential.
The playful nature of MMOs is perhaps most apparent in what happens when individuals do bring gravity to the game.
the home-like quality of third places in rooting people
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
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
Are virtual communities really communities, or is physical proximity necessary?
Anderson (1991), who suggests that geographic proximity itself is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the emergence and preservation of "community."
Social capital (Coleman, 1988) works analogously to financial capital; it can be acquired and spent, but for social and personal gains rather than financial
operates cyclically within social networks because of their associated norms of reciprocity
bridging social capital is inclusive.
This form of social capital is marked by tentative relationships, yet what they lack in depth, they make up for in breadth.
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.
bonding social capital is exclusive.
social superglue.
it can also result in insularity.
shows that bridging and bonding social capital are tied to different social contexts, given the network of relationships they enable.
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.
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:
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.
Despite differences in theoretical grounding and methodologies, our conclusions were remarkably similar across complementary macro- and micro-levels.
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.
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.
In such cases, MMOs appear to enable a different kind of sociability, one ostensibly recognizable as a "community" nonetheless.
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
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).
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.
Moreover, despite the semantics of the term, "weak" ties have been shown to be vital in communities, relationships, and opportunities.
is to what extent such environments shift the existing balance between bridging and bonding
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
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.
it seems ironic that, now of all times, we would ignore one possible solution to our increasingly vexed relationship with diversity.
academia is just scratching the surface about the implications of social networking and what exactly it is, what it means, and how it happens
scholarly speculation
"Has social networking technology (blog-friendly phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) made us better or worse off as a society, either from an economic, psychological, or sociological perspective?"
"students were using Facebook to increase the size of their social network, and therefore their access to more information and diverse perspectives. "
"Powerful new technologies provide great benefits, but they also change the way we live, and not always in ways that everyone likes. An example is the spread of air conditioning, which makes us more comfortable, but those who grew up before its invention speak fondly of a time when everyone sat on the front porch and talked to their neighbors rather than going indoors to stay cool and watch TV. The declining cost of information processing and communication represents a powerful new technology, with social networking as the most recent service to be provided at modest cost. It can be expected to bring pluses and minuses."
social networking technologies support and enable a new model of social life, in which people’s social circles will consist of many more, but weaker, ties
Social networking technologies provide people with a low cost (in terms of time and effort) way of making and keeping social connections, enabling a social scenario in which people have huge numbers of diverse, but not very close, acquaintances.
A brief look at social networking theory with interesting views of SNs and where academia are "at" with regards to the emerging field. The post is a little old (Aug 2010) but much is still relevant and the link through to the Freakonomics blog is worthwhile following.
"AUTHOR: ISSIE LAPOWSKY. ISSIE LAPOWSKY DATE OF PUBLICATION: 05.04.15.
05.04.15
TIME OF PUBLICATION: 7:00 AM.
7:00 AM
INSIDE THE SCHOOL SILICON VALLEY THINKS WILL SAVE EDUCATION
Click to Open Overlay Gallery
Students in the youngest class at the Fort Mason AltSchool help their teacher, Jennifer Aguilar, compile a list of what they know and what they want to know about butterflies. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/WIRED
SO YOU'RE A parent, thinking about sending your 7-year-old to this rogue startup of a school you heard about from your friend's neighbor's sister. It's prospective parent information day, and you make the trek to San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. You walk up to the second floor of the school, file into a glass-walled conference room overlooking a classroom, and take a seat alongside dozens of other parents who, like you, feel that public schools-with their endless bubble-filled tests, 38-kid classrooms, and antiquated approach to learning-just aren't cutting it.
At the same time, you're thinking: this school is kind of weird.
On one side of the glass is a cheery little scene, with two teachers leading two different middle school lessons on opposite ends of the room. But on the other side is something altogether unusual: an airy and open office with vaulted ceilings, sunlight streaming onto low-slung couches, and rows of hoodie-wearing employees typing away on their computers while munching on free snacks from the kitchen. And while you can't quite be sure, you think that might be a robot on wheels roaming about.
Then there's the guy who's standing at the front of the conference room, the school's founder. Dressed in the San Francisco standard issue t-shirt and jeans, he's unlike any school administrator you've ever met. But the more he talks about how this school uses technology to enhance and individualize education, the more you start to like what he has to say.
And so, if you are truly fed up with the school stat
Feed readers
are probably the most important digital tool for today's learner because they
make sifting through the amazing amount of content added to the Internet
easy. Also known as aggregators, feed readers are free tools that can
automatically check nearly any website for new content dozens of times a
day---saving ridiculous amounts of time and customizing learning experiences for
anyone.
Imagine
never having to go hunting for new information from your favorite sources
again. Learning goes from a frustrating search through thousands of
marginal links written by questionable characters to quickly browsing the
thoughts of writers that you trust, respect and enjoy.
Feed readers can
quickly and easily support blogging in the classroom, allowing teachers to
provide students with ready access to age-appropriate sites of interest that are
connected to the curriculum. By collecting sites in advance and organizing
them with a feed reader, teachers can make accessing information manageable for
their students.
Here are several
examples of feed readers in action:
Used specifically as
a part of one classroom project, this feed list contains information related to
global warming that students can use as a starting point for individual
research.
While there are literally dozens of different feed reader
programs to choose from (Bloglines andGoogle Reader are two
biggies), Pageflakes is a favorite of
many educators because it has a visual layout that is easy to read and
interesting to look at. It is also free and web-based. That
means that users can check accounts from any computer with an Internet
connection. Finally, Pageflakes makes it quick and easy to add new
websites to a growing feed list—and to get rid of any websites that users are no
longer interested in.
What's even
better: Pageflakes has been developinga teacher version of their tooljust for us that includes an online grade tracker,
a task list and a built in writing tutor. As Pageflakes works to perfect
its teacher product, this might become one of the first kid-friendly feed
readers on the market. Teacher Pageflakes users can actually blog and create a
discussion forum directly in their feed reader---making an all-in-one digital
home for students.
For more
information about the teacher version of Pageflakes, check out this
review:
You've arrived at the most complete and current source of information about the WebQuest Model. Whether you're an education student new to the topic or an experienced teacher educator looking for materials, you'll find something here to meet your needs.
In his deliberately provocative — and deeply nihilistic — new book, “Reality Hunger,” the onetime novelist David Shields asserts that fiction “has never seemed less central to the culture’s sense of itself.”
Mr. Shields’s book consists of 618 fragments, including hundreds of quotations taken from other writers like Philip Roth, Joan Didion and Saul Bellow — quotations that Mr. Shields, 53, has taken out of context and in some cases, he says, “also revised, at least a little — for the sake of compression, consistency or whim.”
It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”
Mr. Lanier’s book, which makes an impassioned case for “a digital humanism,” is only one of many recent volumes to take a hard but judicious look at some of the consequences of new technology and Web 2.0. Among them are several prescient books by Cass Sunstein, 55, which explore the effects of the Internet on public discourse; Farhad Manjoo’s “True Enough,” which examines how new technologies are promoting the cultural ascendancy of belief over fact; “The Cult of the Amateur,” by Andrew Keen, which argues that Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise; and Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows” (coming in June), which suggests that increased Internet use is rewiring our brains, impairing our ability to think deeply and creatively even as it improves our ability to multitask.
Steven Johnson, a founder of the online magazine Feed, for instance, wrote in an article in The Wall Street Journal last year that with the development of software for Amazon.com’s Kindle and other e-book readers that enable users to jump back and forth from other applications, he fears “one of the great joys of book reading — the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author’s ideas — will be compromised.” He continued, “We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.”
Thank you! This is great information! James McKee wrote: > Shannon, > > I was recently referred to this video of Michael Wesch who teaches cultural anthropology at Kansas State University. He ...
Dr. Barrett's (n.d.) webpage presents an introduction to the types of ePortfolios in a learner-centered approach. The website requires cognitive activity and capitalizes on the use of multimedia to present the essential content; and it does so following instructional design principles as recommended by Mayer (2009). Beginning with an anticipatory set to activate the learner's prior knowledge, the lesson page begins by asking learners to think about their own personal use of portfolios. Immediately following, the essential material elements are presented in a cartoon image, capitalizing on the benefits of dual coding (Mayer, Id.), using both images and key words to help learners pay attention and select appropriate information. The image also relies on spatial contiguity (Mayer, Id.) in its presentation format. This webpage itself would fit into Mayer's (Id.) use of multimedia as "information acquisition." However, coupled with a reflective activity, learners would be able to make more integrated sense of the types of portfolios available and which types would be most suited for their particular needs.
References:
Barrett, H. (n.d.). ePortfolios and Google Apps. [Webpage]. Retrieved from http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioapps/overview/blog-entry-eportfolios-and-googleapps
Mayer, R. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Dr. Barrett's (n.d.) webpage presents an introduction to the types of ePortfolios in a learner-centered approach. The website requires cognitive activity and capitalizes on the use of multimedia to present the essential content; and it does so following instructional design principles as recommended by Mayer (2009). Beginning with an anticipatory set to activate the learner's prior knowledge, the lesson page begins by asking learners to think about their own personal use of portfolios. Immediately following, the essential material elements are presented in a cartoon image, capitalizing on the benefits of dual coding (Mayer, Id.), using both images and key words to help learners pay attention and select appropriate information. The image also relies on spatial contiguity (Mayer, Id.) in its presentation format. This webpage itself would fit into Mayer's (Id.) use of multimedia as "information acquisition." However, coupled with a reflective activity, learners would be able to make more integrated sense of the types of portfolios available and which types would be most suited for their particular needs.
References:
Barrett, H. (n.d.). ePortfolios and Google Apps. [Webpage]. Retrieved from http://sites.google.com/site/eportfolioapps/overview/blog-entry-eportfolios-and-googleapps
Mayer, R. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Four Corners and Anticipation Guides:Both of these techniques “activate schema” by asking students to react in some way to a series of controversial statements about a topic they are about to study. In Four Corners, students move around the room to show their degree of agreement or disagreement with various statements — about, for instance, the health risks of tanning, or the purpose of college, or dystopian teen literature. An anticipation guide does the same thing, though generally students simply react in writing to a list of statements on a handout. In this warm-up to a lesson on some of the controversies currently raging over school reform, students can use the statements we provide in either of these ways.
Gallery Walks:A rich way to build background on a topic at the beginning of a unit (or showcase learning at the end), Gallery Walks for this purpose are usually teacher-created collections of images, articles, maps, quotations, graphs and other written and visual texts that can immerse students in information about a broad subject. Students circulate through the gallery, reading, writing and talking about what they see.
Making Text-to-Text/Text-to-Self/Text-to-World connectionsCharting Debatable IssuesListing Facts/Questions/ResponsesIdentifying Cause and EffectSupporting Opinions With FactsTracking The Five W’s and an HIdentifying Multiple Points of ViewIdentifying a Problem and SolutionComparing With a Venn Diagram
The One-Pager:Almost any student can find a “way in” with this strategy, which involves reacting to a text by creating one page that shows an illustration, question and quote that sum up some key aspect of what a student learned.
“Popcorn Reads”:Invite students to choose significant words, phrases or whole sentences from a text or texts to read aloud in random fashion, without explanation. Though this may sound pointless until you try it, it is an excellent way for students to “hear” some of the high points or themes of a text emerge, and has the added benefit of being an activity any reader can participate in easily.
Illustrations:Have students create illustrations for texts they’re reading, either in the margins as they go along, or after they’ve finished. The point of the exercise is not, of course, to create beautiful drawings, but to help them understand and retain the information they learn.
Update | Feb. 2012: We'll be exploring the new Common Core State Standards, and how teaching with The Times can address them, through a series of blog posts. You can find them all here, tagged "the NYT and the CCSS."
