Great New Professional Network focusing on sharing free webinars, useful mp3s, videoas and pictures for professional development, great groups for networking. Be part of this site in its growing stages and help to mold it into a site useful for you. Link up with professionals from companies aroung the world and join the larger group on Linkedin.
Sherry Turkle (TED Talk), a professor at MIT, discusses (2012) how our many devices isolate us. Just last week, I watched a group of seniors at a coffee shop sitting together and texting rather than conversing. It made me think about their definitions of communication. Thought provoking.
How can teachers use the resources?
Each school, classroom, and teacher is unique. As such we didn't try to provide specific activities for particular grade levels. Instead we suggest that teachers explore each link, then design specific, developmentally appropriate activities such as discussion questions, small group activities, or webquests to fit the needs of their curriculum.
Designing Choreographies for the "New Economy of Attention" is an interesting discussion of attention and distraction. You may not agree with their core argument - that we need to choreograph technologies that are under the control of learners (such as back channels) in a manner similar to how we organize more traditional classroom components - but the approach of blocking software and banning mobiles/laptops in classrooms is simply not sustainable. Today's reality of connectedness is dramatically different from what existed even ten years ago. Banning is at best a short term solution that will isolate and agitate the very group education is expected to serve. The battle for control of information and interaction has already been won by "the individual". Organizations, governments, and universities that have not yet recognized this may continue to limp along for a while…but their current stance is not tenable.
Enter a problem, and a unique URL is created. Once shared with others, a group can collaborate by adding questions, comments, solutions, etc. Very easy to use and effective way to solve problems.