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Sean McHugh

Interview with Adrian Graham and Carl Sjogreen - Learning Stuff - 0 views

  • The consistent thing I’ve learned is that it’s very hard to make things simple. No matter how much you try, the first time you put it in front of someone, it’s too complex. You’re like, “Oh my God, how could they get this wrong?” But that’s your fault. It wasn’t simple enough. I came away from Google trying to build very simple experiences that lots of people can use.
  • The real enthusiasm at Google is around technology: “Let’s build a cool, new technology. We’ll find a lot of ways to apply it. Our technology will be better than our competitors.” The Facebook approach was, “Well, technology is a tool to achieve these things we’re trying to do. Let’s figure out how to make it work. Sometimes that means building our own technology and other times that means using something that someone else has built.”
  • But the people who kept using it over and over were all in schools. It wasn’t teachers using it to explain things, it was kids using it to document their thinking. They would take a picture of their art, and they would explain what they were thinking when they made it. Some kids would use it as a lightweight presentation tool. They would string together some photos of a science lab and make a lab report.
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  • Most of the tools we’ve used to document and communicate ideas haven’t changed much since the introduction of Microsoft Office. We have documents, spreadsheets, and slides. Those are sort of the universal formats for communicating information. That seemed kind of dumb given that those were invented in a world of keyboards, mice, and DOS prompts.We now had these things that had cameras and microphones and touch interfaces and decided that there should be some new way of communicating ideas.
  • We also heard from teachers about the practical problems
  • it was clear that touch devices unlocked something for computing
  • On the parents’ side, I was incredibly frustrated watching all the work that all my kids’ teachers were doing to communicate what was happening at school. There were weekly newsletters that were long and involved; photo albums with 300 pictures, only three of which were my child. All of this was behind a password I could never remember. Teachers were doing all this work that was taking away from actual teaching or their personal lives. The experience felt pretty broken to me.It also seemed that kids might be able to document their own learning and reflect on what they were making more independently.As a parent, I’d ask my kids, “What did you do at school today?” and they say, “Nothing,” and I had no idea what next question to ask because I just didn’t have a thread to pull on.
  • the magic of Seesaw is all about changing the conversation from “What did you do in school today?” to “Tell me about more about this thing you made.” It’s a starting point for a conversation
  • Seesaw is a learning journal. It’s a place where kids can document their learning over time
  • The child now has an audience for his work beyond the teacher. We hear time and time again from teachers that their kids want to do their best work with Seesaw because their parents are going to ask them about it when they come home. They also know their classmates are going to watch it.
  • I had to learn what issues teachers are struggling with, and then work through those problems
  • This became obvious around log-in. We knew this was a real hassle in classrooms, and we thought we could solve it using a simple text code. But a tech coordinator at one school suggested using a QR code instead. “What would really make this easy is if kids could just scan a QR code to log in.” Carl and I both thought this was weird — no one uses QR codes. They’re a technology from 10 years ago that no one adopted. But we decided to build it to see if it got used.It turned out to be one of Seesaw’s most important features, especially in the younger grades.
  • we really invested in those relationships. I would call them on the phone every week. We listened, we showed them stuff ahead of time. They would give us an idea, and we would actually build what they asked for. We developed a close connection with those teachers and they started talking to other teachers in their building and other schools and so on.Honestly, we took this word-of-mouth and advocacy approach because we were a little nervous to tell teachers how to use our product. We felt like we didn’t really understand the classroom enough to tell them what to do. So we went down this path of finding some teachers who are excited about using Seesaw and helped them tell other teachers about it. Our hope is that most teachers discover Seesaw from another teacher, not from us.
  • Get it in the hands of teachers, and if it’s good, it will probably spread. Teachers are asked to use a lot of crappy software. When they find something good, they tend to recognize it
  • I just wanted to tell you how life changing this app has been for me and my teaching, and for my students
  • but we get an email like that two or three times a week
  • I have had millions of people who are slightly more organized because I worked on Google Calendar. Good, but that’s not really what I want that on my tombstone
  • Parents don’t know what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms. It’s not because someone wants to keep it secret, but the information is not easily shared
  • I cannot imagine a future where I will be okay sending my kids to school for eight hours a day and having no clue what they’re working on. This is the most important person in my life. I get immediate updates about everything else, and yet somehow I accept that I have no information on what my kids are doing for eight hours a day. It’s not possible that’s the future.
  • On the parents’ side, I was incredibly frustrated watching all the work that all my kids’ teachers were doing to communicate what was happening at school. There were weekly newsletters that were long and involved; photo albums with 300 pictures, only three of which were my child. All of this was behind a password I could never remember. Teachers were doing all this work that was taking away from actual teaching or their personal lives. The experience felt pretty broken to me.It also seemed that kids might be able to document their own learning and reflect on what they were making more independently.As a parent, I’d ask my kids, “What did you do at school today?” and they say, “Nothing,” and I had no idea what next question to ask because I just didn’t have a thread to pull on. When you ask a kid to describe something abstractly, particularly younger kids, it’s quite difficult for them to do it. If you show them a picture of something and say, “What’s going on in this picture,” they’ll say, “Oh, let me tell you all about this,” it totally gives them a thing to start with.
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    I cannot imagine a future where I will be okay sending my kids to school for eight hours a day and having no clue what they're working on. This is the most important person in my life. I get immediate updates about everything else, and yet somehow I accept that I have no information on what my kids are doing for eight hours a day. It's not possible that's the future.
Sean McHugh

BitTorrent and the Legitimate Use of P2P - 0 views

  • How can P2P networks go legit?'' My answer is, ``they already are
  • No one here would dispute that filesharing networks are used by those who would violate copyright. But this is not solely the domain of P2P; copyrighted software has been traded on electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs) since their inception and has permeated every public communication protocol on the Internet. Filesharing is a social phenomenon, not a technological one - demonizing P2P based on one use of the technology is a mistake
  • Legitimate uses of BitTorrent
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  • a distinction can be made between a technology (P2P) and implementations of that technology
  • the system was not designed with illegal use in mind, but instead to faciliate transfer of large files in an economical way.
  • trading of copyrighted files is not central to the technology
  • While you could potentially upload a virus to a public tracker and provide a .torrent file for it, you'd still have to convince people to download and run the file just as if you posted it to a website.
  • BitTorrent is a P2P system that allows large, popular files to be downloaded quickly
  • Open Source
  • Live-Taping
  • Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Tenacious D
  • bands are realizing that having a loyal following is very valuable and that they can both support their fans and still sell records
  • Slashdot
  • DIY Publishing
  • legitimate P2P use is here and has a definite role to play in the future of the Internet
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    "How can P2P networks go legit?'' My answer is, ``they already are.'' The world-wide-web is used to download illegally copied software, copyrighted music and movies as well as child pornography, yet we're not asking how the web can go legit. No one here would dispute that filesharing networks are used by those who would violate copyright. But this is not solely the domain of P2P; copyrighted software has been traded on electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs) since their inception and has permeated every public communication protocol on the Internet. Filesharing is a social phenomenon, not a technological one - demonizing P2P based on one use of the technology is a mistake in my opinion. P2P already has positive mainstream benefits in certain communities and new uses are being found all the time."
Sean McHugh

Why the debate on reading print versus digital books needs to change - Parenting for a ... - 0 views

  • There is a concern in some quarters that children’s activities with screens will replace their reading of books. There is a concern that the habit of skimming digital texts will carry over to reading on paper. These are valid concerns but they are not substantiated by research and they omit the important role of context and individual readers in driving change.
  • There could be a difference because of the way gains were measured (methodological reasons) and/or because of how gains were defined (theoretical reasons).
  • The calibration process is not dependent on the digital medium but on the readers’ preference
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  • The readers’ awareness of how they read on screen (and the calibration process they engage in when reading on screen), might be the sources of the print-versus-screen difference
  • The chain of influences is an essential piece of understanding for the debates on reading on and off-screen. It is a continuation of a long argument in media studies where one camp of researchers focuses on metacognition and another camp of researchers on the inherent characteristics of the medium.
  • The screen introduced hyperlinks, large collections of e-books, automatic possibility for translation, multimedia representations of meaning
  • Recent research by the National Literacy Trust in the UK shows that it is not the reading medium but readers’ motivation that explains their reading habits: skilled readers read a lot and well both on paper and screen.
  • children are less aware of the disconnect between a digital and non-digital reading medium than any generation of children before them. It follows that they have different preferences, different resources for calibration, different lived examples of reading around them
  • The ‘home sweet home’ for reading in the digital age is the provision of, and the practice in the use, of high-quality texts on and off screen
Sean McHugh

My First Year of One to One: A Reflection - 0 views

  • One of my fears when I was able to put a device into the hands of every student was that the students might focus on the screen, the way many children do with a television or a computer. Those children become absorbed by the device, ignoring all that is going on around them. Happily, this has not at all proved to be the case for us. The students did not want to just use the iPads; they wanted to share them.  The hum of voices excitedly talking to their peers about what they were doing was just the same as it had always been. They just had different things to share.
  • One of the things I have come to value most highly is choice.  I have offered my students as much choice in how they learn and in how they demonstrate their learning as I can. The iPads have given my students so many more opportunities for choice.
  • the iPads have given us a rich variety of options that were just not available before
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  • My children were not using their iPads in every spare moment—they still liked other classroom tools such as Lego, dominos and drawing paper—but the iPads were a popular choice
  • I didn’t get around to figuring out how to use it, but my students did. They taught themselves and then taught me as well.
  • Some students preferred digital and some preferred non-digital, but most moved seamlessly back and forth between the two.
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    "One of my fears when I was able to put a device into the hands of every student was that the students might focus on the screen, the way many children do with a television or a computer. Those children become absorbed by the device, ignoring all that is going on around them. Happily, this has not at all proved to be the case for us. The students did not want to just use the iPads; they wanted to share them.  The hum of voices excitedly talking to their peers about what they were doing was just the same as it had always been. They just had different things to share."
Sean McHugh

The Kids (Who Use Tech) Seem to Be All Right - Scientific American - 0 views

  • Social media is linked to depression—or not. First-person shooter video games are good for cognition—or they encourage violence. Young people are either more connected—or more isolated than ever. Such are the conflicting messages about the effects of technology on children’s well-being. Negative findings receive far more attention and have fueled panic among parents and educators. This state of affairs reflects a heated debate among scientists. Studies showing statistically significant negative effects are followed by others revealing positive effects or none at all—sometimes using the same data set.
  • at a population level, technology use has a nearly negligible effect on adolescent psychological well-being
  • Technology use tilts the needle less than half a percent away from feeling emotionally sound. For context, eating potatoes is associated with nearly the same degree of effect and wearing glasses has a more negative impact on adolescent mental health.
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  • The size of the association documented across these studies is not sufficient or measurable enough to warrant the current levels of panic and fear around this issue.”
  • Unfortunately, the large number of participants in these designs means that small effects are easily publishable and, if positive, garner outsized press and policy attention,
  • put these extremely miniscule effects of screens on young people in real-world context
  • some positive behaviors such as getting enough sleep and regularly eating breakfast were much more strongly associated with well-being than the average impact of technology use.
  • Strikingly, one of the data sets Przybylski and Orben used was “Monitoring the Future,” an ongoing study run by researchers at the University of Michigan that tracks drug use among young people. The alarming 2017 book and article by psychologist Jean Twenge claiming that smartphones have destroyed a generation of teenagers also relied on the data from “Monitoring the Future.” When the same statistics Twenge used are put into the larger context Przybylski and Orben employ, the effect of phone use on teen mental health turns out to be tiny.
  • “The real threat isn’t smartphones. It’s this campaign of misinformation and the generation of fear among parents and educators.”
  • All of this is not to say there is no danger whatsoever in digital technology use. In a previous paper, Przybylski and colleague Netta Weinstein demonstrated a “Goldilocks” effect showing moderate use of technology—about one to two hours per day on weekdays and slightly more on weekends—was “not intrinsically harmful,” but higher levels of indulgence could be.
Sean McHugh

Literature, Ethics, Physics: It's All In Video Games At This Norwegian School | MindShift - 0 views

  • game-based learning seems to be a misnomer, as the learning is not based on games, but enhanced by them. Commercial games are repurposed and modified to support curricular goals, as opposed to driving them. Of course, learning can and should also be based on games, as they are valid texts that can be studied in and of themselves, but it is important to see video games as elastic tools whose potential uses exceed their intended purpose.
  • It’s important that video games are regarded as useful and engaging learning tools in their own right.” To that end, he uses popular commercial games that would not outwardly seem suitable for the classroom.
  • the game gives students a different perspective on the laws of physics, where mechanics are simulated by a computer to create a realistic gaming environment. It can also be a great source of discussion when the laws of physics are broken!” Students think about how the simulation deviates from reality and transform what might be perceived as a game’s shortcoming into a critical thinking opportunity.
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  • Civilization holds a unique value in letting students experiment with “what if” scenarios to see how changing variables like political structures or social policies affect and alter the course of a nation.
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    A Model for Game-Enhanced Learning In each case, game-based learning seems to be a misnomer, as the learning is not based on games, but enhanced by them. Commercial games are repurposed and modified to support curricular goals, as opposed to driving them. Of course, learning can and should also be based on games, as they are valid texts that can be studied in and of themselves, but it is important to see video games as elastic tools whose potential uses exceed their intended purpose.
Sean McHugh

Teens, Technology and Friendships | Pew Research Center - 1 views

  • Social media and online gameplay are the most common digital venues for meeting friends
  • Along with texting, teens are incorporating a number of other devices, communication platforms and online venues into their interactions with friends
    • Sean McHugh
       
      The overlap between socialising within a gaming context and within the context of platforms like Facebook is an interesting one... Teen use of social media has many parallels with MMORPGs, I wonder how the time spent on these platforms compares... I'd bet the girls spend as much, if not more time on social media than the boys do, even combined with their gaming time.
  • Video games play a critical role in the development and maintenance of boys’ friendships
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  • Playing video games is not necessarily a solitary activity; teens frequently play video games with others.
  • video gameplay, particularly over online networks, is an important activity through which boys form and maintain friendships with others:
  • 38% of all teen boys share their gaming handle as one of the first three pieces of information exchanged when they meet someone they would like to be friends with
  • Teens face challenges trying to construct an appropriate and authentic online persona for multiple audiences, including adults and peers. Consequently, many teens feel obligated to project an attractive and popular image through their social media postings.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Again, classic gamification of social media, where the online persona becomes more like a 'role' than the true character of the person, the equivalent of social media becoming a 'massive, multiplayer online, role playing game', but with the critical difference that this is IRL, which is a little scary, Black Mirror crazy...!
  • Some 76% of teens ages 13 to 17 use social media
  • Social media helps teens feel more connected to their friends’ feelings and daily lives, and also offers teens a place to receive support from others during challenging times.
  • But even as social media connects teens to friends’ feelings and experiences, the sharing that occurs on these platforms can have negative consequences. Sharing can veer into oversharing. Teens can learn about events and activities to which they weren’t invited, and the highly curated lives of teens’ social media connections can lead them to make negative comparisons with their own lives
  • 88% of teen social media users believe people share too much information about themselves on social media
  • 78% of teen online gamers say when they play games online it makes them feel more connected to friends they already know
  • Girls are more likely to use text messaging – while boys are more likely to use video games – as conduits for conversations with friends
Sean McHugh

10 Most Violent Video Games (and 10+ Alternatives) | Common Sense Media - 0 views

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    "No parent wants to say "no" all the time. So we've rounded up 10 of the most violent video games out there -- explaining the details that put each one on our list -- as well as more than 10 that you can say "yes" to. Our reviewers play literally thousands of hours of video games a year -- they know games inside and out. But we're not trying to be sensationalistic, which is why we're offering less-violent alternatives. Our alternatives include three categories: less-violent games in the same genre as the violent game listed, less-violent games with a similar theme, and less-well-known but still great titles that play on the same system."
Sean McHugh

New tech 'addictions' are mostly just old moral panic - 0 views

  • Not everybody in the medical community is on board with such an assessment
  • a group of more than two dozen doctors and researchers sent an open letter to the WHO in 2016, arguing that formalizing the disorder lacked scientific merit and could cause real harm to patients.
  • the current operationalization leans too heavily on substance use and gambling criteria, and the lack of consensus on symptomatology and assessment of problematic gaming
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  • Addiction is not a good term to be using with video games, because I would say unlike substance problems there is no substance that we're ingesting that directly affects your brain chemistry," Colder Carras told Engadget. "It makes more sense to talk about problematic video gaming.
  • The study found that the strongest agreement between participants' rankings and IGD characterizations were functional impairment, continued use despite problems, unsuccessful attempts to stop and the loss of interest in other hobbies
  • These games aren't necessarily causing the problems; it might just as well be the other way around. People are not functioning, they suffer from social anxiety, they're lonely, and they flee into the games because it's an excellent coping mechanism.
  • However, the official investigation report points out that the only game he played regularly was Dance Dance Revolution.
  • If anything, the current body of evidence suggests that gaming might actually reduce the rate of violent behavior rather than instigate it.
  • Luckily, moral panics don't last far beyond the lives of those who are outraged by them
  • The group of people who believe in the dangerousness of whatever they put on media eventually dies off," Ferguson remarked. "And then people stop talking about it, and they move on to whatever the next new thing is that older adults don't use and don't like."
  • newly defined diagnoses of Internet Gaming Disorder or Selfitis may be rooted in a modern-day moral panic. "It looks like from the data that some people probably do overdo gaming like they overdo a lot of other things -- like food or exercise or work or religion. There are even papers on dance addiction, of all things," Ferguson said. "But that seems to be more of a symptom of other underlying mental illness rather than a mental illness by itself
Sean McHugh

Is it time to swap your Mac for a Windows laptop? | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

  • It’s one thing to have to relearn behaviours when you switch machines, it’s another to have to re-learn them every time you plug in a peripheral.
  • the necessity, or not, of drivers for accessories was a big part of that competitive push by Apple, which made a point of ensuring out-of-the-box support for many of the most commonly used peripherals like printers, cameras and mice. When Steve Jobs said “it just works”, this is the sort of thing he was referring to: the ability to plug in a mouse and have it Just Work. Installing drivers for a mouse to enable a niche behaviour is no great hardship, but it still left me moderately concerned. Microsoft made both the mouse and the laptop, yet the two weren’t able to play nicely together without my intervention. This digging in the nuts and bolts of the machine was not something I had missed.
  • It’s a fantastic machine. Small and powerful, with a long battery life, it impresses as a laptop, but its real strengths are revealed when you undock the screen from its base. Being able to carry my laptop around the kitchen when doing the weekly shop, before docking it back and typing up some recipes, was genuinely cool.
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  • Unfortunately, cool is all it was for me. The ability to pop out my laptop and write on it with a (very accurate) stylus was never that useful. If anything, it served to underscore how efficient the keyboard-and-touchpad combo is for a lot of hefty tasks.
  • I simply didn’t do it much, and most of the time when I did, it was just to see if I could.
  • Two-fingered swipe on the touchpad? The answer, of course, is to reach up to the screen, and swipe that way. A shortcut it is not, particularly if the screen is up on a dock and you’re already using a keyboard and mouse.
  • I was shocked by the amount of advertising and cross-promotion riddled throughout the OS, from adverts for apps in the start menu, to a persistent pop-up offering a free trial of Office 365. I was surprised by the paucity of solid third-party apps in general, and particularly by the lack of any good consumer productivity suite.
  • Most of all, though, I couldn’t stand the small irritations, from the failure of Chrome windows to correctly adapt when dragged from a high-res screen to a low-res one, to the trackpad’s inability to accurately click when I used it with my thumb rather than my finger.
  • Ultimately, the question comes down to how much you’re prepared to pay to keep things the same as they have been
Sean McHugh

The Touch-Screen Generation - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • he hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence
  • In 2011, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy on very young children and media. In 1999, the group had discouraged television viewing for children younger than 2, citing research on brain development that showed this age group’s critical need for “direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers.” The updated report began by acknowledging that things had changed significantly since then.
  • To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter or teach her to speak Chinese, or alternatively that it will rust her neural circuitry—the device has been out for only three years, not much more than the time it takes some academics to find funding and gather research subjects. So what’s a parent to do?
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  • Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers. Touch technology follows the same logic as shaking a rattle or knocking down a pile of blocks: the child swipes, and something immediately happens.
  • A more accurate point of comparison for a TV viewer’s physiological state would be that of someone deep in a book, says Kirkorian, because during both activities we are still, undistracted, and mentally active.
  • even very young children can be discriminating viewers—that they are not in fact brain-dead, but rather work hard to make sense of what they see and turn it into a coherent narrative that reflects what they already know of the world.
  • Children’s lives are filled with media at younger and younger ages, and we need to take advantage of what these technologies have to offer
  • More important, she made the video demonstration explicitly interactive.
  • That exchange was enough to nearly erase the video deficit.
  • That kind of contingent interaction (I do something, you respond) is what captivates a toddler and can be a significant source of learning for even very young children—learning that researchers hope the children can carry into the real world. It’s not exactly the ideal social partner the American Academy of Pediatrics craves. It’s certainly not a parent or caregiver. But it’s as good an approximation as we’ve ever come up with on a screen, and it’s why children’s-media researchers are so excited about the iPad’s potential.
  • something about tapping the screen, about getting feedback and being corrected in real time, is itself instructive, and enables the toddlers to absorb information accurately, regardless of its source
  • A TV is static and lacks one of the most important things to toddlers, which is a “two-way exchange of information
  • The statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics assumes a zero-sum game: an hour spent watching TV is an hour not spent with a parent. But parents know this is not how life works. There are enough hours in a day to go to school, play a game, and spend time with a parent, and generally these are different hours. Some people can get so drawn into screens that they want to do nothing else but play games. Experts say excessive video gaming is a real problem, but they debate whether it can be called an addiction and, if so, whether the term can be used for anything but a small portion of the population.
  • We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.”
  • a useful framework—what she calls the three C’s—for thinking about media consumption: content, context, and your child. She poses a series of questions—Do you think the content is appropriate? Is screen time a “relatively small part of your child’s interaction with you and the real world?”—and suggests tailoring your rules to the answers, child by child.
Sean McHugh

Let's Ban The Classroom Technology Ban. - 0 views

  • The claim that the students who didn’t use tablets performed better academically is based upon exam scores, which were only one-third of a standard deviation higher for the non-tablet crowd than the others. Some might see this as a large difference; I do not, and I doubt a majority of statisticians would either. But hey–why let the fact that this was a superficial study conducted with a small sample size of atypical students examining only one type of technology deter you from claiming that all technology in the classroom is bad? This is what people in the psych business call “confirmation bias,” I believe.
  • no mention of pedagogy at all
  • They don’t even acknowledge, much less control for, pedagogy.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Although to be fair in terms of the study all students would be experiencing the same learning environment and would be equally "disadvantaged". Given that the actual impact of the technology was negligible this would explain why, the technology wasn't really able to be much of an advantage in that kind of teaching and learning environment.
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  • If students in a large lecture course with no laptop or device policies are doing poorly, is it because they’re on Facebook or because they’re in a cavernous auditorium with several hundred other captives, being talked at by someone who’s likely had no formal pedagogical training whatsoever?
  • unilateral bans on technology in the classroom accomplish nothing but demonstrating an off-putting rigidity and an adversarial view of students.
    • Sean McHugh
       
      "Adversarial" the tone of the entire study clearly spoke to this as the dominant perspective when considering tech use in classrooms.
  • If you’re the grumpy faculty member who kvetches about students not being taught penmanship in primary school, and who makes their classes take notes by hand to build character or whatever, take a step back and think about what you’re actually saying to your students: that some are inherently deficient, that they will fall short, and that your way is the only possible way to learn.
  • But if two-thirds of the class is doing non-class related stuff on a laptop or cell phone, why is that happening? Are they incorrigible internet addicts, or is it a pedagogical issue? If they’re not getting to where you want them to be, is it Twitter’s fault? Or is it the side effect of a lecture-based, passive pedagogy that doesn’t engage anyone?
  • Let’s be real: it’s not as if students paid rapt attention to everything faculty said until the smart phone was invented.
  • Of course, there are situations where you’ll want your students to not use devices. But there will also be occasions where you’ll want to encourage their use (quick polling, checking something online). That’s the whole point–there are no hard and fast rules, nor should there be. Good pedagogy is, above all, flexible. And, rather than an end unto itself, technology is a tool that can support good pedagogy if it’s used appropriately.
  • Rather than banning the tool because of an instance where someone used it improperly, we should work to prevent the processes which led to that instance. Our students need to be our allies, not our adversaries, if genuine learning is to occur. Students cannot experience the transformative effects that higher education can and should inculcate if we refuse to treat them as responsible agents who are the co-architects of their learning.
Sean McHugh

Screen Time? How about Creativity Time? - Mitchel Resnick - Medium - 0 views

  • Too often, designers of educational materials and activities simply add a thin layer of technology and gaming over antiquated curriculum and pedagogy
    • Sean McHugh
       
      I think because the designers of these apps are not educators and are therefore assuming that they often traditional education they experienced is the norm or at the very least is still a desirable outcome for the kids that they are designing their Apps for.
  • But I’m also sure that some students found it very discouraging and disempowering. And the activity put an emphasis on questions that can be answered quickly with right and wrong answers — certainly not the type of questions that I would prioritize in a classroom.
  • In many cases, the skeptics apply very different standards to new technologies than to “old” technologies. They worry about the antisocial impact of a child spending hours working on a computer, while they don’t have any concerns about a child spending the same time reading a book. They worry that children interacting with computers don’t spend enough time outside, but they don’t voice similar concerns about children playing musical instruments. I’m not suggesting that there are no reasons for concern. I’m just asking for more consistency.
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  • For kids growing up today, laptops and mobile phones aren’t high-tech tools — they’re everyday tools, just like crayons and watercolors.
  • Of course there’s a problem if children spend all their time interacting with screens — just as there would be a problem if they spent all their time playing the violin or reading books or playing sports. Spending all your time on any one thing is problematic. But the most important issue with screen time is not quantity but quality. There are many ways of interacting with screens; it doesn’t make sense to treat them all the same
  • Rather than trying to minimize screen time, I think parents and teachers should try to maximize creative time. The focus shouldn’t be on which technologies children are using, but rather what children are doing with them
Sean McHugh

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/07/us/video-games-child-sex-abuse.html - 0 views

  • Sexual predators and other bad actors have found an easy access point into the lives of young people: They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps
  • Games are a common target, but predators are also finding many victims on social platforms like Instagram
  • Six years ago, a little over 50 reports of the crimes, commonly known as “sextortion,” were referred to the federally designated clearinghouse in suburban Washington that tracks online child sexual abuse. Last year, the center received over 1,500
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Most likely migrating from other haunts like playgrounds and shopping malls.
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  • Almost every single teenage boy in America — 97 percent — plays video games, while about 83 percent of girls do
    • Sean McHugh
       
      And you can bet those percentages are equal or favouring girls when it comes to chat.
  • promote “healthy gaming habits” and develop students’ science and technology skills
  • Parents aren’t telling their kids at 6 years old, ‘Keep your clothes on online
  • It had nothing to do with gameplay
  • Parents aren’t telling their kids at 6 years old, ‘Keep your clothes on online,’” Mr. Halpert said. “But they need to.
  • Minecraft, said it planned to release software early next year that could recognize some forms of grooming and sextortion. The company said it would offer the software to other tech businesses free of charge
  • a 26-year-old Ohio man was charged with sexual exploitation after claiming to be 13 on Yubo and luring a 12-year-old girl, the authorities said
    • Sean McHugh
       
      I guess most systems are focused on the opposite, kids pretending they are adults...
  • But the solution many game developers and online safety experts return to is that parents need to know what their children are playing, and that children need to know what tools are available to them. Sometimes that means blocking users and shutting off chat functions, and sometimes it means monitoring the games as they are being played. “‘Literacy’ is the word I say a billion times a day
  • parents should react carefully when their children report encounters with online predators. Punishing the children — no more video games or social media, for example — could backfire by pushing them into even more dangerous places for their online activity.
Sean McHugh

Seven reasons why grown ups should play more video games | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

  • the last five years has seen a huge renaissance in video game design
  • a lot of the technologies that are going to affect our lives in the next decade are being tested and developed in the video game sphere.
  • A lot of the people now making, producing and funding television and movies grew up playing video games – and that influence is becoming ever more obvious and important.
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  • how you cooperate on video game tasks is a pretty good indicator on how you will cope with real-life challenges
  • Games will break out of two-dimensional screens and into rooms, either through VR or AR, or through new combinations of TV and tablets. It’s possible that in twenty years, the idea of sitting down and just watching a narrative drama will seem outdated and anachronistic
  • video games remain astoundingly good value. A big mainstream release like Witcher 3 or Fifa 2017 will cost around £50 on console and less on PC, but they can provide hundreds of hours of entertainment
  • Video games have become important testbeds for artificial intelligence research
  • it’s a way of meeting with your children in a domain they enjoy and feel comfortable. It lets them take the lead; it lets them show you stuff
  • Games are fun. They provide fascinating worlds to explore and take part in, they let us do incredible, sometimes terrible things without recourse. They test out intelligence and reaction; they posit weird futures and possibilities; they let us take control of lives and bodies that we could never own or experience. They are made by artists and visionaries, they provide moments of utter transfixing beauty and resonance. The glowing sunset over the city of Los Santos in GTA V, the swoop of a dragon over the plains of Skyrim; the desperate struggle to survive in the snowy wastelands of The Long Dark; the heart-wrenching power of friendship in Life is Strange – these are valid forms of escape and experience; they tell us things.
  • it is time to see video games alongside – and equal to – books, television and cinema as a popular imaginative medium. It is OK to play.
Sean McHugh

Technology And Video Games Make Kids Think Differently About Old Questions - Forbes - 0 views

  • I never limit my kids’ screen time. I do, however, require reading time, outdoor play time, and physical toy time. The difference between limiting screen time and requiring non-screen time is subtle, but substantial. It emphasizes the positive benefit of other activities rather than scolding the screen.
  • I spend a lot of time making sure my children don’t get too heavily absorbed in any one way of perceiving. I do this by paying enough attention to what games my kids are playing that I can ask them to switch games. That’s right, not all games are the same. Each one has unique narrative properties. Each one has particular mechanics that inadvertently teach a specific way of making meaning of the world. Gaming is not a singular way of being. Parenting gamer-kids is not just about monitoring the on/off switch.
  • Consider Minecraft. Like most kids these days, mine play it all the time. I’ve written about the good things my kids learn by playing. I love the free sandbox creativity. I think it strengthens a sense of systems thinking. But I’m also worried that so many kids develop an almost obsessive relationship to the game.
  •  
    "I never limit my kids' screen time. I do, however, require reading time, outdoor play time, and physical toy time. The difference between limiting screen time and requiring non-screen time is subtle, but substantial. It emphasizes the positive benefit of other activities rather than scolding the screen."
Sean McHugh

Tony Wagner: All Students Need Digital Portfolios - Pathbrite - 0 views

  • [Students need] three things: they need content knowledge, but that’s the easy part today. It’s online; you don’t need a teacher to acquire content. The world simply doesn’t care how much you know anymore because Google knows everything. What the world cares about, now that content has become a commodity, is what you can do with what you know. And that suggests the two other education outcomes that are absolutely critical, and to simplify them I call them skill and will. Students need a new set of skills to thrive for work learning and citizenship in the 21st century; and they need will, meaning motivation, and arguably the most important is motivation. Because if you are motivated you will continuously learn new skills and new content knowledge, which you will have to in this era, and its the thing we do the most damage to in our schools today.
  • We’re not giving kids work that is intrinsically interesting in the vast majority of our schools, and we’re spending far too much time on test prep, and the tests themselves are predominantly multiple choice factual recall tests that tell us absolutely nothing about work learning or citizenship readiness in the 21st century. Kids know it, and they’re bored out of their minds.
  • I think the whole idea of a digital portfolio is part of what I call Accountability 2.0, moving away from an over-reliance on stupid tests and moving towards really looking at student work and having students meet a performance standard for passing on to higher grades and for graduating from high school. And it […] can be an important factor in motivating kids to want to do better work.
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  • teachers have to give students work that demands critical thinking, problem solving, and that they expect a high standard for communication skills and collaboration skills. And the digital portfolio provides students with an opportunity to show mastery. And also—this is very important—to show progress over time.
  • the skills you need to succeed in a competitive academic environment bear absolutely no relationship to the skills you need to succeed in an innovation economy.
  • in fact the real world is evidence-based, not merely data driven. And a digital portfolio can be one of the best forms of evidence of competency and accomplishments.
Sean McHugh

Technology in Education | American Federation of Teachers - 0 views

  • pedagogy (i.e., teaching practice) and not the medium (i.e., technological tools and resources, such as whiteboards, hand-held devices, blogs, chat boards) that made a difference in learning, stating that instructional media are “mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition
  • there was no proof to show that a medium was capable of ensuring that pupils and students could learn more or more effectively. He saw the medium as a means, a vehicle for instruction, but that the essence of learning remained—thankfully—in the hands of the teacher
  • it is not the medium that decides how effectively learners learn
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  • the effectiveness of learning is determined primarily by the way the medium is used and by the quality of the instruction accompanying that use
  • The crucial factor for learning improvement is to make sure that you do not replace the teacher as the instrument of instruction, allowing computers to do what teachers would normally do, but instead use computers to supplement and amplify what the teacher does
  • the use of both e-learning and contact education—which is known as blended learning—produces better results than lessons given without technolog
  • the medium does not influence the learning
  • the medium seldom influences teaching, learning, and education, nor is it likely that one single medium will ever be the best one for all situations
    • Sean McHugh
       
      But 'ordinary real life is mediated by computers! I'm still only in classrooms where the myth that this is not true still persists! 
  • students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the newest technologies, such as blogs, wikis, and virtual worlds
  • the main reasons young people use technology. These reasons are mainly social
  • Digital natives! Whenever the question of digital innovation in education is discussed, this is a term that immediately comes to the surface. But it should be avoided. Even the person who coined the term digital natives, Marc Prensky, admitted in his most recent book, Brain Gain, that the term is now obsolete.2
  • Prensky’s coining of this term—and its counterpart for people who are not digitally native—was not based on research into this generation, but rather created by rationalizing phenomena that he had observed
  • The students use a large quantity and variety of technologies for communicating, learning, staying connected with their friends, and engaging with the world around them. But they are using them primarily for “personal empowerment and entertainment
  • university students do not really have a deep knowledge of technology, and what knowledge they do have is often limited to basic Microsoft Office skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), emailing, text messaging, Facebook, and surfing the Internet
  • There is simply no experimental evidence to show that living with new technologies fundamentally changes brain organization in a way that affects one’s ability to focus. Of course, the brain changes any time we form a memory or learn a new skill, but new skills build on our existing capacities without fundamentally changing them. We will no more lose our ability to pay attention than we will lose our ability to listen, see or speak.
  • Note that many of these studies examined the influence of television rather than the influence of interactive technology, such as smartphones and social media
  • when people think that young people today read less, it’s not about reading online content or text messages, it’s about reading book
  • young people are still doing a lot of reading, and these statistics make clear that many of them are reading for pleasure. However, we need to be careful about making too many sweeping assertions, since the reading figures in many countries are falling. Even so, we know that reading continues to be important: both reading by young people themselves and parents reading to their childre
Sean McHugh

Three problems with the debate around screen time - 0 views

  • it increasingly feels as though scientific evidence has become a casualty in the process.
  • the factors which underlie why the public discourse around technology is so dysfunctional
  • Google does not sort search output by quality; it ranks search input by popularity.
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  • Academics, public servants and other stakeholders alike need to recognise that plugging in a few terms of interest into a search engine will give an inherently skewed view of the actual state of the field
  • Academics, public servants and other stakeholders alike need to recognise that plugging in a few terms of interest into a search engine will give an inherently skewed view of the actual state of the field
  • these factors aren’t just focused on debates around the effects of technology – they speak to wider debates around science and evidence-based policy
  • Very recent evidence, that might use much better quality data or methods but that has not received much coverage, will not be featured. Yet one piece of high quality evidence might be worth 500 pieces of low quality evidence that populate the search output.
  • In 21st century life, finding evidence is not the most important skill anymore. Instead, it is recognising which evidence should be considered and which should be ignored, based on objective markers of quality.
  • Until this is addressed, moral entrepreneurs and doomsayers will dominate discourse with dire yet never fully substantiated claims
  • we need to be wary of any question which frames screen time as a simple number – questions like ‘how much screen time we should be engaging in?’, or ‘should we impose limits or bans on screen use?’ oversimplify a very complex concept to the point of becoming meaningless.
Sean McHugh

No, Fortnite Isn't Rotting Kids' Brains. It May Even Be Good for Them - Education Week - 0 views

  • we see little to be concerned about with the game
  • Granted, kids’ enthusiasm for Fortnite can be a little much, but we are old enough to remember Garbage Pail kids and have played Pokémon.
  • one of the best things educators can do is bystander training. That is, we can teach kids appropriate ways to respond when they see distrustful, harassing, or hateful behavior.
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  • Can we really blame kids for being so taken by Fortnite? The game itself—a combination of army guys, building forts, and king-of-the-hill battles—would have taken place with sticks or toy guns in the vacant lots or wooded strands that are increasingly designed out of today’s suburban neighborhoods
  • look beyond the immediate content of the game (its characters and themes), and focus more intently on what kids are doing with it
  • Although there are no established links between games and violence, there are some obvious connections between gaming too much and wider problems
  • Wrangling over what extent games are the cause or the symptom somewhat misses the point; unhealthy game play can be a signal
  • Rather than focusing on what games kids are playing, we should attend more to who they are meeting and gaming with online, what type of talk they are engaged in, and what kinds of groups they are becoming a part of
  • just like offline ones
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