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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.

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

[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.

Representations of math problems using words, images and numbers each use different parts of the brain, so the concept gets hardwired in a neural network drawing on multiple brain faculties instead of one numerical pathway

students are forced to articulate their thought process, how it compares and contrasts to ideas peers have shared, and in doing so may help the teacher identify any misconceptions.

Keeler sees many ways that technology could enhance the visual and collaboration elements of the work

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

describing exemplars of technology integration is not synonymous with student-centered teaching. And student-centered teaching is not the same as “success” in student learning

Evidence of technology use in Europe, Asia, and the Americas  (see JECR PDF) have pointed out how powerful devices often end up being used to support teacher-centered instruction.

The all-important implementation question–too often overlooked, ignored, or forgotten by champions of new technologies–remains: have teachers altered their classroom practices as a consequence of using new technologies? Without such changes in teaching practices, then student learning and outcomes can hardly be expected to improve.

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.

AltSchool is a decidedly Bay Area experiment with an educational philosophy known as student-centered learning. The approach, which many schools have adopted, holds that kids should pursue their own interests, at their own pace.

AltSchool mixes in loads of technology to manage the chaos, and tops it all off with a staff of forward-thinking teachers set free to custom-teach to each student.

no administrators, no gymnasiums, no cafeterias, no hallways. There are no report cards and no bells

these are examples of how technology may make the process a bit more efficient or less dreary but does nothing to challenge the outdated pedagogy. To the contrary: These are shiny things that distract us from rethinking our approach to learning and reassure us that we’re already being innovative

The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. The second involves working with each student to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests, and it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well

a few guidelines to help understand how the study’s findings can be of practical use to students, and teachers who are looking to improve digital literacy in their classrooms

The internet has democratised access to information but in so doing has opened the floodgates to misinformation, fake news, and rank propaganda masquerading as dispassionate analysis.

read laterally, leaving a site after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs in order to judge the credibility of the original site

setting up those systems at the beginning of the school year will help kids for far longer than the school year ahed.  After all, today’s students will eventually be living and working in a tech-suffused world. Learning to study digitally is the best way for them to learn to live and work in that world– and isn’t that what school is supposed to prepare them for?

a way to help computer scientists think more logically about data analysis

at its core, computational thinking is simply a way to process information using higher-order or critical thinking

we might be overlooking the “educational and psychological benefits of using social media sites,” such as developing critical thinking and perspective-taking skills

parents and educators have been led to demonize what could simply be an evolving means of social connection

a constant stream of interruptions

the way we’re taught from a young age to evaluate and think critically about information is fundamentally flawed and out of step with the chaos of the current internet.

It’s often counterproductive to engage directly with content from an unknown source, and people can be led astray by false information

the best way to learn about a source of information is to leave it and look elsewhere, a concept called lateral reading.

at no time in history has the public become so susceptible to the spread of willful ignorance, intentionally deceitful lies, and blatant stupidity.

Unexpectedly, it appears, the tsunami-like exponential explosion of information has devolved into the Age of Ignorance.