Group items tagged

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.

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

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.

An excessive focus on coding ignores the current plight of existing developers.Technology changes at a rapid pace in this industry.

The line between learning to code and getting paid to program as a profession is not an easy line to cross.Really.

If becoming an engineer is what you want, don’t let me — or anyone, for that matter — get in the way of your goal. And don’t let traditional confinements like the educational system slow you down

let’s get media literacy firmly embedded in the school curriculum

it might be wise to calculate the cost also – to individuals, to society – of not promoting media literacy, of having a population with insufficient critical knowledge to manage its digital safety, security, privacy, civic and health information needs or consumer rights.

it is commonly said that media literacy is, at heart, critical thinking (demand evidence, question sources, analyse claims, consider what’s at stake for whom, etc.) and, therefore, should be taught right across the curriculum from history to science or English

In order to enable citizens to access information, to exercise informed choices, evaluate media contexts, use, critically assess and create media content responsibly, they need advanced media literacy skills.

Work to get media literacy firmly embedded as compulsory in the school curriculum.

Media education is a long term solution – it takes thought-through pedagogical strategies and years of teaching, not a one-shot campaign

We may think that kids have a natural fascination with phones. Really, children have a fascination with whatever Mom and Dad find fascinating. If they are fascinated by the flowers coming up in the yard, that’s what the children are going to find fascinating. And if Mom and Dad can’t put down the device with the screen, the child is going to think, That’s where it’s all at, that’s where I need to be! I interviewed kids between the ages of 7 and 12 about this. They said things like “My mom should make eye contact with me when she talks to me” and “I used to watch TV with my dad, but now he has his iPad, and I watch by myself.”

What we’re doing now is modeling a primary relationship with screens, and a lack of eye contact with people. It ultimately can feed the development of a kind of sociopathy and psychopathy.

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.

Whenever you give your attention to a bad actor, you allow them to steal your attention from better treatments of an issue, and give them the opportunity to warp your perspective

Internet users need to learn that our attention is a scarce commodity that is to be spent wisely

four simple principles:1. Stop.2. Investigate the source.3. Find better coverage.4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.Otherwise known as SIFT.

The question we want students asking is: Is this a good source for this purpose, or could I find something better relatively quickly

We’ve been trained to think that Googling or just checking one resource we trust is almost like cheating,” he said. “But when people search Google, the best results may not always be first, but the good information is usually near the top

The students are confused when I tell them to try and trace something down with a quick Wikipedia search, because they’ve been told not to do it,” she said. “Not for research papers, but if you’re trying to find out if a site is legitimate or if somebody has a history as a conspiracy theorist and you show them how to follow the page’s citation, it’s quick and effective, which means it’s more likely to be used

Use Wikipedia for quick guidance! Spend less time torturing yourself with complex primary sources

instill a reflex that asks if something is worth one’s time and attention and to turn away if not

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.

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.

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.

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.

The digital deficit, they suggest, isn’t a result of the medium as such but rather of a failure of self-knowledge and self-control: we don’t realize that digital comprehension may take just as much time as reading a book

It wasn’t the screen that disrupted the fuller synthesis of deep reading; it was the allure of multitasking on the Internet and a failure to properly mitigate its impact

We need to be aware of the effects of deeper digital immersion, Wolf says, but we should be equally cautious when we draw causal arrows or place blame without adequate longitudinal research

Deep-reading skills, Wolf points out, may not be emphasized in schools that conform to the Common Core, for instance, and need to meet certain test-taking reading targets that emphasize gist at the expense of depth. “Physical, tangible books give children a lot of time,” she says. “And the digital milieu speeds everything up. So we need to do things much more slowly and gradually than we are.” Not only should digital reading be introduced more slowly into the curriculum; it also should be integrated with the more immersive reading skills that deeper comprehension requires.

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

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

stop blaming technology for your personal failings and start blaming yourself

the fact we’re all carrying smartphones means that “distraction is easier than ever to find”. But he stresses that “This doesn’t mean we’re powerless – it means we need a new skill set

There are only three reasons for a distraction,” he adds. “An internal trigger, an external trigger or a planning problem

but it takes me for ever to figure out how to label my emails

“hack back” my iPhone by adjusting my notification settings, reducing “external triggers” from apps.

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

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

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

Everything about school and work in the twentieth century was designed to create and reinforce separate subjects, separate cultures, separate grades, separate functions, separate spaces for personal life, work, private life, public life, and all the other divisions. Then the internet came along. Now work increasingly means desktop computer. Fifteen years into the digital revolution, one machine has reconnected the very things–personal life, social life, work life, and even sexual life–that we’d spent the last hundred years putting into neatly separated categories, cordoned off in their separate spaces with as little overlap as possible.

that 0.36 percent means that 99.64 percent of the group’s depressive symptoms had nothing to do with social media use.

In datasets as large as these, it's easy for weak correlational signals to emerge from the noise. And a correlation tells us nothing about whether new-media screen time actually causes sadness or depression

research on the link between technology and wellbeing, attention, and addiction finds itself in need of similar initiatives. They need randomized controlled trials, to establish stronger correlations between the architecture of our interfaces and their impacts; and funding for long-term, rigorously performed research

teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning

even if ed tech were adopted as thoughtfully as its proponents claim, we’re still left with deep reasons to be concerned about the outmoded model of teaching that it helps to preserve — or at least fails to help us move beyond

most people are aware of when something that they’re doing isn’t healthy. They may not be able to stop. Or they may not want to stop. Untangling that is part of the challenge

parenting is about helping children navigate the world and support them to develop agency in a healthy manner

Once you share something online, you lose control of where it goes, who can forward it, who will see it, and how it can potentially be used.

Never post a photo or message that you wouldn’t want “everyone” to be able to view.

Once you put something out there online, it’s almost impossible to take it back.

You have the ability to instantly end a digital conversation and should plan to do so the minute you recognize that cruelty has begun.

there is a very, very, VERY big difference between real friends and online followers

make sure that the only person who is speaking for you is YOU

Your accounts are your accounts. It is in your best interests not to let any friend—even a best friend—post or text from your account. Ever.