Group items tagged

he job of teaching * Join in the discussion reddit this Comments (1) Wendy Berliner Guardian Professional, Monday 3 October 2011 18.30 BST Article history Teacher Daniel Hartley from Chulmleigh Community College, Devon. Photograph: Apex Back in the summer we decided here at GTN HQ that, with our membership rocketing, it was the right time to mark our first six months in operation with a survey to find out what members thought about teaching today. There were questions across a wide spectrum of topics and, at the end, we left a free text box for teachers to add any comments they wanted to share. It was the dying days of the summer holiday - August 25 - when it went out just after lunch. We knew the survey would take ten or 15 minutes to complete so we weren't quite expecting what happened next, but within those first few hours after its release, we realised you had started something big. By 10.30pm that night we'd had several hundred questionnaires back, which in itself was impressive with many teachers perhaps still away on holiday or back but busy preparing for the new term. The most impressive thing of all was the content of those text boxes. There was just so much of it. Some people wrote several hundred words at a time, speaking clearly from the heart and arguing cogently against the things they felt were going wrong in education. A love of teaching and vocational pleasure felt working with children and young people emerged but it was emerging from a fog caused by far less pleasant aspects of the job - disrespect from society and governments, bullying by senior management, other teachers, parents and students, despair at the parenting skills of some homes and despair with government targets and league tables that were funnelling education into an ever thinner tube feeding stuff that improved Sats and exam results rather than nourishing a lifelong love of learning. One former solicitor questioning the sense of the switch into teaching said: " M

"Can ICT redefine the way we learn in the Networked Society? Technology has enabled us to interact, innovate and share in whole new ways. This dynamic shift in mindset is creating profound change throughout our society. The Future of Learning looks at one part of that change, the potential to redefine how we learn and educate. Watch as we talk with world renowned experts and educators about its potential to shift away from traditional methods of learning based on memorization and repetition to more holistic approaches that focus on individual students' needs and self expression."

Conference talks recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Games, Learning and Society. Cool to watch and learn. Another TED and POP! TECH conference.

"I want the people who will help shape our society in the future to understand the technology that will help shape out society in the future. If this is going to happen, then we need to reverse the trend that is seeing digital illiteracy exponentially increase. We need to act together, as parents, as teachers, as policy makers. Lets build a generation of hackers. Who's with me?"

By the end of this year, our society will undergo a most peculiar form of societal change -- and it will involve a lot of strife and conflict. The cause? Google (GOOG_) Glasses.

"...research aimed at providing robust, science-based evidence and policy options that support the widespread take up and effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the economy and in society."

"Some believe the internet is losing its direction as an enabler for a more connected society and falling into the hands of corporations. Isaac Wilder, founder of the Free Network Foundation, is fighting back because he believes companies like Facebook and Twitter are now corporations and far from the original ideology of an open web. "A lot of people put a lot of faith in those platforms and don't realize that the medium is the message," he said. This is how he and his supporters plan to take back the web for the people..."

"Much attention has been paid to 3D Printing lately, with new companies developing cheaper and more efficient consumer models that have wowed the tech community. They herald 3D Printing as a revolutionary and disruptive technology, but how will these printers truly affect our society? Beyond an initial novelty, 3D Printing could have a game-changing impact on consumer culture, copyright and patent law, and even the very concept of scarcity on which our economy is based. From at-home repairs to new businesses, from medical to ecological developments, 3D Printing has an undeniably wide range of possibilities which could profoundly change our world."

"Humanity is about to undertake a bold experiment. If all goes as Google hopes, many of us will be strapping on Google Glasses later this year. The post-PC era in effect since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010 could give way to a the wearable computing era prompted by Glass. But what will that do to society? What will it do to our brains?"

Heartfelt reflections from a student undertaking exams. Not specifically around technology however it does add to the debate and reinforce that notion of exams becoming more and more curious in their present form in modern society.

"Each election, Prime Ministerial candidates lay out their parties' platforms in campaign speeches. These speeches are more than just historical records; they tell us about national concerns and political obsessions, wars and drought, industry and society. They speak to - and in some cases, exploit - our aspirations and our fears. We've collected speeches by successful and unsuccessful candidates from every election from 1901 right up to the present day."

"This is the first post of a research inquiry that questions the ways in which we have understood the Youth-Technology-Change relationship in the contemporary digital world, especially through the identity of 'Digital Native'. Drawing from three years of research and current engagements in the field, the post begins a critique of how we need to look at the outliers, the people on the fringes in order to unravel the otherwise celebratory nature of discourse about how the digital is changing the world. In this first post, I chart the trajectories of our research at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and Hivos (The Hague, The Netherlands) to see how alternative models of understanding these relationships can be built."

"David White of the University of Oxford explains how the Visitors and Residents model provides a framework to understand individuals' engagement with the Web based on motivation and context. He argues that the metaphors of 'place' and 'tool' best represent the use of technology in contemporary society and allow us to better adapt to the challenges of new forms of academic practice. "

A great podcast on the place of the Internet in society and how it needs to be separated from behavioural issues.

I'm not sure we need these skills to be taught as a separate subject. Technology has been changing the way people learn and interact for thousands of years. Many researchers argue that major innovations adopted by society have an effect on the structure of the human brain. There is little doubt that the Internet has changed the way people find information and the way they communicate. Changes to the way that students learn, and probably what they learn, need to follow.

Their Youtube channel has some excellent videos *especially* the RSA Animate ones - incredible! "The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action."

"Games for Change (G4C) is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society.

"Social media has become an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries. There are niche sites for virtually every special interest out there. There are sites to share photos, videos, status updates, sites for meeting new people and sites to connect with old friends. It seems there are social solutions to just about every need. In this article, we'll review the history and evolution of social media from its humble beginnings to the present day."

"The rules and frontiers of our classrooms are changing with the disruptive technologies now being embraced by our society and integrated into our schools. In some ways, we are still playing catch-up with these technological and social changes. I am redefining my role as an educator in his new education landscape."

A short video that I made whilst on holiday about changing borders in our classrooms. Thought that you may be interested.