Group items tagged

"Dr. Andrew Feenberg: Ten Paradoxes of Technology"

I am not sure I agree with his truth in these paradoxes. Starting with his notion that a non-speaking human is less than human to his notion that workers/guilds did not influence change in manufacturing technologies speak to his belief that his thoughts are the most accurate, in my opinon. Many changes in manufacturing are the direct result of a worker creating either something that did a task in less time and better/safer to creating a product to do a job that did not exist previously. Those things should and will occur in technology moving forward. I had to watch this a couple of times as his presentation tone and expressions or lack thereof made following him challenging to me. The Democratic Paradox resonated the most with me as he discussed the relationship of technology to society to Escher's Drawing Hand. Paraphrasing what I think he was saying - "What was originally created in a military computer lab does not really resemble the technological environment we have today and it is hard to distinguish who is creating what at this point as society and technology merge. Unless we study technology from a historical prospective, we will not know the reasons for why things are a certain way in years to come." I do not see a separation in that thought from any other in a need for an intellectual society to study its own history in order to prevent making similar mistakes in the future.

I found a number of the articles here to be very interesting. They tend to be short reads on many of the current trends in educational technology.

These articles are interesting and easy to read through! There is a lot of information about educational technology. The bried articles gave you different ways to implement ideas into my classroom and why these concepts are so important.

It will be amazing to see what the future holds. The article points out the need for technology to applied throughout educational components, instead of being only a stand alone one.

This website has a lot of useful articles on technology in the classroom and it is quite easy to browse and read whatever is of interest to educators. I use Diigo with my classes for bookmarking news articles which students can later use to write their economic commentaries for International Baccalaureate Internal Assessment.

I agree. Where do you teac ESL? I used to teach for BSU & the College of Western Idaho. I'm teaching ESL in Thailand now.

This is an article by Alan November, a leasing educational technology theorist

CNN highlights how cell phones are revolutionizing Africa, including in the realm of education. The cells phone is the PC of Africa.

The ramifications of this story may be far-reaching. I've often wondered how technology can be the great equalizer. This story shows just some of the ways.

I truly like the idea he has of flipping the classroom. The ability to allow a lecture to be viewed and reviewed as "homework" and guided practice in front of the educator would certainly work in a learning difference environment and seems to be proving itself across the board according to Khan. In the case of a performance class, the tools needed to bring to the stage, for instance, could be taught the night before and allow the entire class period for stagecraft experience. Great post, thanks!

There are pros and cons to this system. I can imagine how it would work well in certain settings but I have experienced some of the downfalls of it. In the younger grades, it is difficult to have every student complete homework on a daily basis. If students were required to view the lesson at home, some may come into school without it completed and need reteaching. At that point, the teacher will need to spend time to teach those children while the others depend on themselves or each other. Then, the students who needed the lesson from the teacher will be behind with the practice work. Typically those children are also the ones who need the most help because their family life may not be the best or they cannot stay organized. If it were a perfect world where these children did not have 2 or more extracurricular activities each week and every student had internet/computer access every day, this would not be an issue. I think I would have to see more proof of this system working before I can implement it in my classroom. Until then, I will continue to use videos like the ones from khanacademy as supplemental forms of instruction.

I am in favor of the idea of the lecture being viewed at home. Probably for the same reasons I am in favor of this program. The ability to learn and review again at my pace and during time I feel most motivated. Any ideas or information not received in the initial lecture would be available to review at home.

Thanks for posting. I'm sure I'll be referring to this in the future. :)

An interesting way to get students involved in audience participation activities.

It's amazing boundless the applications for technology such as the Ipad are. In this article, I liked the quote : "Making things less complicated can actually make a lot of money,"

This tool is easy to set up and as long as the student has a device with a browser they can set it up.