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Bonnie Sutton

NCES Announces the 2012 National Forum on Education Statistics and the 25th Annual NCES... - 0 views

NCES Announces the 2012 National Forum on Education Statistics and the 25th Annual NCES Management Information Systems (MIS) Conference The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will be s...

MIS conference National NCES Forum Education Statistics K-12 Information systems

started by Bonnie Sutton on 12 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

The United Nation's Take on Digital Citizenship - 1 views

Guest Post: The United Nation's Take on Digital Citizenship Christine Kane on the Internet Governance Forum! This week the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) met in Kenya. No one is...

Internet Governance UN take ideas on digital citzenship international citizenship

started by Bonnie Sutton on 27 Mar 12 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Microsoft Wins TEACH Campaign from the Education Dept - 0 views

Microsoft wins TEACH campaign from Education Dept By Valerie Strauss http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/microsoft-wins-teach-campaign-from-education-dept/2011/11/13/gIQA5t5bMN_bl...

Microsoft education department teach doe

started by Bonnie Sutton on 15 Nov 11 no follow-up yet
Jim Shimabukuro

Rupert Murdoch uses eG8 to talk up net's power to transform education | Media | guardia... - 6 views

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    "Rupert Murdoch uses eG8 to talk up net's power to transform education News Corp chairman claims 'Victorian' schools are 'last holdout from digital revolution' Kim Willsher in Paris guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 May 2011 18.10 BST Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation founder and chairman, used his address to the eG8 Forum in Paris on Tuesday to call for more investment in education and "unlocking the potential" of the world's children. Murdoch said it was not a question of putting a computer in every school, but concentrating on opening up opportunities for youngsters to flourish by using targeted and tailored software. News Corp moved into the $500bn (£310bn) US education sector in late 2010, paying about $360m in cash for 90% of technology company Wireless Generation, which provides mobile and web software to enable teachers to use data to assess student progress and deliver personalised learning."
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    From Harry Keller
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    Interesting contrast with Murdoch's attitude in 2009 - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/murdoch-google - but is it really a contrast?
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    We've had Ely Broad, Bill Gates, and a host of other billionaires (even George Lucas) attempting to "fix" our education system. They're not doing so well. What is so interesting to me about Murdoch, despite his pirate-like business practices, is that he sees what I think is the real direction for the future of education. Oddly unlike his right-wing colleagues, he's not pushing for vouchers or more school privatization. Unlike the technocrats, he's not pushing for more and more computers in schools. He sees the solution to our schooling problems as "targeted and tailored software." Many (maybe most) countries, including the U.S., lack the political will as societies to fix education the way that Finland did. Software is the other path. Much discussion today centers around the platform. Will we use smart phones or e-tablets or netbooks? Will we see $1 apiece apps as the learning modules or cloud-based solutions? Will our new learning software run on iOS or Android? All of that is window dressing and barely worthy of discussion. For me, Murdoch hit the nail on the head. We have too little software "targeted and tailored" to education or, at least, too little highly professional quality software.
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    Errh yes about Murdoch pushing "targeted and tailored software" , Harry. But see also: "News Corp moved into the $500bn (£310bn) US education sector in late 2010, paying about $360m in cash for 90% of technology company Wireless Generation, which provides mobile and web software to enable teachers to use data to assess student progress and deliver personalised learning." So he is doing at software level what Microsoft etc were doing at hardware - and at times software - level: promoting his wares in a very juicy market. We've had "targeted and tailored to education" software for decades, now: LMSs, addons to office suites, etc. Some good, some bad. The problem with software that is targeted and tailored to education is that it is a) often boring; b) perforce based on an abstract general idea of education; c) often remote from what gets used outside school. Would it not be better to train teachers in adapting whatever software is generally available, be it desktop or on the cloud, to fit their and their specific students' needs?
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    My point is simply that Murdoch gets it. His motives don't have to be pure for us all to benefit from the light he's shining on educational technology. Regarding the software, your points are well-taken. However, one extra qualification must be added. The software must be "good." That means it must avoid the problems you list.
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    "Would it not be better to train teachers in adapting whatever software is generally available, be it desktop or on the cloud, to fit their and their specific students' needs?' I disagree with this analysis. Software not created for educational purposes will only adapt so far. It is, for example, word processing substituting for paper and pencil. That's worthy of doing but really makes no difference in instruction. When software is created specifically for learning, it can reach much more deeply into the learning processes. It's not just peripheral but central to learning. You can adapt lots of software to education in lots of ways, and I've read of many very clever adaptations. Almost all could be done without the use of a computer, albeit somewhat less efficiently but nonetheless effectively. I read Murdoch's call, which echoes something I've been saying for many years, as meaning that we have to build software that answers the necessities of learning. We don't have much today.
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    Taking up your example of word processing as substitute for pen and pencil , Harry: true, and that's what I retorted in the late 1990's to a digitalophobe academic, when we met about the Italian translation of one of his books, and he boasted of having got a letter from a publisher saying he was their last author to deliver typescripts on paper and not as a digital file. I pointed out that cut and paste, copy and paste (the things he particularly hated the ease of in digital media) existed in the real world looooooong before computers, let alone PCs, let alone the Web. And yet... in 2007 I was asked to set up at very short notice an intensive preliminary French workshop for participants in a master course in intercultural studies: though in Lugano, the course was to be in French and English. I asked for access to the Moodle for the course, to store course materials there etc. The organizers refused: "The Moodle will only be explained to the students in the first week of the course proper". The idea that graduate students needed to have a Moodle explained to them in 2007 seemed peregrine, but rather than arguing, I set up a for-free wiki instead. At our first meeting, the students asked why we weren't using the Moodle, I repeated the official explanation, they laughed and got the hang of the wiki immediately. Then, for reading comprehension, they chose one of the assigned texts for the course: a longish book chapter they had received by e-mail as a grayish PDF based on a low-resolution scan, based on a reduced photocopy to make 2 pages fit on an A4 sheet: i.e. with no margin to take notes on. So we printed the PDF, separated the pages with scissors, pasted the separate pages with glue sticks on new A4 sheets, to get wider margins to write in. And then we made a wiki page for it, copied in it the subheadings, between which the students, added the notes they were taking, working in groups on the new paper version. Result: http://micusif.wikispaces.com/Vinsonneau
Claude Almansi

The future was not invited in Paris - storify.com - 0 views

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    "By Roberta Ranzani, June 7, 2011 Considerazioni varie su eG8 nelle parole di alcuni tweeter che stavano seguendo il forum in diretta ( o in streaming) e in qualche link."
Bonnie Sutton

New Ideas to Advance STEM Education in the US - 1 views

Acting U.S. Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank unveiled findings from the Economics and Statistics Administration's (ESA) third and final report on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jo...

Education Technology Innovation Competitiveness U.S. Economic Growth

Bonnie Sutton

SC11 June Newsletter - 1 views

http://sc11.supercomputing.org/ Follow SC11: SC11 will feature the latest scientific and technical innovations from around the world. Bringing together scientists, engineers, researchers, educa...

SC11 Tutorials Broader engagement student volunteers education HOC Paralle computing communities

started by Bonnie Sutton on 22 Jun 11 no follow-up yet
Claude Almansi

Playing with Reality at the Learning and Entertainment Evolution Forum - ProfHacker - T... - 0 views

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    June 21, 2011, 8:00 am By Prof. Hacker Lewis Carroll's logic game[This is a guest post by Anastasia Salter, Assistant Professor at the University of Baltimore in the school of Information Arts and Technologies. Her academic work focuses on storytelling in new media; she also writes the Future Fragments column for CinCity. Follow her on Twitter at AnaSalter.--@jbj] "...With that said, perhaps the most important takeaway from LEEF is that it's not all about expensive toys. Learning games don't have to be hi-tech to be effective. There's a lot to be learned from Space Vikings, the conference's ARG-that's alternate reality game, not its augmented reality cousin. Unlike augmented reality, which requires technology to mediate an environment, alternate reality is a playful imposition of story onto a physical space. In Space Vikings, a number of us dedicated conference attendees were drawn into a mission to save our tribes from a "pedagogical wasteland." How did we accomplish this feat? By hunting down "anomalies"-read masking tape clues, QR codes and posters-with answers to questions to submit in a digital educational games theory scavenger hunt. This is just one example of a conference ARG, and designers were at LEEF to report on lessons learned from others like DevLearn's Zombie Apocalypse. (For more ideas on educational uses of Alternate Reality, check out Think Transmedia.) These same ideas can scale and transform to a number of settings. For example, Melissa Peterson's Elmwood Park Zoo ARG is currently a project conducted with paper (though imagined for smartphones), and it's already doubling the engagement time of visitors to the local zoo. And on the other side, games like the Giskin Anomaly in Balboa Park are adding new layers of narrative to a popular and culturally rich tourist destination. And these games don't have to be location dependent. Case studies like the Radford Outdoor ARG Outbreak, a social inquiry game that puts st
Bonnie Sutton

Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Techno... - 1 views

Making Progress: Rethinking State and School District Policies Concerning Mobile Technologies and Social Media pdf http://www.cosn.org/Default.aspx?TabId=12543 BACKGROUND It is...

Making Progre Rethinking State and School District POLICIES COSN Mobile Technologies Social Media

started by Bonnie Sutton on 15 Apr 12 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

A state that just says 'no' to charters, other reforms - 1 views

A state that just says 'no' to charters, other reforms By Valerie Strauss This was written by Melissa Westbrook, a public education activist and co-writer of the Seattle Schools Community Forum...

charters other reforms Washington State innovation support

started by Bonnie Sutton on 04 May 12 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

How Mobile Technology is Reshaping the Global Landscape - 0 views

How Mobile Technology is Reshaping the Global Landscape http://www.brookings.edu/events/2011/120... With smart phones now outnumbering personal computers, there has been a sea change in the way peo...

mobile technologies smart phones global landscape

started by Bonnie Sutton on 10 Dec 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider? - 1 views

Mobile Multiplier or Mobile Divider? http://bigthink.com/ideas/41809 Dominic Basulto on January 4, 2012, 9:28 PM inShare12 Mobile_divide_mobile_multiplier The rapid proliferation of mobil...

mobile phones byot multiplier internet connected devices

started by Bonnie Sutton on 07 Jan 12 no follow-up yet
Claude Almansi

Make: Online | Walled Gardens vs. Makers - 0 views

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    Cory Doctorow. Make. June 2011. "Consider the iPad for a moment. It's true that Apple's iTunes Store has inspired hundreds of thousands of apps, but every one of those apps is contingent on Apple's approval. If you want to make something for the iPad, you pay $99 to join the Developer Program, make it, then send it to Apple and pray. If Apple smiles on you, you can send your hack to the world. If Apple frowns on you, you cannot. What's more, Apple uses code signing to restrict which apps can run on the iPad (and iPhone): if your app isn't blessed by Apple, iPads will refuse to run it. Not that it's technically challenging to defeat this code signing, but doing so is illegal, thanks to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which makes it a crime to circumvent a copyright-protection technology. So the only app store - or free repository - that can legally exist for Apple's devices is the one that Apple runs for itself. Some people say the iPad is a new kind of device: an appliance instead of a computer. But because Apple chose to add a thin veneer of DRM to the iPad, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act applies here, something that's not true of any "appliance" you've ever seen. It's as if Apple built a toaster that you can only use Apple's bread in (or face a lawsuit), or a dishwasher that will only load Apple's plates. Apple fans will tell you that this doesn't matter. Hackers can simply hack their iPads or shell out $99 to get the developer license. But without a means of distributing (and receiving) hacks from all parties, we're back in the forbidden-knowledge Dark Ages - the poverty-stricken era in which a mere handful of ideas was counted as a fortune."
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    We discussed this article in the forum of lascuolachefunziona.it. Someone objected that the iPad was a great tool and gave far more liberty to developers than traditional print publishers. I retorted that it was precisely because the iPad was such a great tool that its proprietariness about content for it was irritating. Then Elena Favaron made an illuminating comparison: "There are also people who make coffee machines that work only with dedicated coffee capsules, and there are folks who even buy them..."
Bonnie Sutton

E-Learn 2011 Sheraton , Waikiki Beach - 2 views

October 17 - 21, 2011 * Honolulu, Hawaii FINAL Call for Participation conf/elearn Proposals Due: August 31, 2011 aace.org/ http://aace.org/conf/elearn/call.htm Proposal Submission ...

Online conference virtual and face ot E-Learn 2011

started by Bonnie Sutton on 23 Jun 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

ITIF to Privacy Chicken Little's: "The Sky Is Not Falling" - 0 views

For Immediate Release For More Information: Steve Norton (202) 626-5758 snorton@itif.org WASHINGTON (October 11, 2011)-In response to the report released today at a forum sponsored by various pr...

Data Privacy Principles for Spurring Innovation. ITIF online tools

started by Bonnie Sutton on 12 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Smithsonian Online Events http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/events/online... - 1 views

You can't believe everything you read online. How do you evaluate the reliability of a website? Join the National Air and Space Museum for an interactive discussion on critical thinking, the Intern...

smithsonian online conferences and education

started by Bonnie Sutton on 19 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
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