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Bonnie Sutton

The New Academic Publishing: Digital First - 2 views

The New Academic Publishing: Digital First http://spotlight.macfound.org/blog/entry/the-new-academic-publishing-digital-first/ Filed in: Schools Filed by Sarah J. 7.11.11 | A growing grou...

Publishing digital content academic journals. white papers reports Scholarly blogs and projects.

started by Bonnie Sutton on 16 Jul 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Ravitch: What Scrooge might think of modern school reform - 4 views

Ravitch: What Scrooge might think of modern school reform By Valerie Strauss This was written by education historian Diane Ravitch for her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Debor...

Diane Ravitch Scrooge education and poverty school reform

started by Bonnie Sutton on 15 Dec 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms? - 2 views

****************************** From The Los Angeles Times, Saturday, February 4, 2012. See http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120205,0,639053.column .. Our appreciation to Monty Neil, ...

Julius Genachowski digital playbook learning ecosystems textbooks

started by Bonnie Sutton on 07 Feb 12 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

The challenge of the introverted student - 2 views

The challenge of the introverted student By Valerie Strauss http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-challenge-of-the-introverted-student/2012/04/28/gIQATva9nT_blog.html This ...

Introverted student isolation the silent pupil

started by Bonnie Sutton on 29 Apr 12 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
Bonnie Sutton

Jamming the System: Standardized Tests, Automated Grading and the Future of Writing - 2 views

View slide show on original site. | View on Flickr on original site. Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://spotlight.macfound.org/blog/entry/jamming-the-system-standardized-t...

Ja the System: Standardized Tests Automated Grading Future of Writing robotic evaluation

started by Bonnie Sutton on 29 Apr 12 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

The Storytelling Project Model: A Theoretical Framework for Critical Examination of Rac... - 2 views

The Storytelling Project Model: A Theoretical Framework for Critical Examination of Racism Through the Arts http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=15787 by Lee Anne Bell & Rosemarie...

Story telling project model race and racism multiracial community comfort zone color blindness

started by Bonnie Sutton on 08 Jun 12 no follow-up yet
Claude Almansi

Rogue Downloader's Arrest Could Mark Crossroads for Open-Access Movement - Technology -... - 0 views

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    "July 31, 2011 By David Glenn Cambridge, Mass. This past April in Switzerland, Lawrence Lessig gave an impassioned lecture denouncing publishers' paywalls, which charge fees to read scholarly research, thus blocking most people from access. It was a familiar theme for Mr. Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School who is one of the world's most outspoken critics of intellectual-property laws. But in this speech he gave special attention to JSTOR, a not-for-profit journal archive. He cited a tweet from a scholar who called JSTOR "morally offensive" for charging $20 for a six-page 1932 article from the California Historical Society Quarterly. The JSTOR archive is not usually cast as a leading villain by open-access advocates. But Mr. Lessig surely knew in April something that his Swiss audience did not: Aaron Swartz-a friend and former Harvard colleague of Mr. Lessig's-was under investigation for misappropriating more than 4.8 million scholarly papers and other files from JSTOR. On July 19, exactly three months after Mr. Lessig's speech, federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging that Mr. Swartz had abused computer networks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and disrupted JSTOR's servers. If convicted on all counts, Mr. Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison."
Claude Almansi

Beware of Google's power; brings traffic to websites but it can also taketh away - Tech... - 1 views

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    "Ahmed ElAmin Published Jul 20, 2011 at 9:18 am (Updated Jul 20, 2011 at 8:01 am) Belgians have invented Smurfs, make some of the best beer in the world, and know how to fry a potato chip. However, one must say the country's leading newspapers scored an own goal when they took Google to court last year for listing their content in the search engine's news section and won on copyright. I guess they didn't look at how people arrive at a typical online newspaper site, which derives up to 50 percent or more of their visitors from Google. In addition to taking the group of papers out of its news section, Google also stopped indexing them in its search engine. Now the newspapers are complaining that they are being discriminated against unfairly! (...) Google has big power and the danger is how the company wields it in pursuit of profit. It brings traffic to websites, but the company that claims to "do no evil" can also taketh away ostracising those for good and bad reasons. The company is also stepping up its aggregation news service by trying to attract more volume through the "gamification" of Google News. Google is following a trend among news sites to bring readers in. With their consent, readers will be rewarded with "news badges" based on their reading habits. Badges of varying levels will be given out depending on the amount and types of articles you read. About 500 badges are available to suit a wide range of topics. Google News indexes about 50,000 sources. Keep reading and get those badges! Maybe."
Harry Keller

You Can't Afford Apple's Education Revolution - 3 views

Apple is picking low-hanging fruit, as usual, and making a nice profit at the same time. Will they remain an isolated provider of online texts for iPads at high prices, or will they move to expand...

Apple future of education iPad economy scale

Bonnie Sutton

The Value of Teachers - 1 views

The Value of Teachers By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: January 11, 2012 Suppose your child is about to enter the fourth grade and has been assigned to an excellent teacher. Then the teac...

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

Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age - 1 views

Submitted: June 9, 2011 - 3:29pm Originally published: June 9, 2011 Last updated: June 9, 2011 - 3:35pm Source: Federal Communications Commission Author: press release Location: Federal Communicati...

Information needs of community broadband enabled innovation citizen Journalism

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

Why Johnny Can't Program - 1 views

Why Johnny can't program -- and how that can change Today's schools are actually turning kids away from computer science, and it will take innovative programs to reverse the trend By Neil McAll...

middle school children's programming agent sheets computer science computing

started by Bonnie Sutton on 05 Aug 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Don't Show,Don't Tell The too-smart-for-its-own-good grid - 1 views

Don't show, don't tell? http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/teaching-children-0630.html Cognitive scientists find that when teaching young children, there is a trade-off between direct instructi...

direct instruction independent exploration grid MIT double edged sword to pedagogy

started by Bonnie Sutton on 06 Aug 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Don't show, don't tell? - 2 views

Suppose someone showed you a novel gadget and told you, "Here's how it works," while demonstrating a single function, such as pushing a button. What would you do when they handed it to you? You'd ...

engineeringsciencemanagementarchitecture + planninghumanities arts and social sciencescampusmultimediapress

started by Bonnie Sutton on 07 Jul 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference - 1 views

http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=16561 Just Schools: Pursuing Equality in Societies of Difference reviewed by Sherick Hughes - October 14, 2011 Title: Just Schools: Pursuing Equality...

pursuing equality societies of difference critical race theory CRT ethnicity

started by Bonnie Sutton on 18 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
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