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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

Digital Literacy is the Bedrock for Lifelong Learning - 2 views

BY VANESSA VEGA 10/25/11 People often ascribe technological devices with magical properties, as though the inert objects in and of themselves can bestow us with the capacity to be "better, faster, ...

digital literacy internet access resources for the divide technology

started by Bonnie Sutton on 04 Nov 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Broadband Adoption Key To Jobs and Education Connect To Compete - 1 views

Connect To Compete Overview http://www.ednetinsight.com/news-alerts/featured-news/broadband-adoption-key-to-jobs-and-education.html Washington, DC - Last week, Chairman Genachowski unveiled his pr...

connect to Compete Genachowski Pew Charitable Trust national effort address the digital divide

started by Bonnie Sutton on 21 Oct 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Digital Learning Day - 0 views

Digital Learning Day - A Movement's Defining Moment by Ferdi Serim Posted on February 1st, 2012 Digital Learning Day - A Movement's Defining Moment By Ferdi Serim With over four times the partici...

Ferdi Serim Digital Learning Day

started by Bonnie Sutton on 01 Feb 12 no follow-up yet
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

Welcoming Mobile: More Districts Are Rewriting Acceptable Use Policies - 1 views

Hotmail Active View Innovation in ISD 199 ( at the Site_ Play video Inver Grove Heights Community Schools has been nationally recognized for the innovative use of technology in the classroom thro...

CoSn Mobile Learning Internet access technology

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

THE LIBRARY: FREE, DIGITALLY HIP & COOL - 0 views

what you're sayingTHE LIBRARY: FREE, DIGITALLY HIP & COOL Ed Weiner A recent opinion piece called into question the Free Library's place in our digital world. A quick stop on freelibrary.org - ou...

E books free philadelphia digital library cool

started by Bonnie Sutton on 17 May 12 no follow-up yet
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

Misunderstanding Race and the Digital Divide - 2 views

Misunderstanding Race and the Digital Divide by Joseph Miller Guest Contributor on December 16, 2011 "One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those w...

started by Bonnie Sutton on 20 Dec 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

Into the Driver's Seat - 1 views

http://www.scoop.it/t/into-the-driver-s-seat/p/856007214/information-literacy-digital-learning-environments-judy-salpeter Information Literacy | Digital Learning Environments| Judy Salpeter...

Information Literacy digital learning environments. judy saltpeter

started by Bonnie Sutton on 21 Dec 11 no follow-up yet
Bonnie Sutton

PLAYBACK: News on Teens and Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Google+, And Schools That Don'... - 0 views

Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning PLAYBACK: News on Teens and Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Google+, And Schools That Don't Allow Them Posted: 03 Feb 2012 02:22 PM PST In this week's PLAY...

Facebook. Twitter and Google+. Parent's Guide to Facebook News on Teens Blogs

started by Bonnie Sutton on 05 Feb 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

Twitter Hashtags for Educators http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/... - 2 views

Electronic Teaming for Singletons in a PLC One of the questions that I'm asked all the time as an advocate for both professional learning communities and teaching with technology is, "How can ...

Twitter Hastags for Educators professional development using social networking

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

The New Digital Divide - 2 views

December 3, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/opinion/sunday/internet-access-and-the-new-divide.html The New Digital Divide By SUSAN P. CRAWFORD FOR the second year in a row, the Monday...

technology broadband video on demand powerful cable companies high speed wired second class wirless

started by Bonnie Sutton on 04 Dec 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."
  • ...5 more comments...
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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

Building Schools Out of Clicks, Not Bricks - 2 views

Building Schools Out of Clicks, Not Bricks By D.D. GUTTENPLAN Published: April 22, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/world/europe/building-schools-out-of-clicks-not-bricks.htm...

schools Bricks not clicks open educational resources Free Public access

started by Bonnie Sutton on 26 Apr 12 no follow-up yet
Claude Almansi

Education Week: Digital Edition: E-Learning for Special Populations - 0 views

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    "This special report examines the growing e-learning opportunities for students with disabilities, English-language learners, gifted and talented students, and those at risk of failing in school. Download the digital edition. (Login or FREE registration required.) You can read the complete online version of the report here. "
Bonnie Sutton

FCC Chairman, Experts, Discuss Driving Broadband Adoption and Effects on Economy at Joi... - 1 views

FCC Chairman, Experts, Discuss Driving Broadband Adoption and Effects on Economy at Joint Center by TIFFANY BAIN on OCTOBER 3, 2012 Although it had only been in its new office location for less th...

Broadband adoption effects on economy experts in technology

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

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