Group items tagged

thoughtful ideas about what types of problems technology can address

Venture capitalists are taking an unprecedented interest in the K-12 education marketplace, largely due to an increased interest in education technology.

A UK experiment - contrived, but might produce some epiphanies?

Interesting study on rewards and motivation: Some excerpts - Rewards worked much better if they were given to students before the test, not after. Researchers found students worked significantly harder to keep what they had than they did to win something new. But none of the incentives worked at any age if students knew they wouldn't get the reward for a month. "All motivating power of the incentives vanishes when rewards are handed out with a delay," the researchers concluded. "Especially among children, the difference between right now and tomorrow is a big difference," Ms. Sadoff said. "For all students it's important that the reward be immediate." That impatience creates a massive problem for incentive programs based on state test results, which can often take months to turn around.

Thanks for this Kasthuri! This gives additional strength to the immediacy of digital rewards and students having access to their own "stats" (both potentially available in games and simulations). The thought of actual green-back monetary rewards for study/learning gives me the heebie-jeebies. I appreciated Alexandra M. Usher's comment, that "it's really important to reward inputs, not outputs [and] to reward behavior that kids can control, rather than just telling them to get better grades."

FYI: Rebroadcast of webinar with Carol Dweck for $49.00.

Some researchers are looking at how video games open up new wiring in the brain. "Infancy is filled with the best of times: critical windows of weeks and months when the growing brain fine-tunes things like language skills and vision. And it's wise to take advantage of them, for when the windows slam shut, those skills don't develop. Or so scientists used to think." Also, "Playing a video game called Medal of Honor helped some people recover lost visual abilities." But some researchers are not confident we know enough or raise ethical questions about further interventions.

This post is part of a three-week series examining educational innovation and technology, published in partnership with the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University.

An example of how teachers are using iPads to streamline data collection and analysis

Panel Discussion at the DML Conference on March 2, 2012

Digital tools are helping students with learning and sensory disabilities gain academic confidence and motivation.

An excellent account of fostering engagement in students.

"Initiatives seek to give students permanent online records for developing specific skills"

A quick overview of digital badges (including pros/cons re intrinsic/extrinsic motivation) and introduction of "Badge Economy" ["With support from the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla has developed an Open Badge Infrastructure, or OBI, designed to become the underlying technical scaffolding for badges," where user can collect badges earned in a digital backpack.]

I think this seriously overlooks the notion that we do so often what we get paid to do - so its not just the money, its the rarity of the experience. Would these people drag so often if they were asked to do this favor 5 days a week?

This week, PBS's Frontline aired a program looking at the impacts of digital media on the population as a whole. A large portion is dedicated to exploring how digital media impact engagement of young people in school and at home.

I watched part of it and would recommend it.

More fodder for STEM education. Diverse units of business and industry are joining forces to rev up support for STEM.

This is an interesting article that speaks to the result of over-engagement. I wonder if this problem is specific to Korea and less so in other countries (if so, what is it about that environment that makes video games so addictive) or if it's only been studied in Korea but could be a similar problem in other parts of the world.