Why is overhearing a "half-alogue" more annoying than overhearing a dialog? Study shows that it's not a question of volume: hearing a half-alogue causes the brain to work harder to make sense of it, hurting our performance other cognitive tasks. Could this phenomenon be exploited in a positive way in a learning environment? (e.g. make use of the brain's natural tendency to work on filling gaps?)
"Reforms" have disappointed for two reasons. First, no one has yet discovered transformative
changes in curriculum or pedagogy, especially for inner-city schools, that are "scalable"
The larger cause of failure is almost unmentionable: shrunken student motivation.
"Motivation is weak because more students don't like school, don't work hard and don't do well." Also see Tom Friedman in the NYTimes referring to this article and concluding that "right now the Hindus and Confucians have more Protestant ethics than we do, and as long as that is the case we'll be No. 11!"
Tying into discussions this week about bringing access to mobile devices to all via non-prohibitive costs, while still reaching a set of bare-minmum technical specs for actual use:
India's "$35 tablet" has been a pipedream in the tech blog-o-sphere for awhile now, but it's finally available (though for a price of roughly $60). Still though, as an actual Android color touch tablet, with WiFi and cellular data capability - I'm curious to see how it's received and if it's adopted in any sort of large scale
I had heard months ago that India was creating this, but was not going to offer it commercially - rather, just for its own country. Just like the Little Professor (Prof Dede) calculator, when tablets get this affordable, educational systems can afford classroom sets of them and then use them regularly. But to Prof Dede's point - can they do everything that more expensive tablets can do? Or better yet - do they HAVE to?
I think this is what they're aiming to do - all classrooms/students across the country having this particular tablet. They won't be able to do everything today's expensive tablets can do, but I think they'll still be able too to do plenty. This $35 tablet's specs are comparable to the mobile devices we had here in the US in 2008/2009. Even back then, we were able to web browse, check email, use social networking (sharing pics and video too), watching streaming online video, and play basic 2D games.
But even beyond those basic features, I think this tablet will be able to do more than we expect from something at this price point and basic hardware, for 2 reasons:
1. Wide-spread adoption of a single hardware. If this thing truly does become THE tablet for India's students, it will have such a massive userbase that software developers and designers who create educational software will have to cater to it. They will have to study this tablet and learn the ins-and-outs of its hardware in order to deliver content for it. "Underpowered" hardware is able to deliver experiences well beyond what would normally be expected from it when developers are able to optimize heavily for that particular set of components. This is why software for Apple's iPhone and iPad, and games for video game consoles (xbox, PS3, wii) are so polished. For the consoles especially, all the users have the same exact hardware, with the same features and components. Developers are able to create software that is very specialized for that hardware- opposed to spending their resources and time making sure the software works on a wide variety of hardware (like in the PC world). With this development style in mind, and with a fixed hardware model remaining widely used in the market for many years- the resultant software is very polished and goes beyond what users expect from it. This is why today's game consoles, which have been around since 2005/6, produce visuals that are still really impressive and sta
This site lists educational games by category. There is no feed for updates (at least, I haven't found one) and games listed vary greatly in quality and educational merit. The site is hard to navigate due to poor design and doesn't seem to update very frequently
The games aren’t just hard - they’re adaptively hard. They tend to challenge people right at the edge of their abilities; as players get better and score more points, they move up to more demanding levels of play.
video games have been shown, in separate studies, to boost visual acuity, spatial perception, and the ability to pick out objects in a scene. Complex, strategy-based games can improve other cognitive skills, including working memory and reasoning
Opinion article from Reynol Junco at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society on why most educational technology startups aren't that great...they don't base their products on research, proven pedagogy, or work with educators.
It does seem like there is a shift going on right now- more educators on start up teams and more interest in developing innovations from the educators themselves. That being said, the market continues to get flooded. I think in the long run this will be very good for teaching and learning, but I would not want to be an investor in this space.
I think that is great that more educators are getting on the teams...but yeah, there are a lot of very fragmented / disperse initiatives that make it hard to tell what will succeed or catch on.
Seems to me to be a real disconnect with respect to assessment. Assessment, testing in the old model, did not authentically serve the learner. It served the system (modeled on the industrial reward paradigm). If we are focused on learning, assessment only serves the learner in terms of feedback but not as "assessment" as in: you worked hard and you get an 'A'. Getting an 'A' has even less relevance in the 21st centruy paradigm.
Educators can view and analyze their practice and then innovate and customize new ways to refine their craft in light of new insights.