Group items tagged

"School of One uses technology to develop a unique learning path for each student and to provide a significant portion of the instruction that is both individualized and differentiated." I liked the definitions of individualized (pacing), differentiated (learning preferences/methods), and personalized (pacing, preferences, and content/objectives).

A new proposal calls for a Consumer Reports-like rating body to evaluate new digital learning tools. Ed tech innovators like the idea in theory but they worry that it won't work in practice.

Funny, I was just talking with someone about this very idea the other day. We absolutely need something like this and my guess is that we will have a few competitors, at least early on, for the top ed tech review site. I think there is space for both an organization that specializes and for a yelp like site that essentially crowd sources the reviews. It will be tough to keep up, but think of how many products and areas Consumer Reports deals with- we can do this, and need to do this, for ed tech to get used wisely in our schools.

With regards to e-learning, I think inevitably some company or organization will provide ratings of the quality of online degree programs and learning tools. Whether this is Consumer Reports or US World & News Report or some new player (investment opportunity?), the need for objective assessments of digital learning tools is definitely needed. The Benchmarking e-learning wiki is interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benchmarking_e-learning

High tech or no-tech - debate continues in Canadian schools. While schools introduce technology from Grades 3 ,4,or 5, Waldorf schools are growing too, 24 affiliated schools with students from K-12, and is growing.

A survey of 25 ed tech directors conducted by Piper Jaffray that is making the rounds in the tech blogosphere. Seems to fall in line with what we're learning and today's trends: all surveyed IT directors are interested in the iPad, not Android, they like the flexibility tablets would offer over computers, it's going to take some time for schools to achieve one tablet per child. Cost is an obvious concern, but so is device management.

Program in Estonia designed to have all students age 7 to 16 learn to write code in a drive to turn children from consumers to developers of technology.

Hmmm.... I read about Estonia being very plugged in as well. I wonder if there is research on whether the kids are actually learning better as a result. I think that you have a point Jeffrey. It depends what the cost is. If kids are missing some critical lesson because they are coding at such a young age, there may be a trade-off. On the other hand, maybe the skills they are obtaining from coding are more critical. I wonder...

Ideally, the tech skills would be used to enhance and deepen some of the other curriculum areas. But, yes, 7 years old may be young.

Gateway source for all students: high school and college composition and journalism and student of life. Bookmark this source and then bookmark the hyperlinks in this article. Do you have the 10 (11 for the bonus) tech skills down? I certainly can improve in some of these areas.

Industry top firms, including Google, News Corp, Disney, and NBC Universal, are showing interest in online education. "Demand for online education is exploding. The global market for online learning at schools and businesses is expected to grow from $32.1 billion in 2010 to approximately $50 billion by 2015, according to research firm Ambient Insight."

This startup, Clever, has a platform to enable the easy integration of other ed tech into the classroom--it stores student data in a single location. Maybe this will also help track student information as they move up grade levels and enable things like mastery-based learning instead of seat-based? They already have 2000 schools and a waiting list!

Here is a list of the top trends in Ed-TEch for 2011. Some of the highlights include Mobile Learning, BYOD, and text-messaging startups.

One of the fastest growing uses of tech is online learning...

Free webinar tomorrow (9/27) from Tech&Learning on Google Chromebooks and Apps for Education - Power of the Web for TEaching and Learning 

This article attempts to balance the 'rah-rah tech is a panacea' view with a reminder that it might not be essential or desirable in all classrooms. Other than citing some studies that show how tech can distract students during class, I don't think her argument is that convincing. I'm curious what people think about this view.

Karen Cator, director of education technology with the U.S. Department of Education touts keystroke-sensitive algorithms are capable of guiding students for learning, accessible to teachers, parents and the students. "Education technology, as in the gaming world, has the ability to assess performance every step of the way, comparing students to classmates across schools, districts, states and the world, with immediate feedback and direction. No final exam necessary."

DARPA is funding "hackerspaces"--high-tech workshops to give high school students opportunities to explore engineering and learning through creation--at 1,000 U.S. high schools. 

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

Brian Lukoff, a Technology & Education Postdoc Fellow working with Eric Mazur, just sent me this article which discusses their new ed tech startup Learning Catalytics.  It's the evolution of the Eric's clicker supported Peer Instruction.  I'm meeting with Brian and Eric on Tuesday to setup a TIE spring internship doing business development for Learning Catalytics.

Minimally Invasive Education is defined as a pedagogic method that uses the learning environment to generate an adequate level of motivation to induce learning in groups of children, with minimal, or no, intervention by a teacher. (Disruptive Tech?)

This is very "hot" in India at the moment. The president of India has given 200 of these to the university I work at and they are distributing it, for free, to loads if other institutes. It costs $25!! I haven't seen the quality of the device, but I have seen other low cost, about $150, tablets and I don't like them AT ALL. D you think e device quality and user experience will not be deterrent given the price point?

Mohit, I've heard a lot about the poor quality of the device and very little about HOW universities intend on using these tablets. It seems like another case of top-down intervention that's tech-driven rather than learning-driven, which is rather unfortunate. Also seems even more unfortunate that even though it's a tech-driven initiative, they haven't thought out the *quality* component of the tech. Oy... See this article for critiques of the tablet: http://www.techulator.com/resources/5523-Most-Annoying-Defects-Flows-Datawinds.aspx

I was reading about using tech in elections and I ran across Hackpad. I had never heard of Hackpad, and this is a question for the teaching staff: Might this be a good option to have more of our class conversations in one place? I'd be curious to know how you think it compares as a discussion platform.

I've always wondered what drives VC investments in ed tech firms. Today, Union Square Ventures, a New York-based VC firm, began sharing its internal market research. Scroll down and click on "online education" to see what's caught their attention in the sector. It's very interesting to consider what is included--and excluded!