Group items tagged

Adults these days (especially those who love themselves some Dateline) seem really into chastising video games those crazy kids are into as symptomatic of the human race's inevitable, steady decline. Like every hobby and medium, legitimate concerns regarding these technologies certainly exist, but their complete lack of validity is decidedly not amongst them.

If you are not familiar with the 21st Century Fluency project, have a look. When I received this week's newsletter, there was a lot of alignment with the conversation we had in Monday's lecture.

http://www.fluency21.com/perspectives/LNE_perspective.pdf This is a great intro to the thinking these guys are doing. Their breakdown of the 5 fluencies is probably one of the most actionable representations of what everyone is calling 21st century skills.

I have found Zaid's blog postings to be very appealing visually (with good use of colors) and to the point (with higher signal to noise ratio). Here is an example of a "1, 2, 3" style posting on the important topic of Autism with Dr. Martha Hebert (a prominent Harvard Medical School researcher and clinician).

related to the previous bookmark from the Economist. 

Don't be a B.L.O.B.

Great blog posts on Acceptable Use, BYOT and pointers for educators on how to support responsible use. There are also sections on connected learning and digital citizenship.

Interesting blog post on use of tablets - specifically iPad - in schools. More than the blog post (which I thought was smug), I found the comments more informative.

Really nice, comprehensive site that meta-rates hundreds of education blogs daily--good for folks like me who need some help sifting through the noise. Too bad I just found it today...

Thought it was April Fool's for a minute

Wow, so online education is a political issue? How could Minnesota government think an arcane law to pay fees is going to deter anyone?

Update: apparently this article went viral and the MN state government was so embarrassed by the outcry that they have backed off and said that they will introduce legislation to amend the 20-year-old law in question, noting that it "clearly didn't envision free online classes from accredited universities." Read more about it here: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/10/19/minnesota_coursera_ban_state_won_t_crack_down_on_free_online_courses_after.html

Notes from a conference on emerging technologies (not sure if Professor Dede was there or not). Count me as a skeptic re: OLPC's Ethiopia experiment, but the Institute of Play/EA partnership is an interesting one. 

I was at EmTech  at MIT during this panel discussion.

Thanks for sharing Mohit. I think the implementation of OLPC in numerous countries have been beneficial and a step in the right direction. Maybe if you do place a laptop in a child's hands, he/she could learn certain basic skills (like what the article suggested). But to go beyond that to higher-order thinking skills, a robust curriculum would be needed to complement the technology. Still, credit to these folks for reaching out to the children in need.

This article highlights the range of ways that many educators and college students are using the ipad in the classroom.

This is the FCC blog calling on people to give feedback on the eRate data (followup to last post).

Interesting her view of disrupt versus improve...

In a world constantly inundated with information, is it valuable to step back and filter what is coming into your world? This blog sketches a framework for potential technologies to take advantage of. Give time and reason back to the people using technology. I especially liked the IDoneThis Company.

The gender imbalance in the startup world, and more specifically the development world, is a frequent topic here and elsewhere. Last week I learned of a new meetup in Cambridge aimed at getting more women to become Ruby developers by simply bringing in women to teach them. Also, read the group's blog here- http://www.railsbridgeboston.org/blog/2012_aug_recap

A general overview of what makes a MOOC unique and, and what role could they play in the core educational mission of universities? Also a good blog from Duke's Center for Instructional Technology

It includes technologies the size of atoms, that will be present in all area of our environment-- similar to the Microsoft Future Vision videos we've seen in T561. But we'll be able power our devices using our own bodies?

Interesting predictions made about what was going to be big in 2011.