Group items tagged

graphing calculators face new competition from smart phones and such, parents wonder why they should by calculators

ROI on social media. I find it interesting that when measuring a social market there are no social indicators that are valued. Does it make sense to slice social media into dollars and sense? I understand why you would need to justify it, but I am not sure that the greatest value of social media is driving traffic.

Along the lines of the discussions we've been having on the isites, mobile learning has major potential in the developing world. "Mobile phones are increasingly ubiquitous in poor countries, which now account for FOUR IN EVERY FIVE connections worldwide". This means that almost everyone owns or has access to a mobile phone. How can we leverage this reality? Well, we can't impose anything that requires a smart phone, since most of these mobile phones cannot access 3G or wifi networks. Perhaps we can start to send podcasts as voice notes? Audio wikis of information sent via sms? In-phone calculators for math homework completion? I think all we need is an educational system that supports this type of learning, and m-learning can possible change the face of education in the developing world. 

"The intuitive software platform for EV3 is based on National Instruments LabVIEW™ graphical programming software, and includes new data-logging capabilities that allow students to collect, graph, and calculate their data."

Interesting article about the cost components (not just device pricetags) of using digital textbooks. The article considers Africa, but the framework can apply anywhere.

Vernier develops some interesting data collection technology for a tough concept. Will capturing info frame by frame and generating a graph help students understand the concept of velocity?

The real question is what the tablet can and cannot do

I would liken this to a graphing calculator (that is typically required of student's to purchase for the purpose of higher math classes) versus the classroom set of calculators typically found in the elementary math manipulative kits - the ultimate purpose of each device is very different - but the basic or fundamental features are the same - so for India, does it matter how "advanced" the system is if they really just want to get the poorest of its citizens on some type of level playing field?

"The best professional-development research shows that teachers need sustained contact hours (between 30 and 100) of training before altering their practices. So, she did a back-of-the envelope calculation about how much time it would take to implement 50 hours of formative-assessment training over the course of a school year...... Teachers would need about six hours a month, for eight months, which amounts to one early-close afternoon a month plus two additional hours. (Good luck with that in this economy.)"

Perhaps this is where technology can play an enabling role. Easy to use and real-time tools like Socrative or technology based learning environments with embedded formative assessments (like my formative assessment design proposal for VPA) could help reduce the time / training barriers for teachers to incorporate formative assessment into the teaching practice. At the very least, new curriculum initiatives aligned with common core standards SHOULD BE REQUIRED to incorporate formative-assessments. Unfortunately on PARCC is. "Of the two assessment consortia, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, is not developing formative-assessment resources as part of its federal grant. The other consortium, known as SMARTER Balanced, is."

Top Ten Back-to-School iPhone apps. Check out the new free Kindle app.

As more and more educational apps hit the market, will schools reconsider allowing hand-held devices in schools?

DC is keeping/firing teachers based on "grading" teachers in their successes with their students on standardized tests.

Can't quite wrap my brain around this one entirely but it sounds interesting and brain-y.

Very similar to the idea of teaching computer programming via storytelling/animation (Scratch)

I just watched this video and it's actually billed INCORRECTLY on that Ted.com description! The guy is *not* saying to teach math through teaching computer programming at'all!! He is simply advocating to use the power of the computer to teach math - i.e. using programs such as Mathematica. His slide says "Computer-based math: critical reform" -- so, he is saying that students should use the computer for the computing (which is for sure true) and teachers should teach with the students using this computing power asap (which I agree with) ... but he is *not* actually saying to teach computer programming ... p.s. This video is sweeping through the math teacher twitter streams and blogs right now (yes, there is such a community out there!) But, in my opinion, his idea is no big leap ...

Absolutely agree... the idea presented here is no big leap at all, especially to us who are following these advances pretty closely. I saw the parallels with scratch in terms of engaging the learner.

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