Group items tagged

The presentation on the ARG alien abduction in class today reminded me of this awesome news story a couple months back. Sans fancy technology, a school staged an alien abduction for its students. Unfortunately, they got some flak for the War of the Worlds effect it had on the younger kids. But this school seems really awesome and I hope no one got disciplined for providing an innovation learning experience.

Check out this site which is like getting the info of a facebook profile and more. Imagine what kind of info search engines like this could generate for a teacher about an entire class. Or what students can find out about each other and their teachers. . .

no more class field trips to the imax once this comes out

What technologies succeed in school purchases and why: The SMARTboard story.

An article from TheApple.com about 5 ways to provide virtual field trips for students, including augmented reality and a class trip to the moon.

A highly amusing flash game for learning physics concepts. How might a teacher use this in class?

What age group would benefit most from this? What could the teacher do to make sure students learn about physics and not just learn how to manipulate the simulation?

I just played around with it a little bit, and I don't feel that I could use it effectively with grade 9th or grade 7th students that I was teaching last year. It is pretty much just a balancing game, but I don't think it can help learners understand any particular concepts like 'gravity' or the 'principle of moments'. For younger learners, like 6-year olds perhaps, it could help them develop an understanding of weights and balancing forces(?)... I don't know...

I get really nervous about these "shifts" when they become sensationalized. Despite our insistence that students are not created equal, we keep searching for the one-size-fits-all solution to education, and in this era that solution is bolstered by anything containing the word DIGITAL. How much socioemotional development will students lose if this trend increases over time? How do we provide for human relationships, mentors, even confrontation and conflict resolution when we are all hiding behind computer screens? It has to be about more than convenience.

Article cited in "Disruopting Class". Has anything changed?

If you haven't yet seen it, there is a fascinating video of Sal Khan speaking at the Gel 2010 conference. For those who haven't been following, Khan is the creator of the Khan Academy-a non-profit that has over 1,800 videos for free on the Web that teach topics in Math, Science, the Humanities, and so forth-and have attracted such an impressive following that they have more viewers than even MIT's open courses on YouTube. The Khan Academy reaches people all over the world with these videos, and recently Google awarded it $2 million to create more videos and translate them into additional languages.

After reading this I wonder what other resources there are online for learning all those things that I have found difficult to master in my life.

A great read and resource that came up through another one of my classes. The Harvard Business School grad makes free online videos that explore math and science concepts. Bill Gates is a big fan.

Curious what math teachers in our class think about this. Anyone worked with these methods?

I was talking with Arene about this. He has taught math in middle school and high school in Singapore. When I asked if teaching this in the US would be effective he had some interesting points. You should talk with him to get an accurate account, but one of the questions he raised in our conversation was the following: Does this pedagogy that works in the cultural context of Singapore transfer to the United States?

A history and forecast of the internet

More than 70,000 school-age children wake up each morning for class and walk as far as the nearest Web-enabled gadget. If that's an iPad or laptop, they may not even need to leave their bed.

"...If you involve them you can teach them" ... "keep them confised for a moment to give them the aha moment"  a similar theme touched upon at last class

My first thought is "why would you want to be friends with your students on facebook?" It depends on the reasons people have a facebook page. If it is, indeed, going to be used as a tool to extend "learning" outside of the classroom, then I believe there are other platforms outside of Facebook. If teachers still want to use this for class, perhaps a better option is having a twitter account for school only where they can update students. I worked for two districts-one told us we were not allowed to be friends with our students and the other just warned against it. Most teachers I know do not add their students because it is a place for their friends where they do not see themselves as some child's teacher, but someone's friend. I know a high school chorus teacher who friends her students, and I think its inappropriate. She posts things about her personal life and they frequently chime in. However, discusses her personal life in class so it may not be that much of a difference than posting it online. I would take action as a teacher if I were disciplined for a facebook post. Ultimately people need to check their privacy settings if they can. There are even issues with friending other teachers. I refused to do this with other teachers, unless we were friends outside of school. I knew of teachers who would tell our principal what was posted on other teachers' pages.

Teacher Karl Fisch uploads his lectures to YouTube for his students to watch at home at night, then gets them to apply the concepts in class by day.

Interesting interviews with folks associated with the for-profit education industry. Worth a glance after reading "Disrupting Class"

Ford T. Smith is helping to bulldoze one of the most durable pillars of academic life: the semester.