Group items tagged

"65% of today's grade-school children will end up at jobs that haven't been invented yet." Infographic detailing some possible future directions for educational technology including gamification, digital classrooms and novel computing methods.

Toolkit to help non-tech-savvy teachers lead a programming club at their school

Actually, ASSISTments is not a tutor, but it draws on insights from artificial intelligence and tutoring. It's a good example of going to scale that we will reference later in the course.

Hi Prof. Dede, it struck me at the end of the article that while the title said '...Computerized Tutors...', what the creator was really struggling with was 'Humanizing computers'. It might never be possible, but the value is really in the journey. Thank you for sharing this with us!

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) implementation in Australia seems to bring positive results. In remote, largely indigenous northwest Queensland, Doomadgee, 3rd grade students' numeracy improved from 31 per cent last year to a staggering 95 per cent in 2011.

'Why integrate Technology into the Curriculum?'' This author states that there's a place for tech in every classroom. '. But he also claims that integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills. The purpose of tech integration is enhance the learning process.

"A Virginia company leading a national movement to replace classrooms with computers - in which children as young as 5 can learn at home at taxpayer expense - is facing a backlash from critics who are questioning its funding, quality and oversight."

Professor Dede had pointed out that mobile phones may hold the key to improving access to educational technology. One of the bottlenecks seem to be access to power in remote areas. This invention seems to be promising in renewable 'human powered' energy. Granted that any new invention has to go a long way before it becomes commercially viable, but I was a bit disappointed at the flippant tone of the author towards the end of the article.

Ipad app that teaches fractions

I tend to agree with Professor Cuban - "IPads are marvelous tools to engage kids, but then the novelty wears off and you get into hard-core issues of teaching and learning." The real challenge is to convert the initial excitement and performance improvement into sustained progress. The key may be in leveraging the increased self-efficacy of students.

This article makes me wonder about the novelty bump you get when you try anything new. In EcoMuve, they researched the effectiveness of EcoMuve vs a new ecology classroom based activity. This tactic is measuring the effectiveness of the technology. However in these studies, if they had kids using a computer game to practice fractions, did the control group practice fractions using a classroom based activity? 15% growth is not much to get excited about.

"IBM is working with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, on a "cognitive computer" that would simulate the same number of neurons as the human brain, upwards of 100 billion". Wonder how 'human' it will be?

iSchool, a student led non-profit initiative, inspiring students to go bookless and paperless. These digital natives plan to bring together business and education to create a sustainable eco-system for mobile learners.

Over the most recent few weeks I've seen similar articles touting the iPod Touch (as opposed to iPads or other tablets). More similar to use of phones as computing devices.

ruggedized and fairly cheap make it cater to students, but still seems bulky for frequent carrying in a backpack

Opinion in the Albert Shanker Institute web-page

These students were successful within a primarily online environment is spite of not owning their own computer.

In the US, 250000 students are enrolled in full-time public virtual schools in 30 states, according to Susan Patrick of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade association. Although that's just a fraction of the country's 50 million students, it has grown 30% each year. Some schools in Michigan already shown the advantage of digital learning.

This is an interesting article. I am just concerned that it is not unbiased or driven by an agenda other than improving education. I found this information about the Mackinac Center online: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/mackinac-center-public-policy I am starting to realize that a lot of the technology in schools rhetoric is driven by corporate and political interests, and as the industry becomes ever more profitable, I'm worried that companies are going to jump in and try to influence policy, rushing through the movement toward the wrong kind of technology in schools- i.e. sacking half of the teaching staff and replacing them with cheap computers. I think one of our most important jobs as Harvard TIE students is to education the public about the right ways to adapt technology in the classroom, and the important role that teachers will continue to play in this movement.

Ipod over Ipad- for struggling readers. Kids use the recording feature.

The headline promises more than the article delivers. It mainly identifies the limited effectiveness that the federal government can have. There are no specific "how to's" here and no mention of technology whatsoever, perhaps because that would be too specific a focus for the scope of the article. These are prominent figures in a prominent publication having a conversation that could have taken place in 1980. How do we change that? The absence of real civic engagement on issues about education is the missing link in education reform. I wonder if we can organize public discourse on the internet more effectively to have formal impact on civic activism and administration.

"applying computer vision to agriculture" - pure innovation