Group items tagged

This article is about students running help desks. This is becoming more common, as students are often better versed in technology than many teachers. The article identifies a relevant curriculum and discusses the dynamic shift from students supporting technology to technology supporting students. This also goes along with the Burlington High School help desk link I shared.

While the technology has summarily 'emerged', Google Earth and a well designed media rich narrative are rethinking lecture dynamics and student participation. Informative video highlights some of the features and offers testimonials about Greenblatt's Humanities 27 being taught at Harvard.

Here is a dynamic video by HP forecasting future possibilities in the realm of AR, sort of in the same genre as the Microsoft video shown by Professor Dede in T561.

I love competative learning labs. I wish this project based co-opetition model were a standard in our schools. Innovation and team dynamics are mindsets and skills that need to be developed in our kids.

A very interesting way to engage individuals on a personal level via video. It startled me the first time around (see :56). I wonder how quickly the novelty of providing subtle dynamic elements to video would wear off, but if done properly, might have a place in a nonformal educational setting for children ... a new type of personalized learning experience. Ah, and I may have altered the web link a bit to make it a bit more appropriate for our class :)

Now this service/interface seems to offer real potential -- it's flexible, it's based on a dynamic interplay of different applications -- it's been around for a few years now -- anybody have first-hand experience with it?

Being a 2nd year part-time student, I already took David Rose's UDL course last spring. My group project for UDL was exploring VoiceThread-- understanding its current feautres and capabilities, testing it out in a real world situation with some students, and envisioning changes to fix shortcomings plus new features. Overall, we thought VoiceThread was really cool! Could allow students to communicate in different kinds of ways (text, voice, submitting video statements, drawing-- whatever someone preferred or was comfortable with) and enabled a growing transcript of student dialogue in reference to a piece of content. But there was a real learning curve- in figuring out how (as a 'teacher') to create an original VoiceThread using our media. And then students had to figure out the interface and tools available to them as they used VoiceThread to browse a stream we created and comment on it. As of last spring at least, I felt it was a bit cumbersome. Really wish it was more intuitive so both creators and viewers could jump right in and get right to communicating. Haven't gone back to using it as of late, but I hear they now have iPhone/iPad access!

Kind of ironic, but "old tech" using new tech to promote sales of old tech. Basically Elsevier is giving students in an edX course a free, static version of one of its textbooks. Students then see a link to purchase a discounted, dynamic version--and it seemed to bump up sales! Also interesting is that edX gets a cut of the book sales--maybe another avenue for them to become sustainable, in addition to charging for certification.

Article on how the government and philanthropies can support innovation in education.

What's the big barrier (besides government reluctance to spend money on education) to this? Historically, I thought that education funding was left to states as "states rights", hence the fact that the Federal government has even put up any money should be a step forward. I would be interested in hearing what people think are the levers for getting the Federal government to invest more...should education research be treated like NSF or NIH "basic research" and get core government support?

I believe that the federal government used to spend more dollars for basic research in education, but that number has been reduced dramatically over the years. I agree 100% that we need to increase this type of investment, and the federal government is the natural source. These social innovation funds are a separate type of investment, distinct from basic research. These grants are "translational" in that they seek to help commercialize promising research, but are not intended to fund the basic research. For a healthy and dynamic ecosystem of innovation in education, we need both.

Ability grouping, more specifically dynamic grouping, has re-emerged.

Documentation of results of an analysis of Apple's Education section of the App Store, with a focus on understanding market dynamics, opportunities that are emerging in the educational apps market, and areas of innovation.

We often tell stories through videos and in a linear fashion. Ryan Merkley imagines videos that are dynamic, working like the web itself. Interesting idea and tool discussed in this video.

This is the link to a MOOC orchestrated by Stephen Downes, "Change in Formal Education Systems". Unlike the MOOCs that are getting all the press, like Coursera and EdX which are largely replicating a model that pushes content to the learner, this MOOC is actually trying to change the dynamics of teacher-learner interactions. The live session described here is about interaction. "Interaction - The various types and methods by which interaction is supported in formal education, especially student-student, student-content and student-teacher interactions. We look especially at the capacity to substitute one form of interaction for another based on funding, time subject and context."

This is an RSA I shared with the blog class I teach. I think the event of "shared knowledge" and its effect on groups dynamics is very interesting. The prompt I used is below: Here are the three questions asked by James Surowiecki in the post below. Please consider them and answer one or all three in a comment. What does the blogosphere tell us about what we believe motivates people to do what they do? Do blogs have the possibility of accessing a collective intelligence that has previously remained untapped? What are the potential problems of blogs as we know them?

One of the few uses of advanced technologies in the history curriculum

As delivery of history teaching to students becomes more and more realistic, it is more important than ever to ensure that we have in place a robust and diverse oversight network to ensure that the narrative being suggested is an accurate representation of the time and place, as opposed to a history-as-written-by-the-winners narrative, which is pervasive throughout many textbooks. For many students, this sort of immersion will overwhelm any alternative streams of knowledge coming from Harlem in the 20s, so it is vital that the VR be constructed in a way that captures the context of why it was such a dynamic time in New York. As for the creators of this technology having to turn to the porn industry for technical support, that should not come as a surprise, as many claim that porn has revolutionized, or at least been instrumental in, the emergence of many new industries from VHS to the internet.

Thought the list provided is interesting in terms of how they relate to 21st century learning: The new school models in the article "suggests 10 elements most common to all of the models: * Student-centered environments * Personalized learning * Competency-based progressions * Adaptive & engaging components * Deeper learning & character development * Rapid & flexible deployments * Dynamic models evolving with new tools * Platform-centric scaling * Leveraging teacher Leadership * Best Practices & Innovation "

Curved Displays,the possibility of wearable displays, would offer dynamic possibilities for digital classroom design.

Students around the world join together to solve global issues, such as the environment, energy, and the global recession, via Webcasts, the Internet, and VChat.

This article talks about online-learning and the ways it may change the college experience. While I agree that new technology is affecting the way our courses are run, I don't see it leading to the complete shut down of Universities. While it is wonderful that people have access to courses and resources that they may not otherwise have, I believe that there will always be a need for face-to-face interactions that one can only get from a University setting.