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Eric Kattwinkel

College Professors, Wikipedia Bury the Hatchet | The Atlantic Wire - 1 views

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    Summary: In a shift, professors from prominent colleges (including Harvard) are actually *encouraging* students to use Wikipedia.
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    Yes! This is a great way to harness a digital resource rather than dismissing it. More or less, everyone uses Wikipedia because if for nothing else, it's usually the first hit in a Google search. I agree with the article in that most students aren't allowed to cite Wikipedia but they do use it as a jumping-off point for their research. So in this sense, it IS valuable. One of the reasons I like it in a pinch is the colloquial tone in the delivery of the information. I usually feel like a buddy is explaining it to me rather than a Phd. If students could capture that tone but provide quality assurance on the facts, there's a real research gem to be had here.
Devon Dickau

The End of the Textbook as We Know It - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 3 views

  • For years observers have predicted a coming wave of e-textbooks. But so far it just hasn't happened. One explanation for the delay is that while music fans were eager to try a new, more portable form of entertainment, students tend to be more conservative when choosing required materials for their studies. For a real disruption in the textbook market, students may have to be forced to change.
  • saying that e-textbooks should be required reading and that colleges should be the ones charging for them
  • radical shift
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  • Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).
  • they're far cheaper to produce than printed texts
  • publishers could eliminate the used-book market and reduce incentives for students to illegally download copies as well
  • When students pay more for new textbooks than tuition in a year, then something's wrong
  • Tricky issues remain, though. What if a professor wrote the textbook assigned for his or her class? Is it ethical to force students to buy it, even at a reduced rate? And what if students feel they are better off on their own, where they have the option of sharing or borrowing a book at no cost?
  • In music, the Internet reduced album sales as more people bought only the individual songs they wanted. For textbooks, that may mean letting students (or brokers at colleges) buy only the chapters they want. Or only supplementary materials like instructional videos and interactive homework problems, all delivered online. And that really would be the end of the textbook as we know it.
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    I would be for this. I could not believe a place so big on recycling (Harvard) murdered so many trees with the printing of course packs. I like this idea if you could get the material from other sources than just the school (say the author or publisher directly or something like Amazon). Otherwise, there is no opportunity for competition or bargaining.
Chris Dede

Palm Beach County students benefit from virtual classroom at home - 4 views

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    virtual education meets some students' needs
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    Thanks for sharing this link. This is interesting for me to read because I grew up in this district. I also think virtual classrooms are a valuable tool for children who suffer from illness and might otherwise have to miss extended periods of class time. My younger brother is a college student and is currently stuck at home with Mono and might have to drop the semester- it would be great if he could keep up with his work online, while resting at home.
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    It is frustrating that his college does not have a distance learning option. Hope your brother feels better soon.
Margaret O'Connell

The Khan Academy Brings Disrupting Class to Life - 0 views

  • Lastly, toward the end of the video Khan talks about his surprise that it's not just him and other math geeks who want to learn and understand these concepts -- and get pleasure from it. He reads a letter about someone who solves a derivative and smiles. This resonates and matches our new chapter in the new edition of Disrupting Class -- that a fundamental job people have to do is to feel successful and achieve.
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    Check out the video at http://vimeo.com/11731351 (It's the same info Cameron posted a while ago but this time it's made the widely read Huffington Post ... and I think it's a good repeat post since I, for one, didn't pay enough attention to this the first time I heard about it.)
Chris Dede

New Social Software Tries to Make Studying Feel Like Facebook - Technology - The Chroni... - 3 views

  • Students live on Facebook. So study tools that act like social networks should be student magnets—and maybe even have an academic benefit.
  • "Our mission is to make the world one big study group,"
  • some of their business plans rely on a controversial practice: paying students for their notes.
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  • College students study in groups to some degree, but from what students say they don't find them terribly beneficial.
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    Interesting look at a few sites and technologies targeted toward college students to "assist" them in learning and studying. The question is...are these actual beneficial to students or is the focus simply on making money for the companies producing these sites?
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    Mixing social media and academic learning may be difficult
Jennifer Lavalle

8 Ways Technology Is Improving Education - 5 views

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    Concord Consortium is mentioned in #1, 4 and 5: 1. Better Simulations and Models 2. Global Learning 3. Virtual Manipulatives 4. Probes and Sensors 5. More Efficient Assessment 6. Storytelling and Multimedia 7. E-books 8. Epistemic Games
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    8 ways technology is improving education
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    Simulations, Global Learning, Virtual Manipulatives, Probes and Sensors, More efficient assessment, storytelling and media, e-books - good overview of how technology is enhancing education
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    This list almost feels like it could be used as a litmus test to judge new technology a school is considering.
Chris McEnroe

Teachers and Students Mark Banned Websites Awareness Day - NYTimes.com - 1 views

    • Chris McEnroe
       
      The most troubling thing about this article is how 'new' they make this debate sound with respect to the internet being a place to conduct school activity. It is less a question of if schools should filter and more a question of how will they deal with the reality that filtering is an ineffective method of dealing with the complexity of the internet.
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    I feel like this is one more instance of expecting schools to be everything to everybody. The filtering issue is there because of the blurring lines between student's home-life and school-life. Student's experience cyberbullying should not expect that the medium in which they are harrassed is also accessible during school hours. I agree with you Chris that filtering is ineffective but the schools are stuck. They are leaving themselves wide open to a lawsuit without it.
Amanda Bowen

How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education | Magazine - 3 views

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    One teacher claims that "The idea is to invert the normal rhythms of school, so that lectures are viewed on the kids' own time and homework is done at school." - Do you agree that this is a good solution? 
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    That is the way a couple of my colleagues (science and math) use Khan and they feel it creates more opportunity to use them as a resource for their specific needs. The spend some time at the beginning of class to answer questions as a group and then students begin working on problems and asking for individual help during class.
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    I think the idea of distributing video tutorials and courseware for free is a powerful lever for change and education (Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseWare, etc). While I'm intrigued by Khan Academy and see the benefit to help student who want to pause and replay lessons, there is a limit to it's use as an educational tool. In the article linked below, the Los Altos district currently piloting the program noted that they have not seen any statistical difference between Khan students and the control group. http://losaltos.patch.com/articles/school-district-expands-khan-academy-to-all-schools
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    I too am intrigued by this "inverting" of time spent in the classroom and at home. My idealized model would be to introduce learners to new material at their own pace out of the classroom (allowing for pausing, note taking, reflecting and/or rewinding) and focus classroom time on face to face guiding and coaching of clusters of students or individual students engaged in applying or exploring the current material. To help facilitate this (and assist with accountability) some brief form of pre-assessment before class or at the start of class could illuminate for student and teacher alike what material has been mastered and what needs more attention. The research report from the TIE Foundations summer reading appears to support this type of hybrid approach. => Marsha Lovett, Oded Meyer, and Candace Thille (2008). The Open Learning Initiative: Measuring the effectiveness of the OLI statistics course in accelerating student learning.
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    An added benefit of tools such as Khan Academy is the option for reinforcement. In a traditional K-12 school environment students do not have the option to watch a video of their class or spend personalized time reviewing a concept they need more time with during class time due to the required pace of school curriculum. An online learning tool allows a student to watch a lesson as many times as needed and to learn from an expert. Often if a student needs help outside the classroom the only people they turn to is parents, who may or may not know about the content themselves.
Kasthuri Gopalaratnam

Sifteo - Intelligent Play - 0 views

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    Interesting product combines the appeal of videogames with the tactile feel of building blocks
Uche Amaechi

BYOD - Worst Idea of the 21st Century? : Stager-to-Go - 7 views

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    Uche, you keep posting stuff I have a problem with- OK I understand that BYOD policies may not be so great but I really believe that familes should shoulder some of the costs for hardware since degredation is such a problem. The schools can have agreements with vendors to provide certain laptops or tablets for a certain price point and they can design their systems to support these items. Parents are expected to purchase backpacks, binders, and school supplies. When parents can't provide these back-to-school supplies, schools cover it. The same should be for computers. Speaking as a middle class parent (refer to above article) I believe this is an important investment in our schools so that they can focus on hardware support and software implementation/ integration.
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    @Allison and Uche - I am torn. While I initially thought BYOD was a good idea so that schools would have to stop "blaming" their fiscal woes on their inability to integrate emerging technologies into the curriculum, I now have some appreciation with points from this article - especially around "false equivalences" and "enshrining inequities" in light of my own children's "bring your own electronic device" day that took place two weeks ago. As a school wide reward for meeting their Accelerated Reading goal, all students were told they could bring an electronic device to school to "play" with on Friday afternoon. This prompted my kids to call me (Skype) on Thursday night and ask me if I could buy them a DS or a SmartPhone that NIGHT so that they could bring either of those devices to school for the celebration. Now mind you, my kids have access to lap tops, iPad, Smart Phones, Wii games, GameBoy, iPods, Flip camera, digital camera, etc - albeit not their OWN - but still access to them for use (when Mom and Dad are not using them). But apparently, of the devices left that Mom and Dad weren't using, none of them were "cool" enough for this event. That got me wondering if BYOD might have the same effect on our learners making those who don't have the latest and greatest feel bad or less adequate then their friends or classmates who could bring something they deemed as "better?" Allison, your point seems to be that requiring parents to cover the expense of a digital device as a requirement for school is not a bad idea, but I think you are referring to expecting the SAME device to be purchased and used, not myriad devices with various capabilities, features and functions - am I understanding you correctly? And if we did try to mandate parental supply of digital devices, would we have a different kind of fight on our hands because, as consumers, parents might have their own biases around what they deem is the best device of all (not just PC vs MAC or iOS vs Android, but sma
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    I still believe that a system properly designed could mitigate some of your concerns. In reality, schools can not support any device that a student brings in. They are capable of supporting a certain number and if they build relationships with the vendors to sell those devices that the school is capable of supporting then families will be aware that the school will offer the best deal on the items that are compatible. Every year the school recommends items for back to school supplies. If the laptop could replace all of the binders it might be worth it. There are many factors to consider but the biggest obstacle is that schools maintain such old equipment because of their budget woes. Even when we can purchase the latest and greatest software, the computers can't run it.
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    What a great debate you guys are having! One point worth considering is that typically the parents are responsible for purchasing the supplies, while the school is responsible for providing the content (textbooks, workbooks, handouts, worksheets, videos, etc). In the near future these devices may also be the primary sources of content, replacing textbooks altogether. I would hope perhaps funding for textbooks could be transferred to funding for these devices. I would also hope that the price of these devices drops significantly (is the $35 tablet in our future?). Then of course the question of who pays is less important. In my job producing educational video for publishing companies, I spend way too much time dealing with various formats and compatibility problems with browsers, so I'd love to see a future where this becomes more standardized.
Jennifer Hern

by : Yahoo! Tech - 0 views

  • The "tweets" of Emmett Rensin and Alexander Aciman combine the knowledge of an English major with the snarky shorthand of a teenager's text message.
  • "It's funny if you've read the books," said Rensin, who has read them at his tender age of 19.
  • "I'm not going to say it's high art," said Aciman, whose favorite author is Marcel Proust. "There is some value to it, I feel, aside from the fact we're making available the idea behind great works of art."
    • Jennifer Hern
       
      Not really propelling education in my book. Ha ha. Book... twitterature...
Jennifer Jocz

Virtual businesses: Going to the office in Second Life - CNN.com - 1 views

  • But if companies are to make the most of virtual collaboration, employees will have to learn that what works a bricks-and-mortar workplace may not be right for the virtual world.
  • Another issue is that virtual teams can't take advantage of the kind of impromptu "water cooler" conversations that occur in a real workplace, where colleagues can share information they may have forgotten to communicate in meetings.
  • Kahai says that lack of human contact can also lead to feelings of isolation, but adds that virtual worlds such as Second Life can help by recreating the water-cooler experience.
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    Discusses the use of virtual worlds for business collaboration
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