Group items tagged

old tech in new bottles

What is old tech here? Just trying to understand your comment since this "blended learning" looks like exactly something I'd like to do in my classroom. Cool article!

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.

Exciting to see how a massive online computer simulation game has enabled a young internet football manager to gain credibility in a real league. This has important implications for other educational simulations.

Minnesota government uses a decades-old law to ban online classes, then reconsiders after public outrage.

Kind of an emerging use of old-technology, but universities and publishers are fighting over the use of electronic scans / copies of book chapters used for classes. I think ti's interesting how content hasn't necessarily changed at the university level like it has for K-12 (like interactive textbooks instead of decades-old material). Maybe due to specialization at universities? Or just that professors at university are less open to adoption of "new" material?

Check out these old videos from the '80s in which Apple predicts the future of education. First thought is that the technologies they show in these videos seem quite pedestrian in today's world. Second thought is that they got it right- many of these things that they show in these videos have come to fruition. Very cool look back.

A 14 year old student in New York shares how Khan Academy improved his learning and scores.

This is a Facebook page started by parents at our local Elementary school about school.

Much of the conversation seems reasonable enough but it will be interesting to see how adults can model public conversation. I'm not comfortable with having adult conversation displayed for kids within the school environment. I think that this is the equivalent of parents fighting in front of their children. Kids don't process it in a healthy manner and adults who do it I think do so for their own convenience and at the peril of kids. I think if adult in this community can be disciplined in their comments and stick strictly to logistical information with the understanding that kids are watching (FB will never replace parent oversight), it may be a useful tool. I also think the only way teachers can influence this page is by jumping on and using it to communicate because it seems to me that is the real "ask" in establishing the page.

Technology isn't explicit in this article, but it is ever-present in regards to this author's re-thinking of the classic book report. Instead of "same old, same old", this article suggests that students should be remixing the information they gather from books and recreating it in different ways - 21st century skills!!! "Below, we present some alternatives to that classic classroom assignment, the book report. All of our ideas are inspired by The New York Times in some way, either because we've adapted an interesting format, or because we were inspired by an article, review, essay, interview or multimedia feature."

An old article from 2007 referenced in my discussion post on infrastructure and mobile learning. It's interesting to consider the capacity and willingness to leverage the power of mobile devices to overcome infrastructure deficiencies in the developing world.

In a few years, when we all own 3D printers and can download and print any number of objects (including 20,000 year old fossils), what will the implications be for teaching and learning when we can present our students and our teachers with the physical manifestations of things we've traditionally learned and taught about only in the abstract through textbooks or videos?

Cushing Academy is transitioning from traditional library to a learning center without books, staffed with electronic readers.

Hi T561- a bit old, but an international perspective on the inequality of technology access across the globe. This article links in with the TIE list discussions about the One Laptop Per Child effort as well. If we want to use technology to break down international barriers, like Dede's "Microsoft of the future" film, we have to address the issue of accessibility, both across the globe and within our own student population.

This article is not directly related to education, but it gives you a sense of how much information youth today might be consuming. An average American consumed 34 gigabytes per day in 2008. From the executive summary: 'In 2008, Americans consumed information for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video). Information at work is not included.'

Happy Holidays to the kid in all of us! Netbook recommendations for 8-12 year olds. Also link in beginning of article to "being a good tech parent."

Portal is a fun, innovative 3D first-person game known for its unique physics gameplay and sense of humor. It's over 4 years old now, but still enjoyable and clever. It's been used in education as a way for students to explore physics, and also as a gameworld ripe for student content creation. The game is available as a free download for PC/Mac through 9/20.

This is an old article, but I thought quite appropriate given the discussion in class yesterday. This topic continues to fascinate me and I'd love to hear what you guys think about it.