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strengths and limits of distance learning

I've heard of 3D printers before. I thought it would be interesting to try out in schools. For example, if students were designing towns to learn volume and surface area. This could help with spatial learning, which is essential to understanding math. I don't know how feasible this it though...

Hi Irina, Yes! Nothing like seeing your ideas take a concrete shape. Looks like the cost of these printers is comparable to that of SmartBoards, so it may be feasible to try them out in classrooms pretty soon. That said, unless the projects are well integrated into the curriculum, they will end up as another fancy toy.

Harvey and I had a conversation about these last week - Harvey spoke of the way that these printers could open up opportunities for those who can visualize their creations in their heads, but have trouble putting those ideas in tangible form. We spoke of the potential in art and design.

This article is about the Khan Academy: how it came to be, how it is funded, its strengths and perceived weaknesses. Additionally, it paints a great picture of the Ed Tech ecosystem.

"KnowledgeWorks Foundation has just released the third edition of its education forecast, called Forecast 3.0, Recombinant Education: Regenerating the Learning Ecosystem, that outlines the deconstruction of the current education model, a change in educators' roles based on their strengths, changing career pathways, and the role of technology in this realm."

In recent years there has been a major push to equip classrooms with technology, including laptops, overhead projectors, interactive white boards and tablets. It has become big business. But there are questions about whether the investment is paying off. This series explores the push to digitize the American classroom and whether the promises are being fulfilled.

This comment from a reader on one of the articles (Inflating the Software Report Card) sums it up rather nicely: "Data-driven, individualized instruction aimed at identifying a student's strengths and weaknesses, is not perfect, nor can it replace great teachers. But it can and does allow gifted students to zoom ahead, average students to keep up, and struggling students to catch up. If we really want math education to become part of the fabric of our kids' lives, not just raising their scores on a standardized test, but helping them become more competent and effective adults, we need to take advantage of all of the technology available".

Day in the life of a flipped classroom

It's cool to see how teachers have been inspired. This model obviously has some strengths.

Following up on the discussion we had in class today, do you think we are focusing too much of our attention on teacher training? If students have the ability to not only understand a certain technology but can also use that technology to self train, isn't the role of the teacher in that respect, highly reduced? Perhaps its easier and would prove fruitful if we redirected our strengths to developing software and devices that are intuitive and help children learn rather than spending the resources on helping a different generation of learners (i.e., the teachers) understand this technology? Also, if you think about it, we are probably only one generation away from the teachers who see the value of technology in teaching. This ideal generation is of course the current students who are using technology and find it extremely helpful. They wouldn't need any convincing or training to use technology in their classroom

an example of technology providing access to a child that previously did not connect with computers

Tying into discussions this week about bringing access to mobile devices to all via non-prohibitive costs, while still reaching a set of bare-minmum technical specs for actual use: India's "$35 tablet" has been a pipedream in the tech blog-o-sphere for awhile now, but it's finally available (though for a price of roughly $60). Still though, as an actual Android color touch tablet, with WiFi and cellular data capability - I'm curious to see how it's received and if it's adopted in any sort of large scale

I had heard months ago that India was creating this, but was not going to offer it commercially - rather, just for its own country. Just like the Little Professor (Prof Dede) calculator, when tablets get this affordable, educational systems can afford classroom sets of them and then use them regularly. But to Prof Dede's point - can they do everything that more expensive tablets can do? Or better yet - do they HAVE to?

I think this is what they're aiming to do - all classrooms/students across the country having this particular tablet. They won't be able to do everything today's expensive tablets can do, but I think they'll still be able too to do plenty. This $35 tablet's specs are comparable to the mobile devices we had here in the US in 2008/2009. Even back then, we were able to web browse, check email, use social networking (sharing pics and video too), watching streaming online video, and play basic 2D games. But even beyond those basic features, I think this tablet will be able to do more than we expect from something at this price point and basic hardware, for 2 reasons: 1. Wide-spread adoption of a single hardware. If this thing truly does become THE tablet for India's students, it will have such a massive userbase that software developers and designers who create educational software will have to cater to it. They will have to study this tablet and learn the ins-and-outs of its hardware in order to deliver content for it. "Underpowered" hardware is able to deliver experiences well beyond what would normally be expected from it when developers are able to optimize heavily for that particular set of components. This is why software for Apple's iPhone and iPad, and games for video game consoles (xbox, PS3, wii) are so polished. For the consoles especially, all the users have the same exact hardware, with the same features and components. Developers are able to create software that is very specialized for that hardware- opposed to spending their resources and time making sure the software works on a wide variety of hardware (like in the PC world). With this development style in mind, and with a fixed hardware model remaining widely used in the market for many years- the resultant software is very polished and goes beyond what users expect from it. This is why today's game consoles, which have been around since 2005/6, produce visuals that are still really impressive and sta