As journalism, this article observes well the cross conversation in the public debate. Before this conversation even begins it would be useful for the parties to agree on the goal of the interaction between teacher and student. This quote from the article, "digital devices let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets . . ." Makes broad assumptions that the invitation to learn (things that are pre-conceived by adults) is all the students need. We have a system of education and no matter what we do, the system assumes s significant and active role for adults (rightly so). There is a persistant sense that the system is not working to our expectations, but that hardly argues for the abandonment of personal and substantive interactions among teachers and students. I agree more with this quote, ""Rather than being a cure-all or silver bullet, one-to-one laptop programs may simply amplify what's already occurring - for better or worse (Bryan Goodwin)," because it asserts the point that Technology promises to enhance the value of our effort in education with better tools to do what teachers do. Technology is not (as some seem to think) a replacement of what teachers do and that unspoken assumption seems to be underlying much of what I see as vague public discussion.
Some of the thinking articulated in this article captures the gridlock of public conversation around the issue of technology in the classroom. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a colleague in which he was telling me about the many interesting ways he uses powerpoint for instruction. I asked him he ever had his students use powerpoint and he scoffed, "Powerpoint for student presenations is a Middle School right of passage. Please. They're terrible." I told him that if he didn't think powerpoint was a useful means of communication than he wouldn't use it. The fact is we don't teach kids how to use powerpoint well and so they don't use it well. The argument about tech in Ed is much the same. Sometimes when I hear or read about these discussions I think of someone who has an F-14 in his front yard complaing that it is terrible for hanging laundry on. The promise of teaching well in a 21st century classroom focuses on cultivating different skills and more dynamic learning than standardized tests seek to quantify.
More fears of publishers who hold the rights to intellectual property. Folks, you think health care is a big debate? Wait until our patent system changes - that will be a gladiator battle with everyone in the world (free and not free) participating...
"As digital collections grow, Mr. Sargent said he feared a world in which "pretty soon you're not paying for anything." Partly because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allowits e-books to be offered in public libraries.
Simon & Schuster, whose authors include Stephen King and Bob Woodward, has also refrained from distributing its e-books to public libraries. "We have not found a business model that works for us and our authors," said Adam Rothberg, a spokesman."
Interesting article about libraries going digital, talking about how this actually functions in libraries (Boston Public Library being one) and addressing concerns about publishers' rights. I'm sad that at this point nobody really seems to care about the experience of reading a real book with actual pages. What a loss if we ditch physical books altogether.
Boston Public Library's online resource for parents and students. The 'schoolrooms' feature is useful in that an administrator can set up the pages so that students are guided to very specific websites within the larger U.S library network.
A principal at one southern public high school discusses the place technology holds in the everyday lives of students, and how teachers, parents, and administrators need to honor this place.
As we're researching on emerging technology, much of the literature we read is based on credible sources, or so we hope. This talk highlights the danger of publication bias and the importance of knowing where research has shown that things work, and where they don't. By focusing too much on the stuff that works, sometimes, we inadvertently ignore the research that shows it doesn't.
Ted talk exploring the fairly sad side effects and unintended consequences of drugs prescribed for learning disabilities, as technology is increasingly used on all fronts to improve learning.
A growing number of kids at increasingly younger ages are engaging in online social networking today-a development that is leading to a surge of news stories, media attention, and economic investment. In this paper, produced with the generous support of Cisco Systems and the Digital Media and Learning Hub at the University of California, Irvine, scholars Sara Grimes and Deborah Fields argue that these shifts in usage and public discussion demand a better understanding of the ways that social networking sites mediate kids' socializing and the opportunities and limits they place on kids' participation, particularly for young children.
"While some federal initiatives, such as The Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), have been aimed at promoting innovation in education, some of the fiscal requirements of two large federal education programs--namely Title I and IDEA Part B--stand in the way. This paper identifies three fiscal requirements of these programs that encourage the status quo, instilling in districts a profound deference for existing staffing and spending patterns."
I have revisited this over and over - but each time I realize that no, I'm not hallucinating. They do indeed endorse 1:1 laptop/iPad, as they are "way cooler than stickers."
Obviously, they don't have access to the right stickers.
Wisconsin officials tout the UW Flexible Option as the first to offer multiple, competency-based bachelor's degrees from a public university system. Officials encourage students to complete their education independently through online courses, which have grown in popularity through efforts by companies such as Coursera, edX and Udacity.
No classroom time is required under the Wisconsin program except for clinical or practicum work for certain degrees.
This article is not about emerging tech directly. However, it discusses how there is an initiative to increase teaching students to be innovators consistent with 21st century learning. When I read this, I thought about all the ways that technology could facilitate this.
Kaggle is a platform for data prediction competitions that allows organizations to post their data and have it scrutinized by the public. In exchange for a prize, winning competitors provide the algorithms that beat all other methods of solving a data crunching problem. Kaggle is in Class is a statistical & data mining learning tool for students.
Voters in Idaho voted 2:1 to repeal a RTTT-inspired state law that would have brought 1:1 laptop programs to all high schools and required all students to take 2 online or blended courses in order to graduate from high school. The public felt that the law would have "diverted taxpayer dollars to technology corporations and marginalized teachers."
Idaho voted down several education measures including one to require participation in an online course before high school graduation and a shift to 1-to-1 computing in schools.