HGSET561

This website allows parents to search for tutors to tutor their children over the web.

"Quest" schools- a parent's view on sending her child to a school focused on game methodologies. 

#edchat A twitter sharing session for teacher's hosted every tuesday 12pm EST. Attempts to foster teacher professional development / updates to research in education. I can't comment till I've tried it. Check out the web site and tell me your thoughts.

A reminder of how to use technology to be an effective communicator.

Very sad news.  Not too surprising but I didn't expect this to happen so soon.  Steve has certainly made his mark.  - James  

This article talks about two companies that are trying to create dashboards to combine all the data that teachers receive from different programs they use. The goal is to help teachers "avoid an air-traffic-control problem as they try to mix and match the tools they use."

This sounds like an interesting competition for students to be involved in. I think this would serve as a great tool that teachers can design their lessons around in order to make the learning relevant

very interesting Kinga. To throw in another STEM-related competition, the National STEM Video Game Challenge is about to begin its second year. Open to middle school, high school, and college/graduate students, the contest challenges students to create innovative video games that promote STEM learning while being accessible to underserved populations: main website: http://www.stemchallenge.org

Equipment provided by Texas Instruments in this study

Jennifer Dick shared this on the TIE2012 Facebook page.  Looks like a great forum to check out on topics relevant to T-561.   Topical groups included "Badges for LifeLong Learning," "Pedagogy", and "Semantic Web."  check it out.

James- I had a really interesting conversation about badges for lifelong learning yesterday, and as I'm sure you know it's a controversial topic, especially among academics who resent the premise that people need extrinsic motivators like badges as incentives to be lifelong learners. One major advantage to badges, according the the people I was talking with, is that they can be used as a kind of shorthand validation of somebody's credentials. So, for example, if you wanted to hire a freelancer to build you a website, write you some content, or re-tile your kitchen, you would be able to get a quick idea of how good they were by seeing what kinds of badges they had earned. I found this to be an interesting application to the badge system, whereas I was quite against the idea before of incentivizing lifelong learning. What does everyone think of HASTAC badges?

An example of student preconceived notions preventing them from learning scientific concepts.

Thanks, Diana. I can use this article in two of my other classes.

Great video - key quote "You can forget facts but you can't forget understandings." Yes - I would agree that Merseth and a number of other HGSE professors structure their courses for engagement in a similar manner. Requiring reading & active reflection (by via a written brief, case preparation, or online quiz) before the class / lecture is a great way to prep for deeper engagement and understanding. The genius in Mazur's approach is to use technology to assess before class and during class what his students understand and, more importantly, don't understand AND then tailor what he presents next to address misconceptions.

Considering the complexity of modern day research, finding opportunities for students to make real contributions to science is a challenge. I am yet to play with this tool. Would high school students be able to use it ? ( I hope , my fellow graduate students who spend 5 years of their life chasing that one elusive protein structure are aware of this tool : )

This post adds value to the previous one regarding the use of FB in the classroom. I'm thinking of using this tool for a project. Let me know your thoughts if you trial it. Cheers

In response to Chris's last side this morning about a mobile "6th sense", I wanted to bring up Apple's "knowledge navigator" vision of an intelligent "personal agent from the late 1980's.  Tuesday morning, it's highly anticipated that Apple will introduce an "Assistant" derived from it's 2010 purchase of Siri Personal Assistant Software.  Some form of Chris '6th sense" agent may become reality tomorrow morning!

"This publication, developed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in collaboration with IDEO, details a human-centered approach to evolving the system of early education for the needs and possibilities of the 21st century." - The ideas presented in this publication are interesting, but I found the presentation of information particularly compelling.

an interesting writeup on on the basics of Khan Academy- including a couple of example teachers & classrooms. Also includes interview excerpts with Salman Khan.

It seems that the gamification of Khan Academy is undermining the "dropping out/back" of the technology after a certain amount of time, but students are learning, so is this good or bad?

This article seems pretty consistent with what we heard today. I think the most interesting aspect of the whole Khan Academy phenomenon is not what he does (make direct instruction videos- People learn to cook that way from Emeril), or how he does it (very few production values), or even that the internet makes him so distributable. The most incredible thing to me is that this one guy who did an end run around the entire establishment of EDUCATION is having this much impact on kids, teachers, and policy makers around the world. He isn't doing anything all that innovative and yet he is having the impact on education that one would think would come from an extraordinary innovator. Why isn't that innovator coming from EDUCATION. I think the big generative questions KA offers us in Education are: Why is this such a big deal? (And I do believe it is), Why didn't we think of it?; and Given all we know about education, shouldn't we be able have a much more substantial effect with much more substantial outcomes with as few resources as KA? If not? What are we doing?

This is a free polling website you can use in classrooms.

Is a good teacher a good teacher regardless of the medium, or do online teachers need medium-specific training? The "class pet" idea is great.

Data-mining in twitter

I found this company that produces mobile apps to learn math. Their games seem to be fun!

Augmented Reality Glasses are out there! Here is a review of some of the current models: