Every year at the beginning of January teachers across the country dream up their own New Year wish lists when they visit the BETT Show at Olympia.
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Filled with the latest innovative pieces of education technology, the four-day exposition gives those that work in education and the technology industry a taste of what the classroom of the future will be like.
Technology impacts on education
From the abacus to the Apple Mac, technology has constantly changed the way we learn.In equal measure, the needs of education have provided the driving force behind some of our most significant technological innovations.BBC World Service programme Digital Planet, explored three of the many unique initiatives in education technology.
"A hacker has stolen millions of user account details from popular education platform Edmodo, and the data is apparently for sale on the so-called dark web.
Teachers, students and parents use Edmodo to work on lesson plans, assign homework, and more. The organization claims to have over 78 million members."
"Smartphones should be banned from schools to tackle classroom disruption, improve learning and help protect children from cyberbullying, a UN report has recommended.
Unesco, the UN's education, science and culture agency, said there was evidence that excessive mobile phone use was linked to reduced educational performance and that high levels of screen time had a negative effect on children's emotional stability."
"Sophie Bishton, a junior doctor, was "fed up with traditional learning and being talked at all the time" and so founded the Twitter finals revision group (known as twitfrg) in October 2012.
Users are invited to participate in a scenario in real time. Prior to the event, revision notes related to the case are made available online. At a prearranged time, a tweet is sent marking the beginning of the scenario. "
"In the meantime, I actually like how most of these islands represent an attempt by education institutions to embrace the weirdness of the web. The current crop of education startups seem bland and antiseptic in comparison to these virtual worlds. I can't take a Coursera class on a pirate ship, or attend office hours in front of an edX campfire.
And honestly, that's probably a good thing. But it makes the web slightly less interesting."
"As colleges come under unprecedented pressure to downsize, from the pandemic as well as the steep enrollment decline that was already projected for 2025, some professors predict that the shift online might reinforce "corporate university" tendencies to track professors' productivity and use the results as an excuse to lay them off."
"Parent "Portals," as utilized in K12 education, are doing significant harm to student development.[1]
For those not familiar, Parent Portals are learning management systems that provide "real time" information to parents of school-aged children: "grades, attendance, assignments, and more."
On a daily basis parents can monitor their child's performance in school and intervene at home. In theory, this seems like a good thing.
But what is the difference between "real time" data and constant surveillance?
In my view, not much.
What if surveillance is not conducive to education?
I'm working this one out. Let's see where it goes."
"Do screens destroy kids' executive functioning? In short: no. Some types of screen use (in particular, non-educational, 'fantastical' shows) may have short-term impacts on attention, memory, or inhibition. But these effects don't seem to be long-term, unless screen use is excessive and interfering with other important activities. And some screens (educational apps, certain video games) may actually improve executive functioning skills. "
""If their website goes down as a result of an attack, they can lose their SEO ranking or it could have an effect on their brand, there is a lot at stake aside from revenues," he said."