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"impact of technology" part made me think that using technology in education is not valuable without how to use it. The project FATİH is generally taken a big step of using technology in state schools. "What is the cost?" "Are they necessary?" "Will our teachers use it?" are most asked questions. However, "How to use it?" is rare. Here with the word "use" I don't refer to running the devices. I mean the way technology be used in accordance to the educational objectives. As Chomsky says, without knowing what to do, using educational technology effectively is difficult.

There were several points that got my attention in this video. The first one was Chomsky's sentence saying that education had a value in itself. The purpose of it was to create "better" human beings, not bigger human capital for money. At this point, he opposed to idea that all generations should be given enough knowledge about math and science in order to increase people with scientific knowledge that will lead to more money income. Rather, education should foster the ideas of being independent in thoughts, being creative, having the ability and willingness to pursue one's own interest, and learning to learn on one's own. The second one was the analogy that Chomsky used. He made an analogy between technology and a hammer. He said that with a hammer you can either construct a building or smash a school down. This is about how you use the hammer, and it is the same with technology. Thus, it is more important that for what purpose we will use the technology than simply how to use technology. The last one was about achievement tests. Chomsky said that tests do not have so much value. You can pass a test after studying hard for about 3 weeks. Nevertheless, it does not mean that you will remember even the names of the topics that was covered in the exam after 3 weeks of the exam. That's why exploration, self learning, project-based learning and formative assessment is much more important and promising compared to achievement tests.

I found this website while looking at Dr. Ana Paula Correia's several work. The website includes lots of technologies that can be used for educational purposes. It looks like an inventory that you can use for enriching your education with technology. One suggestion is that explanation for each technology should be increased, and the website might have several links for tutorials and etc.

Erdem, Thanks for sharing. We are going to do a similar website (wiki) in the class that I will be teaching next semester, with your suggestions taken into considerations of course.

The link to the pool that has been prepared for technology based educational materials for FATİH project. In this pool, teachers and students can send several educational materials that they created or they were using in classroom environment. They aim to extend the content with contributions of people who are actively in education in Turkey. However, it is obvious that the project needs professional e-content materials. Videos, pdf's are ok but multimedia based tools are needed.

Erdem, I wonder if there is any section on the website that include resources/guidelines for teachers. E.g. how to integrate those simulations in the classrooms.

Canan, I hope it will help, thank you, Hocam, there are just materials in the pool. I downloaded 10th grade math teacher guidelines released by Ministry of Education and started to read some sections. I saw that they offer recommendations like "using a dynamic math software, students do...". However, I don't know if they will handle the learning and usage of such software in in-service trainings. I wish I could bring more information about the system but they have not answered my CV and my sample work yet,

It says that children can learn with internet without any intervention from outside -like a teacher. When the topic is not defined, children can learn what they want. But for some specific topics, they at least need the very first idea -a question, sometimes even a pre-designed system of information and instruction. Are we too much interfering to students' learning process?

Such educational frameworks support the trend of shift from teacher-centeredness to student-centeredness. In the past, when we need to ask something, we asked to our elders- in school, to teachers. Now, we have an additional elder, the internet. It can answer almost anything. In that sense, the impact of the technology can not be ignored. The idea of providing internet access to places that is scarce in terms of teachers is reasonable - which also supports the idea of distance education. Besides, bringing technology is easier and cheaper than bringing a teacher with resources. However, we still need teachers as -cliche but vital term- "facilitators" and regulators in self-learning process. It is necessary for constructivism as well as child-driven education or for any other self-learning methods. Someone is needed for wrapping-up the knowledge gained, for assessing the results, for remedying circumstances that obstruct the learning process, for deciding goals or organizing goals to be attained, and for secure and heuristic browsing on the internet. In that sense, I support the idea of "self organized learning environments" as Mitra offers, but also I contend that there should be teachers around these environments for facilitating. In short, we should not quit important elements of education while trying to make it better.

I believe although computers and instructional softwares are amazing to enhance the effectiveness of instruction, they are not enough. They are always limited. It is impossible to load them all possible questions of students and their responses. Moreover, none of the computers or softwares would be able to fulfill students' emotional and motivational needs. There is also the uniqueness of the students; not all of the students would enjoy a computer-based education. Lastly, as a science educator when I think for my area; it is never the same to make an experiment on computer and in a laboratory. Students learn better when they are actively engaged in an experiment and seethe results with their eyes.

"We are reinventing education," declares Agarwal. "This will change the world."

Dinçer, thanks for sharing. I support the idea that traditional schools should be supported by technology. However, in my opinion, technology should not be used as a total substitute of traditional campus-based education. By stating that, I do not support idea that technology can not offer the effectiveness of content transfer to students. Rather, it offers a wide range of opportunities to enhance learning. However, in my opinion, we should not separate people from each other anywhere in the world. The long term effects of technology and mass city life is not clear yet. At least, we know about depressions and diseases because of long term stress crises. Thus, today's schools should also reteach people to be together. To put it differently, we should use technology for "better learning together".

This article describes instructional theory that supports post-industrial education and training systems - ones that are customized and learner-centered, in which student progress is based on learning rather than time. The article describes universal methods of instruction, situational methods, core ideas of the post-industrial paradigm of instruction, the importance of and problems with task-based instruction, a vision of an instructional theory for post-industrial education and training, and the roles that may be played by the teacher, the learner, and technology in the new paradigm. Keywords: Instructional theory, post-industrial paradigm, task-basd instruction

Is this Reigeluth's recent publication? I plan to include this in the reading list for next year. Thanks for sharing.

I saw the news on Kursat Hoca's FB profile. It is published in Magazine about Distance Education (Revista de Educación a Distancia). I like the idea of learning without time constraints. I don't know why :)

Why we need good teachers? Why "EDS-536 Research and Practice on Technology in Teacher Education" course is important? From the site: "Good teachers are essential and need respect: There is no substitute for good teachers. The impact of good teachers extends beyond positive educational outcomes and can be linked to positive societal factors, such as lower levels of teenage pregnancy and a greater tendency to save for retirement. Creating the best teachers is about more than paying a good salary. The best performing countries attract top talent, train teachers throughout their careers and allow them freedom too."

Dincer, thanks for making a connection to the course. A reform in teacher education is a must in our country. The research indicates the quality of preservice teacher education is one of the biggest predictors of the student success. This finding by itself seems to explain this urgent need for a reform!

"FATIH PROJECT Turkey has initiated FATIH Project with the aim enabling equal opportunities in education and improving technology in our schools for the efficient usage of ICT tools in the learning-teaching processes by appealing to more sense organs in all 620.000 schools that are in the preschool education, the primary education and the secondary education through providing tablets and LCD Smart Boards.

This is an interesting website hich incleudes different web connections in it. All connections include different sources and web pages which is related to educational development both students and teacher. You can check all pages, I could not check all of them, because they are too much :). ı suggest this webside.

A great collection. Thank you for sharing!

It is difficult to keep up with all new technologies that can be used for learning and techning. However, this is a good compilation of different tools

For those who are looking for some inspiration for their thesis

Mobiles and MOOC's are in my list along with "learning analytics"

I've already joined both EdX and Coursera for 2013 spring courses to see the implementation process and how the changes will take place in time. Hoping to use my findings in the future.

We will be using this group extensively this semester for the grad course that i will be teaching. I am inviting you to join this group, Your insights on learning and instruction will be valuable for the class.

Massive Open Online Courses might seem like best way to use the Internet to open up education, but you're thinking too small. Technology can turn our entire lives into learning experiences.

Dincer, interesting! While I am in favor of open education and massive open online courses, I recently started thinking about the cultural and social impact of such initiatives. For instance, the Moocs are recently being offered from the west because we assume or accept that they have the high quality content and courses. One might say that this could cause a kind of cultural imperialism, countries importing ideas from the west that may not necessarily fit to their context.

Hope to see a similar result for Fatih project.

Here I think the most important phrase is "when used properly". "Peggy Johnson, Qualcomm's president of global market development, believes that the improvement comes because students using smartphones have easier access to information at any time of day or night. They are also able to keep in contact with their classmates and even their teachers, which helps them stay on top of everything that goes on in school." When students have enough motivation to allocate more time to use these devices for such activities stated above, the finding that their learning is increased can be supported. Here again we reach the conclusion: How to use technology is important, since it is just a tool, and can well be used as a toy instead of educational material.

Is this a case of learning or transfering the existing information without assimilating or accommodating into the classroom environment via technology? I think the meaning of learning is also changing. In near future, there will be no learning like we do I guess.

This is video is generally about the time perception of people and its effects on human life. The first five minutes give background info, then it talks about the effects of time perception on educational processes. I found it very interesting, I hope will, too.

There are so many interesting metaphors. I liked them. The associations between educational concepts and time perception are very interesting in this video.

The topic is about charter schools in US. It is not easy to understand what is charter school but it is like a publicly founded school where the "educational experience is qualitatively different". They just try different style of learning. "Charters were originally a progressive movement (called the "small schools" movement) started by University of Massachusetts professor Ray Budde and American Federation of Teachers leader, Al Shanker to explore best practices for education without bureaucracy." (wikipedia: charter school) Quote from the original text "Students taught by teachers with at least five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced teachers. (The impact of this finding is compounded by the fact that charter schools are twice as likely as traditional public schools to employ inexperienced teachers.)" This means that experienced teachers are better than in experienced ones (Not suprised?) but more importantly it shows us that if you try something new it is better to have an experienced teacher :)

As far as I understand, if you have a brilliant idea about the ways that the education can be implemented, you can ask for being a charter school. As a charter school, you are free from governmental regulations and obligations. However, your performance is monitored closely. In that schools, new innovative methods are tried out, and apparently inexperienced teachers are not successful at all comparing to traditional ones. This is because the experience. I remember my internship time. As an intern teacher, I had difficulty even implementing techniques that I had been taught throughout my undergraduate career. It was because concrete experiences are much more hard to accomplish that abstract ones. And self-evidently being "concretely experienced" needs time. After years and years in active teaching, teachers naturally can have the ability to integrate innovative methods in their teaching. If the innovation is surprising (like technology integration while experienced teachers might not have enough knowledge), they at least have the ability not to confuse with the new innovation, they can resist and hold on their traditional experiences. New teachers may become confused with undergraduate knowledge and innovations since both of them are still not deeply got used to.

I just liked this video :) You will see that technology is integrated into nearly all lessons like physics, physical education and even history.

This piece of news may challenge our understanding and effort of using technology in teaching!

other timelines are available

I've been trying to find a timeline tool. This is what I was looking for. So can I create my own timelines? Are they free? Abdullah, I heard that you started at Uludag University. Congrats on your new position and all the best with your new academic life at Uludag.

As I know you can create timeline online, creating a free account. Yes I started this month. It was a bit difficult leaving students, especially colleagues and METU but here is also a good environment. Thanks for the wishes:)

Here is the course trailer I prepared for the new course that I will offer at METU in Spring.