Group items tagged

A lot of kids use smartphones or tablet everyday, and they even do not need their parents to tell them how to use these devices, it is like kids have the innate ability to use the technological devices. There are debates on whether touchscreen technology is good or bad for kids. For my personal opinion, touchscreen technology would make them lack communication skill and social skill. However, by providing sound effects, colours and moving objects on the screen, it could get kids' attention and interest to learn something they feel really boring such as math, by this way they could learn faster and understand better. Therefore, touchscreen technology is not totally bad or good for kids, it depends on how parents help kids to balance how much time they could spend on touchscreen technology. It seems the only way for kids, because they are too young to have self control.

"Logan Laplante is a 13 year-old boy who was taken out of the education system to be home schooled instead. Not only was he home schooled, but Logan had the ability to tailor his education to his interests and also his style of learning, something traditional education does not offer." I realise this article (and the video on which the article is based) does not fall neatly into any category we've studied yet, though I hope many of you may find it as interesting and inspiring as I have. At core, this is about "hacking" the educational system. As Logan explains, his methods can be applied in mainstream schooling (or indeed for anyone interested in lifelong/lifewide education). There's also the element of "participatory culture" embedded in the production of this video: Logan is sharing his experiences, allowing others to comment and contribute so that he might learn as others are learning from him.

This is a truly amazing talk, I was especially pleased to discover your post since I was just about to share a talk that speaks to many of the same issues! My shared video talks about how schools simply aren't made for boys - for many reasons - and what should be done to reengage them in education. (You can check it out here, if you're interested - https://groups.diigo.com/group/okmooc/content/gaming-could-the-ultimate-tools-to-re-engage-boys-in-education-12782090) The part about "writing about butterflies and rainbows" quite literally made me chuckle, here's why: (from my video) "Boy comes home from school, and he says, "I hate writing." "Why do you hate writing, son? What's wrong with writing?" "Now I have to write what she tells me to write." "Okay, what is she telling you to write?" "Poems. I have to write poems. And little moments in my life. I don't want to write that stuff." :) The boy then goes on to saying "I want to write about video games. I want to write about leveling-up. I want to write about this really interesting world. I want to write about a tornado that comes into our house and blows all the windows out and ruins all the furniture and kills everybody." ...which is one of the main points of "hackschooling" -writing through experiences & interests. Also, speaking from personal experience as someone who also left a diploma behind, I can confirm that leaving a rigid non-functional study environment for an open world of possibility can be the best thing you can ever do. All in all - thumbs up for sharing the talk!

Thanks for sharing - what an inspiring talk. Many of his lessons are just as valuable for adults, who often seem to lose any sense of creativity after settling in to their lives, careers, and relationships. FYI - my wife and I have done some limited homeschooling with one of our kids who really doesn't thrive in traditional school settings. I wish we could have done more, but at the very least I encourage each of our kids to explore other ways to learn to either supplement (or question) what they are learning in school. Traditional education just isn't supportive of creative thinking and creative thinkers.

"...we need to recognize you can't kill the instinct the technology produces. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using it. We can only drive it underground. We can't make our kids passive again. We can only make them, quote, "pirates." And is that good?" - Larry Lessig This is a great talk about the free use of materials to make something new. The crux of Mr Lessig's argument is that every time a "kid" remixes a song with a video they are committing a criminal act. By doing this the law is making their free expression criminal. He shows three great examples of this starting at 8:29 in the video. He suggests that by using Creative Commons materials, we can avoid being criminals, and by doing this we can break the cartel of the RIAA and others. He uses the example of BMI causing the downfall of ASCAP. You can see this at 4:55 in the video. Here is the quote: "Finally. Before the Internet, the last great terror to rain down on the content industry was a terror created by this technology [Shows a picture of a broadcast radio antenna]. Broadcasting: a new way to spread content, and therefore a new battle over the control of the businesses that would spread content. Now, at that time, the entity, the legal cartel, that controlled the performance rights for most of the music that would be broadcast using these technologies was ASCAP. They had an exclusive license on the most popular content, and they exercised it in a way that tried to demonstrate to the broadcasters who really was in charge. So, between 1931 and 1939, they raised rates by some 448 percent, until the broadcasters finally got together and said, okay, enough of this. And in 1939, a lawyer, Sydney Kaye, started something called Broadcast Music Inc. We know it as BMI. And BMI was much more democratic in the art that it would include within its repertoire, including African American music for the first time in the repertoire. But most important was that BMI took public domain works a

By: Thomson Reuters Foundation Nairobi - Mobile phones and other technological innovations can be "game changers" in securing children's rights, the United Nations children's agency Unicef said at the launch of its first crowd-sourced report on Thursday.

published by Mozilla, covers all sorts of open news. Interesting feature: unlike most news sites the content is actually CC-by-sa. "The Open Standard provides online news coverage of open, transparent, and collaborative systems at work in technology and our daily lives. Our purpose is to showcase the positive global impact of these systems and inspire more people to seek out, support and adopt open principles of accessibility, participation and experimentation. The Open Standard is published by Mozilla, a global community of technologists, thinkers and builders working together to promote openness, innovation and opportunity online. We will disclose and be transparent if we take a position on or promote the products and services of Mozilla or a partner company."

for example, check out this article about companies collecting data on school kids, https://openstandard.mozilla.org/whos-collecting-kids-personal-data-lots-of-people/

That is scary...

Sal Khan maintains his vision for education. SAN FRANCISCO - Good news for parents of school-age kids and fans of free online tutoring lessons from Khan Academy: founder Salman Khan has no intention of turning it into a profit-making enterprise. Khan, who has three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard, started out creating programs to help a cousin learn math in 2006.

I dare also to share this paper which recently appeared on seminar.net. It deals with my PhD project and tries to link open government data with educational concepts, merging a critical perspective with productive approaches. If any other people in this MOOC are interested in this field, I would be truly glad to discuss these ideas and read/hear your opinions about it!

Using game like concept to teach kids and adults is becoming more and more recognize a great learning and teaching tool. I am also interested on using games for computer cognitive rehabilitation exercixes.

A very thorough paper especially useful for its careful analysis of the "flip side" of open government data. It presents the main objections raised against the OGD "paradise" and also analyses ways in which media pedagogy can alleviate these problems. It culminates in a very important question: » An educational conception towards 'governing students not to be governed (that much)' within formal, obligatory education can too easily act out what it pretends to counteract. Informal settings, however, run the risk of fortifying social injustice and privilege - if largely used by well-educated citizens and semi-experts, as assumed. «

A description of the future of libraries being makerspaces - centres of production as well as consumption.

Gracias por compartirlo, esta nueva tendencia de la BIblioteca como espacios de creación y producción es muy enriquecedora.

This video shows the possibilities for libraries: Encouraging users to create content in addition to absorbing it. Melanie Florencio provided excellent exemplars, spanning generations (the old and the young) and showing that all can participate.

Amazing idea for an adult camp! Camp Grounded provides adults who feel that they are a little too dependent on technology a place where they can get away from it all, detox, and find pleasures in the simple things in life. We all have a little kid inside of us!!!!

"Just as important as learning these helpful tools, however, is unlearning and avoiding the most common pitfalls of common sense. Reminding us of where society is most vulnerable to those, Sagan writes: In addition to teaching us what to do when evaluating a claim to knowledge, any good baloney detection kit must also teach us what not to do. It helps us recognize the most common and perilous fallacies of logic and rhetoric. Many good examples can be found in religion and politics, because their practitioners are so often obliged to justify two contradictory propositions.He admonishes against the twenty most common and perilous ones - many rooted in our chronic discomfort with ambiguity - with examples of each in action"

The 20 fallacies: "ad hominem - Latin for "to the man," attacking the arguer and not the argument (e.g., The Reverend Dr. Smith is a known Biblical fundamentalist, so her objections to evolution need not be taken seriously) argument from authority (e.g., President Richard Nixon should be re-elected because he has a secret plan to end the war in Southeast Asia - but because it was secret, there was no way for the electorate to evaluate it on its merits; the argument amounted to trusting him because he was President: a mistake, as it turned out) argument from adverse consequences (e.g., A God meting out punishment and reward must exist, because if He didn't, society would be much more lawless and dangerous - perhaps even ungovernable. Or: The defendant in a widely publicized murder trial must be found guilty; otherwise, it will be an encouragement for other men to murder their wives) appeal to ignorance - the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the Earth; therefore UFOs exist - and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Or: There may be seventy kazillion other worlds, but not one is known to have the moral advancement of the Earth, so we're still central to the Universe.) This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. special pleading, often to rescue a proposition in deep rhetorical trouble (e.g., How can a merciful God condemn future generations to torment because, against orders, one woman induced one man to eat an apple? Special plead: you don't understand the subtle Doctrine of Free Will. Or: How can there be an equally godlike Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the same Person? Special plead: You don't understand the Divine Mystery of the Trinity. Or: How could God permit the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - each in their own way enjoined to

Wonderful post, Kim! These are great guidelines alongside which to test ideas.

Teachers are discovering the value of imparting media-literacy skills, from critical analysis of news programs, commercials, and films to basic design and video-production techniques.

This is an excellent video summarizing all the skills and necessity of them in a participatory culture. Everyone is spending more and more time in the multimedia world these days, especially the youth, who can be considered the most vulnerable. An ability to perceive all the information we are getting through a critical lens is profound, as is an ability to dissect and understand the logic of multimedia. Learning the tricks of graphics, cinema, music studies (collectively called "communication studies"), young people learn to understand and create media, find new ways to express themselves efficiently in an ever-changing world and supplement the traditional ("written") curriculum, which is behind the needs of today's man. The point is illustrated nicely by George Lucas, founder of The George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF): "Everybody is affected by this, and it should be taught in school." I agree 100%.

Re-thinking communication skills is absolutely essential for all educators, since much of the communication students are faced with during a day comes in the shape of different kinds of media. But the result of this is also that we need to address the fact that not all educators are necessarily equipped to teach about media because it's rarely included in teacher's programs (especially if you were trained twenty or thirty years ago). So the video makes a lot of good points about media-literacy and hopefully our educational systems will make sure that educators are given the tools to include this in their classrooms.

Smithsonian museums transcription center--volunteer on projects to create information about newly digitized collections, lots of fascinating stuff to see. "Join us as we create digital records for the United States National Entomological Collection! Bumblebees (the Bombus genus) are social insects that feed on nectar and collect pollen to feed their young, making them very important pollinators!

This seems like a good way to get kids involved in open activities. These all look like very interesting projects, even if transcription isn't all that entertaining, and it results in an actual real world accomplishment which can be a good way to motivate students who don't see the point of school work because it's "just" for school.

LibGuides. PRC SPCH 1311 1315 Jessen: Speech Communication and Public Speaking. CRAP Detection.

We are not aware of all the mistaken information that is online and that's why crap detection is so important.

I strongly disagree with their list of 'crap' detecting guidelines. "Credentials"? "Reputable"? Fact or Fiction"? You gotta be kidding me. Most credentialed people I know are lost in the sea of institutionalized learning, and with it comes their arrogance that they know better - they don't. Those known as reputable are not walking the bleeding edge of knowledge. And fact/fiction is turning inside out as we begin to see more and more historical fictional information is now shown to be based in fact. ... LOL! ... (Not that I have an emotional attachment to this issue.) ;) ;)

About MathTV Our History The current version of MathTV.com was started in 2008. That summer, Mr. McKeague hired six of his students to help him proofread and error check a college algebra book he was working on. Because of the extremely positive attitude of his students toward improving the book they were proofreading, Mr. McKeague decided to see how the students would do in the studio. With a little coaching they actually did very well. In 2009, we started adding online versions of three of Mr. McKeague's textbooks to the website, and experimenting with building an online homework system. In 2010 we published the first print versions of those textbooks with our new publishing company XYZ Textbooks, and we officially launched our online homework and gradebook software with XYZ Homework. As of now over 80 schools use our books.

It's great idea to start MathTV.com. I will show to my kids too