Group items tagged

A review of the evidence of the impact of digital technologies, on formal education. Includes sections on what the evidence says, and challenges for the future.

Looking at the New Directions for school leadership and the teaching profession discussion paper, the only evidence presented to support the assertion that Victoria's education outcomes are not improving is the report "Challenges in Australian Education: results from PISA 2009: the PISA 2009 assessment of students' reading, mathematical and scientific literacy" Specifically the New Directions paper focuses on reading literacy, where in 2009, 14,251 students were given a two-hour pen and paper comprehension test. To get an idea of what types of competencies the reading test is assessing we can look at the sample test , with questions range from comprehension about a letter in a newspaper, the ability to interpret a receipt, comprehension around a short story, an informational text, and interpreting a table. While it doesn't seem unreasonable to want our students to be able to accurately perform these kind of tasks, these tests are not a true or accurate representation of the skills and competencies our students need in today's technology driven world.

She stressed the importance of collecting conflicting information before making up one's mind, of calibrating one's certainty level to the strength of the evidence, of enduring uncertainty for long stretches as an answer became clear, of correcting for one's biases.

"In order to convince teachers of the possible benefits of using a new technology, such as Twitter, we decided to look for evidence of its qualities. What in particular, does Twitter offer educators? Is it worth getting involved?" 30 leading educators (with an interest in educational technology) were identified. They were the ones who were currently using Twitter. The study analysed samples of their tweets in order to determine their purpose and the possible benefits of the tweets to their followers. Also examined were a sample of tweets from the twitter streams of two popular educational hashtags: #edchat and #edtech, in order to determine what 'followers' may gain."

Society confronts educational change in an odd, entirely counter intuitive manner. On one hand we acknowledge that education can and should do a better job of preparing our children for the future while on the other we cling to the models of education that we knew. This led educational writer Will Richardson to state that 'the biggest barrier to rethinking schooling in response to the changing worldscape is our own experience in schools'. Our understandings of what school should be like and our imaginings of what school could be like are so clouded by this experience that even the best evidence for change is overlooked or mistrusted.

There is something about human nature that draws us towards dichotomous patterns of thought; an all or nothing, us or them style of thinking in which an option is either good or it is bad. In such a model complexity and subtle nuance with multiple possible outcomes and routes towards a goal are ignored. The field of educational technology is one where such a pattern is evident and recent ban on technology by a Sydney school shows how this style of analysis can have a significant impact on student learning.

i wonder if anyone actually reads anymore? plenty of evidence in these 100 articles why innovation based on CoPs, edupreneurs, outputs, valuing behaviour change we want to see and student centred GBL pull learning not course inputs, packaged content, event based TPL, 2005 ala 2nd life, push teaching and traditional boring LMS use will see some projects fly and others crash and burn. Also reinforces why fundamentally old thinking will fail if you just put lipstick on the e-pig and call it innovative.

The Big history project tells the story of the universe. It starts at the very beginning and reaches to the complex societies of today. It illustrates the connections between what are often seen as diverse subjects and weaves together insights and evidence from many disciplines into one single, understandable story. Insights come from astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology, history, economics, and more.

"Over the past year more and more schools across the globe have embraced the concept of making to learn.  This phenomenon trickled into schools as the Maker Movement became more popular and natural connections to learning became quite evident.  To begin to understand the educational value of making we must look at the roots of this movement."

When research is widely available and effectively communicated, people can put it to use in their everyday lives. Making education research more accessible helps both teachers and ed tech developers make informed decisions based on the scientific evidence of how people learn. In this post the author shares suggestions gathered from researchers, developers, and educators at a recent Research Summit on how to increase access to academic research, and communicate it more clearly to the public.

"The Leap Ahead LLN ePortfolio and eSystems pilot report carried out by the Centre for ePortfolio Development is now complete. The project ran trials of over 1000 ePortfolio licences in schools, FE, HE and employees from 2007 to 2009. http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/leapahead/ePFLLN.shtml  The following are available now:* Executive SummaryMain points from the full ePortfolio and eSystems report* Five PilotsePortfolios compared, evidence-based, postgraduate PDP, different sectors and levels, raising employees' aspirations* XCRI ReportThe LLN XCRI implementations in Notts & Derbys The full report will be available early July."

IMAGINE AN assessment system in which teachers had a wide repertoire of classroom-based, culturally sensitive assessment practices and tools to use in helping each and every child learn to high standards; in which educators collaboratively used assessment information to continuously improve schools; in which important decisions about a student, such as readiness to graduate from high school, were based on the work done over the years by the student; in which schools in networks held one another accountable for student learning; and in which public evidence of student achievement consisted primarily of samples from students' actual schoolwork rather than just reports of results from one-shot examinations.

"The eSmart Schools model provides a rigorous, evidence-based framework for schools to implement whole-school culture and behaviour change relevant to the smart, safe and responsible use of communications technology. "

The Studywiz ePortfolio gives students an individual space for capturing progress and achievement while building a sense of pride and accomplishment. Studywiz ePortfolio enables students to store a variety of rich media materials including digital photos, scanned documents, video and audio clips and to arrange these records of learning in collections for a range of purposes. Teachers are easily able to assess their students' learning progress as well as using collections for formal summative assessment. Studywiz ePortfolio comprises four areas that enable students to plan for learning and manage their records or evidence of learning. The Studywiz ePortfolio meets the specifications recommended by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC):

key points (see also my bookmark to the BLC '07 keynote by Professor McFarlane) - technology is not helping learning (1:30) - american high schools are counterproductive to success in knowledge society (Bill Gates) (2:30) - have a model where kids produce their own digital representation of how they see the world (4:00) - make learning deeper rather than try to cover a lot of content but shallow learning (5:00) - one suggestion is teaching people to be able to recognise an evidence-based argument and not be susceptible to incorrect information (6:00) - model for assessment based on this sort of change to curriculum (7:30) - meaningful coursework - mainly in school - not allowing homework to restrict their self learning - treat school like work in a way with emphasis on quality not quantity (10:00) - need to connect with parents who see school as different than their schooling and unsure about its benefits (11:00) - access to technology (12:00) - benefit based on having the access first bit also that their environment but also their culture at home helps them benefit - top 15% (from BLC keynote) are getting most benefit from access and their culture - but these normally high achievers can't see school as relevant to them based on what they experience at home and are failing at school (13:30) - community knowledge and learning capacity building in technology (14:00) - "digital challenge" program in Bristol (14:40) - community mentors that learn something then teach to others in the community - giving more people access and that means they can have choices on what they can do

Professor MacFarlane discusses many issues which ring true to me. In particular: - lack of vision for what education could be like with new technology (around 4 min mark) - the web2.0 and technology revolution is great for the 15% of people who have a good life anyway because of their suituation and culture (5:30) - others don't benefit from the access to the technology - they need help (6:00) - no change in classroom over last 20 years with computers and in danger of no change in next 20 years (7:30) - instruction vs. construction (8:30) - expect learning to change with introduction of technology (10:30) - but hasn't really done so - student self-directed learning is separate from school work i.e. at home and not related to school (14:30) - much of what kids do on computers at home is trivial (16:00) - the ones that do have good experiences are the same 15% (16:30) - kids that are missing out have a computer at home probably but no access to the community that enables them to have these experiences (17:10) - doing something by themselves does not really benefit them - it is being part of a community that had benefit for learning - what are we dong for these people? (19:10) - talking about missing pedagogical model for how to teach (22:00) - teachers are expected to use technology to provide innovative learning but no model against which to do so, some don't use it at all, some use it inappropriately - there maybe some individual examples but not overall (23:00) - schools bad at connecting with their communities in a learning sense (26:00) - talks about chinese online writing community and how they comment, collaborate (34:00) - community (47:30) - communitites aren't formed when people are brought together in schools etc. - need to have a common problem or interest (48:30) - Plant's definition? - in education the problem is because assessment is done individually (49:00) - so forming groups and sharing ideas is not attractive for students - worried about not getti

"Educating the Net Generation Implications for learning and teaching in Australian Universities Despite the considerable recent attention devoted to the 'Net Generation', few Australian studies have documented the characteristics of this group and little evidence has been provided to support claims made about the Net Generation and its implications for higher education in Australia. "

8 case studies are available for consideration that have been carried out at various Australian Universities. May relate to secondary education.

"Even if the technological progress gap between 2000 and 2010 was enormous, there is almost zero evidence that it has made an impact on education. Yeah, I know. "Blogging changed your life. Your PLN saved you from social isolation…" Social media just doesn't feel that new to me and I challenge you to argue that it has had more than an infinitesimal impact on classroom practice."

Nice blog article that reflects on the past decade, without getting lost in the next.

The aim of this survey was to illustrate effective approaches that might help others to improve their practice in literacy. Inspectors visited providers of childcare, education and post-16 learning. The providers were selected because previous inspection evidence and data on achievement and attainment showed that they were particularly successful in enabling children and learners from disadvantaged backgrounds to make better than average progress and to achieve good standards of literacy.