Project Connect - iPad

“The future”, William Gibson once wrote, “is already here: it’s just not evenly distributed”.

So far as email is concerned, it’s an ugly irony of contemporary connectivity that many of the chances it provides are not for creation or self-betterment, but for the perpetuation of a system where, if an idea or a task isn’t represented in your inbox, it might as well not exist.

what is email best for? The answer, I’d suggest, is anything that a self-contained written account can effectively convey without begging too many questions – and that doesn’t actually need answering until tomorrow.

"Teachers loved being able to use technology [tools] within the PD just like they use those tools with their own students," said Walhof. "They can put themselves in the student's role and use technology in a similar fashion."

Results for the use of computers in the classroom are mixed, and heavily dependent on how the computers are used.

The best results from computer-based learning are seen with Computer-Cooperative Pair Learning (0.96), where two students will work together to complete a computer-based learning task.

First, students are engaged through activation of a schema. Basically, setting the stage for learning something new by invoking things they already know.  Second, students do an experiment where they are allowed to “mess around” with a concrete phenomenon.  Third, an extensive class or tutorial discussion or activity takes place where students attempt to make sense of what they’ve seen.  This is the most critical stage, and must include scaffolding, guided questioning, modeling, shaping, concept mapping and so on.  Finally, having developed a set of principles or a theory, students are made to apply the theory to a novel problem or situation.  Some have formalized this learning cycle into four stages and an acronym: Activation (A; the set up), Concrete (C; the experiment), Invent (I; the discussion etc.), and Apply (A; the application to a novel problem); ACIA.

My ultimate goal for using a classroom blog or student blogfolios though, is that of creating transformative teaching and learning opportunities, not to have a platform that substitutes a composition book or paper journal.