Group items tagged

When was the last time you wrote an essay? When was the last time you read one other than for grading?

We need to reframe our conversation about writing from one based on polarities of analog versus digital to one about purpose, passion and relevance.

Social media: The haiku of digital writing

The first automobiles were really horseless carriages, designed on the same frame as a horse-drawn carriage and with power defined in horsepower. The capabilities of these early contraptions were limited, and the infrastructure to support this new form of mobility was slow to develop as the early car owners rattled across the ruts and sank into the mud of unpaved and poorly maintained roads. These days, our society is built around the mobility provided by today's automobiles, and we are seeking to expand the infrastructure to accommodate battery-powered vehicles. How close is this analogy to the early stages of experimenting with cyberspace? I think the two stories are very similar, and I look forward to the day when the ruts in the cyberspace highway have been smoothed for a true community of learners to improve our world.

She is not, of course, arguing that kids should be exposed to pornography, but rather that their response to it depends on the kid. By way of analogy, she says that when a 40-year-old is an alcoholic, the issue is not that he was exposed to alcohol at 21.

Sync teaching using technology is valuable because the analogous method of sync teaching without technology is effective. The appropriate enabling technology, especially when combined with the “abundance of engaging and flexible learning resources on the Internet,” becomes a way to amplify a tried and true method.

Whether students work in cloud-based platforms or take pictures of analog notes, technology lets them save their work indefinitely. I once had a wonderful advisee. Every afternoon, we repeated this routine. Find his planner. Find his notebooks. Make sure that he could find his notes in said notebooks. Put the notebooks into his backpack. When we finally got this child a laptop, everything changed. He typed all of his notes in Google Docs so that he could access them from any device and from anywhere. Suddenly, everything was truly saved.

note taking is an activity where the note taker needs to process information and reframe, reorganize, and work with the data to make note taking useful.

“Adaptive technologies presume that knowledge can be modularized and sequenced,” says Watters, the education writer. “This isn’t about the construction of knowledge. It’s still hierarchical, top-down, goal-driven.”

e latest techno-fad, destined to distract administrators and upset curricula for a few years until the next one comes along. But there are two reasons why adaptive learning might prove more durable than that. The first is that the textbook companies have invested in it so heavily that there may be no going back. The second: It might, in at least some settings, really work.

“I like to think of analogies to other places where science and technology have had an impact, like transportation. We went from walking to horse-drawn carriages to Model Ts, and now we have jet planes. So far in educational technology, we’re in the Model T stage.”

Less discussed is how to mix online tools with in-person college classrooms. And some technology proponents say faculty need to do this effectively on a large scale to prepare students for life beyond college - and to make sure college stays relevant to a generation that has spent most of their lives on digital devices.

"I don't know if we can continue to pretend that we operate in analog environments and still prepare students for the digital world."