Group items tagged

As much as some people may yearn for the simpler times of the past, life will continue to move forward as the natural order of society requires.

If we do not take time to understand new information and how it interacts with what we do, we, as a profession, may go the way of typewriters, photographic film, super 8 film, 8 track cassettes, landline telephones, or block-ice refrigeration.

Staying up-to-date, relevant, on information in your own profession is a moral imperative. We can’t expect what we learned as college students to carry us through a 30 or 40-year career.

ultimate result with this shift has been increases in engagement as well as a sense of relevancy and meaning amongst learners, all of which are foundations for improving achievement.

some of the reasons for not embracing technology have to do with several misconceptions revolving around fear.

time excuse seems to rear its ugly head more than any other reasoning to not move forward with technology

We’re going from districts fearing it and blocking it off to welcoming it and making it a major part of their technology plan. We’ll be surprised if a significant portion of districts aren’t using mobile learning inside and outside of schools soon.”

Each educator, each class, each school will have to find the best way to integrate mobile devices based on its student population. The opportunity of using mobile devices and all of its utilities allows educators to reconsider: What do we want students to know, and how do we help them? And what additional benefit does using a mobile device bring to the equation? This gets to the heart of the mobile learning issue: beyond fact-finding and game-playing – even if it’s educational — how can mobile devices add relevance and value to how kids learn?

personalized learning – students owning what they learn.

Common Misconceptions of Educators Who Fear Technology

Control: For technology to be not only integrated effectively, but also embraced, a culture needs to be established where teachers and administrators are no longer fearful of giving up a certain amount of control to students.  T

Lack of training: With the integration of technology comes change.  With change comes the inevitable need to provide quality professional development. 

the idea that technology will save education (as opposed to the idea that relevance will).

The reason that so many schools are struggling with the change technology represents is because they haven’t adjusted to this shift, to the emergence of participatory, user-driven technologies and social media as viable communicative and collaborative tools.

findings presented here paint a rich and complex picture of the role that digital technology plays in people’s social worlds. Wherever possible, we seek to disentangle whether people’s varying social behaviors and attitudes are related to the different ways they use social networking sites, or to other relevant demographic characteristics, such as age, gender and social class.

As needs change over time, addressing them might mean switching devices (remaking the choice). As schools progress in their technology implementation, they may find that their needs have changed, and should not hesitate to change devices as their understanding of their students’ needs develops. This seasonal view of devices (rather than “device as school identity”) is essential to helping schools move forward, meet their current students’ needs, and keep the curriculum relevant and timely for the future. A focus on pedagogy and key technology skills will transfer from one device to another, making the shift easier; a focus on being a device expert, or mastering device specific mechanics, will not. Students will graduate into a world that will demand technological fluency, the ability to move and process information across various platforms and devices.

counteract the New WWW's potentially harmful impact on youth, educators must use technology to create learning experiences that are real, rich, and relevant.

Next will come 4G, in which data rates are expected to be 100 times faster than those in this first 3G wave. As the delivery platform of broadband content and functionality shifts from computer to personal device, we will be surrounded by a multimedia aura that accompanies us wherever we go

The plan is that you'll use your phone to spend money everywhere, all the time.

Think: more rigorous, more relevant, more fun.

students are not waiting for the rest of us to “catch up to their vision for 21st-century learning,”

Middle and high school students’ smart phone access “jumped 42% from 2009 to 2010,”

parents aren’t waiting around either

“biliterate”, or the ability to successfully read both in print and online – to describe the new expectations for learners in the 21st century.

when we say transformational learning experiences powered by technology, we are talking about authentic, project-based learning, where students have agency, ownership and commitment to a relevant and meaningful goal that allows them to use digital tools to take on roles of creators, problem solvers, and learner-teachers working with and alongside peers, instructors, and other mentors to accomplish something bigger than themselves.

The best way to raise scores over the long haul is through rich, authentic learning experiences that feel relevant to students.

I challenge you to think about WHAT we learn. On whose terms? In what areas? When was the curriculum we are using formed? Educators need to start acknowledging that students need a time, place, and resources to learn what is relevant to them as well.

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."

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