Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

“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.”

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.

she advises teachers and parents to praise a child’s process and strategies, and tie those to the outcome

“Let’s look at what you’ve done,” “Let’s look at what your understanding is,” or “Let’s look at what strategies you’ve used, and let’s figure out together what we should try next.”

Dweck says that many teachers have to change how they teach, offering more critical feedback and giving students opportunities to revise their work

One powerful aspect of technology and assessment is that it can show the journey of learning and serve as a form of curating the learning in the digital realm. Students can use these collections as reflection tools not only across a unit but also over years of learning.

The policy should be, "No time-wasting, rote, repetitive tasks will be assigned that lack clear instructional or learning purposes."

reflect a considered school policy and not simply be up to each individual teacher to carry out according to his or own theory of student learning

When will education embrace as an institution that change is the only constant in our world, and constant flexibility and adaptation are what will be needed from our organizations, educators, and students?

Slow and easy is always the best way to go. Believe it or not, students are not always as prepared as we think.

an example using the rotational model

mix your classroom up into a digital playground

So perhaps the answer is to prepare our students for a world that will require them to learn continuously, to find and solve problems, to act with empathy so as to bring hope and equity to many and strive to live a life full of a passionate pursuit of beauty and wonderment, to live and learn today as da Vinci might have done.

Connected devices should inject new opportunities, knowledge, data, influencers and thinking into our debates and add value not distraction.

The question of student distractibility is worth further exploration.

Technology does not need to be a part of every aspect of our lives. We need to learn when it is the best tool, when it plays a part on the sidelines and when it is best left out of the equation.