SJR Teacher/Learners

Learning communities set goals about student learning and focus exclusively on the day-to-day work of teachers

Imagine how different things today could be if educators were aware of just how much technology affected their own lives.

First, great teachers tended to set big goals

they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

The Social Learning Academy is intended for learning professionals  - in Workplace Learning and Education - who are new to social media and would like to find out more about the different social technologies and their application to learning.

points to the growing importance of online citizenship and media-literacy education, in addition to what has come to be seen as online safety education, as solutions to youth risk online."

We switch-task, rapidly shifting from one thing to another, interrupting ourselves unproductively, and losing time in the process.

In fact, Wave is extremely powerful groupware, designed to facilitate the interactions of groups working together on projects

These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement — a dopamine squirt — that researchers say can be addictive. In its absence, people feel bored.

I instead encourage faculty to start by adding a blog to their class. A blog can be set up in minutes and is easy to learn and maintain. Plus, there are a variety of studies proving that blogging can improve educational outcomes. For instance:

students post their written work to a blog before handing it in. The students received comments from other students and even faculty at other institutions, which improved their work greatly.

Scaring children about the dangers of the Internet and blocking access to social-networking sites can do more harm than good, according to a report released Friday by a committee tasked by the U.S. government to explore online safety.

one hears that important changes can be effected in education but it will cost money for a new lab of computers, for wireless access and faster routers, for iPads and other new devices. However, as readers explore “Why ___ Matters!”, you will be amazed that the suggested changes and ideas are more about “humanware” than hardware.