Group items tagged

As educators and learners, the power of the highlighting marker and sticky notes has long been established.

"Getting information off of the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant."  -Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation

Another changing paradigm in education is the demand for differentiated and individualized instruction. The challenge in this environment is how to manage appropriate information flow for each individual learner without the educator working one-at-a-time guiding each learner along a prepared path followed by assessing the learner's progress and understanding.

Learning has always been based on exposure to new stimuli, research and communication. Ideas are formulated through external opinion, reflection and conclusion

For twitter to work you need to follow the right people. As an educator I needed to follow those who contributed to #ukedchat and there I found items of interest (@ICTEvangelist). Not only was it interesting to read the 140 character snippets but also the links that were posted. I was introduced to a range of teaching discussion that stimulated thought. There were blogposts that led to conversations in the staff room and links that could be passed on to colleagues.

Solitude can even help us learn. According to research on expert performance by the psychologist Anders Ericsson, the best way to master a field is to work on the task that’s most demanding

associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle;

The one important exception to this dismal record is electronic brainstorming, where large groups outperform individuals; and the larger the group the better. The protection of the screen mitigates many problems of group work. This is why the Internet has yielded such wondrous collective creations. Marcel Proust called reading a “miracle of communication in the midst of solitude,” and that’s what the Internet is, too. It’s a place where we can be alone together — and this is precisely what gives it power.

The problems we face in science, economics and many other fields are more complex than ever before, and we’ll need to stand on one another’s shoulders if we can possibly hope to solve them.