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Louise Phinney

20 Tips for Creating a Professional Learning Network - 0 views

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    I like this! "sharing discoveries is more efficient and honorable than patenting them"
Sean McHugh

The Overselling of Ed Tech - Alfie Kohn - 0 views

  • the rationale that I find most disturbing — despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s rarely made explicit — is the idea that technology will increase our efficiency . . . at teaching the same way that children have been taught for a very long time
  • We can’t answer the question “Is tech useful in schools?” until we’ve grappled with a deeper question: “What kinds of learning should be taking place in those schools?” If we favor an approach by which students actively construct meaning, an interactive process that involves a deep understanding of ideas and emerges from the interests and questions of the learners themselves, well, then we’d be open to the kinds of technology that truly support this kind of inquiry. Show me something that helps kids create, design, produce, construct — and I’m on board. Show me something that helps them make things collaboratively (rather than just on their own), and I’m even more interested
  • these are examples of how technology may make the process a bit more efficient or less dreary but does nothing to challenge the outdated pedagogy. To the contrary: These are shiny things that distract us from rethinking our approach to learning and reassure us that we’re already being innovative
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  • The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. The second involves working with each student to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests, and it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well
    • Sean McHugh
       
      Yeah, so?
  • even if ed tech were adopted as thoughtfully as its proponents claim, we’re still left with deep reasons to be concerned about the outmoded model of teaching that it helps to preserve — or at least fails to help us move beyond
  • teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning
Adrienne Michetti

More Than Blended Learning - - 0 views

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    "Blended solutions combine contrasting learning methods and media in order to maximise effectiveness and efficiency. The More Than approach goes a step further to ensure the blend results in application to real-world tasks and the learner is supported along the whole length of their learning journey." This site includes a portfolio of resources, case studies, and video. 
Louise Phinney

Tech Tidbits: Increasing Teachers' Digital Efficiency | always learning - 1 views

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    essential productivity skills: Creating labels in GmailCreating e-mail lists in ContactsInstall Google Notifier to set up web Gmail as your default email client (this has saved me hours of work)Creating collections in Google Docs and organizing your filesMaking a copy of a document & saving for yourself (to edit)Sharing a collection with a group (made in your Contacts list) or a colleagueMake a Google Doc public, for linking on your class blogCheck the revision history in a Google DocCreating events in Google Calendar and setting automatic reminders via e-mailCreating repeating events in Google CalendarImporting the school's calendar into your own Google CalendarCreating a Google Reader account and subscribing to feedsCreate a bundle of feeds in Reader for each class you teachAdding feeds to folders in ReaderRecording screencasts in QuickTime
Jeffrey Plaman

http://newlearningonline.com/_uploads/3_Kalantzis_ELEA_7_3_web.pdf - 1 views

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    ABSTRACT This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical principles originally articulated in the Multiliteracies project, an approach to teaching and learning that addresses literacy and learning in the context of new media and the globalizing knowledge economy. The need for a new approach to learning arises from a complex range of factors - among them, changes in society and the economy; the potential for new forms of communication made possible by emerging technologies; and rising expectations amongst learners that education will maximize their potential for personal fulfillment, civic participation and access to work. The authors first brought together the Learning by Design team of researchers and teachers in 2003 in order to reflect upon and create new and dynamic learning environments. A series of research and development activities were embarked upon in Australia and, more recently, in the United States, exploring the potentials of new pedagogical approaches, assisted by digital technologies, to transform today's learning environments and create learning for the future - learning environments which could be more relevant to a changing world, more effective in meeting community expectations and which manage educational resources more efficiently. One of the key challenges was to create learning environments which engaged the sensibilities of learners who are increasingly immersed in digital and global lifestyles - from the entertainment sources they choose to the way they work and learn. It was also about enabling teachers to explicitly track and be aware of the relationship between their pedagogical choices and their students' learning outcomes.
Keri-Lee Beasley

Using Technology to Break the Speed Barrier of Reading - Scientific American - 0 views

  • Unfortunately, the system of reading we inherited from the ancient scribes —the method of reading you are most likely using right now — has been fundamentally shaped by engineering constraints that were relevant in centuries past, but no longer appropriate in our information age.
  • search for innovative engineering solutions aimed at making reading more efficient and effective for more people
  • But then, by chance, I discovered that when I used the small screen of a smartphone to read my scientific papers required for work, I was able to read with much greater facility and ease.
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  • hen, in a comprehensive study of over 100 high school students with dyslexia done in 2013, using techniques that included eye tracking, we were able to confirm that the shortened line formats produced a benefit for many who otherwise struggled with reading.
  • For example, Marco Zorzi and his colleagues in Italy and France showed in 2012 that when letter spacing is increased to reduce crowding, children with dyslexia read more effectively.
  • A clever web application called Beeline Reader, developed by Nick Lum, a lawyer from San Francisco, may accomplish something similar using colors to guide the reader’s attention forward along the line.  Beeline does this by washing each line of text in a color gradient, to create text that looks a bit like a tie-dyed tee-shirt.
  • one aims to increase the throughput of the brain’s reading buffers by changing their capacity for information processing, while the other seeks to activate alternate channels for reading that will allow information to be processed in parallel, and thereby increase the capacity of the language processing able to be performed during reading. 
  • The brain is said to be plastic, meaning that it is possible to change its abilities.
  • people can be taught to roughly double their reading speed, without compromising comprehension.
  • Consider that we process language, first and foremost, through speech. And yet, in the traditional design of reading we are forced to read using our eyes. Even though the brain already includes a fully developed auditory pathway for language, the traditional design for reading makes little use of the auditory processing capabilities of the brain
  • While the visual pathways are being strained to capacity by reading, the auditory network for language remains relatively under-utilized.
  • Importantly, our early indications suggest that the least effective method of reading may be the one society has been clinging to for centuries: reading on paper.
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    "Importantly, our early indications suggest that the least effective method of reading may be the one society has been clinging to for centuries: reading on paper."
Katie Day

Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Hi... - 1 views

  • We used a method that I call "collaboration by difference." Collaboration by difference is an antidote to attention blindness. It signifies that the complex and interconnected problems of our time cannot be solved by anyone alone, and that those who think they can act in an entirely focused, solitary fashion are undoubtedly missing the main point that is right there in front of them, thumping its chest and staring them in the face. Collaboration by difference respects and rewards different forms and levels of expertise, perspective, culture, age, ability, and insight, treating difference not as a deficit but as a point of distinction. It always seems more cumbersome in the short run to seek out divergent and even quirky opinions, but it turns out to be efficient in the end and necessary for success if one seeks an outcome that is unexpected and sustainable. That's what I was aiming for.
  • had the students each contribute a new entry or amend an existing entry on Wikipedia, or find another public forum where they could contribute to public discourse. There was still a lot of criticism about the lack of peer review in Wikipedia entries, and some professors were banning Wikipedia use in the classroom. I didn't understand that. Wikipedia is an educator's fantasy, all the world's knowledge shared voluntarily and free in a format theoretically available to all, and which anyone can edit. Instead of banning it, I challenged my students to use their knowledge to make Wikipedia better. All conceded that it had turned out to be much harder to get their work to "stick" on Wikipedia than it was to write a traditional term paper.
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    Cathy N. Davidson on experiments at Duke University in instigating digital devices and teaching ..... what the students learned and what she learned....
Katie Day

News: What Students Don't Know - Inside Higher Ed - 0 views

  • The prevalence of Google in student research is well-documented, but the Illinois researchers found something they did not expect: students were not very good at using Google. They were basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results. Consequently, the students did not know how to build a search that would return good sources. (For instance, limiting a search to news articles, or querying specific databases such as Google Book Search or Google Scholar.)
  • In other words: Today’s college students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar.
  • Librarians often have to walk that line between giving a person a fish and teaching her how to fish, proverbially speaking, says Thill. And the answer can rightly vary based on how quickly she needs a fish, whether she has the skills and coordination to competently wield a pole, and whether her ultimate goal is to become a master angler.
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  • “It’s not about teaching shortcuts, it’s about teaching them not to take the long way to a goal,” says Elisa Addlesperger, a reference and instruction librarian at DePaul. “They’re taking very long, circuitous routes to their goals.… I think it embitters them and makes them hate learning.” Teaching efficiency is not a compromise of librarianship, adds Jagman; it is a value.
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    results of an ethnographic study of college students and their relationship with libraries and level of information literacy...  Quote: "In other words: Today's college students might have grown up with the language of the information age, but they do not necessarily know the grammar."
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