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have kids read (and write) mostly on their own -- if your goal were to cause them to lose interest in what they’re doing.

every single study that has examined grades and intrinsic motivation has found that the former has a negative effect on the latter.

What matters is not what we teach; it’s what they learn,[14] and the probability of real learning is far higher when the students have a lot to say about both the content and the process.

Ideas to Get You Started Here are a few basic strategies for integrating student voices into your class blog this semester. Comments – Obviously the most familiar way to add student voices to a class blog is adding comments to a post. At the beginning of the week, the instructor or TA would create a post that includes a discussion question or prompt. Then during or between classes students would stop by to add comments to the main question or reply to the comments of others. Question Queue: create a standing post where students can raise questions they would like to discuss in class. Rapid Response: ask students, individually or in pairs, to contribute a 3-4 sentence position statement they will then defend or debate. Student Posts – One way students can master new concepts is by having to teach them to others. Most blog software provides user roles for secondary contributors, so with a little preparation, students can have their own dashboard and post content as a full author to the blog. If you imagine student work more like a short essay than a single observation, then allowing students to make full posts may communicate higher expectations and value of their work. Reading Journal: ask students to post a summary of preliminary research or more formal abstract to the blog for peer comments and critique. Media Mashup: have students analyze appearances of course concepts in popular media by embedding a YouTube clip and then evaluating its relevance. Post by Email – A final feature we found in many mobile blogging tools was post by email. For students and faculty with mobile devices, this provided us a simple way to share content quickly back to the class hub. Since most native apps on the iPhone offered email sharing of photos, links, and media, post by email become the common avenue connecting mobiles to the blog. (At ACU, this feature is built on a Gmail account associated with each blog and the Postie WordPress plug-in described below.) Webliography: early in a survey course, ask students to construct a bibliography of useful study materials and web sites by emailing links with annotations to the blog. Photo Shoot: send students into the community (or out onto the web) to capture images that reflect social attitudes toward a common topic then email them to the blog for discussion. (New iPhone or iPod touch users may not know they can tap and hold on a web image to copy it before pasting it into an email. Remind them to cite the original source of the image, or better yet copy and paste the URL as well.)

WPtouch – An essential plugin for mobile blogging via WordPress is WPtouch (now standard on all WordPress.com blogs). Once installed, the plugin makes reading and commenting on mobile posts and pages easy. Simple to install and MU compatible.

CONS: essential links from sidebar widgets in a desktop theme must be added to the WPtouch menu manually.

Early research results aren’t surprising: - Students are heavy users of computers, but not for education. - Teachers make limited use of computers and other technologies in class - Parents are limited computer users - Teacher training is lacking in utilizing computers effectively in classrooms

At the core of the discussion surrounding the future of education is a concern of how to navigate shifting power and control. What is the role of the student? The teacher? The school? The parents? If learners have the ability to do what educators have done in the past (access information directly), what role should the educator play?

Perhaps face-to-face time should take on a different model than we currently utilize. We should do what we can with technology outside of classrooms. Then we wouldn’t need to meet in classrooms as often.

Such experiences may point the way to how personal learning environments will evolve in the future. The PLE will not be one application running on the desktop or in a web browser. Rather, it will be multiple applications running on may different devices. It is also important to understand that learners will use different devices in different contexts and for different purposes. The PLE will be based on networks of people with whom learners interact, they may adapt a particular tool for communication and interaction in a particular context but then cease to sue that tool when that context has passed. In previous projects linked to mobile learning we have tended to focus on how to transmit standardised learning materials and applications to different platforms and devices. The PLE will be comprised of not only all the software tools, applications and services we use for learning but the different devices we use to communicate and share knowledge.

Two broad approaches exist for learning technology implementation: The adoption of a centralized learning management approach. This may include development of a central learning support lab where new courses are developed in a team-based approach—consisting of subject matter expert, graphic designers, instructional designer, and programmers. This model can be effective for creation of new courses and programs receiving large sources of funding. Most likely, however, enterprise-wide adoption (standardizing on a single LMS) requires individual departments and faculty members to move courses online by themselves. Support may be provided for learning how to use the LMS, but moving content online is largely the responsibility of faculty. This model works well for environments where faculty have a high degree of autonomy, though it does cause varying levels of quality in online courses. Personal learning environments (PLEs) are a recent trend addressing the limitations of an LMS. Instead of a centralized model of design and deployment, individual departments select from a collage of tools—each intending to serve a particular function in the learning process. Instead of limited functionality, with highly centralized control and sequential delivery of learning, a PLE provides a more contextually appropriate toolset. The greater adaptability to differing learning approaches and environments afforded by PLEs is offset by the challenge of reduced structure in management and implementation of learning. This can present a significant challenge when organizations value traditional lecture learning models.

Self-organised learning networks provide a base for the establishment of a form of education that goes beyond course and curriculum centric models, and envisions a learner-centred and learner controlled model of lifelong learning. In such learning contexts learners have the same possibilities to act that teachers and other staff members have in regular, less learner-centred educational approaches. In addition these networks are designed to operate without increasing the workload for learners or staff members.

Instead of learning housed in content management systems, learning is embedded in rich networks and conversational spaces. The onus, again, falls on the university to define its views of learning.

Just 18% of last year’s high school graduates in Michigan were prepared for college-level English, writing, reading, mathematics and science, according to the ACT’s Profile Report for the Class of 2009.

Nationwide, it has been estimated that one in five students at universities enroll in a remedial class. At community colleges, which do the heavy lifting in remedial work, it has been estimated that 60% of first-time students need at least one remedial course. Many of those students, certainly, are returning adults who left high school years ago. Others are students who have mild developmental disabilities. But what bothers educators and policy-makers is this: Many are also recent graduates who have left the high school stage with a diploma, only to find out a few months later that they’re not ready for even basic college work.

If the printing press empowered the individual, the digital world empowers collaboration.

McLuhan drew from many, many sources in order to develop these ideas; the work of Canadian political economist and media theorist Harold Innis was instrumental for him. Innis's technique, like McLuhan's, forswears the building up of a convincing argument, or any attempt at "proof," instead gathering in a ton of disparate ideas from different disciplines that might seem irreconcilable at first; yet considering them together results in a shifted perspective, and a cascade of new insights.

Wikipedia is like a laboratory for this new way of public reasoning for the purpose of understanding, an extended polylogue embracing every reader in an ever-larger, never-ending dialectic. Rather than being handed an "authoritative" decision, you're given the means for rolling your own.

they too seek not to proclaim what they know, but rather to engage and share with others as they explore and come to understand technology and related trends.

The lesson of the research is that even little kids react to ambiguity in a systematic and specific fashion. Their mode of playing is really a form of learning, a way of figuring out how the world works. While kids in the unambiguous condition engaged in just as much play as kids in the ambiguous condition, their play was just play. It wasn’t designed to decipher the causal mechanisms of the toy.

According to the psychologists, the different reactions were caused by the act of instruction. When students are given explicit instructions, when they are told what they need to know, they become less likely to explore on their own. Curiosity is a fragile thing.

we shouldn't consider someone literate if they can consume but not produce media.

The literacy of the future rests on the ability to decode and construct meaning from one's constantly evolving environment -- whether it's coded orally, in text, images, simulations, or the biosphere itself. Therefore we must be adaptive to our social, economic and political landscape. Those of us living in this digital age are required to learn, unlearn and learn again and again.