February 2011
46 posts
Edudemic: New Social Networking Platform for... →
thingsforteachers:
Edudemic’s post explains this well, but Diipo.com is a new social networking site made for classrooms. Based on Edudemic’s explanation and briefly visiting Diipo’s site, it looks like Edmodo and Ning had a child and called it Diipo. It the same capabilities I love about Edmodo, but adds onto it with blogging capabilities. It looks like (based on images from this post) Diipo...
Google Book Tool Tracks Cultural Change With Words... →
Perhaps the biggest collection of words ever assembled has just gone online: 500 billion of them, from 5 million books published over the past four centuries.
The words make up a searchable database that researchers at Harvard say is a new and powerful tool to study cultural change.
The words are a product of Google’s book-scanning project. The company has converted approximately 15...
How to 'Gamify' Your Class Website →
world-shaker:
I decided to search for a compromise. The longer process of grading is essential, but game elements could reward participation and engagement without directly correlating with a grade—and, ideally, without requiring my continual input. I wanted to automate the “game” as much as possible so that the site itself could provide some of that instant feedback. And since designing a new...
Seven Ways to Build Your Own Educational Games →
world-shaker:
I’m a huge proponent of gaming, and think you should look into it.
Here are the first two sites from the article. Click through to read more.
Sharendipity makes it possible for students and teachers to quickly create and share simple video games. Sharendipity’s drag and drop creation tools can be used to create a game in as few as four steps. For new Sharendipity users the...
Cellphone Use Tied to Brain Changes - NYTimes.com →
Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have found that less than an hour of cellphone use can speed up brain activity in the area closest to the phone antenna, raising new questions about the health effects of low levels of radiation emitted from cellphones.
The researchers, led by Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, urged caution in interpreting...
Watchworld-shaker:
Are schools designed to help people learn? Are colleges and universities really institutions of higher education? Do students actually learn any science in science classes? Can skateboarding give us a better model for teaching and learning?
Dr. Tae — Building A New Culture Of Teaching And Learning (by Dr. Tae)
Watch
Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like... →
The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said ina report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.
Former bloggers said they were too busy...
At Texas' Abilene Christian, Digital Age Under Way... →
A few years ago, professors noticed that fewer students were taking notes. Instead, if they needed to recall information, they were looking it up online. “Students were basically saying, ‘There is nothing you’re telling me that I perceive to be of value,’” says George Saltsman, executive director of ACU’s Adams Center for Teaching and Learning. He says the conventional...
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25 Web 2.0 Sites for Educators →
world-shaker:
Here are the first ten:
Google/Gaggle - Google Apps are some of the most popular services for document creation and collaboration. Gaggle (for a small fee) filters Google Apps (Zoho as well) to make it an ideal choice for education. Also, Gaggle allows for filtered blogging, chatting, messaging boards, and filtered videos in You Tube, etc.
Edmodo - A wonderful free site that...
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Secrets of a Mind-Gamer - NYTimes.com →
“What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly,” Cooke said. He explained to me that mnemonic competitors saw themselves as “participants in an amateur research program” whose aim is to rescue a long-lost tradition of memory training.
Today we have books, photographs, computers and an entire superstructure of external devices to help us store...
Different Learners: Rethinking "Intelligence" and...
Jane Healy is an entertaining speaker. She’s very funny and knows how to get peoples attention and hold it.
Moving from the idea of learning disability to learning difference.
We must focus on both intellectual and emotional qualities of the human brain
There’s a “mismatch” between culture, kids, and the schools
What potential is there in learning difference?
What are the changes we’re...
Transforming Teaching, Learning and Assessment
Linda Hammond
What we know:
· Already debunked: Notion that a teacher’s a smart person who knows content and transmits knowledge.
· Knowledge is built and organized into schema
· Most of what we learn doesn’t stick with us
How do we re-think teaching, curriculum, and assessment according to what the best nations are doing?
What we’ve know about kids should learn and how we...
Kurt Fisher on differences and similarities in...
Diverse pathways for development and learning.
We learn in very different ways. Teachers v Students.
One pattern for teaching everybody does not work.
Our goal is educating everyone. Educating 25% of our students well is not good enough.
Students learn differently. They use similar processes to learn though.
Learning Differences:
Fisher looks at a new model for disabilities as people...
just sat through a very boring close-reading of myspace.
School-based R&D
Wagner talking about “School-based R&D”. I’m a big fan of this. I like to think of all of my classes as labs for trying new things. I wish there was more of a community within Lawrenceville to support that kind of work.
More on the Global Achievement Gap
The global achievement gap is the gap between even what our best schools are teaching and testing vs. the skills all students will need for careers, college, and citizenship in the 21st century.
[Wagner is providing evidence that as a nation, we’ve fallen behind, and that our schools are not teaching the right skills]
We need open-ended constructed response assessments
Motivation for the...
“It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”
– Albert Einstein
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Tony Wagner: Addressing the Global Achievement Gap
Tony Wagner
Students need NEW SKILLS for work, continuous learning & citizenship in a knowledge society for all students
The net generation is differently motivated
Reform vs. Reinvention – we need to re-frame the problem
What are the skills students today need (other than habits of the heart) Seven Survival Skills
Critical thinking and problem solving leaders of business demand...
Day 2 introductions
Tony Wagner came and spoke at Lawrenceville for the NJAIS conference a few months back. Curious to see if this is going to be a repeat of that talk. From the literature it looks as though it’s going to be the same.
Dr. Cossack is talking about the information age — how social media has transformed us and has penetrated many facets of society.
How important is “memorizing...
Web resources on the argument: abolish grades →
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Are Report Cards Really the Best Tool for... →
I recently become a fan of Joe Bower’s blog, “For the Love of Learning” where he spends a lot of time explaining why he despises grades and wants to abolish homework. He shares the reasons for his sentiment as well as many alternatives. You can read about his dislike of grades here and his dislike of homework here. He’s also a fan of Alfie Kohn who has provided the foundation for many of his...
Assessment model based on gaming
Assessments in games are fluid and seamless. They are not the testing model, where the learner recalls information in an isolated context. Information is applied to move forward and upward in the game. Gee makes the point that it would be ridiculous to have someone beat a game and then quiz them on their mastery of the game. The game assesses mastery through its context.
Of Assessment:
...
The link between Gaming and Learning
Problem Solving Games teach not through content but by situating content within problem solving contexts. In games, the participant has the flexibility to test strategies, take risk, and fail, in the pursuit of getting to the next level. If you can’t solve the problem you can’t get to the next level. Problems in games are always designed to be solved using knowledge acquired through...
gaming, specialist language, and situated meaning
The game is a piece of software — it is essential a well designed experience. It could not exist without the designing that went into it.
meta game — these are designed social interactions.
Big “G” gaming = well designed gaming experience + well designed social experience that’s focused on articulation/decoding of the game experience.
Teacher’s role is...
Video Games and Learning: James Paul Gee
Gee was actually the most interesting of the bunch this morning. What he had to say, while maybe not revolutionary, was novel in the depth of its observations.
Good learning/teaching is about designing experience
[I’ve believed this for a while. As teachers what we do is design learning experience. What Gee talks about later is how gamers work to decode through experience first and then...
Our capacity for memory
We can use tech to assist our capacity for memory
pick and choose what we want to be in our biological memory
but for other things use the exterior memory (computer)
We can also use offline tech to assist our capacity for memory
psychotherapy
Is search the end of memory or an opportunity for collective wisdom?
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
FMRI of brains who had not searched the web, versus net-natives.
Internet searching compared to reading a page of a book
Giving a test motivates people - how would they score on the test of the information
net naive brains were using similar areas when they read book v. searching
savy brains had two fold increase in brain use when using searching engine
conclusion: people who are internet...
What will happen to brain evolution because of...
young people between 8-18 use devices 11.5 hours/day
brains are wired to use the technology elegantly.
Loss of inter-relational analogue technologies: talking to someone one on one.
Our brains are complex, the technology is complex, and answers are not straightforward.
Technology and Addiction
Email powerful emotional reinforcer. For all the emails that are not great, the few that are...
iBrain: The Technological Alteration of the...
Dr. Gary Small.
How are these new technologies affecting us and changing our behaviors.
This is a global issue - it’s affecting us everwhere
How does technology make you feel? What happens neurologically when your device indicates it’s turning on?
We just did something interesting: everyone in the audience just gave their phone to a stranger. It was a very anxious room.
Back to...
Conversation with G.D.
The role of Information Technology Services is outdated.
Should education IT be different than normal IT?
Should it be populated with educators who have programming knowledge or who can design iphone apps or curricular devices with technology?
Multiuser Virtual Learning Environment Model
The more kids use tools where they feel immersed in an environment, the more they’re engaged.
Whatever, Wherever, Whenever
Virtual Worlds
Flexible tools
Interactive (participatory)
Collaborative and Social you can talk to others in the space, especially friends.
Creative
Student Centered (Push AND Pull) Student pushes material out and pulls it in from the environment (what happens...
New models for education
Kids want what’s new and fresh — always the most recent technology.
Wireless mobile devices (WMD) How can we use the WMDs in education?
Texting in class (polling, summary, questions to teacher)
Find the facts
Read the news
Twitter - parent updates, homework reminders
IMing students
Record/replay experiences in class
Access videos
polling
24/7 help
blog access
How can you...
What are the values of iGeneration
being able to connect to the world
being able to do things fast and immediately
communicate every possible way they can
iGeneration is idealistic
they want to be something (career goals) — their goals change often.
very close to family (will live at home until 30)
extremely social and do not like hierarchies.
strong work ethic when motivated — open to distractions
works at...
How do Kids Manage their Task Switching?
after 10/15 minutes their minds start to wander to txts/facebook/who did what and who did this.
Kids have to be able to understand the downfalls of task switching. If they switch often, there is going to be a detriment to their ability to work.
Tech breaks - strategy schools are trying out. Teachers ask them to put all devices away, and then they have 1-2 minutes where they can access the...
Multitasking
Early studies show we can’t multitask.
when faced with two aural inputs (each in a different ear) you can’t pick up/focus on the desired input .
People who have lots of media cannot multitask as well as those who aren’t surrounded by media.
It’s not really MULTITASKING. They’re really switching back and forth between tasks.
Do professionals Task Switch? When...
the mini-generation of different kinds of...
What they’re like.
Major changes in generational spans — before, generations used to be 20-25 years, but now they’re spanning 10 years or so.
Net generation: using the internet iGeneration: internet, mobile devices, technology that they could individualize. looking ahead: the yNot? Generation. kids thinking about creating through technology to fill needs they can’t...
Larry Rosen
The iGeneration is made up of kids who are “magical”
video of 3rd grader, Michael, who has three websites. He talks about his camera, ipad, ipod touches, Nintentdo DS. Going on and on about all the technology he has — a flying helicopter that he can control from his ipad.He also has an “old” kindle — he’s stuck on the idea that he doesn’t have the...
Fisher talking about what’s happening with learning and the brain around the world.
World class movement — Dr. was in Shanghai — University in China (largest for training teachers in China) implementing Mind Brain Education/Educational Neuroscience program reaches hundreds of new teachers a year.
Huge effort in schools worldwide to research how students learn and how teachers...
First Keynote: Understanding the iGeneration and...
Introductions:
How are new technologies affecting learning and the brain?
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Alone Together
Almost finished with “Alone Together” by Sherry Turkle.
An interesting read for a couple reasons. First, she writes about Sociable Robots and how humans, as they become increasingly isolated and more technological, tend to treat these objects as “partially alive”, as able to care, and as able to be cared for.
She also writes about how humans in the technological age...
Still clearly on Lville time. Coffee and some reading pre-registration.
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On the way to the airport, C and I discussed the idea of placing older students in classes with younger students. There they could act as teaching assistants/class captains. We determined that in order to make the model sustainable, there shouldn’t be too much burden on the teacher’s time. However, any teacher who agrees to host a class captain would need to dedicate time to conference with the...
