למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

Educating the Leaders of Tomorrow

Let me say that again. Bloomfield, a decent but not particularly wealthy town, supports its schools. We pay taxes. We go to the school plays, the games, the art shows. Most of our local taxes go to support our schools, and most adults in town do not have kids in school.

In three words it captures our town, and I think most of the nation not warped by the Wall Street madness that infects so much of our public life today.

Learn to live!

increasing the use of testing across the country should also be a spending priority

תוויות: פני החינוך

My biggest challenge as a teacher-researcher was to figure out what kind of role I should play in the community. The traditional role of the teacher seemed inadequate. I knew that, as active bloggers and communicators, the students would not respond well to a teacher who enters the class blogosphere only to assign work or to evaluate their writing.

Once I started responding to student work in a readerly fashion and participating as a contributor, reader, and not just an evaluator, I realized that it would be unfair to the students to reduce all their rich interactions and complex online presence to a B+ or a 13/15. I realized that I needed to develop an assessment strategy that would take into account the complexity of student interactions online and recognize the process as much as the final product.

Then, I realized that none of the children asked me for feedback. It didn’t take long to realize that, a) they didn’t see me as a contributor in the community, and b) they associated me with corrections and grades. At this stage, they were not ready for corrections yet - they were simply interested in having conversations about their ideas. They needed somebody to talk to and, as their teacher, I was not at the top of their list.

... a teacher who enters a community of independent learners/writers/researchers to support and encourage student learning removes that hierarchical structure and encourages students to become more involved in the assessment process.

תוויות: בלוגים, הוראה, מורים

Engineers at the University of Michigan have developed software aimed at turning cell phones into educational tools for K-12 students. Why? According to developer Elliot Soloway, cell phones cost a fraction of what a laptop costs but can do just about anything a laptop can do. As an added bonus, students are already bringing the devices to school with them.

This is the beginning of the future.... The future is mobile devices that are connected. They're going to be the new paper and pencil.

Soloway says this type of hands-on, reinforced learning is only possible when each student has his or her own device.

"People ask why every child needs a computer and why can't students just share," Soloway said. "Well, do you share pencils?"

תוויות: סלולארי

Almost exclusively we use computers as group technologies. We have a bunch of them in a lab and then bring in a bunch of kids to use them for some teacher-designed activity.

Or in schools that have laptop carts, we wheel them into a classroom, pass out the units, and then proceed, again largely with group activities.

... the iPod Touch, and other pocket computing devices, are intended for personal use. They are designed to be customized, personalizing the user’s experience so, instead of everyone seeing the same desktop, we all see ourselves in the device.

We just need to find people who are already using these devices in our schools (our IT department sees several thousand a day on the network) and invite them to tell us how they use their iPod Touch.

Undoubtedly they, especially the kids, will give us some insight we can’t get any other way.

תוויות: סלולארי

תוויות: דיווחים, כנסים, פני החינוך

so-called smartphones can make students smarter.

is also talking to school districts in Chicago, San Diego and Florida about buying specially equipped phones for the classroom. It projects that wireless companies could sell 10 million to 15 million phones as a result of this effort in the next few years.

four North Carolina schools in low-income neighborhoods, where ninth- and 10th-grade math students were given high-end cellphones running Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software and special programs meant to help them with their algebra studies.

תוויות: סלולארי

Yet as school librarians increasingly teach students crucial skills needed not only in school, but also on the job and in daily life, they are often the first casualties of school budget crunches.

Ms. Rosalia, the school librarian at Public School 225, a combined elementary and middle school in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, urged caution. “Don’t answer your questions with the first piece of information that you find,” she warned.

Most of the students ignored her, as she knew they would. But Nozimakon Omonullaeva, 11, noticed something odd on a page about Christopher Columbus.

“It says the Indians enjoyed the cellphones and computers brought by Columbus!” Nozimakon exclaimed, pointing at the screen. “That’s wrong.”

We are teaching them how to think. But sometimes the Board of Ed seems to want them to learn how to fill in little bubbles.

our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved

תוויות: אוריינויות

Three years ago, the school at which I teach made the move to one-to-one computing. Initially there was hesitancy on behalf of much of the faculty with regard to the use of the new machines and confusion about how to best implement the new technology in the classroom in an effective and authentic way. For many, the technology of wireless tablet-PCs and LCD projectors amounted to not much more than a word-processor hooked up to a glorified overhead projector. Not that they were wrong... it's just that, for all of us and myself included, our thinking was trapped in the static paradigm we'd always lived with. A paradigm of strict schedules, top-down decisions, and analog television. But the world was growing more dynamic by the hour.

Over the last two years, I have seen a real change in relations to technology in the classroom. And that change has been student-driven.

I don't.

While I encourage reading online, in no way do I ever discourage reading real paper books. As I've written before, it's not paper I'm against -- it's a paper-knowledge mentality I'm in opposition to.

I post online all of the sorts of assignments that I used to have kids turn in on paper, not because I want them to use technology or because I don't want them to use paper. I do this because online assignments are naturally dynamic.

In terms of actually using a novel in class, however, I always post the sections we are doing a close-reading of up on the wall via an LCD projector. It's then easy for me to mark it up via my tablet-PC. Often I will then post the day's notes to my blog as jpgs. In addition, my students mark up their own digital copies of the text and save their notes on their blogs.

Over the course of the year, the students unwittingly develop a wonderful digital portfolio that demonstrates their progress. And -- and this is something else cool about the dynamism of Web 2.0 -- is that the students can go back, revisit their notes, and link their notes to digital sources and scholarship online.

... rather than predicting what classrooms will look like and how they will work in the future, it's more exciting to think about what people will 'think' like in the future. Because what history tells us over and over again is that more than anything else, technology -- whether papyrus or the printing press or the Internet -- allows for the distribution of fresh ideas and new ways of thinking about ideas.

תוויות: בלוגים, דיגיטאליות, שימוש בבתי ספר

School heads and parents were supportive of the project, and in fact some parents asked why their students were not involved!

In every case, other teachers became interested and involved, and the project teachers decided to continue using mobile phones. These champions of change have shown that, with good planning and anticipating class management and technical issues, using mobile phones can be a very productive way to augment access to tools for computing, communication and photography.

1. Timing experiments with stopwatch
2. Photographing apparatus and results of experiments for reports
3. Photographing development of design models for eportfolios
4. Photographing texts/whiteboards for future review
5. Bluetoothing project material between group members
6. Receiving SMS & email reminders from teachers
7. Synchronizing calendar/timetable and setting reminders
8. Connecting remotely to school learning platform
9. Recording a teacher reading a poem for revision
10. Accessing revision sites on the Internet
11. Creating short narrative movies
12. Downloading and listening to foreign language podcasts
13. Logging into the school email system
14. Using GPS to identify locations
15. Transferring files between school and home

At the outset, students were often surprised at the thought that mobile phones could be used for learning. They saw their phones as mainly for social uses, normally only using the camera to take pictures of parents or friends when socialising.

תוויות: סלולארי

UWM online psych students outperform those in lecture hall class

Initial evidence says it works: In a study of 5,000 students over two years, U-Pace students performed 12% better on the same cumulative test than students who took traditional Psych 101 with the same textbook and course content, even though U-Pace students had lower average grades than those in the conventional course.

The online model, the study found, was particularly successful for disadvantaged or underprepared students - low-income students, racial and ethnic minorities, and those with low grades or ACT scores. And students in general do better in the class, too, earning a higher percentage of As and Bs than students earn in traditional Psych 101.

With targeted assistance and an approach that forces students to master each topic, the student actually ends up gaining confidence. The student gets a sense that she can control her own learning. She learns how to learn. Her behavior changes.

תוויות: למידה, מקוון

networks that are both socially constructed and individually driven

Students who understand that their knowledge is socially constructed can benefit immensely from the integration of social networking into their learning process. It cannot be understated that the sooner students understand that their knowledge is not an isolated construct the sooner they will develop skills of negotiation, debate (an almost forgotten academic skill), critical inquiry, and cognitive positioning--all of which are essential in becoming successful lifelong learners as well as developing expertise in their discipline.

In the digital world, these kinds of groups, if they are truly based in learning, need not be confined to a class or a course but can continue long after the course has ended.

... if students begin a class with existing communities of learners, why silence those and start new ones? Similarly, if students initiate new communities of learners during a class, why attempt to end those simply to apply a grade?

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, כלים חברתיים, למידה, רשתות חברתיות

More technology, but not necessarily more sense about how to use it.

One of the challenges I think we need to address is the need to teach people a new way to learn.

תוויות: אוריינויות, מידענות

This has infused so much excitement in our students. I'm amazed at the creativity of these small children. . . . This is just a different way of problem-solving and learning, and it is the way we need to continue to go.

In the 20th century, it was all about memorizing content, but today it's not just about that. It's about being able to integrate other skills like critical thinking, communication and technology skills.

With new technology emerging daily, more demands in the workplace and global competition, students need to do more than solve algebra problems or regurgitate historical facts, Pope said. They need life skills that will make them competitive in a global economy.

תוויות: העתקה-הדבקה, כישורי המאה ה-21

... what is clear just one week into the term is that while collection of evidence is easy, reflection is hard.

Reflection as a concept should be abandoned in management educational practice because of:

• Lack of consistent definition
• Lack of operational value - we can't tell students how to do it
• Some minor, but potential dangers if we could tell students how to do it
• Lack of necessity - we do not see how such an ill-defined concept is necessary for helping students to learn.

Students get fed up with this, and feel it is playing a game - they know if they say 'I think I could have done better at this', then they'll get marks. Whereas if you said 'I think I did everything right' you won't.

We don't sit down at a keyboard and go "Um, time to reflect". In fact we mull things over, move thoughts about in our heads, have ideas (and forget them) at the most mundane times - making tea, driving the car, walking to the shops. Recording these reflections, at least for me, becomes a set of notes or memos. It is later that they come together into a way of thinking about something and I may or may not have a reason to write it down more coherently - often it is just stored in the head.

תוויות: בלוגים, הרהורים, רפלקציה

1. Become an informed citizen
2. Be able to read for pleasure
3. Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
4. Do well on standardized tests
5. Homogenize society, at least a bit
6. Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
7. Give kids something to do while parents work
8. Teach future citizens how to conform
9. Teach future consumers how to desire

תוויות: הרהורים, פני החינוך