למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

if we want students to engage with learning, we won't tell them the answers.

You want to succeed in learning? Then learn to activate your own capacity to learn. Figure it out. Use that thing sitting on your lap and the connection to the world that it represents. And stop leaning on me; because soon enough I won't be here. And it will just be you and the world.

תוויות: הוראה, למידה

Students randomly selected for the program will receive iPads loaded with digital versions of their textbooks for the coming school year. Their progress will be tracked and compared against that of their classmates using traditional textbooks to determine the potential benefit of a switch to digital technology.

Students with iPads will have instant access to more than 400 videos from teaching experts walking them through the concepts and assignments, rather than having to rely on the teacher's explanation in class. There is also a homework coach and animated instructions on how to complete assignments.

Cathie: So, when the iPad class shows higher test scores, there is no way to tell if it was the iPad per se or the 400 videos or the coach or the myriad of other elements that caused the gain in test scores. In fact, it is probably all the factors and given the confounds...
Elliot:... academics talk funny.
Cathie:... oh hush... there is no way to even correlate an increase in test scores with the use of the iPads.
Elliot: This situation points out the absurdity of traditional physics-style experiments in social contexts. There is simply no way to hold everything constant except one variable!
Cathie: The crazy thing is: what if the iPad class does worse than the traditional algebra classes? Does that mean that iPad is bad?
Elliot: No! To do a real educational experiment is expensive, time consuming, and requires considerable planning. The “experiment” organized by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the California Secretary of Education in several districts in California does not sound carefully conceived.

in the future all classes will be using iPad-like, mobile learning devices – not paper-based textbooks – for learning.

תוויות: למידה, ספרי לימוד

However, instead of lecturing about polynomials and exponents during class time – and then giving his young charges 30 problems to work on at home – Fisch has flipped the sequence. He’s recorded his lectures on video and uploaded them to YouTube for his 28 students to watch at home. Then, in class, he works with students as they solve problems and experiment with the concepts.

Lectures at night, “homework” during the day. Call it the Fisch Flip.

When he puts it like that, you want to slap your forehead at the idea’s inexorable logic. You wonder why more schools aren’t doing it this way. That’s the power of flipping. It melts calcified thinking and leads to solutions that are simple to envision and to implement.

I did not originate the idea of flipping homework and lectures. Many other folks are doing this also and, frankly, most of them are doing it better than I am.

תוויות: שיעורי בית

Manage the flow of information from a wide variety of sources

Use technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information

תוויות: כישורי המאה ה-21, RSS

I first got a request from the CBC Radio afternoon program in Prince George but after explaining my perspective to the producer in a pre-interview she confessed that this wasn't what they were expecting and they would have to get back to me. They never did and I suspect the reason is they were looking for somebody to present the same old story about how the net generation is changing the world.

I was somewhat put off as I sat listening to the lead-in to my interview at 7:40 am and heard the announcer say, "Coming up, an interview with a BCIT professor who doesn't believe in technology in the classroom."

תוויות: ילידים

to get my sixth graders re-focused on usage and paragraphing and a few other skills, along with researching and finding information and then reporting it out accurately, I started to design a lesson using “The Important Book” by Margaret Wise Brown.

I melded the simple pattern from the book with doing research to come up with a way to practice both. I also took into account that students like mine that are lacking in schema often don’t get excited about many topics because they often lack the base understanding that makes things interesting and engaging.

Get students published, and they start to edit themselves and want to write more. Require everything to be perfect, and you stifle writing and the willingness to self edit.

Maps tell a story. And that's what my Human Geography students and I talked about today. We talked about how you could lay a map of something as seemingly innocuous as how people describe soft drinks over the context of patterns of human habitation and find a telling correlation.

תוויות: בלוגים, דוגמאות, Twitter

And that's why in this -- what I guess you'd call the third season of TeachPaperless -- I am questioning whether or not I need to write this blog. Because so long as you can get computers and access, you can do this stuff. You don't need to pay me to come teach you. You don't need me to write a book to sell you. This stuff is easy; all you have to do is experiment a bit and find what works for you.

... solve your problem openly. While you're working on the problem, describe what you're doing, how you planned for the problem, and how you're addressing it. Let students know your thinking process. Let them see you think!

תוויות: כלי ווב 2.0

I found that as I looked upon the whole positivist (think knowledge transfer), interpretive (think knowledge as contextual), and critical (think knowledge and power relationships) paradigms, I did so not as a wet-behind-the-ears student seeking to remember what each was, but as a student trying to see how they all fitted together with what I understand, and my own context.

That’s what all those (horrible) Learner Management Systems are about, it’s the objective of death-by-PowerPoint, and the intention of many static learning objects... and this type of learning is ok in some circumstances. When knowledge transfer and memorisation in a hurry is what you need, the positivist paradigm appears to work.

The suggestion implicit in most of the discussions on “open data” ... is that “everyone” has the potential to make use of the data. However, as we know from experience elsewhere, not “everyone” has access to the digital infrastructure, to the hardware or software, or to the financial or educational resources/skills which would allow for the effective use of data or any other digital resource. Thus rather than the entire range of potential users being able to translate their access into meaningful applications and uses, the lack of these foundational requirements means that the exciting new outcomes available from open data are available only to those who are already reasonably well provided for technologically and with other resources.

In a sector of the economy as dominated by political Libertarianism as web technology is, the idea that opening up platforms of data for innovation needs to include consideration of the unequal circumstances of potential consumers of that data is unlikely to be a popular argument. We tend to believe that the web and data are meritocracies, where anyone with enough motivation can create value and the tide will rise, raising all ships.

תוויות: כלים חברתיים, שימוש בבתי ספר

תוויות: הרהורים