למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

In assigning certain mechanizable functions to machines, the teacher emerges in his proper role as an indispensable human being.

Now the designers of computerized tutoring systems are beginning to make sensing and responding to emotions a key part of the process, and they’re finding that users learn more as a result.

Skilled human tutors likely arrived at these insights some time ago. Our computers are just now catching up to what good teachers have done forever: make students’ feelings part of the lesson.

But rather than fundamentally change school – rather than ask why so much of the job of teaching entails “burdensome chores” – education technology seems more likely to offload that drudgery to machines.

The MOOC Where Everybody Learned

There was no evidence that cohorts with low initial ability learned less than the other cohorts

should allay concerns that less-well-prepared students cannot learn in MOOCs

But that’s not to say that the less-well-prepared students did well. Many of them scored significantly lower than did students with more schooling. Some would have earned failing grades.

The point is that even the students who got bad grades in the course came away knowing more than they did at the outset.

The learning management system has shaped a generation’s view of education technology, and I’d contend, shaped it for the worst. It has shaped what many people think ed-tech looks like, how it works, whose needs it suits, what it can do, and why it would do so. The learning management system reflects the technological desires of administrators — it’s right there in the phrase. “Management.” It does not reflect the needs of teachers and learners.

How education worked offline translated into how courses would work online. What a course looked like. How a course, and the knowledge that was generated and shared therein, began and ended in conjunction with the academic calendar. How each course is a separate entity — one instructor and a roster — hermetically sealed in a walled off online space, much like a walled off classroom.

But. We can’t just abdicate the responsibility of the institution to provide the facilities that are needed to support the activities of the instructors and students. That doesn’t mean just “hey – there’s the internet. go to it.” It means providing ways for students to register in courses. For their enrolment to be automatically processed to provision access to resources (physical classrooms, online environments, libraries, etc…). For students’ grades and records to be automatically pushed back into the Registrar’s database so they can get credit for completing the course. For integration with library systems, to grant access to online reserve reading materials and other resources needed as part of the course.

Any eLearning tool, no matter how openly designed, will eventually become indistinguishable from a Learning Management System once a threshold of supported use-cases has been reached.

Closed courses provide a sense of protection for students and professors, just like the closed classroom door does. ... there is an argument to be made that academic freedom, student participation, and the use of copyrighted material, is much easier and “freer” in a closed silo.

Like D’Arcy, I work with and support the need for the boring, but oh so important administrative functions that our iteration of Blackboard support and that are needed for teaching and learning just now. If we got rid of Bb, I think it is fair to say there would be a fair amount of chaos for our students and staff alike. I have been in several meetings over the last year where a new shiny (and sometimes not so shiny) thing has been talked about with almost awe and wonder. This despite the fact that it just duplicates what are already doing within Bb but without the crucial integration “thangs” that automagically assign modules to students and staff. In these cases I have very much been advocating sticking to the ‘devil we know”, and trying to have a more holistic conversation about learning, where and how it (could) takes place in our context.

should prompt universities to encourage innovative teaching that reflects modern realities

What the Apple Watch Tells Us About the Future of Ed Tech

Nothing.

So please, if you’re thinking about writing that post or article, don’t.

I’m begging you.

Don’t they get to play in dirt anymore?

So where does the dirt come in? Digital learning is another kind of hands-on, messy learning. It is our job to balance it so every child — our children, our students — experiences the mess and mud of learning in the science lab, in the outdoors, on our tablets, with crayons and paper (gasp!), and in collaboration with those we can connect to only digitally. Think of it as connected mud.

The high school students in the project were to create original, documented programs to the specifications of teachers in the elementary grades. Tomberg (המורה האחראי לפרויקט) wanted the programmers to work closely with the students and teachers receiving the programs.

The computer is going to force us to reexamine our goals in education.

In many ways, I think that we were more innovative and even forward thinking back before computers and the Internet became mainstream.