למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

Personalized education does not mean kids just doing what they want. In fact, quite the opposite

Obviously, teaching in the 21-century is an altogether different phenomenon; never before could learning be happening the way it is now -- everywhere, all the time, on any possible topic, supporting any possible learning style or preference.

If we just let kids continue to ask questions when they got to school, would we have to “teach” them how to do this when they got older?

Imagine the shock that kids experience when they show up to school on day one and their learning spaces move from playgrounds and neighborhoods to four walls. I know that for some kids those four walls may offer more than they’d get in their own neighborhoods, but there’s no doubt that as kids progress through school, those four walls get less creative and more constraining as they go. So now we need to “rethink” them? What if we’d never rethought them in the first place?

I understand that the demands of traditional schooling force us to keep our focus on efficiencies and standards and outcomes, and that it’s more than difficult to break that focus when the state and parents and to some extent the world is watching and measuring and ranking and rating.

In Online Courses, Students Learn More by Doing Than by Watching

provided general course structure (registration, syllabus, etc), video lectures and slides, discussion forums, writing assignments, quizzes ... and a final exam

a variety of expository content (text, examples, images, and video clips) and a large number of interactive activities.

Just because students register to use OLI (החומרים האינטראקטיביים שהוכנו), does not guarantee that they do. And, similarly, just because students are in the MOOC does not mean they take advantage of the features it provides, such as watching the lecture videos.

Our results support the view that video lectures may add limited value for student learning and that providing more interactive activities will better enhance student learning outcomes.

Though specific activities vary from course to course, video-based lectures and student discussion forums typically form the core of the MOOC instructional experience. We call this the “lecture model”. The Open Learning Initiative (המיזם של האוניברסיטה של החוקרים), which has offered online learning environments since 2002, takes a different approach focusing on rich and interactive learn-by-doing activities, aligned with student-centered learning outcomes, and designed around science-based learner models. We call this the “learn-by-doing model.” Both models offer rich datasets, though with different focuses and capturing different kinds of learner interactions.

ארגון ה-OECD מפרסם תוצאות ממחקר כלל עולמי חדש, שמגלה כי סביבה טכנולוגית אינה משפרת את הישגי התלמידים. מהדו"ח עולה כי מדינות שבהן היה שימוש גבוה במחשבים, לא הגיעו להישגים גבוהים במבחנים בינלאומיים.

Computers 'do not improve' pupil results, says OECD

the findings of the report should not be used as an "excuse" not to use technology, but as a spur to finding a more effective approach.

It is endemic in society now, at home young people will be using technology, there's no way that we should take technology out of schools, schools should be leading not following.

We're training them to use technology which hasn't yet been invented. So how can you possibly divorce technology from industry or from teaching and learning?

עוד מראים הממצאים כי במדינות שהשקיעו במידה הגבוהה ביותר בטכנולוגיה – ספרד, נורבגיה ודנמרק, לא חל שיפור משמעותי בהישגי התלמידים בקריאה, מתמטיקה או מדעים, בהשוואה למדינות אחרות.

באוסטרליה, ניו זילנד ושבדיה, שם השימוש באינטרנט הוא השכיח ביותר בבתי הספר, נמצאה הידרדרות משמעותית ביכולת הקריאה של התלמידים.

מנגד, במדינות בהן התלמידים מגיעים להישגים הלימודיים הגבוהים ביותר במבחני PISA, כמו שנגחאי שבסין, ישנה תדירות שימוש נמוכה מאוד במחשבים.

These findings, based on an analysis of PISA data, tell us that, despite the pervasiveness of information and communication technologies (ICT) in our daily lives, these technologies have not yet been as widely adopted in formal education. But where they are used in the classroom, their impact on student performance is mixed, at best. In fact, PISA results show no appreciable improvements in student achievement in reading, mathematics or science in the countries that had invested heavily in ICT for education. (ע' 15)

PISA data show that, in countries where mathematics lessons focus on formulating, and solving, real-world problems – whether in engineering, biology, finance or any problem that arises in everyday life and work – students reported that their teachers use computers to a greater extent in instruction. (ע' 16)

But while PISA results suggest that limited use of computers at school may be better than not using computers at all, using them more intensively than the current OECD average tends to be associated with significantly poorer student performance. ICT is linked to better student performance only in certain contexts, such as when computer software and Internet connections help to increase study time and practice.

Emerging technology today departs from my previous vision of improving the human condition. Through AI/Machine Learning, we are constantly hearing that technology is becoming more human and becoming more capable of judgements that we once thought were our domain. In education though, the opposite is happening: educational technology is not becoming more human; it is making the human a technology.

Both Udacity and Knewton require the human, the learner, to become a technology, to become a component within their well-architected software system. Sit and click. Sit and click. So much of learning involves decision making, developing meta-cognitive skills, exploring, finding passion, taking peripheral paths. Automation treats the person as an object to which things are done. There is no reason to think, no reason to go through the valuable confusion process of learning, no need to be a human. Simply consume. Simply consume. Click and be knowledgeable.

I no longer want to be affiliated with the tool-fetish of edtech. It’s time to say adios to technosolutionism that recreates people as agents within a programmed infrastructure.

I used to feel bad that I wasn’t “keeping up” and trading in some of my old tools for new ones – no longer. I’m not interested in tools that are meant to mainly make sure that teachers and administrators are micro managing their tracking of standards. I’m interested in helping kids to learn.

our cultural notion of the pedagogical work that happens in a good lecture is pretty impoverished relative to the reality. We don’t have a clear understanding of all the things that a good lecture accomplishes, and therefore we often lose valuable elements of student support when we try to replace it.

This has pretty serious implications for MOOCs, flipped classrooms, personalized learning, and a wide array of pedagogical approaches that replace a traditional in-person lecture with something else.

We tend to think of a traditional “content-driven lesson” as a “lecture,” and we tend to think of a “lecture” as a professor droning on for an hour and twenty minutes with no student interaction. But most lectures are not that, and no lectures are only that.

The large number of questions suggests that in actual practice there is very little effort put forth to teach our boys and girls to be self-reliant, independent mental workers. The discrepancy between our theory and practice is nowhere more patent. With the tremendous pressure incident to the rehearsal of questions numbering from seven to one hundred and seventy, for the purpose of covering every conceivable issue expressed in the pages of a text assignment, the teacher loses sight of the fact that he has a youth to teach through the medium of his subject. There is no time to teach him how to study: how to organize subject matter, how to judge relative worths of facts studied, what to memorize.

when you only use a laptop to take notes, you don’t absorb new materials as well, largely because typing notes encourages verbatim, mindless transcription.

Learning to take notes requires practice and frequent reminders from instructors, teachers, and coaches. Educators already know we need to teach how to highlight material in texts. Left to their own devices, younger students develop the habit of highlighting anything they don’t know. They often try using different colors of highlighters for different pieces of information. Students tell me they use blue for new vocabulary, yellow for new facts, pink for new dates, etc. While their texts are quite colorful at the end, students don’t really absorb material and have no clue how to use the highlighted passages to study for quizzes or tests.

Taking notes on a laptop is far more useful than longhand if taught and practiced correctly. Laptop notes can be annotated, tagged, re-used, shared with study groups, and, when cited correctly, become the basis for research articles, class papers, and essays. Electronic notes also encourage reorganizing, further research, etc., that both enhance and extend learning.

The ability to simply obtain information and recite it back is not necessarily learning as much as it is regurgitation. I might better be able to retain the facts shared, but it doesn’t mean I understand them. On the other hand, if I am taking a picture, putting it in my camera roll and doing nothing with that information, then really, what good is that?

When I speak, I try to challenge people to create something with the information I have shared, whether it is write a blog post, reflection, podcast, video, or any other type of media. If they really want to process what I have shared, they will need to make their own connections, not the connections I have made for them.

Note taking is not primarily about manual duplication of a set of resources produced by a teacher. It’s an active process of sensemaking and internalization. Of visualizing the processes of thinking. There is no part of the valuable process of note taking that can be obsolesced by mere content being posted online.