למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

The school board didn’t allocate the money for the networking upgrade because the school board thought that the only real difference between iPads and Chromebooks was that the latter had an attached keyboard. Apparently, no one had explained the networking needs of Chromebooks to the board.

In June, the pilot project was deemed a huge success. The teachers had put a tremendous amount of effort into creating new, inquiry-oriented curriculum materials that exploited the collaboration software. Student engagement in classwork was up — as was student achievement. The principal was pleased and told the teachers that they would be able to use the carts of Chromebooks again in 2016-2017.

Of course, there were all sorts of rules about when a cart could be signed out and for how long it could be signed out. The icing on the cake rule on cart sign out was this: Those using the computing devices for state testing purposes had priority. State tests, district tests, and even classroom tests had priority over curricular use of the computing devices. In effect, then, there was no way the two English teachers would have the kind of access in 2016-2017 to computing devices for their students that they had enjoyed in 2015-2016.

Typing practice gets priority over curriculum!

Officials said they opposed a delay in part because new state and national tests will be taken on computers, and they don't want Los Angeles students to lack the necessary experience with them.

From an administrator's point of view, it made more sense to put the computers together in one room – misleadingly named "computer lab" – under the control of a specialized computer teacher. Now all the children could come together and study computers for an hour a week. By an inexorable logic the next step was to introduce a curriculum for the computer. Thus, little by little the subversive features of the computer were eroded away: Instead of cutting across and so challenging the very idea of subject boundaries, the computer now defined a new subject; instead of changing the emphasis from impersonal curriculum to excited live exploration by students, the computer was now used to reinforce School’s ways. What had started as a subversive instrument of change was neutralized by the system and converted into an instrument of consolidation.

When there were few computers in the school, the administration was content to leave them in the classrooms of teachers who showed greatest enthusiasm, and these were generally teachers who were excited about the computer as an instrument of change.

Let’s start with a video you have no doubt seen, a super-slow-motion video of a bat hitting a baseball. If you slow it down to 10,000 frames per second, you will see something that looks like an optical illusion. You will see that the baseball, which seems pretty solid, compresses like it’s a racquetball hitting a wall. It gets smooshed. And, if you look even more closely, you will see that the bat actually bends, as if made of rubber. Similar things are true when you slow down a football being kicked, a golf ball being driven or even a basketball being dribbled.

There is no possible way we would know this — or even believe it — if the cameras didn’t show it to us. I remember listening to NFL Films’ Steve Sabol marvel about how a kickoff looked when you slowed down the film just enough. Everybody at Films just sat around watching in wonder. “It was,” he said, “like seeing a new star through a telescope.”

But, when dealing with replay — and the ability to slow the game down to 2,000 frames per second — the rabbit hole goes very deep. And you can’t just stop with fixing the bad calls. Because the more you slow it down, the more you see things that the eyes could never see before. And once you see those things — like someone hopping slightly off the bag in a stolen base — you can’t UNSEE them.

And the more we slow down this game, the more we’re going to see stuff like that, silly little stuff that should not matter, but in slow motion does matter. We move away from the spirit of the game, I think.

Is the digital learning revolution a waste of money?

an earlier study that drew on PISA results and contained data from 250,000 students aged 15 [that] showed that they performed worse at school if they had a computer in their bedroom

In Israel, researchers found performance declined in elementary and middle schools with computers

in Romania it has been reported that poorer children whose families received money to buy a computer performed worse in school than those without computers

On one hand, children in families that received a voucher scored significantly higher on tests of computer skills and cognitive ability than their counterparts without a voucher. On the other hand, children in families that received a voucher had significantly lower school grades in math, English, and Romanian than their counterparts without vouchers. The authors conclude that "providing home computers to low-income children in Romania lowered academic achievement even while it improved their computer skills and cognitive ability.

A comparison between electronic and paper textbooks in Science [that] showed that embedded videos and hyperlinks in the former are a distraction and impede learning.

There is no indication that publishers are investing the time and hard work required to leverage this information into a new generation of electronic textbooks. Rather, it seems that most are taking the pedagogical devices from print books and putting them in digital format, with little evidence that they positively affect learning.

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.

The research revealed that while users initially believed the mobile devices would improve their ability to perform well with homework and tests and ultimately get better grades, the opposite was reported at the end of the study.

users felt smartphones were actually detrimental to their ability to learn

... our research clearly demonstrates that simply providing access to a smartphone, without specific directed learning activities, may actually be detrimental to the overall learning process.

have important implications for the use of technology in education

The research looked at the results of an experiment in which 282 participants in grades 2-4 were observed in the fall and spring during one school year. Student engagement was monitored by actions such as answering a question, raising a hand, or participating in discussion, while off-task behaviors included talking out of turn.

Children who stand at their desks instead of sitting stay on task better

The teachers reported that the students were much more engaged at the standup desk, and constantly moved their feet back and forth with the fidget bar. Students didn’t ask to use the bathroom or water fountain as much, and the height allowed them to see the board better.

The preliminary results suggest that students improve their ability to stay on task by 12 percent. That's the equivalent of gaining an extra seven minutes per hour of instruction time.

Over a three-week period of observations in Saitama prefecture, I captured 17 classroom videos from various subject areas across 1st to 12th grade. Every classroom I visited was equipped with a large green chalkboard. There were few computers, few projectors or smartboards, and no other visible forms of 21st century technology in most of the classrooms. Japanese colleagues and researchers confirmed this was representative of the average K-12 classroom in Japan. In January 2015, the Tokyo Broadcasting System reported approximately 75% of Japanese classrooms still use chalkboards as the primary medium for presentation of lesson content.

Language arts and social studies teachers used a variety of chalk colors, each with a consistent meaning and precise purpose related to grammatical terms, literary themes, or systems of government. They used magnetic timers on the board to pace activities and posted magnetic labels of student names to assign workspace for whole-class demonstrations. Most importantly, teachers carefully preserved a lesson storyline as they progressed across the board. They added elements in a strategic sequence that helped bring coherence to the lesson, and rarely erased content unless they reached a major instructional transition.

During a typical lesson study cycle, teachers conduct research, analyze curriculum, and design a detailed "research lesson" to address a jointly selected investigative theme. One team member teaches the research lesson while colleagues observe and collect data on student learning. The team then engages in extended discussion of results and potential revisions.

במקום שהשינוי האיטי של תוכנית הלימודים מעורר לעג מפני שהוא איננו תואם את השינוי המהיר של הטכנולוגיה, הוא בעצם מהווה תשתית לחשיבה חינוכית מעמיקה.

The more I observed Japanese masterful use of the chalkboard, the more I reflected on technology approaches in US classrooms. Not only do educators rarely discuss the rationale for which technologies might best support particular learning opportunities, many US schools are consumed by a haphazard race to adopt the latest innovation. While many classrooms are decked out with shiny new tablets, document projectors, smartboards, or infrared response systems, far too often these devices are under-utilized, and methods of use vary widely across teachers.

K-12 has been using the computer to automate direct instruction, the pedagogy that has dominated K-12 for the past 120+ years. In automating direct instruction, the computer has been and is being used to present information and drill learners. As Schuler, et al. pointed out, more than 80 percent of the apps in Apple’s iPad store are some form of digital flash card. While drilling learners via an iPad may be more fun for the children, drilling is still drilling, and the gains from using iPads have been modest – incremental at best.

The 11 Barriers to Technology Adoption

We have said it before — and been beaten up for saying it, by the way — but we will say it again: to a first approximation, the impact of 50 years of computing technologies on K-12 education has been zero.

When an early adopting science teacher visited a third-grade classroom to demonstrate the inquiry-oriented pedagogical practice of “fostering conversation through question asking," one student piped up: “Why are you asking us questions? Your job is [to] provide us with answers, not questions.”

If the tests are about “this or that fact,” then it is not surprising that personalized learning, with its focus on competency-based learning of “this or that fact,” is seeing significant adoption in U.S. schools.

Personalized learning does increase test scores!

השאיפות של גוגל לשנות את עתיד ילדיכם

המשתמשים מקבלים חוויה דומה למה שהם מחזיקים בו כל הזמן – הסמארטפון שלהם. גוגל מצמצמת את הפערים בין החוויה של הסמארטפון לבין החוויה של מחשב שולחני. הכל פשוט יותר.

על הגב של הקטנים שלכם מתחוללת אחת המלחמות הגדולות בין מיקרוסופט לבין גוגל על שוק ההשכלה (בתי ספר עד אוניברסיטאות).

התקשוב אינו תרומה של עולם ההיי-טק למערכת החינוך, אלא להפך – מערכת החינוך תורמת מיליוני שקלים ליזמים ולמשווקים של תעשיית ההיי-טק, שמוכרים לנו הבטחות מופרכות על למידה וחינוך. את הכסף משלמים ההורים. את המחיר משלמים הילדים.

מתי אפשר לחייב הורים לממן טאבלט?

מטרה חשובה - להפוך את הלמידה ליותר מהנה ומותאמת לתלמידים

אנחנו צריכים לדאוג שגם הבתי ספר יהיו שם, אחרת לא נהיה רלוונטיים

הספר הדיגיטאלי גם מאפשר למורים לדעת אונליין מה המצב של התלמידים שלהם

את ההשלכות של דור שהתחנך באמצעות מחשב במקום בספר נוכל לראות רק בעוד שנים

How Google Impacts The Way Students Think

When your formative years are spent working your fingers through apps and iPads, smartphones and YouTube, the digital world and its habits can bend and shape not just how you access information, but how you conceptualize it entirely. You see information differently – something that’s always accessible.

And you see knowledge as searchable, even though that’s not how it works.

Wikipedia is a perfect source of information provided you understand how sources and information work. Same with Google. In and of itself, it’s literally a perfect, whole thing that does exactly what it’s supposed to do; it’s misunderstanding the technology itself that causes problems.

• ב-"שימוש" מדובר בשימוש אקראי ושרירותי, ואילו ב-"הטמעה" השימוש מתוכנן ובעל תכלית
• ב-"שימוש" השימוש נדיר ומזדמן, ואילו ב-"הטמעה" השימוש נעשה לחלק אינטגרלי מהנעשה בכיתה
• ב-"שימוש" הטכנולוגיה משמשת להוראה סביב תכנים, ואילו ב-"הטמעה" הטכנולוגיה מקרבת, ומערבת את תלמידים עם התכנים
• ב-"שימוש" הטכנולוגיה משרתת חשיבה מסדר נמוך, ואילו ב-"הטמעה" הטכנולוגיה משרתת חשיבה מסדר גבוה

In all seriousness, it’s easy to say to “be purposeful.” It’s another to know what that looks like – which is where all of the indicators as a whole can be useful to you as an educator.

When I think about teaching before access to technology, I didn't have this hope of possibility. I see teachers today way more engaged, way more excited about teaching than ever before. That’s what technology does. It starts with access, it continues with support and encouragement and it can lead to change. I've seen it happen.

What I try to share is that these tools are about possibilities and mindsets. They offer hope that you can do things differently, that students can learn in new ways, that you can learn in new ways. When you have hope you are less likely to settle, your eyes and ears remain open to new ideas and your curiosity is piqued.

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.

She asked if it was OK to take home her school laptop and input grades from home, and the answer was of course since it was a school district computer. She informed them that even though she used her phone that at no time were the grades actually “on her phone” but only on “the cloud” or internet, so she was not sure how that was against policy. They admonished her again and informed her that she was never to do that again!

Officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District have immediately halted home use of the Apple tablets until further notice.

Teachers and administrators had programmed the iPads so that they were the only ones who controlled what was on them. But hours after getting them, between 300 and 400 students found ways to reprogram the iPads so they could download games and apps for social media sites, technology director Julie Bohnenkamp said.

As soon as the school learned what students were doing, teachers inspected each student's iPad, and the technology department had to reset the hundreds of tablets that had been altered by the students, Bohnenkamp told the Daily Journal.

Outside of the district's network ... a user is free to download content and applications and browse the Internet without restriction... As student safety is of paramount concern, breach of the ... system must not occur.

every student will be provided access to a personal computing device which will allow for a more individualized instruction