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.

Augmented reality has strong potential to provide both powerful contextual, in situ learning experiences and serendipitous exploration and discovery of the connected nature of information in the real world.

Augmented reality is an active, not a passive technology; students can use it to construct new understanding based on interactions with virtual objects that bring underlying data to life as it responds to user input.

The growing use of AR in education

AR can be used to give mini homework lessons, to put in common reviews or essays made by students, or for social content, such as an interactive photo wall.

The use of augmented reality in educational settings is a disruptive innovation that can deeply alter traditional methods, especially when applied to the primary school environment. An interaction with an iPAD and a recorded teaching session can help involve the child’s participation, as can be seen in this video.

מחקר: שימוש בטאבלטים משבש את שנת הלילה

בניסוי שנמשך כשבועיים, מספר מתנדבים התבקשו לקרוא מאייפד ארבע שעות לפני השינה במשך חמישה לילות ברציפות, בעוד שקבוצת הביקורת התבקשה לקרוא ספרים מודפסים עם אור עמום. לאחר שבוע, שתי הקבוצות החליפו ביניהן את מטלת הקריאה.

צוות המחקר מצא באלה שהשתמשו במכשירים האלקטרוניים רמות נמוכות של מלטונין - "הורמון החושך" שנוטה לגדול בערב וגורם לישנוניות. לקבוצה זו לקח זמן רב יותר להירדם וחבריה בילו פחות זמן בשנת חלום, הנחשבת כשינה עמוקה. יתר על כן, מי שהשתמש במכשירים האלקטרונים דווח בבוקר שלמחרת על עייפות, גם לאחר שינה בת שמונה שעות.

"We introduce these devices that have medical and biological effects without requiring any health studies on their impact ... They don't have to go through any evaluation like a drug would, for safety and efficacy," Czeisler said. "I think it's time to rethink that."

Those nights were so oppressive that scientists now believe our sleep patterns were radically different in the ages before ubiquitous night lighting. In 2001, the historian Roger Ekirch published a remarkable study that drew upon hundreds of diaries and instructional manuals to convincingly argue that humans had historically divided their long nights into two distinct sleep periods.... Ekirch documents the way the ideal of a single, eight-hour block of continuous sleep was constructed by nineteenth-century customs, an adaptation to a dramatic change in the lighting environment of human settlements. Like all adaptations, its benefits carried inevitable costs: the middle-of-the-night insomnia that plagues millions of people around the world is not, technically speaking, a disorder, but rather the body’s natural sleep rhythms asserting themselves over the prescriptions of nineteenth-century convention....

The flicker of the tallow candle had not been strong enough to transform our sleep patterns. To make a cultural change that momentous, you needed the steady bright glow of nineteenth-century lighting. (עמ' 200-201)

For most of evolution we slept a certain way…. Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology.

One of the most convincing arguments for using tablets in the classroom is the possibility for students to then take that learning outside of the classroom – they can use the digital materials they are familiar with from class on their own devices at home.

This is Why We Need Tablets? Really?

Wow.

It is important to remember that fundamentally tablets are simply another tool to assist language learning.

Teachers would probably give the same consideration to classroom organisation if students had no access to technology, but the implementation of tablets is an opportunity to reconsider what works best. As the students become familiar with working straight on to the tablet, class time can be organized differently.

It is no coincidence that that the increase in tablets in education has led to an increase in project-based learning

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

Connected devices don’t replace textbooks... they destroy them. The last thing I want my students to do is to have a connected device and then have a traditional textbook on it.

1. Is the technology being used “Just because it’s there”?
2. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in Old ways?
3. Is the technology allowing the teacher/students to do Old things in New ways?
4. Is the technology creating new and different learning experiences for the students?

As one moves along the continuum, computer technology becomes more important in the classroom but at the same time becomes more invisibly woven into the demands of good teaching and learning.

The teacher’s tablet also has an app blocker and monitoring functions that can see and control what’s happening on student tablets, and a one-touch classroom-control feature to lock their screens, replacing whatever was on them with an eye symbol and the phrase “Eyes on Teacher.”

This growing stream of information, which can be analyzed down to individual keystrokes, yields a picture that will eventually progress in complexity from, say, a list of words a student looks up to a profile of metacognitive skills — like the ability to concentrate — and in time to a full-blown portrait of a developing mind. In theory, each student will generate the intellectual equivalent of a fantastically detailed medical chart.

When fully implemented, LAUSD students will have access to:

• E-instruction: Instruction geared for the 21st century
• E-curriculum: Individualized learning opportunities
• E-textbooks: Interactive, searchable textbooks
• E-tools: Calculators, audio/video players, digital camera, and more
• E-assessments: Ongoing feedback for personalized student learning plans

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.

They [מפקחי בתי הספר] are also being urged, often with the hope of economizing, to introduce new panaceas such as teaching machines and educational television. Unfortunately their training does not enable them to understand the educational aspects, advantages and limitations, of these devices; so if they are adopted it is apt to be for public relations purposes. In American education it is important to be able to say that one's school system is abreast of the latest developments.

In some ways this dichotomy mirrors the disconnect between our traditional factory model of education and the growing personalization of learning out there in the real world. We continue to try and maintain an homogenized approach to schooling while the opportunities for individual and high social learning is exploding.

If a child’s attention wanders, a stern “eyes on teacher” prompt pops up. A quiz uses emoticons of smiley and sad faces so teachers can instantly gauge which students understand the lesson and which need help.

The purpose of this table is to foster the same nice, neat, uniform, teacher-directed instruction that has been the centerpiece of schooling for more than a century. If it’s not there already, I fully expect Amplify to come with an app for taking standardized tests since the whole package is designed to address the holy grail of American education: higher scores.

"Maybe we will shift to a new form of classrooms, leaving the traditional way of gathering 20-30 students in a room everyday," said Harun. "Maybe students will have their own cubicles as we do now, and they will run apps and watch videos, etc. Or maybe they will not have the obligation to come to school everyday, they will study at home, with their parents working at home."

Ok, so here we go again. This is what "learning" looks like to folks who think an education is simply mastering a set of concepts and skills that we deliver to kids. We know what they need to know, and all that we really need to change is the delivery method. Cubicles and apps. That’s reform. Cheaper. More efficient. Quantifiable.

The author would like us to believe that education is being “radically rethought” by the online and “blended” options that are available to students. But let’s be clear; the only things being rethought here are the delivery models of a traditional education and, most importantly, the financial models to sustain it and make lots of money for outside businesses who see technology and access as a way to not only line their pockets with taxpayer money but also bust the unions that stand in their way.

"Also, technology will also change learning from drill-and-practice to project-based learning," added Harun. "Students will have more hands-on activities and real-life projects, which is still not the case in here."

• שכירת כוכבי אקדמיה שיכתבו ספרים נוצצים ומושכים
• קביעת בעלות על הספרים האלה בידי אפל
• הפצת הספרים בחינם כדי לעודד רכישת עוד ועוד מכשירי iPad