Posted on April 25, 2009
I like Mark Bauerlein.
I had the chance to speak with him, then post the interview with him on my website about his book: The Dumbest…
There are some very specific areas of current school curricula that will, in my opinion, become part of the dustbin of academic history simply because technology is going to make the teaching of the area useless. If these actually happen, as I suspect they will, they will force us as educators to…
There are a lot of reasons I love my Mac, but even after having used pretty much Macs only since my beloved Atari 1040 ST died in 1993, I am still thrilled when I find a new trick that I either forgot or someone shows me for the first time.
While watching Apple’s Maria Henderson give a…
How can we say on the one hand “We must differentiate instruction for each learner based on their needs” while on the other hand say “Every learner must take the exact same test to see if their needs have been met?
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| — | Tim Holt (via holtthink) |
Why do people with little or no knowledge of education think they know more about education than people that are trained in education? No other profession is treated that way. No one goes into surgical suites and tells doctors how to operate or into cockpits and tells pilots how to fly planes. No one goes into a court and tells the lawyers they are “doing it wrong.” No one tells professional football players that they should be outsourced. No one goes to firefighters and says “Don’t worry, we can fight fires on our own, we don’t need you.”No one says that we should privatize the military to save it or to save money. Yet, that is exactly what happens in education. An interesting phenomenon to say the least.
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| — | (via holtthink) |
Proud to be a Texan!
Here is a phrase from the Texas GOP 2012-13 platform:
Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education…
From the article:
Twenty-four years ago, at a time when many would have struggled to describe the internet in even the most conceptual terms, George Washington University (DC) launched its online Educational Technology Leadership Program, one of the first of its kind. Today, the online directory GetEducated.com lists nearly 50 online graduate programs in educational technology.
Their popularity continues to grow along with the demand for educators who are prepared to use new technologies in teaching and administration. At the same time, a number of issues animate the discussion around educational technology that were not even a consideration a quarter of a century ago. What makes for an effective online master’s program in ed tech has clearly evolved over the years.
T.H.E. Journal Contributing Editor Jan Fletcher spoke with instructors and administrators in online ed tech programs and identified five critical elements of any online master’s programs in education technology that you should look for when evaluating which program is right for you.
1) The Right Focus
Master’s programs in educational technology vary in their academic focus from institution to institution. Make sure the program you’re investigating covers what you want to learn. “Some [programs] will lead you toward designing learning technology or designing instruction,” says Cindy Pancer, an instructor for Jones International University, in Centennial, CO. “Yet, teachers may be more interested in promoting the integration of technology in classroom instruction, or providing alternatives for K-12 students to enhance their learning using technology.”
Regardless of the specific focus, Pancer advises that the program should at the very least address in its curriculum the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) national standards for teachers, which describe “the fundamental concept, knowledge, skills, and attitude for applying technology in educational settings.”
From the article:
To hear Dean Pacey describe online learning is a lesson in how the Internet—despite its vastness—can actually be a very personal place. In fact, taking courses over a computer, he believes, has the potential to make education more intimate and effective than any typical class-teacher setting, which is often full of distractions.
“When I go to university and I sign up for psych 100, I’m sitting with 1,500 other students with one talking head who I can’t hear and who may or may not speak English well at the front of the room,” he says. “How is that a rich experience?”
By comparison, Pacey imagines a world in which students in any country can pick and choose the courses they’d like to take over the Internet from the best international schools, many of which are in Canada. These courses would feature video lectures, online chats and news feeds related to the content, and would be delivered in whatever language the student preferred. Even more surprising: while the course content could be viewed on a computer screen or tablet, it would be designed, first and foremost, for smartphones—making the “classroom” entirely mobile and available anytime, anywhere.
Pacey is chief operating officer at ClevrU, a Waterloo, Ont.-based tech firm, which is set to offer this innovative virtual education as soon as this summer. And the target audience is just as compelling: developing countries, where there are millions of individuals who want an education but can’t afford it or access it locally—and where smartphones are common.
We complain about kids sitting around on video games not moving, yet, we stick them in chairs in school and tell them not to move.
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Thoughts while writing a presentation on learning spaces.
(via holtthink) |
From the article:
The immediate access that students have to millions of results for every question or keyword has created a real challenge for teaching. Before the advent of search engines, the academy created a self-defining class of legitimate sources. They were published. To wildly overstate it, if it was published, you considered it. If it wasn’t, you didn’t.
McClurken believes it is more a matter of quantity than quality. Back in the days of more paper than not, you still had to evaluate research papers, books, and other resources in terms of potential biases: how the material fit in with that of the larger discipline and authorial reputation. What professors must now teach students is an “amped up version of what we were doing before.”
Sifting the wheat from the chaff has become more important as the sources have proliferated.
“Quantity has a quality all its own,” as the murderous dictator quipped.
This issue is not merely a pedagogical one. It can change the way the rest of us see things; it can and will produce “common wisdom.” That is because access to information on a topic deforms, on a structural level, the investigation of that topic.
“We have to be careful about the digitization of ‘everything,’” McClurken warned. “There is a myth that everything has been digitized. Things online are going to shape research going forward. If one archive is online and another is not, odds are most of the people working in that subject will favor the one online.”
I just created a petition: Producers of Television shows and movies aimed at children: Portray classrooms as modern learning centers infused with technology., because I care deeply about this very important issue.
I’m trying to collect 100000 signatures, and I could really use your help.
To…
I just created a petition: Producers of Television shows and movies aimed at children: Portray classrooms as modern learning centers infused with technology., because I care deeply about this very important issue.
I’m trying to collect 100000 signatures, and I could really use your help.
To…
Friends,
I just created a petition: Producers of Television shows and movies aimed at children: Portray classrooms as modern learning centers infused with technology., because I care deeply about this issue. The way classrooms are portrayed in the media can affect how the public expects…
