I found this to be a conversation starter.
If we are going to change education, we need to know where we are going first.
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/12/whats-our-vision-for-the-future-of-learning/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29
This Is prettyy neat.
I would love to do this kind of thing with students.
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/a-tiny-speaker-made-out-of-paper
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/a-tiny-speaker-made-out-of-paper
I am really looking forward to trying this with kids.
I was especially interested in the discussion of students as active participants in MOOCS.
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&ie=UTF8&nv=1&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http://spilloneso.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/%25C2%25ADlearning-is-not-simply-a-process-of-reception-and-filtering/&usg=ALkJrhj-I8qriXNpc9gk46XBuBaOgZTcdw
This is incredibly interesting.
What happens when students have easy access to all this computing power?
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/11/putting-the-wolfram-language-and-mathematica-on-every-raspberry-pi/
This is really interesting:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-03-chess-2-the-sequel-how-a-street-fightin-man-fixed-the-worlds-most-famous-game
As I was reading it, I was imagining this as a STEM project. Learning to build something while actually building it.
I really appreciated this article. As a middle school Science teacher, I developed a self-directed curriculum for an 8th grade Biology course, and delivered it over two years. It was an amazing experience, watching the students learn to work independently, and then going so far beyond what would have normally happened (in terms of depth of understanding) in a typical classroom.
In the Digital Age, What Becomes of the Library? | MindShift
This article does a great job connecting the printed page with the digital world. And, in the center of this nexus, is the librarian.
Why Programming Teaches So Much More Than Technical Skills | MindShift
Well said AND student driven.
MAKE | Is it a Hackerspace, Makerspace, TechShop, or FabLab?
This article made me think of something I have been churning about for a long time - schools as maker spaces.
I mean this in two ways.
The first is that I think that making if all kinds - arts, crafts, robotics, etextiles, welding, etc., should absoltely be in schools.
I also mean it in the sense of schools as places where people make deep understanding for themselves.
In a very real and practical way, I believe the two are intimately connected, and that these connections are essential to actual education reform.
(Says one teacher,) “Not all young students are interested in utilizing technology to make their art,” she said. “There can be much resistance in my classroom when we work on an art project that is going to be produced using Photoshop. I explain to my students that these are just alternative tools, and like any other tool, you can create something digitally that would be impossible to create by hand. Conversely, you can create something by hand that you cannot replicate digitally.”It made me think of other areas (like writing) where we may insist on using technology (keyboarding instead of hand writing), without perhaps providing and choice or thinking through what we get and lose by these choices.
I really appreciated this article. IR starts, I believe, to reveal the always broader agendas involved in ed tech.
Connected Learning: Tying Student Passions to School Subjects | MindShift
This article is truly worth some discussion.
“If you give the students a lot more ownership and allow them to pursue their ideas rather than direct them too closely, you get much better results because they are so creative and they have great ideas,” she said. “But it’s scary teaching. I’ve gotten over thinking I have to answer every single question they have. It’s so liberating.”'via Blog this'
By the Numbers: Teachers, Tech, and the Digital Divide | MindShift
This study seems to have provided fairly predictable results.
The bigger questions for me are:
1. How can we capture the richness of technology usage by teachers and learners?
2. How can these technologies be used to powerfully close a digital divide?
3. In a true community of learners, what does it matter who knows more or less?
I desperately want us to move beyond this level of discussion, into something more transformational.
Tongue-tingling interface lets you taste data - New Scientist - New Scientist
This could be an amazing way to teach students to "experience" data, instead of just talking about them.
For David Preston, the term “open source learning” — a variation on inquiry learning or passion-based learning – is about helping students choose their own learning path, an approach that already has some well-known champions among educators.What do you think?
What models are we building for education (and why)? Who are the experts we trust in ed-tech and why? What are their interests in making predictions or even -- and I am implicated here too -- in identifying trends?What models, indeed.
