The Persistent Appeal of Technology in Learning Image credit: iStockphoto Dr. Victor Frankenstein loved technology, and Mary Shelley's work of fiction was at once a cautionary and promotional tale of technology's incredible potential. In the iconic story, he took the pieces of a human being and stitched them together to create something monstrous -- but in many ways more human than the model he was hoping to produce. Who doesn't love a little irony? Education loves technology, too -- and for good reason. Education & Technology: A Sometimes Awkward Marriage First off, people love technology, and people run education. The same goes with students. But there are other reasons why education consistently turns to technology -- important factors that can help us infer what it is that teachers, administrators and other stakeholders are truly after. An educational holy grail, of sorts. This applies to technology as well. Three Goals of Technology in Education Goal #1 Goal #2 Goal #3 Waiting for the Jumpstart In most ways that’s probably true.
Teaching Kids About “Stress” | Kids at SWiTCH “Stress hurts learning. Most important, however, stress hurts people. In a world as complex as the brain, is the relationship between stress and learning that straightforward? Recently, some of our high school students mentioned that they’re feeling really stressed about their upcoming exams. So I asked the children to fill a clear plastic bottle with water, some glitter and metallic paint. I told them… “There is a security guard in our brain called “amygdala”. The children and I opened up ourselves and shared with each a time when our brains feels all shaken up and confused. Like this: Like Loading...
Leap Year Project: A Prototype for Radically Experiential Learning | Education on GOOD Can young people create their own education? If so, how should they do it? For me, the roots of the question lie in the fact that I've always been hopeful. At a young age hope seemed sparse after my family life deteriorated due to a divorce and subsequent challenges. However, a group of teachers, mentors, and friends in my small town of Nixa, Missouri, became incredible supports. During my senior year of high school, I brought my Middle Eastern parents into the same room to share that I wouldn't be pursuing the expected route of becoming a doctor. I also began working for a student program at a church in the west suburbs of Chicago. My work made me curious about further education in business, design, and simply learning how I could make a difference. I began interviewing hundreds of friends, family, peers, college students, and professors, asking droves of questions about learning methods, practices, ideas, and personal dreams. So, can we create a new type of education?
How Can We Fix Education? Listen to Young People | Education on GOOD Daily news stories and countless blog posts detail the state of learning, education, and schools in America. It is a fervent conversation, but it's one led by adults: policymakers, school board members, school administrators, teachers, and parents. Despite the best intentions of adults, there is a critical aspect of transforming education that's clearly missing. Young people are not being invited to participate or to be a part of the decision-making process. And, as this debate about changing education goes on feverishly across the country, an entirely different dialogue is occurring among young people. In the last month, two youth voices have been center stage—Jeff Bliss, a student from Texas, and nine-year-old Asean Johnson a student from Chicago. As important as these questions are in helping us understand where young people are, answering them only offers an opportunity to release pent up anger, frustration, and cynicism. So how do we move forward? But we don't just ask questions.
The 60/30/10 Principle to Strengths-Based Learning | The Right Side of Normal When I talk about strengths-based learning, parents and educators may wonder exactly what that looks like. Am I talking about only pursuing things that are a strength or gift for a person? I mean, doesn’t every task or job have elements of weakness involved, or things we don’t like? I remember coming across the adage from Confucious that says, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” I contemplated that and wondered how such a job would look. The other important element to my strengths-based learning is understanding how brain development impacts learning. Don’t be afraid to give very young children access to technology if they are attracted to it. Children are young and just learning how to use the brain they were given. At the 8 to 10 year brain stage, children are starting to transition to using their less dominant side to learn. This style of interaction to create a strengths-based learning environment requires a shift in perspective.
Theory U | Sustainability Thinking Hello! Today we will start with a citation from Peter Senge: “Strategic planning towards sustainability requires engaging in profound change, an inner shift in peoples values, aspirations and behaviors guided by their mental models, as well as an outer shift in processes, strategies and practices.” But, how to make this profound change? Hum, let´s see what Theory U can do about… Theory U was developed by Otto Scharmer. Scharmer also say that presencing is the “vision of our deepest source”. Therefore: Open Mind: Ability to see something with new eyes. Open Heart: The ability to redirect attention and use the heart as an organ of perception (“seeing with the heart”). Open Will: While an open heart allows us to see a situation from the whole, the open will enables us to begin to act from the emerging whole. Following is the figure with the movements of theory U: In the next post we will see more about these movements. See bellow an interesting video with Otto Scharmer : Kind Regards. Like this:
Innovative assignment gets SMS students thinking far into the future Details Published on Friday, May 31 2013 23:29 You may not have noticed, but the courtyard at Sanders Middle School was transported to an interstellar marketplace in the year 2065 yesterday. During the afternoon, brand-new companies were shopping their futuristic wares to members of the Earth Space Alliance or rebel groups Union of Lunar Colonies and Unionized Martian League. Surrounded by people “selling” rocket fuel and space weaponry, SMS visual arts and design instructor Ken Morrill bragged on his students’ creativity and teamwork throughout the project. “I had difficulty keeping up with them because this grew so quickly,” he said. The idea for the inaugural SMS ADLAB show resulted from a mixture of educational resources from NASA and MIT after Morrill learned of a NASA-sponsored program over the summer. “The goal was for them to think about the future and what products would be needed in the year 2065,” he said. “I just let them run with it,” Morrill said.
Hacking into the Indian Education System - On the Stepping Stone - Quora In the last several weeks, in a time wedged awkwardly between the end of my college finals and my summer internship, I've been exposed to some information that left me quite flabbergasted. It started about a month ago. It was a very important day in the lives of two of my juniors and close friends, Sumit Shyamsukha and Ronak Shah. Wrought with the monumental anxiety that usually surrounds such a crucial result, Sumit had asked me whether I might be able to break into their system before D-day and quell his curiosity. Technicality Alert. [Technical] Handed just a URL and a task, I was unsure of how to proceed past a mostly blank screen with two text-boxes in the center. I tried again, a little while after the results were released.At least I could salvage some of my respect and maybe scrape some results, I thought. The page source did not contain the HTML for a particular student's results but had one layer of additional security - it fetched them via javascript. Enough is enough.