Background to the 4E's — Digisim - A Flipped Academic A highly experienced mentor once told me that there are 3 main groups of staff with regards to influencing change around technology use. These are the evangelists, those who will naturally be inquisitive and try new technology; the resistors, those to whom the change model applies (there is a sliding scale for resistors as some will resist for longer than others) and finally the naysayers, those who just don't want to change and are excessive complainers. (This final group I have renamed as C.A.V.E.s - Colleagues Against Virtually Everything.) My mentor also suggested that it's a waste of time and effort to focus attention on the "naysayers" as they very rarely change their minds. So what's all this got to do with the 4E Framework? I began to realise that as part of the change process staff had to take ownership for the rationale behind the use of technology.
The LA School iPad Scandal: What You Need To Know : NPR Ed Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy exchanged multiple emails with executives at Pearson PLC about the potential for working together. Damian Dovarganes/AP hide caption itoggle caption Damian Dovarganes/AP Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy exchanged multiple emails with executives at Pearson PLC about the potential for working together. Damian Dovarganes/AP A massive expansion of classroom technology has come to a grinding halt in Los Angeles. The LA Unified School District had planned to buy some 700,000 iPads for its students and teachers. The decision comes on the heels of an investigation by NPR member station KPCC, which obtained emails between Deasy and tech executives that bring into question whether the initial bidding process was fair. The goal of the expansion was simple yet ambitious: to equip every student in the nation's second-largest school district with a tablet computer. Then came the emails.
A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned The following account comes from a veteran HS teacher who just became a Coach in her building. Because her experience is so vivid and sobering I have kept her identity anonymous. But nothing she describes is any different than my own experience in sitting in HS classes for long periods of time. And this report of course accords fully with the results of our student surveys. I have made a terrible mistake. I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching my own classes; I am the High School Learning Coach, a new position for the school this year. As part of getting my feet wet, my principal suggested I “be” a student for two days: I was to shadow and complete all the work of a 10th grade student on one day and to do the same for a 12th grade student on another day. The schedule that day for the 10th grade student: 7:45 – 9:15: Geometry 10:55 – 11:40: Lunch
The Best Resources for Free Online Classes “18th-c studies” meets “digital humanities” | The Long Eighteenth This post by George Williams. The CFP for ASECS 2010 is out, and I can’t help but notice that several of the panel proposals (including one being organized by Lisa Maruca and me) deal explicitly with digital humanities topics. Details regarding these panels are available after the jump, but before you make that jump, dear reader, please indulge me for a few sentences. Does it seem to you that the various academic disciplines concerned with the humanities are at a turning point with regard to integrating digital tools into their research and teaching methodologies? It certainly seems that way to me: And yet, does it perhaps also feel to you that the benefits of these developments have not yet filtered down to our day-to-day academic lives? This is not meant to be a list of complaints, mind you. Is this new phase a good thing? ASECS 2010 and the Digital Humanities Below are the CFPs for ASECS 2010 panels that explicitly deal with the digital humanities. George H. Like this: Like Loading...
Report highlights 10 trends set to shake up education Massive open social learning and dynamic assessment on the Open University’s list The Open University has published the Innovating Pedagogy 2014 report, which explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment. It proposes 10 innovations that, although already established to some extent, have not yet had what it describes as “a profound influence” on education. To produce the report, academics at the university’s Institute of Educational Technology proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories and practices, which were then boiled down to 10 that it deems to “have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice”. 1. This is all about bringing the benefits of social networks to massive open online courses (Moocs). “Possible solutions include linking conversations with learning content, creating short-duration discussion groups made up of learners who are currently online, and enabling learners to review each other’s assignments,” the report says. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Salem College professor Spring-Serenity Duvall banned students from emailing and got more engagement from class. Screenshot courtesy of Outlook/Photo illustration by Slate This article originally appeared in Inside Higher Ed. A Salem College faculty member last semester took an uncompromising approach to curbing syllabus and inbox bloat: Why not ban most student emails? “For years, student emails have been an assault on professors, sometimes with inappropriate informality, sometimes just simply not understanding that professors should not have to respond immediately,” Spring-Serenity Duvall, assistant professor of communications at Salem College, wrote in a blog post last week. “In a fit of self-preservation, I decided: no more. This is where I make my stand!” Duvall’s frustration is shared by many in academe—or anyone with an email account—from faculty members beset by questions they have answered both in class and in writing to students inundated by university email blasts. “I did think ‘this is ridiculous—I’ll never get away with it,’ ” Duvall said.
Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment? Building on research of individuals’ modes of engagement with the web (Visitors and Residents4), and the JISC-funded Digital Information Seeker report5, this project is exploring what motivates different types of engagement with the digital environment for learning. The investigation focuses on the sources learners turn to in order to gather information, and which ‘spaces’ (on and offline) they choose to interact in as part of the learning process. It is using the Visitors and Residents6 framework to map learner’s modes of engagement in both personal and institutional contexts. The project is assessing whether individual’s approaches shift according to the learners’ educational stage or whether they develop practices/literacies in early stages that remain largely unchanged as they progress through their educational career. The pilot phase focused on the ‘Emerging’ educational stage which spans late stage secondary school and first year undergraduates. Objectives Reports Video: Blog posts:
Kids And Screen Time: What Does The Research Say? : NPR Ed Kids are spending more time than ever in front of screens, and it may be inhibiting their ability to recognize emotions, according to new research out of the University of California, Los Angeles. The study, published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, found that sixth-graders who went five days without exposure to technology were significantly better at reading human emotions than kids who had regular access to phones, televisions and computers. The UCLA researchers studied two groups of sixth-graders from a Southern California public school. One group was sent to the Pali Institute, an outdoor education camp in Running Springs, Calif., where the kids had no access to electronic devices. At the beginning and end of the five-day study period, both groups of kids were shown images of nearly 50 faces and asked to identify the feelings being modeled. "It might mean they would lose those skills if they weren't maintaining continual face-to-face interaction," she says.
Why disruptive innovation matters to education There is a common tendency at this time of year to reflect and refocus on what matters most and then use that renewed focus to chart into the year ahead. In that spirit of reflection, I want to share some thoughts on why the theory of disruptive innovation, which guides our work here at the Clayton Christensen Institute, is so important to education. If you are not familiar with the theory of disruptive innovation, a brief explanation is available here on our website. For a more thorough explanation, The Innovator’s Solution lays out the theory in a comprehensive yet digestible format. My purpose here is not to explain the theory, but rather, explain in brief why that theory should matter to people who want to improve our education system. First, disruptive innovation is the catalyst for bringing about more equitable access to high-quality education. One of the great tragedies of our time is that a student’s zip code largely determines whether she will receive a high-quality education.
The End Of Neighborhood Schools : NPR Harris founded the brand-new Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. His team of newly minted Ph.D.s shares a bare, beige-carpeted downtown office space with a fraternity of New Orleans choice backers. But the goal of the Education Research Alliance, Harris says, isn’t necessarily to promote charter schools or choice. “We’re here to do deeper research, and to do that it’s important to be a neutral party,” he says. In fact, Harris has some bad news for RSD schools. “The increasing trend in scores is not all achievement,” he says, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded behind his head. Harris isn’t talking about outright cheating — though more than a third of the city’s schools were flagged by the state between 2010 and 2012 for cases of plagiarism, suspicious levels of erasures, and similar indicators. He means something subtler: a distortion of the curriculum and teaching practice. “The curriculum is really characterized by a narrow interpretation of state standards.
What is a Relevant Educator? - Corwin Connect Contributed by Tom Whitby Education in America has been around for several hundred years now, going back to colonial times in the 17th century. Back then, teachers were not only content experts, but also models for moral standards for children. I imagine that the concept of applying “moral turpitude” as a condition of employment for a teacher started back then. Teachers back then were covered by a common law doctrine of “in loco parentis” which empowered schools, and thereby teachers, to administer corporal punishment (hitting or paddling) to any students whom they felt warranted punishment. Change came slowly to education. Technology slowly crept into schools. Educators were slow in adopting technology beyond the word processor. The picture I have attempted to paint in words is a common experience most educators and parents have experienced in their contact with education. We have in our minds a picture of a successful student of the 20th Century.