or how to keep your students engaged … from Neetzan Zimmerman Ceiling Cat Drops In On University Classroom Unannounced. Awesome!
Students at Costa Rica's University for Peace receive the shock of a lifetime when the ceiling suddenly starts leaking Internets into their classroom.
There is a new online initiative called We Use Math, which is meant to address and answer one of the most common questions that high school students have: when am I ever going to use math in the real world?
The idea behind this project is to motivate students to pursue mathematics-based careers, by helping them understand just how much math actually influences and shapes society. “We Use Math” is extremely well done, and I highly encourage you to check it out and pass it along – especially to any students you know.
His soon-to-be-published book, The Young and the Digital: What the Migration to Social Network Sites, Games, and Anytime, Anywhere Media Means for Our Future, touches on those ideas.
Q. How has technology made today’s students different from students a decade ago?
A. They’re really the first generation of teenagers who grew up with the household computer and the Internet as a kind of everyday experience and everyday technology in the household. So they’re used to a much more active way of engaging their environment, a much more active way of gauging the information landscape. Have they developed a set of skills? Have they developed habits that are simply out of step with those more traditional ways of conducting or modeling a classroom? I think they have.
Q. How has today’s student changed how professors prepare their classes?
A. It’s really forcing university professors to think about their teaching style and the pedagogical techniques that they use in the classroom. In other words, I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with simply delivering a traditional lecture in the classroom. I’m beginning to debate whether or not it’s effective, whether or not it works, whether or not it’s a useful tool or a useful way to engage and create a kind of learning space or a learning environment. They’re active learners, as opposed to passive learners. That one-way flow of content -- I don’t know how effective that is anymore.
Our high schools are full of secretly texting, blithely unengaged adolescents, my colleague Dan de Vise reveals today in a story on a Montgomery County proposal to let students text during lunch. Dan’s story describes the situation well. Educators can’t keep up with the latest technocrazes. They banned cellphones for awhile, then decided they were necessary for emergencies. They figured no one would use them in class, forgetting that the text function allows a flurry of conversations without the miscreants making a discernible sound.
No one in the story asks my question: What do good teachers do about this? The best classes, in my experience, are the ones in which the teacher is holding a conversation with the entire class. Nobody is allowed to sit in a corner and dream about the prom, or text their dress choices to friends. The teacher has her eyes on the entire class, and is calling on everybody. If you are not paying attention, you are going to get caught. If the instructor is particularly good, the frequent texter decides what the class is doing is more interesting than sending another message. [Emphasis mine - MQ]
But since such classes are relatively rare, and teaching often involves the instructor talking and students listening, it is relatively easy for texters to avoid detection, and relatively common for them to be so bored they prefer to tune out and send messages. The standard adminstrative response is to try a new rule--like texting only during lunch--that might or might not alleviate the problem, when the answer to almost every educational mishap or distraction is not more rules, but more good teaching.
Episode 103: A Conversation with Steve Dembo
This was one of the best episode's I've done and I certainly which there hadn't been the ambient noise that you'll have to listen through. I usually do not worry about the back grounds, because I think that it adds to the sense of place. But a restaurant is not the place to do a podcast recording.
I get them where I can thought, and I certainly didn't want to miss an opportunity with Steve Dembo.
I hope that you enjoy it.
audio post: listen now
Will They jump on the TEchno wagon now?I'm hoping he's right. I'd love to see my college president and other college presidents writing a blog or communicating via a weekly or monthly YouTube address. And I love this comment from David Robinson - emphasis is mine!
Who wants to take a bet?
I bet you, that when Obama takes office in a few weeks, and starts using things like You Tube, or if his inner circle starts to really begin using technology to communicate with the world through web 2.0 that educational leaders all over the country will suddenly be using technology to communicate with the public. Are ya in?
Superintendent Jones will suddenly have a weekly podcast.
Principal Smith will suddenly take a keen interest in starting that blog.
Board member Doe will all of a sudden want the IT department to set her up with that new fangled webcam thing and start Skyping!
Suddenly, the techno-phobic will become tech-literate.
Praise the lord and pass the Macbook!
Place your bets.
Don't hold your breath.
This is something like old dogs and new tricks.
My super, who came from the old school, thinks technology integration is turning on the lights each day in his office!
If he started blogging, it would be his secretary writing it for him, or having one of us do it for him.
the top 11 K-12 Engineering Education Programs
Almost every time I present at a conference or attend an engineering event, a school district administrator or teacher asks me what engineering programs or curriculum are available. Usually, this person is charged with the responsibility of implementing a standards-based engineering academy or program in their school or district. They invariably want something easy, proven and engaging for the teachers and students.
If you want to know what is going on in engineering education around the United States, this list is for you. However, it's not all-inclusive. These are just a few of the more popular approaches to implementing engineering at the K-12 level.
1. Engineering the Future (EtF): Science, Technology, and the Design Process (www.keypress.com/etf) is a laboratory course for the first year of high school science, created to help a broad spectrum of students. EtF is a full-year lab course organized around four projects, each of which is divided into several tasks. The entire course can be implemented on a modest budget.
2. Engineering is Elementary - This project develops curricular materials in engineering and technology education for children in grades K-5 (www.mos.org). Educator support includes lesson plans, assessment materials, and professional development programs that tie into other major content areas, including science and language arts.
3. Project Lead the Way (PLTW) - is a non-profit organization that promotes engineering courses for middle (Gateway to Technology) and high school (Pathway to Engineering) students. The program formally partners with school districts, trains the instructors that will be teaching and implementing the curriculum, and acts as a bridge between educational institutions and private businesses. (www.pltw.org)
4. The Infinity Project is a national high school and early college math- and science-based engineering and technology education initiative that helps educators deliver a maximum of engineering exposure with a minimum of training, expense and time. Created to help students see the real value of math and science and its varied applications to high tech engineering. (www.infinity-project.org)
You should take a look at Yugma (www.yugma.com). Yugma's free version allows you to share your desktop with up to 10 others while using the built-in instant message features.Great point Rebecca, thanks! There are a ton of free and open source alternatives to paid services and applications. In an earlier post - UPDATED: Educational Uses of Web 2.0 Based Applications - I pointed to Yugma and a number of synchronous learning tools.
Just added - Online Meeting-Screen/Application Sharing
- DimDim
- Yugma
- Vyew
- Zoho Meeting
- Elluminate - free VRoom for up to 3 participants
- Screen Stream
- TeamViewer
- Adobe ConnectNow - free for up to 3 participants
Synchronous, virtual classroom systems can provide high levels of interaction for distance learning initiatives. With the rapid evolution of technology,continuous product evaluation is necessary to ensure optimal methods and resources for connecting students, instructors, and educational content in rich, online learning communities. This article presents the analysis of two online, synchronous learning solutions (Elluminate Live and Breeze),focusing on their abilities to meet both technical and pedagogical needs in higher education. To make a solid comparison, the systems were examined in online classrooms with instructors, guest speakers, and students. Pros and cons relative to usability, instructional needs, technical aspects, and compatibility are outlined for both systems.
Web conferencing systems
On New Hampshire public radio’s Word of Mouth, Don Tapscott and Mark Bauerlein debate how kids are faring in this plugged-in world. Bauerlein insists the Internet is making kids dumb. Bauerlein is professor of English at Emory University and author of "The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)".
What seems like an easy question — Will you be my friend? — is not necessarily so for teachers who have joined the Facebook phenomenon.
The social-networking Web site, whose popularity has grown from the college crowd down to teens and up to boomers, poses a prickly question for teachers who want to connect with their tech-savvy students yet maintain professional boundaries.
Should teachers become virtual "friends" with their students?
Online gamers in the market for a new job may want to skip any mention of “guild master” on their resume.
A member on F13, a forum for game-related news, recounted a recent job interview where his hobby of playing online games such as World of Warcraft came up in conversation, with disastrous results: “I happened to mention I’d spent way too much time in the early 2000s playing online game…He replied that employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players. He said there is a belief that WoW players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc.”
Parliament has approved a law that will likely make [Estonia] the first nation on Planet Earth to give citizens the right to vote by phone
Stephen Cooper, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, decided to take a CD spindle and an ioBridge, a smart board that requires very little skill and will set up an online interface page for you. Ninety minutes later he came up with a way to feed his pup Cooper remotely from his iPhone. Stephen explains on his site how you can make a similar gadget. We guess that his dog was happy once he got the hang of it, but we bet he would rather have had the 90 minutes with his best friend.
and Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
. Although the blurb is interesting and enlightening, the really good stuff comes further down - when Tapscott responds to some reader comments. Worth the read! I couldn't agree more with Tapscott. I've added links throughout the passages to illustrate Tapscott's point.Schoolchildren should not be taught to memorise facts and figures because information is available online, a leading commentator said today.Comments
The existence of search engines such as Google and Wikipedia mean that traditional methods of learning are redundant.
Don Tapscott, author of the best-selling book Wikinomics, said teachers should instead encourage pupils to think creatively and learn to apply available online knowledge.
The author, who coined the term "net generation", said the commonly-used modern-day education model was designed for the industrial age, and needed to be changed. He said: "Kids should learn about history but they don't need to know all the dates.
"It is enough that they know about the Battle of Hastings, without having to memorise that it was in 1066. They can look that up and position it in history with a click on Google. Memorising facts and figures is a waste of time."
Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that all facts are useless and a waste of time to learn. I do believe, however, for most of the classrooms around the world the model of pedagogy has remained the same for centuries. Teachers stand at the front of the class, spouting facts, figures and dates. Students demonstrate they have “learned” when they can regurgitate these facts on exams. I describe this model as being “teacher focused.” It is also outdated.
The better model is “student focused.” Kids memorize fewer facts but acquire more knowledge. They learn how to think, communicate, solve tough problems (from math to society), put things in context, and work in groups. Learning excites them, and they acquire an appetite to keep on learning throughout their lives. This works out well, because almost all workers in the digital economy will need to constantly relearn as their jobs evolve or simplify disappear through ever-faster Schumpeterian creative destruction.
Moreover, the factoids that students should learn could be acquired in a much more efficient manner than is typically the case today. Instead of delivering a one-size-fits-all form of education, schools should customize the education to fit each child’s ability and way of learning. Software can easily teach facts to kids and quiz them as they progress. When a student does poorly in one area, that material is retaught. Meanwhile, the teacher is freed up to spend more one-on-one time with each student.
- Don Tapscott, Toronto, Canada
