Category: Uncategorized
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If only this weren't a course in how to do online education,
I’d be OK with the message that came on the first week of classes: Bottom line: students of the Educational Technology masters program (hybrid) are getting a valuable end-user educational experience in system failure. How do I feel as a learner when my Blackboard goes down? frustrated–as I mentioned in my last post (am beginning…
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End-user review: "blended" learning
It’s about time to further reflect on the effectiveness of the “blended” courses (part face-to-face, part online) I’ve been taking at CUC. Has the technology enhanced my learning, as any educational technology should? Have things gotten better since I last reviewed it? In a previous critique, I cited Since the soul of web 2.0 tools…
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School administrators, it's time to co-opt the smart phone
In September last year I championed Juliette LaMontagne‘s championing of the mobile phone in the classroom. Now school districts in places like Ohio are getting smart with smart phones. These 1:1 handheld computers –smart phone or ipod touches too– (averaging around $100 to districts) reduce the “digital divide,” provide for quick and easy RTI acounting,…
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With the new year, some hopeful posts
I came across that point to web 2.0 positives. I believe I’ll enjoy them both in the new year. The first is Ms.Durff’s blog, which is full of positive, if brief, reflections on working digital tech in with the classroom. She posted an intriguing Edutopia video of Henry Jenkins, USC professor of media. In the…
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Red cups = red flags
And I would bet the following scenario that happened a year or two ago in my neighborhood at a public high school has happened at others: the on-line record of a student’s out-of-school activity was used as evidence of a breach of conduct rules. “Hey, what’s our star running back doing with that red cup?”…
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A plurality of voices, unmolested, though they dissent
from the current host’s point of view: that is proof positive of democratic vigor, no? Barack Obama, my Facebook friend, seems to be no wuss. He and his people are not afraid of any unfavorable vox populi there might be. His White House puts out a forum for FB discussion, whether it’s in his immediate…
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The "Buffalo" teacher, in the middle of the field
with time to self reflect. What will he decide? [this is the second part of my 13 December post reflecting on my course in “Ethics and Foundations in American Education.” I use the north American bison (depicted), also known as the “buffalo,” as a totem animal because of its strength, stolidity, and precariousness, qualities I…
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Have we seen the emerging "teacher-killer" app?
in Microsoft’s “Project Natal“? Yesterday, I suggested to my students (and Facebook friends) that just as the first phonographs suggested the end of the dance-hall band, the first ATM machines betokened the end of bank buildings, the first “self-service” gas stations suggested the end of the “service station attendant” career, and the first telephones the…
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It's wonderful when students teach fellow students
It is perhaps the best way for learning to happen–among peers, un-mediated by extraneous influences. I’m feeling proud of my juniors tonight and want to kvel. On our wiki-land.wikispaces class site, a peer dialog around a classmate’s writing happened. He had written a letter pointing out problems he saw in Barack Obama’s administration and in…
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Video Games = Learning Games
and the world, including cognitive scientists, is starting to see that as clearly as a wii game detail on a hi-resolution digital monitor. As I noted a few posts ago, an eschoolnews article this month discusses not only how increasingly ubiquitous and “open access” games are becoming (they’re playing wii in Senior Citizen centers), but…
The Wikiness 