Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Wordia
Wordia is a free visual, video dictionary. Wordia features a selection of user-submitted and professionally created videos explaining the meaning of a word. .. read the full post at Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers
Monday, September 13, 2010
The child-driven education
Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity…
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
Sugata Mitra's "Hole in the Wall" experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity…
How the Internet is making us stupid
This provocative article explores the impact of the net on deep thinking and critical thinking skills. What are the implications of this for educators?
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Digital Literacy
'At Google, we support the education of families on how to stay safe online. That's why we've teamed up with online safety organization iKeepSafe to develop curriculum that educators can use in the classroom to teach what it means to be a responsible online citizen.
The curriculum is designed to be interactive, discussion filled and allow students to learn through hands-on and scenario activities. On this site you'll find a resource booklet for both educators and students that can be downloaded in PDF form, presentations to accompany the lesson and animated videos to help frame the conversation.'
Google's Digital Literacy Tour
The curriculum is designed to be interactive, discussion filled and allow students to learn through hands-on and scenario activities. On this site you'll find a resource booklet for both educators and students that can be downloaded in PDF form, presentations to accompany the lesson and animated videos to help frame the conversation.'
Google's Digital Literacy Tour
Monday, September 6, 2010
The networked student model for construction of personal learning environments: balancing teacher control and student autonomy
This entry is from Curriculum Leadership 3 September 2010
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology
Volume 26 Number 3, 2010; Pages 369–385
Wendy Drexler
A model for the introduction of autonomous, networked student learning has been trialled at a K–12 independent school in the USA. This test case involved 15 students spanning the final three years of secondary school. During a nine week unit each student researched a contemporary social issue of their choice using a range of web applications, including RSS alerts, social bookmarking, personal blogs, video conferencing, web searches, podcasts, digital notebooks and a class wiki. Teachers scaffolded this learning experience, providing students with working knowledge of the web applications involved as well as the organisational skills required for independent learning online. Students' capacity to develop and maintain a personal learning environment was assessed through weekly assignments, a rubric-based evaluation at the end of the unit, an essay and a final synthesis of the topic using multimedia. At the end of the semester students were surveyed for their views about the trial. Positive responses were received from 11 students, who valued the unit for the breadth and quality of learning it offered, and saw it as a sound preparation for tertiary study. One negative response referred to the fact that ICT was not 'fun or entertaining' in the school context, while another student noted the difficulty of moving from a traditional to an autonomous model of learning. Students identified time management as the greatest area of difficulty for them, especially time free from normal classes, which students were left to regulate on their own. The researchers concluded that students' success in adapting to autonomous networked learning is likely to depend on their individual levels of motivation, technical aptitude and comfort with self-directed learning. It also depends on the teacher's ability to gauge students' understanding and progress. The unit called on teachers to find a balance between encouraging student autonomy and scaffolding students' experience of a new and challenging learning environment. Generalising this form of learning to other schools would require extensive professional development and 'a philosophy different from that of most current educators'. One of the most useful forms of such professional development would be to apprentice a teacher to a colleague who has already implemented networked learning in a classroom.
View full article free online...
Australasian Journal of Educational Technology
Volume 26 Number 3, 2010; Pages 369–385
Wendy Drexler
A model for the introduction of autonomous, networked student learning has been trialled at a K–12 independent school in the USA. This test case involved 15 students spanning the final three years of secondary school. During a nine week unit each student researched a contemporary social issue of their choice using a range of web applications, including RSS alerts, social bookmarking, personal blogs, video conferencing, web searches, podcasts, digital notebooks and a class wiki. Teachers scaffolded this learning experience, providing students with working knowledge of the web applications involved as well as the organisational skills required for independent learning online. Students' capacity to develop and maintain a personal learning environment was assessed through weekly assignments, a rubric-based evaluation at the end of the unit, an essay and a final synthesis of the topic using multimedia. At the end of the semester students were surveyed for their views about the trial. Positive responses were received from 11 students, who valued the unit for the breadth and quality of learning it offered, and saw it as a sound preparation for tertiary study. One negative response referred to the fact that ICT was not 'fun or entertaining' in the school context, while another student noted the difficulty of moving from a traditional to an autonomous model of learning. Students identified time management as the greatest area of difficulty for them, especially time free from normal classes, which students were left to regulate on their own. The researchers concluded that students' success in adapting to autonomous networked learning is likely to depend on their individual levels of motivation, technical aptitude and comfort with self-directed learning. It also depends on the teacher's ability to gauge students' understanding and progress. The unit called on teachers to find a balance between encouraging student autonomy and scaffolding students' experience of a new and challenging learning environment. Generalising this form of learning to other schools would require extensive professional development and 'a philosophy different from that of most current educators'. One of the most useful forms of such professional development would be to apprentice a teacher to a colleague who has already implemented networked learning in a classroom.
View full article free online...
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Making events, places and buildings more real
BBC Dimensions
Dimensions takes important places, events and things, and overlays them onto a map of where you are. A great way of showing the relative size, eg. the size of the Pakistan flood and Australia, the Colosseam and Geelong.
Dimensions takes important places, events and things, and overlays them onto a map of where you are. A great way of showing the relative size, eg. the size of the Pakistan flood and Australia, the Colosseam and Geelong.
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