edtech

Showing 142 posts tagged edtech

When To Put The Tech Away In Your 1:1 (or Any) Classroom Though failing to include any technology in the modern classroom is wrong, including too much, or employing it ineffectively, can be equally problematic. Having a list of specific instances where choosing to put away classroom technology is the right choice would certainly be nice, but like most pedagogical challenges it is also unrealistic. Oftentimes, it simply isn’t that easy to know whether to put it away or not., and the skill of making that choice develops over time – a bit like a callous. At its best, technology enhances, extends or deepens the learning taking place. At its worst, it detracts, distracts, and otherwise frustrates you and your students. When these situations cannot quickly and effectively be remedied – without sacrificing your lesson’s learning objective – put the technology down and embrace the lesson. The trick is to never let technology erode the relationships in your classroom… image via flickr:CC | altopower High-res

When To Put The Tech Away In Your 1:1 (or Any) Classroom

Though failing to include any technology in the modern classroom is wrong, including too much, or employing it ineffectively, can be equally problematic. Having a list of specific instances where choosing to put away classroom technology is the right choice would certainly be nice, but like most pedagogical challenges it is also unrealistic. Oftentimes, it simply isn’t that easy to know whether to put it away or not., and the skill of making that choice develops over time – a bit like a callous.

At its best, technology enhances, extends or deepens the learning taking place. At its worst, it detracts, distracts, and otherwise frustrates you and your students. When these situations cannot quickly and effectively be remedied – without sacrificing your lesson’s learning objective – put the technology down and embrace the lesson.

The trick is to never let technology erode the relationships in your classroom…

image via flickr:CC | altopower

How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?

Concern about young people’s use of technology is nothing new, of course. But Rosen’s study, published in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become common behavior among young people—so common that many of them rarely write a paper or complete a problem set any other way.

But evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. So detrimental is this practice that some researchers are proposing that a new prerequisite for academic and even professional success—the new marshmallow test of self-discipline—is the ability to resist a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone.

Moment by Moment: This is why teachers hate technology requirements

fifthgradeisonfire shares:

So our district has technology project requirements every year. We have to have our students create a project in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and everyone’s favorite…Movie Maker.

Now, the first three are not such a big deal. They usually fit in easily with other projects and lessons. Every year we put off the Movie Maker project until the last minute because everyone HATES it. (The only edtech program that I hate more is moodle.) The biggest problem is that every single time we try to make a project something goes wrong. 

This morning we spent an hour with our edtech teacher working on a Movie Maker project. My kids were awesome, they were so well-behaved and listened like champs! We get all the way to the end, click save and…10 minutes later an error message pops up. Grrrr! 

The edtech teacher and the IT guy worked for 30 minutes trying to figure it out. 30 MINUTES! And in the end they decided to shut down everyone’s computer and all work was lost. 

Just like that an hour and half was wasted.

The infographic highlights findings from the mobile learning report, Living & Learning with Mobile Devices, released today from Grunwald & Associates and the Learning First Alliance. According to the report more than 50 percent of parents believe that schools should make more use of mobile devices in education. Embiggen here I’m really surprised by the data collected in this survey (2,392 parents) which isn’t unfortunately broken down into age categories. Two items of note: 83% said their school does not require use of personal electronic devices and 72% said it was not allowed at all. Parents are concerned about theft of personal devices (81%), but 45% still plan to buy or have a personal mobile device purchased for their student. 32% of parents surveyed think schools should require this. High-res

The infographic highlights findings from the mobile learning report, Living & Learning with Mobile Devices, released today from Grunwald & Associates and the Learning First Alliance. According to the report more than 50 percent of parents believe that schools should make more use of mobile devices in education.

Embiggen here

I’m really surprised by the data collected in this survey (2,392 parents) which isn’t unfortunately broken down into age categories. Two items of note:

  • 83% said their school does not require use of personal electronic devices and 72% said it was not allowed at all.
  • Parents are concerned about theft of personal devices (81%), but 45% still plan to buy or have a personal mobile device purchased for their student. 32% of parents surveyed think schools should require this.

It’s #FF on Twitter - if you’re not following on twitter today is a great day to start; she’s an amazing resource!

I have been traveling throughout Slovenia and Croatia for the past month training teachers in integrating Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) effectively with their classes. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to teach various classes of teens throughout the two countries to show teachers how BYOT works. For the days I was teaching the students, these schools lifted their policies and allowed the students to use their devices as a way of getting technology in the schools. The teachers wanted to see BYOT in action, especially with students who were never allowed to use their mobile devices or other technologies before for learning. BYOT was a great option because many of these students would not usually be able to learn with various technologies in schools if they didn’t bring them in.

TechMeetsClass: Would You Welcome An EdTech Panel At Your School?

techmeetsclass asks:

So yesterday I posted the following question to Tumblr.

Are you required to take a technology course to fulfill your education degree?

I got a lot of great responses via Tumblr, some email and some twitter. I asked this specific question for a number of reasons. One of them being that when I was in graduate school getting my MA in Secondary Education at Adelphi University (‘07-‘09) we were not required to take any technology courses nor were even given a proper offer and I thought we were getting gypped.

Here we were, smack in the middle of the rise of Facebook and Twitter and not a single person was talking about how to leverage technology into our classrooms. When I got into student teaching, my cooperating teacher had a smart board and I had no clue how to use it #learningfail. I wanted to know what schools were doing to correct that (if anything at all) given how dependent we (and our students are) on technology in our daily lives.

The other reason is that I am looking to put together an EdTech panel for preservice teachers here in NYC. The question is still available for anyone to answer regardless as to where you live:

Would you welcome an EdTech panel at your school? What kind of panelists would you expect (professors, teachers, edtech start up companies)? If you could ask any one of these panelists a question regarding educational technology what would it be?