Daniel Livingstone discusses Prensky’s Digital Natives and refers to recent figures of game playing. He also refers to an eSchool News article on Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up Survey, which is ‘the largest annual survey addressing the attitudes and opinions of K-12 students, teachers, parents, and school administrators toward the use of technology in education’. Worth a look.
“I’m starting to think that more of Prensky’s ideas about digital natives are becoming reality, albeit not for the generation he originally identified. While often technologically naive, game playing (and social virtual worlds) are perhaps now so commonplace amongst younger age groups (say six to 16) in the UK that the term ‘gamer’ is likely to become somewhat obsolete - or restricted to those who play the ‘hardcore’ games while other induldge in more casual gameplay.”
Author: Daniel Livingstone, Learning Games Blog, 14th April 2008
See full article here.
April 14, 2008
Glenn Wiebe and Dave Warlick have both recently posted on Digital Vaults, a new website by the US National Archive that brings elements of social networking to primary history and social science resources.
Digital Vaults is an interesting concept and one I think works well with it’s logical tag organisational structure. The digitisation of sources and Web2.0 twist makes the wealth of knowledge highly accessible and even allows the user to create their own collections.
Read Glenn Wiebe’s post and Dave Warlick’s post for more information.
April 13, 2008
TECHNOLOGY is changing the way we learn. That is a given as school students — the ubiquitous digital natives — come to class equipped with skills and expectations unparalleled in schools 20 years ago.
To Dale Spender, an educationalist and an expert on the impact of digital technologies on learning, the shift is fundamental: “There has been a switch from passive to active learners,” she says, “and active learners need a different range of support staff.”
Author: Kirsten Lees, The Australian, 5th April 2008
Full article available here.
April 12, 2008
Free educational tool launched to support debate on any topic
Futurelab has launched Power League, a free online resource for schools which supports pupils of all ages to explore, debate and discuss any topic in a fun and easy way. Power League, available at www.powerleague.org.uk, enables the user to rank and display group opinions on any issue across the entire curriculum.
Author: FutureLab, 9th April 2008
Full article available here.
April 10, 2008
One educator demonstrates that blending face-to-face and online instruction can lead to better student grades and understanding.
“Hybrid courses,” or courses that deliver part of their instruction in a traditional lecture manner and part in an online environment, are becoming increasingly popular among schools and colleges. Proponents of the concept say it capitalizes on the benefits that both face-to-face and online learning can provide—and now, there is some evidence to suggest that hybrid courses can help students learn more effectively.
Brian McFarlin, a professor at the University of Houston’s Laboratory of Integrated Physiology, decided to conduct an experiment in one of his classes to observe the strengths and weaknesses of hybrid courses.
Author: Meris Stansbury, Assistant Editor, eSchool News, 3rd April 2008
Full article available here.
April 10, 2008
Dave Warlick has written some interesting posts about his personal learning network and he elaborates also on the technologies and tools he uses along the way. This is an exerpt from one such post:
“Somewhere between 22 and 59 virtual attendees, the chat conversation became more of a focus point for me, as lurkers were commenting less about where they were from (PA, TX, SC, Perth, Shanghai) and more about the topics of Steve’s presentation, each shining a slightly different light on the idea, each giving me a different way of looking at it. A sudden small and fragile network was becoming a temporary branch of my Personal Learning Network.”
Author: Dave Warlick, 2cent Worth Blog, 9th April 2008
Full article available >here.
April 10, 2008
To be fair to Barbie Girls it isn’t the only virtual world for kids that worries me - with its not-so-implicit goal of training children to be good little consumers. Reinforcing the concept in children that rewards come from playing games, watching shows (themselves somewhat promotional, I’d guess) and from buying products does not seem a good one, and I was despairing of seeing a model other than this. So while I’ve yet to delve deeper, Handipoints appears to be the first imaginative alternative.
Author: Daniel Livingstone, Learning Games Blog, 7th April 2008
Full article available here.
April 8, 2008
I believe technologies that engage and motivate students by offering opportunities for self-direction, inquiry, discovery, and creativity are the best way to meet the needs of all students. One of the most significant things I’ve heard said about 1:1 laptop programs is that when you walk into the classroom, you can’t tell who the Special Ed students are or who the GATE students are… because everyone is fully engaged and working at their own level.
Some technologies that might be readily available to most teachers and which might help provide this sort of individualized engagement include commercial off the shelf videogames with educational value (such as the Sims series, the Tycoon series, or the “Age of…” series of games), read/write web tools (such as blogs, wikis, and podcasts), and multimedia creation programs (for editing images, audio, and video). These things are nearly free and ubiquitous and ought to be used creatively in support of the base program.
Author: Mark Wagner, Educational Technology and Life Blog, 7th April 2008
Full article available here.
April 8, 2008
The notion of techies huddled in isolation in front of monitors has given way to the concept of sharing data and/or ideas across the office or across the ocean. Students, professionals, or like-minded hobbyists can now be linked on line by more than mere discussion boards or chat rooms. Wikis now give a venue for virtually anyone to collaborate on line.
How can I utilize them for students?
The idea of a collaborative creation space for students has limitless possibilities. Students can create a biology on-line textbook. In Literature Circles (Harvey Daniels) students can culminate the process with a set of “Cliff Notes” on the book studied. Students can collaborate with a school across town or across the country to create any kind of a project. For ideas, visit Wikispaces’ “Examples of Educational Wikis”, which is itself a Wiki and as such can be amended by users.
Author: Jon Orech, TechLearning, 1st April 2008
Full article available here.
April 8, 2008
