Glogster - useful tool for research posters

20 Things

Jenny Luca, through another one of her brilliant blog posts, made me aware of this excellent resource for understanding the web and all its parts.

http://www.20thingsilearned.com/table-of-things

This is a useful background reading resource for teachers or a taeching and learning tool in the classroom.

2010 Horizon Report

The 2010 Horizon Report: Australia-New Zealand Edition, examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative enquiry within higher education in Australia and New Zealand over a five-year time period. Below is a sumamry of the key trends described in detail in the report.

Electronic books/readers: the report describes the extensive changes the publishing industry is undergoing as a result of people's desire to have easy, flexible access to electronic books, including textbooks. We have trialled using a 'live' version of the maths text in our Year 7 curriculum this year. A definite advantage for students is the ability to tap into tutorial videos and interactive worksheets which are embedded in the electronic version of the text.

Educational content for mobile devices: with the development of electronic texts have come devices and applications which allow materials to to be customised and accessible anywhere, anytime. Apps for iPads, iPods and Kindles are produced at great speeds.

The evolution of learning enviroments: especially at the tertiary and upper secondary level, there are now multiple options for students and teachers to interact and learn outside of the traditional classroom. Social networking tools, virtual worlds and mobile technologies allow for materails to be exchanged online.

The report also goes into detail on the challenges institutions face with integrating new technologies. Those put forward include:

• the need for professional development
• the mismatch between open collaboration and traditional forms of assessment (exams)
• the need for explicit teaching of new skills - information literacy, digital literacy and visual literacy
• the shift towards knowing where to find information rather than knowing the inforamtion itself

Finally the report lists: mobiles, augmented reality, open content and gesture based computing as key emerging technologies.

18 Technologies Changing Education Forever

In this recent EdTech Digest article, 18 technologies influencing teaching and learning are described briefly. It was interesting to go through the list and identify those which we are currently using in our context.

Some inclusions are broader system/infrastructure based solutions including fast fibre optics, powerful servers and ubiquitous wireless access. Then there are whole school examples of technology applications such as digital signage, IWBs, digital cameras high definition LEDs and databases. Finally there are more specific applications which individual teachers/students may be experimenting with in their classrooms: Skype for collaborating with other schools and experts, YouTube for solutions to just about everything and Cloud computing as a data storage/sharing alternative.

The technologies which are not a part of the current environment but described here on the list are perhaps the most interesting. How would mobile devices such as iPads, mobile phones and digital readers transform what we do? X-box Kinect - working in a boys school there has to be potential for something like this!

Waking them up

At one point in this animated, abridged version of a talk given at the RSA, the brilliant Sir Ken Robinson describes education as an opportunity for 'waking them up to what they have inside themselves'. Instead, he argues, schools (and doctors over-prescribing drugs for ADHD) 'anaesthetise' their students by using traditional instruction methods, labelling students as academic/non academic and measuring a student's ability by very narrow means, standardised testing.

This is an engaging presentation which deserves to be watched, discussed and acted upon.

What do the best classrooms in the world look like?

This Slate published article makes some interesting observations and connections between student performance (no real data provided) and traditional pedagogy (read, limited technology use).

Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students contain very little tech wizardry, generally speaking. They look, in fact, a lot like American ones—circa 1989 or 1959. Children sit at rows of desks, staring up at a teacher who stands in front of a well-worn chalkboard.

The measure used to describe 'highest performing students' is not given, but likely PISA as the article goes on to provide comparisons between the US and Finland, South Korea and Singapore.

Shifting the focus from technology (lack of it) to teacher quality, the article supports the call made by others for increasing the academic rigour in university education faculties and lifting entrance requirements for prospective teachers.

More importantly perhaps, school systems in Singapore, Finland, and Korea recruit 100 percent of their teachers from the top one-third of their academic cohort, according to a 2010 McKinsey & Co. report, "Closing the Talent Gap."In the United States, about 23 percent of new teachers—and only 14 percent in high-poverty schools—come from the top one-third. "It is a remarkably large difference in approach, and in results," the report concludes.

Top 100 Tools

Seeing this for the first time thanks to Jenny Luca's blog. Out of the top 10, the two I need to explore the use of more as taeching and learning tools are Google docs and Moodle. We have tried several LMS in our school over the years without really finding one that has become the go to for a large number of staff. Have heard lots of positives about Moodle this year. Love prezi, just brilliant!

Top100 Tools for Learning 2010

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