As schools and districts prepare for the Common Core State Standards, the pressure to buy new technology overtakes the need to create a vision and a plan for smart long-term use.
One of California's poorest school districts, the Coachella Valley Unified southeast of Los Angeles, is currently rolling out iPads to every student, pre-K through high school. It's an ambitious effort that administrators and parents hope will transform how kids learn, boost achievement and narrow the digital divide with wealthier districts.
We don’t want iPads to just become replacements for notebooks and textbooks, we want them to be objects to think with. We want students using them to mess around with the world around them and their courses of study. Here are ideas on how to use iPads to create and document in order to cement what students are learning.
The decline in teaching cursive handwriting, the rise of the keyboard, and the introduction of the Common Core State Standards that do not require children to know cursive all question its relevance. Passionate advocates claim that cursive is a cultural tradition with cognitive and academic benefits that must be preserved, while some teachers and handwriting experts say the decline of cursive is natural, and it should be allowed to morph into a print/cursive hybrid, or bow out altogether.
A recent survey of students shows they aren’t able to access the full range of learning tools available to them due to firewalls that keep them from social networks and a range of websites, as well as school restrictions on their smartphones.
How might efforts to curate benefit from the portability and ubiquity of mobile devices? Tools like Evernote and GoodReads allow for easy and valuable curation. But the harder questions are pedagogical and curricular.
Nine universities are testing CourseSmart technology that lets professors track their students’ progress in a digital textbook. The product goes further to package individual information about each student that a teacher can use to intervene throughout the learning process. Source: Nytimes SAN ANTONIO – Several Texas A&M professors know something that generations of teachers could … Continue reading Good Read: New E-Books Can Track Whether You Did Your Homework →
While the open content movement in education continues to gain steam, more teachers are starting to learn about free content they can use and adapt to their own needs for their classrooms. But educators are focusing too heavily on acquiring content, rather than contributing and improving to it, according to a company that helps teachers … Continue reading Tips for Sharing Great Open Educational Content →
Technology has become a seamless part of students’ lives in and out of the classroom, and schools must find ways to integrate it. This is one of the conclusions in a report by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), which states that policymakers at the highest level need to understand the trend … Continue reading It’s Time: Create Smart Policies to Support Student Tech Use →
Erin Scott By Jennifer Carey A good rule of thumb for any classroom use of cellphones: the lesson/activity must be engaging as well as productive. You don’t want technology for the sake of technology (and students aren’t going to be intrinsically fascinated with a device they use routinely when they’re outside of school). If the … Continue reading Four Smart Ways to Use Cell Phones in Class →
The following is an excerpt of One Size Does Not Fit All: A Student’s Assessment of School, by 17-year-old Nikhil Goyal, a senior at Syosset High School in Woodbury, New York. Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: “How do we teach it?” In school, instead of crossing subjects and classes, we teach … Continue reading Why Learning Should Be Messy →
By Doug Ward The rush to create large, free online classes has generated anxiety at universities around the country. With finances already tight and with a surge of movement toward online learning, universities are being forced to move quickly to change centuries-old models of learning. Terms like historic, seismic and revolutionary now pop up in … Continue reading Where is Technology Leading Higher Education? →
Thinkstock By Lillian Mongeau Elizabeth is a college freshman who has severe dyslexia that makes it impossible for her to decipher printed materials. Nearly every night for 12 years of school, Elizabeth’s mother would sit down and read her daughter’s school work to her because that’s the only choice they had. But a few months … Continue reading For Dyslexic and Visually Impaired Students, a Free High-Tech Solution →
In just a few weeks, school will start again in most schools. For teachers gearing up for the new school year, here are some instructive articles that may help get new ideas flowing -- everything from using free online games, free digital media tools, cell phones, Pinterest and Learnist, and creating your own textbooks.
