Teaching+&+Technology

=Information, documents, and links dealing with technology in education - particularly future use. =

Read the web version of the [|2009 Horizon Report] to understand why just "getting on the Internet and typing a paper in Word" are no longer appropriate end goals for our students and their use of technology. (The annual //Horizon Report// describes the continuing work of the [|New Media Consortium (NMC)’s Horizon Project], a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within learning-focused organizations.)

Of particular importance is the following quote: //"Information technologies are having a significant impact on how people work, play, gain information, and collaborate. Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines." //

A recent blog post (1/19/2009) by David Warlick addressed the question,"What is the purpose of Education?". The [|entire post] is worth reading, but this excerpt is particularly pertinent to the discussion of technology in TPS:

//"Preparing students based on standards, so that they can pass government tests// //(to make politicians look successful), carries expectations. Students should listen, study, learn, and assure gain. If they do that, they’re doing what they are supposed to do. We’re happy about it. They’re happy about it. Let’s go home.// //But, when there is a mission, where teachers and students are equal partners in achieving new learning — and they both realize that it is not simply about new knowledge, but more importantly it is about new potentials, then we’re not just producing cogs for an industrial and societal machine. We all becoming better and more inventive builders of the future."//

[|Digital Youth Research: Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media] "Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures" is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives.

[|A Vision of Students Today (& What Teachers Must Do)] Watch this video posted on YouTube for a sobering look at how students view education and how they currently use technology. (Excerpted quote from the beginning of the article by Michael Wesch - linked below - that describes the video project) "In spring 2007 I invited the 200 students ... to tell the world what they think of their education by helping me write a script for a video to be posted on YouTube. The result was the disheartening portrayal of disengagement you see below." [|Article that discusses the video] by [|Michael Wesch] - October 21st, 2008 - [|(Brave New Classroom 2.0)]

[|A Day in the Life of Web 2.0] by David Warlick. This article gives an excellent description of the application of Web 2.0 tools in a middle school setting. (Taken from the course materials for "23 Things: Teachers Need to Know about Web 2.0 offered through WCRESA)

[|Brave New Classroom 2.0 (Blog Forum)] (Quote from the opening page introducing this new Britannica blog) The new classroom is about information, but not just information. It’s also about collaboration, about changing roles of student and teacher, and about challenges to the very idea of traditional authority. It may also be about a new cognitive model for learning that relies heavily on what has come to be called “multitasking.” Many educators voice ambivalence about the power of educational technologies to distract students and fragment their attention. //Do the new classroom technologies represent an educational breakthrough, a threat to teaching itself, or something in between?// Utopian and dystopian visions tend to collide whenever the topic comes up. To explore the question intelligently we’ve asked several experts on educational technology to join us this week for a forum on the subject at the Britannica Blog.

[|The Power of Digital Integration by Mark Erb] Read about a technology initiative where "a small-town district prepares its high school students for the future by implementing a 1-to-1 laptop program with digital communication tools." (Published online at T.H.E. Journal) Note the references to how students and teachers use technology throughout the curriculum. Also note the vision, as stated in the article, held by the district for technology: "We believe that when students learn new digital communications skills and teachers integrate technology into the curriculum in a meaningful and practical manner, students will develop important critical- thinking and collaborative skills simultaneously."

[|Moving Toward Web 2.0 in K-12 Education] **Steve Hargadon /** Posted October 20, 2008 Steve Hargadon is Director of the K12 Open Technologies Initiative at the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network. Hargadon blogs, speaks, and consults on educational technology, free and open-source software, Web 2.0, computer reuse, and computing for low-income people.

[|Essay - At School, Technology Starts to Turn a Corner] Published in The New York Times, August 17, 2008