Design Thinking, Problems of Practice, Open Teaching & Learning

---

A K-20 Creative Design Approach to Addressing Problems of Practice in a Future Ready School Setting. from Anita Zijdemans Boudreau

Fall 2015 was a good tech semester for me as it presented an opportunity to radically depart from the way I have been teaching educational technology for the past 10 years, and dive into my most authentic open teaching and student learning experience to date. Needless to say it was both

Spring Blog Festival 2015

---

Spring Blog Festival (SBF) is a free one day event, hosted by Nellie Deutsch, that will take place on Saturday March 21, 2015.

The aim of the festival is to showcase bloggers and their work. Topics range from transformational blogging and reflective blogging to connectivity, history, evolution, teaching tools, multi-media, thinking & creativity, families, schools, educational applications, and content curation. → Register     → Presenters

---

Making the Case for Online Teaching & Learning?

---

As I work with colleagues on developing an Online PhD program, and think to my ongoing research and writing, I thought it would be interesting to compare and contrast findings across Project Tomorrow, the ECAR Annual Survey, PEW Internet Data and Device Acquisition Trends in 2013.
I have taken the JOURNAL's 10 Technology trends from Project Tomorrow 2013 -representing 400,000 surveys from 9,000 schools and 2,700 districts nationally with [students, teachers, parents, administrators and this year community members] - and put them alongside infographic visuals from the The Annual ECAR Student and IT Study - a collaboration with 251 institutions with 112,000 undergraduate student responses about their technology experiences around their 4 themes of 1. Mobile Device Ownership and Use; 2. Technology Value and Use; 3. Connectivity and Engagement; 4. Learning Environments

A Systems Framework Examination of the Impact of ICTs on Education

---

I have had the great pleasure of spending part of my sabbatical as a visiting professor in Chile, working on a few different projects with the Faculdad de Educacion. This is the first of what will be three presentations that I am giving during my last week. In this presentation, I look at the impact of ICTs on Educational Practice using Bronfenbrenner´s Chronosystem, Exosystem, Microsystem, and the Individual to frame the discussion.

A Systems Framework Examination of the Impact of ICTs on Education from Anita Zijdemans Boudreau

---

The history of technology in education

This short video provides an timeline of some of the technologies that have influenced how we teach and learn through the centuries [The only thing I saw missing in the 510BCE Pythagoras Academy the was the use of wax tablets]. The journey ends in 2011, with the Smartboard. What struck me was how, in the short time between then and now, we have had an explosion in mobile learning and Apps.

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology | Video on TED.com

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology | Video on TED.com

Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: Teachers Use of Digital Technology

Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook: Teachers Use of Digital Technology

Cool tools

http://www.wordle.net/


Also here is another tool for Firefox browsers for downloading videos to your desktop and it can reformat too

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

playing with technology

there are so many cool things to learn when it comes to technology. for example, i remember getting all excited about taking a flash workshop - i had all kinds of ideas that i wanted to develop for my teaching, so when the chance arose to take a course i was really looking forward to it.

i think many of us are used to learning technology by taking a tutorial or workshop. it is usually full of exciting new information that goes by in a flurry. then at the end you gather up your notes and handouts, and go home thinking about what you can do with your new learning. truth is that unless you sit down and play with it right away, the notes inevitably get lost somewhere in that so-well-organized filing system and it just seems to get more and more difficult to get back to. time passes, and when you finally do get the chance to sit down - if you do get it --- well, let's say that i have yet to create even one of those brilliant flash ideas of mine...

so for this class, i figure why not really go constructivist - just give them an idea, a little bit of direction, a bunch of tools and then let them discover. just like we used to when we were young - learn through play.

give this task to a class of young people and chances are they'll be off and running. but i've discovered a curious thing when it comes to adults - it's not always so easy for us to just play. we tend to want to over think the task, get bogged down by concerns about what to do or how to do it. it's quite fascinating really. and i think that this is a contributing factor to why the digitial divide is becoming more and more a generational thing and less an access thing...when it comes to technology, kids just tend to love to get down with it.

...and so i maintain that the best way to learn technology is to simply play with it!

the possibilities...

when i started my career in education, i was far from expert in technology. i knew how to do the email thing, use a browser, word, a bit of powerpoint and excel. i dont even recall my teacher ed program having a tech course -- now it seems to be standard to get at least one. it wasnt until i started my M.A. that i stumbled across the potential of technology to support learning. my first tech course was taught by marlene scardamalia - whom i later discovered is an internationally renouned cognitive scientist/educator. anyway she and her husband carl bereiter [who i also later took a course from] have developed this collaborative learning environment CSILE [computer supported learning environment] which has since morphed into KF [knowledge forum] and the Institute for Knowledge Innovation & Technology [IKIT]. the whole premise of this environment was to support online learning communities by supporting what they call knowledge building - a collaborative approach to sharing the learning experiences that eventually lead to the creatio of new knowledge products.

this is of course very closely related to the ideals of web 2.0 needless to say, here i am some 13 years later, still excited about the possibilities, still exploring...