From DSC:
Twitter is a tool that you should consider putting in your toolbox — or in your students’ toolboxes. Consider how it was used here –> This Henry VIII Twitter Account Is The Best Way To Learn About Brexit | @KngHnryVIII tells it like it is (and like how it was in the 1500s).
Amazon unveils online education service for teachers — from nytimes.com by Natasha Singer
Excerpt:
Just ahead of the back-to-school season, Amazon is making a major foray into the education technology market for primary and secondary schools, a territory that Apple, Google and Microsoft have heavily staked out.
On Monday morning, Amazon said that it would introduce an online marketplace with tens of thousands of free lesson plans, worksheets and other instructional materials for teachers in late August or early September.
Called Amazon Inspire, the education site has features that may seem quite familiar to frequent Amazon shoppers. Search bar at the top of the page? Check. User reviews? Check. Star ratings for each product? Check.
What the bot revolution could mean for online learning — from huffingtonpost.com by Daily Bits Of
Excerpt:
We’re embracing the bot revolution
With these limitations in mind, we embrace the bot movement. In short, having our bite-sized courses delivered via messaging platforms will open up a lot of new benefits for our users.
The future of online learning will happen via messaging services.
Also relevant here:
From DSC:
By posting such items, I’m not advocating that we remove teachers, professors, trainers, coaches, etc. from the education/training equations. Rather, I am advocating that we use technology as tools for educating and training people — and using technologies to help people of all ages grow, and reinvent themselves when necessary. Such tools should be used to help our overworked teachers, professors, trainers, etc. of the world in delivering excellent, effective elearning experiences for our students/employees.
Association for Learning Environments | 2016 Regional Award Winners and Commendations
Excerpt:
OVERALL WINNER OF ALL CATEGORIES:
The Learning Project for CAULFIELD GRAMMAR SCHOOL by Hayball (in association with LEaRN, The University of Melbourne)
Also see:
Connecting the education community with research on learning — from digitalpromise.org
Excerpt:
When designing a program or product, many education leaders and ed-tech developers want to start with the best knowledge available on how students learn. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
Although thousands of academic articles are published every year, busy education leaders and product developers often don’t know where to start, or don’t have time to sift through and find studies that are relevant to their work. As pressure mounts for “evidence-based” practices and “research-based” products, many in the education community are frustrated, and want an easier way to find information that will help them deliver stronger programs and products — and results. We need better tools to help make research more accessible for everyday work in education.
The Digital Promise Research Map meets this need by connecting education leaders and product developers with research from thousands of articles in education and the learning sciences, along with easy-to-understand summaries on some of the most relevant findings in key research topics.
Also see:
Questions from DSC:
As an example of what I’m trying to get at here, who all might be involved with an effort like Echo Dot? What types of positions created it? Who all could benefit from it? What other platforms could these technologies be integrated into? Besides the home, where else might we find these types of devices?
Echo Dot is a hands-free, voice-controlled device that uses the same far-field voice recognition as Amazon Echo. Dot has a small built-in speaker—it can also connect to your speakers over Bluetooth or with the included audio cable. Dot connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music, provide information, news, sports scores, weather, and more—instantly.
Echo Dot can hear you from across the room, even while music is playing. When you want to use Echo Dot, just say the wake word “Alexa” and Dot responds instantly. If you have more than one Echo or Echo Dot, you can set a different wake word for each—you can pick “Amazon”, “Alexa” or “Echo” as the wake word.
Or how might students learn about the myriad of technologies involved with IBM’s Watson? What courses are out there today that address this type of thing? Are more courses in the works that will address this type of thing? In which areas (Computer Science, User Experience Design, Interaction Design, other)?
Lots of questions…but few answers at this point. Still, given the increasing pace of technological change, it’s important that we think about this type of thing and become more responsive, nimble, and adaptive in our organizations and in our careers.
Teaching while learning: What I learned when I asked my students to make video essays — from chronicle.com by Janine Utell, Professor of English at Widener University
Excerpt:
This is not exactly a post about how to teach the video essay (or the audiovisual essay, or the essay video, or the scholarly video). At the end I share some resources for those interested in teaching the form: the different ways we might define the form, some of the theoretical/conceptual ideas undergirding the form, how it allows us to make different kinds of arguments, and some elements of design, assignment and otherwise.
What I’m interested in here is reflecting on what this particular teaching moment has taught me. It’s a moment still in progress/process. These reflections might pertain to any teaching moment where you’re trying something new, where you’re learning as the students are learning, where everyone in the room is slightly uncomfortable (in a good, stretching kind of way), where failure is possible but totally okay, and where you’re able to bring in a new interest of your own and share it with the students.
…
Take two: I tried this again in an upper-level narrative film course, and the suggestions made by students in the previous semester paid off. With the additional guidance, students felt comfortable enough being challenged with the task of making the video; a number of them shared that they liked having the opportunity to learn a new skill, and that it was stimulating to have to think about new ways of making choices around what they wanted to say. Every step of realizing their storyboard and outline required some problem-solving, and they were able to articulate the work of critical thinking in surprising ways (I think they themselves were a little surprised, too).
…
Some resources on the video essay/scholarly video:
From DSC:
A couple of comments that I wanted to make here include:
Per Jack Du Mez at Calvin College, use this app to randomly call on your students — while instilling a game-like environment into your active learning classroom (ALC)!
Description:
Randomly is an app made specifically for teachers and professors. It allows educators to enter their students into individual classes. They can then use the Random Name Selector feature to randomly call on a student to answer a question by one of two ways: Truly random, where repeated names are allowed, or a one pass – where all students are called once before they are called again. The device you’re using will even call out (vocally) the student’s name for you!
This app can also be used to randomly generate groups for you. You can split your class into groups by number of groups or by number of students per group. It intelligently knows what to do with any remaining students too!
This app supports Apple Watch, so you can call on your students with the use of your Apple Watch!
From DSC:
In the future, given facial and voice recognition software, I could see an Augmented Reality (AR)-based application whereby a faculty member or a teacher could see icons hovering over the students — letting the faculty member/teacher know who has been called upon recently and who hasn’t been called upon recently (with settings to change the length of time for this type of tracking — i.e., this student has been called upon in this class session, or in the last week, or in the last month, etc.).
Who inspired you to become an educator? — from peopleadmin.com; with thanks to Chris Abraham for the resource
Have you heard of #Inspired2Educate?
Inspired2Educate is a national recognition program that encourages current K-20 educators to honor the teachers or administrators who inspired them to embrace education as their life’s work. Educators can share their story with PeopleAdmin for a chance to win $2,000.
Educators can tell their stories either via videos or via a written format and each month PeopleAdmin will award one person with $1,000 for professional development and $1,000 for their educational institution.
For further information, go to https://peopleadmin.com/
From DSC:
Also see:
Projections of Education Statistics to 2023 — from nces.ed.gov
By William J. Hussar, National Center for Education Statistics
and Tabitha M. Bailey, IHS Global Inc.
Description:
This publication provides projections for key education statistics. It includes statistics on enrollment, graduates, teachers, and expenditures in elementary and secondary schools, and enrollment and earned degrees conferred expenditures of degree-granting institutions. For the Nation, the tables, figures, and text contain data on enrollment, teachers, graduates, and expenditures for the past 14 years and projections to the year 2023. For the 50 States and the District of Columbia, the tables, figures, and text contain data on projections of public elementary and secondary enrollment and public high school graduates to the year 2023. In addition, the report includes a methodology section describing models and assumptions used to develop national and state-level projections.
Also see:
From DSC:
Yesterday, I attended the Michigan Virtual University (MVU) Online Learning Symposium on the campus of Michigan State University. I would like to send a shout out to MVU for putting this event together and to MSU for hosting a solid event, as well as to all of the speakers and presenters throughout the day.
Some key points/themes:
An insert, dated 4/14/16 from:
We’re already seeing such changing expectations, as identified in the following article from 4/11/16:
“What Gen Z Thinks About Ed Tech in College” — edtechmagazine.com
A report on digital natives sheds light on their learning preferences.
Excerpt:
A survey of the collegiate educational-technology expectations of 1.300 middle and high school students from 49 states was captured by Barnes and Noble. The survey, Getting to Know Gen Z, includes feedback on the students’ expectations for higher education.
“These initial insights are a springboard for colleges and universities to begin understanding the mindset of Gen Z as they prepare for their future, focusing specifically on their aspirations, college expectations and use of educational technology for their academic journey ahead,” states the survey’s introduction.
Like the millennials before them, Generation Z grew up as digital natives, with devices a fixture in the learning experience. According to the survey results, these students want “engaging, interactive learning experiences” and want to be “empowered to make their own decisions.” In addition, the students “expect technology to play an instrumental role in their educational experience.”
Keynotes/speakers (with some notes on their presentations included):
Buddy Berry
Superintendent of Eminence Independent Schools
Eminence, Kentucky
Also see:
School on FIRE (Framework of Innovation for Reinventing Education)
Woven throughout all we do is the concept of Surprise and Delight. We want each student, staff, and stakeholder to be continually amazed and engaged each and every day. We want to create and foster an environment where creativity and customer service abound in all aspects of our school. Whether great or small, the element of “Surprise and Delight” is the essence of our organization.
Buddy gave an emotional, powerful keynote address — even while cooking up a delicious dish.
Photo from Eric Kunnen at GVSU
The aromas spread throughout the room, even if only a handful of people were actually going to eat the dish (a lesson is in there for education reform as well). Buddy thinks outside the box and wants those in the Eminence Independent School system to start thinking differently as well. He seeks to have their schools surprise and delight students — awesome! As an example of this, he wouldn’t accept no to some things re: providing WiFi to their students. So he had their buses outfitted with WiFi, then saw to it that those buses were parked overnight in the areas where their students didn’t have access to WiFi. Students within 100 yards of those buses now have WiFi.
As a result of a tragic accident involving one of his former football players, Buddy is truly driven to change the world. He thinks big. He is on a mission, backed up by vast amounts of energy and determination.
Their School on FIRE document mentions the following bullet points re: personalized learning:
Brian J. Whiston
State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Brian:
Joe Freidhoff
Vice President of Research, Policy & Professional Learning, MVU
Joe shared numerous pieces of data from the report that he authored:
Freidhoff, J.R. (2016). Michigan’s K-12 virtual learning effectiveness report 2014-15. Lansing, MI: Michigan Virtual University. Retrieved from http://media.mivu.org/institute/pdf/er_2015.pdf.
Some excerpts from the Key Findings section:
Joe also shared some items from “A Report to the Legislature” — from 12/1/15.
Other notes:
Backchannel products/solutions I saw used:
