From DSC:
I originally saw this at:
Excerpt:
Of course, the future belongs to the young. You get a decent look at it ahead of time, though, by watching how they build new ways seize it.
Earlier today a 17 year old named Priyanka Jain launched a student run nonprofit called iCAREweCARE, which is dedicated to helping high school and college students identify causes they care about, find local organizations that address those problems, and then write about their experiences, or connect with their friends over them. There is a Web site, and Facebook connections for rapid and deep information sharing.
The cause-centered orientation is praiseworthy. The implications of this kind of social platform, however, could be what proves really world-changing
echalk — from www.echalk.de
From DSC:
I’m looking for a technology that can capture 20 feet worth of “chalkboard” for longer mathematical problems and solutions and equations. How can we capture that?
Perhaps I’m not thinking clearly, but tablets don’t seem nearly large enough to fit these types of work on them in their entirety. Document cameras are another potential option, but again, the writing surface is too small. That goes for PolyVision’s Eno Board, Smart’s Interactive Whiteboards, BrightLink Projectors from Epson and other similar products.
That’s why E-Chalk caught my attention.
I’m trying to free up students’ minds — to allow them to be cognitively engaged with — and present with — the content being discussed (vs. having to madly write down the equations before the professor erases the board). I want them to walk away with such writings on a device and/or accessible somewhere on the cloud.
E-chalk is more than a traditional chalkboard because it integrates multimedia elements:
The NMC Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition, a research effort led and published by the New Media Consortium, is rolling out at three important venues over the next few weeks. Three international organizations — the New Media Consortium, the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) — collaborate on identifying technology experts and other aspects of the research, and this year, for the first time, each organization is planning a significant event related to the new report for each of their audiences.
Excerpt from introduction (emphasis DSC):
Three factors are driving this new interest and enthusiasm for digital learning by educators. First, teachers and administrators are increasingly become technology-enabled themselves, using emerging technologies such as mobile devices, online classes and digital content to improve their own productivity. This development of a personal value proposition with the technology is propelling educators to think creatively about how to leverage these same tools in the classroom. Second, students and increasingly parents are demanding a different kind of learning experience and that is forcing even the most reluctant teachers and administrators to re-evaluate their perspectives about the value of technology within learning. As noted in prior Speak Up national reports, students have a very clear vision for 21st century learning. Their preference is for learning environments that are socially-based, un-tethered and digitally rich. Parents are also supportive of this new learning paradigm and as we noted in our first Speak Up 2010 report (released in April 2011) the emergence of a new trend of parental digital choice is an indication of this unprecedented support level. And schools and districts are waking up to this new trend. Concerns about parents’ capability to, for example, enroll their children in non-district provided online classes are compelling many districts to start virtual schools themselves. The third factor, the economy, and its resulting financial pressures on school and district budgets, has created a sense of urgency to more fully investigate how technologies can help educators meet their instructional goals with less expense.
All three factors converging at the same time has opened up a new window of possibilities for achieving the promise of technology to transform education. Evidence of this shift in perspective and vision by educators is noted in some comparative Speak Up findings over the past few years.
…
This report is the second in a two-part series to document the key national findings from Speak Up 2010.
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In this companion report, “The New 3E’s of Education: Enabled, Engaged, Empowered – How Today’s Educators are Advancing a New Vision for Teaching and Learning,” we explore how teachers, principals, district administrators, librarians and technology coordinators are addressing the student vision for learning around three key trends. These trends have generated significant interest in the past year at conferences, in policy discussions and within our schools and districts: mobile learning, online and blended learning and digital content.
While each of these trends includes the essential components of the student vision of socially-based, un-tethered and digitally-rich learning, they also provide a unique backdrop for investigating the role of educators to engage, enable and empower students through the use of these emerging technologies.
• Role of Librarians and Technology Coordinators: To enable student use of the emerging technologies through their planning, support and recommendation responsibilities.
• Role of Classroom Teachers: To engage students in rich, compelling learning experiences through the effective use of these technologies in the classroom.
• Role of School and District Administrators: To empower both teachers and students to creatively envision the future of digital learning, and to provide opportunities for exploring the elements of a new shared vision for learning.
Online learning begins to explode into mainstream in blended schools — from Disupting Class posted by Michael Horn
This week, Innosight Institute, where I am the executive director of the education practice, released a landmark report, titled The rise of K-12 blended learning: Profiles of Emerging Models, which profiles 40 different operators leading the rise of K-12 blended learning.
Across America a skyrocketing number of K-12 students are getting their education in blended-learning environments. Over 4 million K-12 students took at least one online course in 2010, according to Ambient Insight, and this space is growing now by a five-year compound annual growth rate of 43 percent—much faster than the growth of charter schooling or other K-12 education reforms, for example. And the majority of this growth is occurring in different types of “blended learning.”
Also see:
John Hunter on the World Peace Game — TED March 2011 — my thanks to Mr. Joseph and Mrs. Kate Byerwalter for this great presentation
About this talk
John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4’x5′ plywood board — and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches — spontaneous, and always surprising — go further than classroom lectures can.
About John Hunter
Teacher and musician John Hunter is the inventor of the World Peace Game (and the star of the new doc “World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements”).
