Emerging Technologies Continued

Tom Daccord is now presenting and has brought up a few good topics. Here are a few books he recommended:

Daniel pink: A Whole New Mind
Ben Shneiderman: Leonardo’s Laptop

Daccord has been mentioning a few concepts and how they apply to the use of technology:

Collect – Relate – Creative – Donate

Collect – Fact acquisition and research
Relate – Team efforts that develop communication
Creative – Individual and team projects create to learn and learn to create
Donate – Authentic, service-oriented projects. The project should benefit others.

He has been discussing how the technology the students use can enable them to contribute and the classroom not only becomes student centered but can leave a legacy for future classes or others around the world.

Daccord has also mentioned how technology is engaging but rather what is more important is to create critical thinking skills by using that technology.

Innovation and information should be the focus not the acquisition or use of technology. We should use technology but ensure that the students create and innovate as they learn and truly understand the content that you as a teacher are disseminating. Through this process we should also cross disciplines and must become more flexible as the world becomes more flat.

Prior to Daccord presenting, a few of the Nobles teachers presented the school’s wiki.  This is the template they have been working with, it might provide you with some good ideas.

Teaching with Emerging Technologies

I am attending a workshop on teaching with emerging technologies at Nobles in Dedham, MA. This has been a useful workshop. At its core, the workshop is placing the dissemination of information above the use of technology. Technology becomes the conduit for the spread of information.

Alan November gave a very good presentation on how to promote critical thinking, global communication skills, and self directed learning. He discussed the importance of incorporating simple and free technologies that will enable the students to become complete learners. Some of theses free tools include:

Skype – a tool for communication
ePals – to be connected to classrooms around the world
podcasts
blogs

More to come as the day progresses.

Shift Happens

The following video discusses how the world is changing. As technologies arrive and students prepare for an ever changing world, this video puts the future into perspective.

Dyslexia and Textbooks

We use Peter Stearns’ World Civilizations: The Global Experience in our World Civilizations classes for both 9th and 10th graders. This is a college level text. Some of the students have difficulty getting through the text. To combat such an issue, especially for dyslexic students, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic publishes common textbooks on audio CD. I believe this is a great resource and believe that every library should have recordings of their textbooks so that students have access to resources that would assist them. Well, at least I’m going to try to get a recording for our department.

The only downside is that the membership and the special cd player that is required are not cheap. I guess you have to be wealthy to afford access to these reading aid materials.

Turnitin. Useful in high school?

I found this site today. Turnitin is a web based software that catches plagiarized papers. The marketing seems to be for higher education but does a application like this find a place in secondary education? I went to both a high school and college that prided itself on its honor code but many institutions are more flexible. Does this lead students to cheat or plagiarize more often? If that is the case, do we need to revert to using software like Turnitin or do the schools need to adopt and instill codes that will promote honor and honesty?

Music and Life

I saw this video clip done by the creators of South Park. The video incorporates a talk given by the philosopher Alan Watts into a cartoon. It discusses the idea behind education and making the most of your life. I thought it is a great social commentary and should provide some inspiration to live your life to the fullest.