Places I’ve Been (to July 13)

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

  • Eliot, Charles W., ed. The Harvard Classics and Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1909–1917

    ”
    The Harvard Classics
    The Shelf of Fiction

    Selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD

    The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume “5-foot shelf of books” and the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.”

    tags: classics harvard books liberal education

  • Gaming and Education | engagement in learning

    ““South Hills High School teacher Saleta Thomas bills her class as a digital game-design program for students. But once students opt to take the class, they start learning computer coding through basic programs like Alice, then move on to Flash, JavaScript, ActionScript, and other coding languages.

    Since the students in the Fort Worth, Texas, school are focused on digital-game creation, often they don’t even realize they’re learning computer coding, Thomas says. The “marketing” ploy of labeling the course digital-game design has had an impact, she says. Computer science wasn’t a popular course at the low-income school, which has struggled over the past few years to bring test scores up, but the digital-gaming elective has gone from 22 students its first year to 45 this school year, and 81 are projected for the next school year.

    “If we get the hook into them through gaming, then when they go to college they can see there’s a whole lot more offered in computer science,” Thomas says. “If you major in computer science, your world is really open.””

    tags: gaming education engagement learning

    • I don’t like the “stealth” idea, but it seems to work. Not sure what that says. – post by Katrin Becker

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Wholesale Adoption of iPads by Schools a Mistake | Educational Technology and Change Journal

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

Wholesale Adoption of iPads by Schools a Mistake | Educational Technology and Change Journal.

YES! YES! YES!

See my own reasons for why the iPad is not the answer here. Others are saying similar things.

The thing is, iPads a re fine if most of what you want to do is consume – watch, read, listen, maybe play a little (but just a little). If you want to make something then you need more. If you want to make something that is not going to live out its entire existence on an Apple device, then you for sure need something else.

 

Sadly, by the time people realize that it isn’t enough AND that it can’t actually “revolutionize learning” that way people are promising, it will be too late. SO much money will have been invested that they will be trapped.

 

Like this:

Why are cash-starved school districts sending public funds to Apple — while laying off teachers? Follow the money

No, iPads do not make teachers obsolete!

As the New York Times sums up that argument, these triumphalists believe iPads and attendant iBooks will “save money in the long run by reducing printing and textbook costs.” The enticing idea is that schools may have to invest huge money upfront, but they will supposedly see huge savings in out years.

The trouble is that there is little evidence to suggest that’s true, and plenty of evidence to suggest the opposite is the case.

….

“It will cost a school 552% more to implement iPad textbooks than it does to deploy books.”

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Double Barrel Critique: Flipped Classrooms & MOOCs

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

The Tyee – The Problem with MOOCs.

Jon Beasley-Murray takes a shot at 2 currently trendy educational “innovations”.  Well said and worth the read.

First the “Flipped Classroom”:

Essentially, his pedagogical tweaks involve the use of technology to incorporate student feedback and discussion. His technique is for the lecturer to introduce a concept, then pose a question. After responses to the question have been gathered, students discuss their answers among themselves before answering the question again; the lecturer goes over the correct answer and moves on.

The point is that ideally students will have taught each other during the discussion phase, as will be demonstrated by their improved responses the second time they answer the same question. Not a bad idea per se, but hardly earth-shattering.

…

Mazur’s thoughts on pedagogical theory were astonishingly superficial and, frankly, uninformed.

Agreed. (!)

One of the downsides of the wonderful interwebs is that everyone now has the ability to pass themselves off as an expert – and people are (always have been) taken in by slick marketing.Besides, who doesn’t want an easy solution to life’s complex problems?

For as little as $20/year you too can access my half-baked but visually pretty idea……But WAIT, there’s MORE….

Next, he takes on MOOCs:

But I do object to the romanticized pathos invoked by Koller (here and increasingly as her talk goes on): the conceit that Coursera’s object is to lift up the impoverished in Latin America, Africa, and the Third World more generally. Or the notion that North American universities’ participation with her company is the best way to make up for lack of educational capacity in the global South. Beyond the immense condescension and ignorance that it betrays on her part, I bet she isn’t spinning this line to her venture-capital investors. And I’d rather she didn’t spin it to us.

…

In the end, it is the broader issues that Koller and Mazur represent that are of most concern.

The radical educational proposals of the 1960s and 1970s are being rediscovered, now that their promise is finally realizable thanks to technological innovation.

But their utopian thrust has been lost, their politics have been gutted, and everything has to be “monetized” as part of a massive round of enclosures in which for-profit start-ups and mega-corporations colonize the captive educational market.

They turn their backs on a whole field of educational theory and enquiry, in favour of the latest huckster with a fancy website. And they forget entirely what the university is supposed to be about, or what in the 1960s and 1970s we thought it could be about.

We have the means to make a previous generation’s utopian dreams real. But we have forgotten their vision, and want only to buy and sell the means as though this were an end of its own.

 

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

It’s Not Women Who Should Lean In; It’s Men Who Should Step Back – James Allworth – Harvard Business Review

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

It’s Not Women Who Should Lean In; It’s Men Who Should Step Back – James Allworth – Harvard Business Review.

Well worth the read.

When I was still @ UofC I quickly found that the less I acted (and taught) like a guy, the more my students liked it, but the more my colleagues attacked me.

Among the WORST offenders were the other women faculty.

To me, the overconfidence typical of “successful” men has always felt deceitful.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Games the key to girls’ STEM education | news @ Northeastern

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

Games the key to girls’ STEM education | news @ Northeastern.p.s. I Love that theiy're holding DS's!

Girls GAMES, short for Girls Advancing in Math, Engi­neering, and Sci­ence, is a new col­lab­o­ra­tion between uni­ver­sity part­ners and gaming com­pa­nies in Seattle aimed at pro­moting STEM careers for women through the devel­op­ment of edu­ca­tional games. Though the main event is being held in Seattle, a two-??hour event is sched­uled for 3 p.m. today in 250 West Vil­lage F.

“We know games can engage kids to learn, so let’s use games for real learning, and let’s use games to advance girls’ learning, interest, and aspi­ra­tions in STEM,” said Tayloe Wash­burn, dean and CEO of Northeastern’s grad­uate campus in Seattle.

 

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Are Rabbits the New Super Meat? – Modern Farmer

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

UEC-2013-06-13_14-43-00_wmNice article. The one thing I would disagree with though is:

The fact that rabbits require a gentler environment than a factory farm can offer means the market largely relies on family-run operations like his own. “Mother Nature designed them at the low end of the food chain so they die easily. That’s problematic.”

I agree that they aren’t really suited to a factory farm. I *really* disagree that that’s a problem. Quite the contrary – it’s a great selling feature – these animals HAVE to be raised more humanely than pigs and poultry.
We should be moving away from factory farming, not trying to find new ways to add to it.

via Are Rabbits the New Super Meat? – Modern Farmer.

Like all prospects of panacea, there’s a catch: farmers have yet to figure out a way to produce rabbits on an industrial scale, which means that getting them into grocery stores, whether consumers want them or not, remains problematic.

OOOH, OOOH, I know! People can raise their own!

 

2012-04-13-11-05-09_wmJust think …. people can have 3 or 4 rabbits – they can use their own lawn clippings to supplement their feed, and they can use the manure to fertilize their gardens. Heck, they can even use the manure to fertilize their house plants – rabbit pellets really don’t smell and come in nice little time-release capsules.

Of course, if they use the lawn to feed their rabbits they shouldn’t be spraying it with anything (a GOOD thing) …. AND, if they use the manure to fertilize, they also won’t need as much factory-made fertilizer (ALSO a good thing).

 

AND …. they will be forced to get back in touch with a part of the natural world that many (if not most) urbanites seem to have forgotten.

 

I wonder what the impact would be…. less use of chemical herbicides and fertilizers. Less garbage (rabbits are now eating all the lawn clippings). Less demand for factory raised meat. Healthier diets (rabbit meat is really good for you). New markets would spring up for things like custom butchering, and tanning of hides (maybe we’ll even find more environmentally friendly ways to process hides). The ripple effect could be substantial.

Be the first to like.

Unlike

Twenty terrible reasons for lecturing

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

I came across this today – it’s not new – but if you’ve ever questioned the efficacy of the Lecture as instructional technology, have a look:

Twenty terrible reasons for lecturing.

Worth remembering: “A heavy workload and a lack of freedom in learning is associated with students taking a surface as opposed to a deep approach.”

2013-06-29_09-36-55

1. If students didn’t have as many lectures they’d learn less.
1.1 “Lectures should last an hour. If I can stay awake for an hour, so can they”.
1.2 “Its the only way to make sure the ground is covered”.
1.3 “Lectures are the best way to get facts across”.
1.4 “Lectures are the best way to get students to think”.
1.5 “Lectures are inspirational: they improve students’ attitudes towards the subject, and students like them”.
1.6 “Lecturers make sure that students have a proper set of notes”.
1.7 “Students are incapable of, or unwilling to, work alone, so its good for them to have full timetables”.
1.8 “The criticisms one can make of lecturing only apply to bad lecturing”.
1.9 “The value of lectures can only be judged in the context of other teaching and learning activities which make up the course”.

2. Why is there so much lecturing going on?
2.1 We are ignorant
2.1.1 We are ignorant of the evidence about the effectiveness of lectures
2.1.2 We are ignorant of alternatives to lectures.
2.2 We are overworked
2.2.1 Alternatives to lectures may appear to involve more work
2.2.2 Changes take time to introduce
2.3 There is a shortage of resources
2.3.1 There is a shortage of books
2.3.2 There is a shortage of other learning resources
2.4 Our attitudes obstruct change – we use lectures as a coping strategy
2.5 There are institutional constraints which support lecturing:
2.5.1 in the way teaching hours are counted;
2.5.2 in the relationship between individual courses
2.6 Course validation and other external forces often support lecturing
2.7 We don’t know how to design courses

 

1 person likes this post.

Unlike

Can Digital Games Boost Students’ Test Scores? | MindShift

Posted on by
Reply
Approximate Reading Time: < 1 minute

Can Digital Games Boost Students’ Test Scores? | MindShift.

I’m always being asked for references to sources that “prove” games are useful. Well, here’s one:

A new SRI study released today suggests they do — at least in the subjects of science, math, engineering, and technology. According to the report, which is an analysis of 77 peer-reviewed journal articles of students K-16 studying STEM subjects, “when digital games were compared to other instruction conditions without digital games, there was a moderate to strong effect in favor of digital games in terms of broad cognitive competencies.”

More specifically, “students at the median in the control group (no games) could have been raised 12 percent in cognitive learning outcomes if they had received the digital game.”

 

However, it is important to remember that “instructional technology only works for some kids, with some topics, and under some conditions – but that is true of all pedagogy. There is nothing that works for every purpose, for every learner, and all the time.” (Mann, 2001, p. 241)

This applies to games too.

Be the first to like.

Unlike