{"id":2416,"date":"2012-07-21T15:12:11","date_gmt":"2012-07-21T21:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=2416"},"modified":"2014-09-12T11:58:32","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:58:32","slug":"where-ive-been-weekly-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2012\/07\/21\/where-ive-been-weekly-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Where I’ve Been Online (weekly: July 15-21)"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 6<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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~ A record of places on the web I want to remember ~<\/h4>\n

\u00a020 Jul 12<\/h2>\n

HP Blogs – Knowing What Your Students Don’t Know – How InkSur… – The HP Blog Hub<\/a><\/h2>\n
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In the course of doing this she confirmed what others have reported: Novices playing with simulations don’t always learn what the need to learn. There are gains, but the gains are not sufficient.<\/p>\n

Enter the magic of great teaching and the power of real-time graphical polling. Students again explored the simulations, but this time during class in a conversational context with the instructor. Students asked questions (with diagrams and words) through InkSurvey; Dr. Gardner responded to the class in real time with questions that scaffolded their further exploration of the sims. She did not simply “tell them the answer”. The results are stunning.<\/p>\n

For all six explorations, during this period of “guided play”, student achievement jumped again – and in most cases, more than the initial jump. Surprisingly, student understanding of the historically “most difficult topic” (2nd order underdamped response to a step change) saw a final average assessment score approaching 90%.<\/p>\n

So the average scores across all six topics went from 45% (PRE) to 58% (after free play) to 78% (after guided play) – a remarkable finding that underscores the critically important role that guidance from the instructor serves, and how real-time graphical polling provides the feedback required to enable thoughtful scaffolding in real time.<\/p>\n

Tags: learning<\/a> simulations<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Bill Gates: Getting schools into the game to engage students | Get Schooled<\/a><\/h2>\n
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Check out the classroom of the future, Bill Gates\u2019 style: Students are grouped according to skill set. One cluster huddles around a computer terminal, playing an educational game or working on a simulator. Another works with a human teacher getting direct instruction, while another gets a digital lesson delivered from their teacher\u2019s avatar.
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\nLast year, the foundation announced it would invest $20 million in a variety of teacher tools, including this and other technologies geared toward changing the way teachers teach and kids learn.
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\n…there are lessons to be learned from the enthusiasm kids have when playing video games, including that winning can be a motivator and that students should be able to move to the next level when ready.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not saying the whole curriculum turns into this big game. We\u2019re saying it\u2019s an adjunct to a serious curriculum, \u201d he said.
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\nNow the foundation is working with the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington on a free, online game called Refraction. As students play, their progress is visible to the teacher on his or her computer, allowing the educator to see instantly what concepts students understand.<\/p>\n

The idea is that in coming years, there could be a digital mall full of low-cost or free online games teachers could download to use with the entire class or individual students.
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\nGates said states are now doing the \u201chard work\u201d of implementing new evaluation systems, and in some cases not providing enough resources to ensure they are properly introduced. That includes retaining important elements such as student feedback and peer evaluators.<\/p>\n

Tags: schools<\/a> game<\/a> students<\/a> dgbl<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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#IsThisJournalism? Feature Interview with BitchslappedByLogic | OpenFile<\/a><\/h2>\n
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Daedalus explained the process he used to try and answer the same questions asked by all professional journalists\u2014the who, what, when, where, why and how of Monday night’s shooting.<\/p>\n

“Another user first discovered an Instagram account containing some photos of the party,” Daedalus explained. “One of the labels was ‘HENNESSY BBQ’ or something like that. The pictures depicted a gathering of 50-100 people (visible, at least) on a house lawn. The photos were also tagged with the name of a major intersection nearby. Deduced that this must have been the party where it happened.”<\/p>\n

From there Daedalus searched variants of the terms \u2018bbq’, \u2018hennessy’, \u2018morningside’ and \u2018party’. Eventually, he was able to locate the Twitter account of someone who had been tweeting about a Hennessy party” since early July. From there, he caught sight of a post by the same user tweeting at someone else in which he claimed that it was \u2018his party’ on \u2018dblock’ (Danzig St.).<\/p>\n

As early police and news reports began to stream in, the social media wizard worked through the night. Describing his methodological process, he explained:<\/p>\n

“A sample workflow (to try and identify the individuals) would have gone something like:<\/p>\n

Search a term related to the event
\nScour results page, identify people who are tweeting about it
\nFor each person X who tweeted about the event, check all their tweets
\nDocument any seemingly related findings
\nFor all tweets on page, identify account Y who contacted X
\nRepeat process from step 3 for Y
\nEtc etc etc, repeat”<\/p>\n

His approach, said Daedalus, is based on a philosophy that, “everything is text (searchable) and a link indicated a relationship (possibly between people, context dependent.)” These links, he says, are “surprisingly powerful.”<\/p>\n

So powerful in fact, that Daedalus was able to correctly identify the host of the party, and many of the victims\u2014including the two deceased.<\/p>\n

Tags: interview<\/a> searching<\/a> internet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What\u2019s the Best Way to Practice Project Based Learning? | MindShift<\/a><\/h2>\n
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Project Based Learning can mean different things to different people, and can be practiced in a variety of ways. For educators who want to dive in, the good news is that a rich trove of resources are available.<\/p>\n

Tags: project based learning<\/a> education<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Trouble With Online Education – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/h2>\n
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A truly memorable college class, even a large one, is a collaboration between teacher and students. It\u2019s a one-time-only event. Learning at its best is a collective enterprise, something we\u2019ve known since Socrates. You can get knowledge from an Internet course if you\u2019re highly motivated to learn. But in real courses the students and teachers come together and create an immediate and vital community of learning. A real course creates intellectual joy, at least in some. I don\u2019t think an Internet course ever will. Internet learning promises to make intellectual life more sterile and abstract than it already is \u2014 and also, for teachers and for students alike, far more lonely.<\/p>\n

Tags: online<\/a> online education<\/a> education<\/a> nytimes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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18 Jul 12<\/h2>\n

Consortium of Colleges Takes Online Education to New Level – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/h2>\n
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As part of a seismic shift in online learning that is reshaping higher education, Coursera, a year-old company founded by two Stanford University computer scientists, will announce on Tuesday that a dozen major research universities are joining the venture. In the fall, Coursera will offer 100 or more free massive open online courses, or MOOCs, that are expected to draw millions of students and adult learners globally.
\nSchoolbook<\/p>\n

News, data and conversation about education in New York.<\/p>\n


Even before the expansion, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, the founders of Coursera, said it had registered 680,000 students in 43 courses with its original partners, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Now, the partners will include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia, where the debate over online education was cited in last\u2019s month\u2019s ousting \u2014 quickly overturned \u2014 of its president, Teresa A. Sullivan. Foreign partners include the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Tags: online education<\/a> colleges<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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17 Jul 12<\/h2>\n

Does Our Current Education System Support Innovation? | MindShift<\/a><\/h2>\n
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My own takeaway from the workshop is the tremendous importance of breaking the “technology silos” in schools. We need fewer technology plans, and more learning plans that incorporate technology. We need fewer technology projects, and more projects in civics, biology, and language arts that use technology to develop interests, skills, and domain understanding. We need fewer technology coaches, and more learning coaches with a rich understanding of the full range of tools available to support student learning. We need fewer efforts to measure technology adoption and usage, and more efforts to measure whether technology adoption and usage is leading to better learning in schools.<\/p>\n

Tags: current<\/a> education<\/a> system<\/a> support<\/a> innovation<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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