An interesting view of teaching with iPads ... disruptive or not?
I had high hopes when I handed out iPads to students in my graduate seminar this semester. I wanted to explore the possibilities of tablet computing and see firsthand how tablets might be used in higher education. I also wanted students to see for themselves where the iPad might fit into their lives and their careers - and into the future of media and communication.
"When I was trained to teach, I was trained to come up with a 45-minute lecture. ... But the essential thing was me giving you information," said McKnight. "They don't need that anymore. Students can find the information. Get them on Google, they can find it faster than I can give it out. ... They need to know how to think and how to create."Piece in this past Sunday's Centre Daily Time about Philipsburg-Osceola School District dealing with new teaching methods. They have been dismissing students early on Wednesdays so teachers can focus on professional development. The description in the article sounds like the time is being used for the teachers to talk about their teaching with each other - very community of practice theory. The article sounds also highlights the familiar argument between those that think teaching styles need to change and those that don't.
I'm 21, I can say with a lot of confidence that the 'books' that come to define my generation will be impossible to print. This is great.This post relates to our class discussion last week on the interface conventions in the ibooks app - ebooks as a transitionary form between physical books and something new. I guess time will tell if the author is right or not.
It was on TechCrunch in late February that I first suggested that the enterprise software industry has to move forward and posted an article, "The Facebook Imperative." In 1999, I was obsessed with the question, "Why isn't all enterprise software like Amazon.com? And in 2010, the question evolved: "Why isn't all enterprise software like Facebook?" This week we will have the answer to that question in our hands with the iPad. It's a more productive, easier, and fun way to work and live. The iPad shows us the old world is no longer good enough. We'll need new software with a new UI.
Via TechCrunch
I am curious as the iPad launch day approaches how all of us are feeling about the device? If you are interested we can talk a bit about it today in class. I think it will usher in a fundamentally different approach to computing for a whole host of reasons.
Learning Parties bring small groups of neighbours, friends, and families together with a knowledgeable, warm and articulate guide to practice the hands-on arts, preferably so that somebody benefits by getting to take home a solar water heater, or having their garden started for them, or getting to keep some freshly-made sauerkraut or kimchi.
http://slas.ca/learning-party/
Not that I think we should get together to do some gardening, but the notion of the learning party is really compelling. Sort of feels a lot like what we do each Tuesday in our class, but I wonder how it would look if we picked a different day, venue, and crowd to invite? Could we build a new vision of what it means to workshop?
While the LMS has become central to the business of colleges and universities, it has also become a symbol of the higher learning status quo. Many students, teachers, instructional technologists, and administrators consider the LMS too inflexible and are turning to the web for tools that support their everyday communication, productivity, and collaboration needs. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, microblogging tools, and other web-based applications are supplanting the teaching and learning tools previously found only inside the LMS.
What would Norman say about the Olympic pictograms through the ages? Are they simple enough?
The point of this historical perspective is to remind us that the last decade has seen transformations of a kind notable even from the long perspective of the record of human history. Our Information Age has been the most extensive and rapid in human history, structurally altering traditional economic and political arrangements on a global level and, at the same time, restructuring communication, interaction, publication, and authorship in all currently available media. Is it any wonder that many of us are wondering what will happen next -- or asking how best to prepare ourselves for what comes next?
Really worth a read and a few thoughts from the class.
Once upon a time on Facebook, participants had to be a vetted member of a community to even have an account. Privacy was a deeply held value and many turned to Facebook because of the ways in which it protected them from making public mistakes. This was especially core to youth participation. Parents respected Facebook's attitudes towards privacy and, in a shocking moment of agreement, teens did too.
If you don't know danah boyd, you should. She looks at teen behavior in social networks. Her work is very smart and really insightful. This piece looks at Facebook's new privacy policies and how they've been changed recently. Dr. boyd (she spells her name with lower case letters) was a keynote speaker at last year's TLT Symposium ... it was a killer talk and can be seen here.
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