Mindless and disturbing commercial hype or … finally … the opportunity to realize the long-held, unfulfilled dreams of boundless learning? Stephen Heppell via Matt Sculley Photo: Ryan Wilson
Tag: technology
The 21st Century Learner
This video from the MacArthur Foundation shows a variety of key and influential people discussing some of the new possibilities in learning, school design and the new opportunities for informal learning. It opens with John Seeley Brown “The most important thing for kids today is the love of embracing change.” “We find when we talk about 21st century skills, people…
A Cautionary Case Study
From BBC Comedy.
Snow Days and Disruption: An open letter to families
Dear PDS Families: A few lines (with minor edits) from division in-boxes and my twitter feed: Student: I just wanted to say how I’ve never been so productive or so academically aware on a Snow day. I’ve been working all day today and yesterday making up work for the D day and other classes. I feel home schooled. I miss school. 🙁 Faculty: Just…
More Educator Luddites Please
Part two of: The Age of Bricolage: School in the Change Blender: Technology is always disruptive: Think of the introduction of the printing press, or the combine harvester, or the typewriter. Think of the mechanical looms and the factory system of the industrial revolution that destroyed a way of life for cottage industry weavers. Some of them took to frame…
The Age of Bricolage: School in the Change Blender
When everything around is changing so rapidly that it feels like living inside a blender on high speed, habits and traditions can be comforting. As the year rolls along in any school there are the dates on the calendar – love them or dread them, those ceremonies, and celebrations – that are familiar, anticipated and taken for granted. And then…
Digital literacy across the curriculum
It’s not about the tools and the testing, it’s about the learning and the thinking. Digital literacy is an important entitlement for all young people in an increasingly digital culture. Every school should have an organized policy for language across the curriculum… Two documents, two eras. The first from FutureLab (UK) – a wonderful introduction to, and handbook for, digital…
Scoundrels alive! High school play streamed to the world
April 23rd 2010 – Shakespeare’s birthday and Poughkeepsie Day School begins live streaming Diary of a Scoundrel – Alexander Ostrovsky’s cynical play about hypocrisy and the trouble with literacy! You can see it here. Thank you David Held- for the live streaming and the videography. David assures me that it only takes half an hour or so to learn how…
Science and technology heroes
It was Dean Kamen – the inventor of the Segway and a version of the artificial heart – who established F.I.R.S.T.* His vision was: “To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.” Last year we introduced lego robotics to 5th and 6th grade…
Where are the adults? Leadership and responsibility in the digital world.
Teacher of the Year Anthony Mullen has another excellent Road Diary post today. At Kent State University, Ohio, he walks down a grassy slope looking back at the spot where, almost forty years ago, the National Guard stood in line to confront student war protesters. And then the fatal 13 seconds that left four students dead. Those Guardsmen and the…
“I know you are into technology …”
Well – yes – I suppose I am, and I always have been. As I child I haunted the school library and, while I didn’t quite read every book, I was certainly familiar with every shelf. I had a town library card at five and usually reached the limit of two fiction and one nonfiction book per visit, which was…
The Children’s Machine: How children take to technology
A second grader needed a place to hang out and my office was available. The conversation went somewhat like this: “Make yourself at home. I’ve not got much for you to do but there are a few toys and books if you want.” “Do you have a spare laptop?” “No sorry, I don’t. But what a good idea.” “What sort…
Hoover that google
With google now declared the word of the decade, tweet the word of the year and unfriend now officially in the OED, the English language is clearly still on the move. When it comes to brand name eponyms some make it, some don’t. In the UK at least hoover is a familiar verb but here is one that did not…
When it comes to technology and change: Are you Toad, Mole, or Rat?
When a new technology comes along and knocks you off the old one – in this case a motor car and a canary-colored horse-drawn cart – are you more of a Toad, Mole or Rat? ‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad, never offering to move. ‘The poetry of motion! The real way to travel! The only way to travel! Here to-day–in…
A Day in the Life of the Internet
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