Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Infographic: Students Want Teachers to Use Social Media

View large at mindshift.kqed.org

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0

The world has become increasingly “flat,” as Tom Friedman has shown. Thanks to massive improvements in communications and transportation, virtually any place on earth can be connected to markets anywhere else on earth and can become globally competitive.

Compounding this challenge of demand from college-age students is the fact that the world is changing at an ever-faster pace.

Few of us today will have a fixed, single career; instead, we are likely to follow a trajectory that encompasses multiple careers.

Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0

As we move from career to career, much of what we will need to know will not be what we learned in school decades earlier. We are entering a world in which we all will have to acquire new knowledge and skills on an almost continuous basis.

It is unlikely that sufficient resources will be available to build enough new campuses to meet the growing global demand for higher education—at least not the sort of campuses that we have traditionally built for colleges and universities.

Nor is it likely that the current methods of teaching and learning will suffice to prepare students for the lives that they will lead in the twenty-first century.

Creator/Author(s): 

John Seely Brown is a Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at the University of Southern California (USC) and Independent Co-Chairman of a New Deloitte Research Center.

He is the former Chief Scientist of Xerox and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Many of his publications and presentations are on his website (http://www.johnseelybrown.com).

Richard P. Adler is a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and Principal of People & Technology, a research and consulting firm in Cupertino, California.

License: 

This is protected under the following Creative Commons License.

Publication Date: 

July 27, 2011

U.S. Department of Education Launches Digital Media 'Learning Registry'

The U.S. Departments of Education and Defense have announced the launch of “Learning Registry,” an open source community and technology designed to improve the quality and availability of educational media resources in education.

The launch is an important milestone in the effort to more effectively share information about learning resources among a broad set of stakeholders in the education community.

 PBS LearningMedia, which is home to a library of 16,000+ digital curriculum-based resources and tools for PreK-12 grade educators, will offer school initial access U.S. Department of Education's Learning Registry.

Under this relationships, a collection of resources, including photos, video, and audio files from federal organizations including NASA, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives, will now be easier to find, access and integrate into educational environments.

PBS' online media-on-demand service combines links to resources from the Learning Registry with original content from public broadcasting producers and programs like WGBH, Nova, Frontline, American Experience, Sid The Science Kid, and The Electric Company, all in one place. 

Rather than creating an alternative destination to existing websites, Learning Registry is a communication system that allows existing educational portals and online systems to publish, consume and share important information about learning resources with each other and the public

Infographic: How Mobile Phones Shape the Lives of College Students

Created by: HackCollege

Women, Girls and STEM Education

First Lady Michelle Obama recently announced a National Science Foundation​ initiative to encourage girls to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and provide flexibility to working parents in research fields.

 

This fact sheet takes a look at why bringing girls and women into STEM fields is so important—and what President Obama and his administration are doing to help.

Girls, Women and STEM Education

Facebook 101: Fighting Cyberbullying

Facebook 101: Fighting Cyberbullying

How To: Create a Classroom Facebook Page

How To: Create A Classroom Facebook Page

Trend Watch: Missouri Outlaws Student-Teacher Facebook & Twitter Friendships [PODCAST]

When the tornado devastated the town of Joplin Missouri, teachers turned to Facebook to help locate students. A new measure could make that a bit more complicated.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon recently signed a bill into law that would ban exclusive contact on social networking sites between teachers and students. Senate Bill 54 passed with unanimous support.

A small part of the wide-ranging SB54, makes it illegal for teachers to be "friends" with students on any social networking site that allows private communication.

That means teachers and students can't be friends on Facebook or can't follow each other on Twitter for example.

It was meant to prevent teachers from developing inappropriate relationships with their students. But to use Facebook parlance, not everyone is clicking the like button.

NPR's All Things Considered's Michele Norris spoke to an eighth grade teacher from Joplin, Mo., who opposes the new law. Randy Turner, who teaches English, said as teachers your job is to reach out to students and that means going where they are and now a days students have shunned e-mail and are using social networking sites to communicate.

But Turner argues instead of protecting children, this new law may be hurting them. "We may be preventing them from talking to the very people who may be able to help," he said.

Missouri Outlaws Student-Teacher Facebook Friendship by barkingrobot

via www.npr.org

Related Links

• Facebook for Educators Guide [EN]
• Facebook Para Educadores [ES]
• Facebook fur Padagogen [DE]
• Facebook para Educadores [PT]

Infographic: How The Internet Is Changing the Way We Learn

via mashable.com

Exchange 2.0: The Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration

The Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration was developed to help teachers use the Internet to "reach out" globally. 

In his address to the Council on Foreign Relations in May 2010, Secretary Arne Duncan stated:

“We must improve language learning and international education at all levels if our nation is to continue to lead in the global economy to help bring security and stability to the world and to build stronger and more productive ties with our neighbors….We have never been more aware of the value of a multiliterate, multilingual society, a society that can appreciate all that makes other cultures and nations distinctive, even as it embraces all that they have in common.”

This Guide has been prepared as part of the Department of Education's effort to expand global awareness through collaboration between students and teachers in the US with their peers around the world.  

On these pages, teachers will find many projects and suggestions to begin or expand classroom projects that reach across the globe and enable students to learn WITH the world, as well as about it.

In each section of this Guide we have also provided links to elementary, middle and high school projects and links to organizations that are involved in international education via the Internet and Web 2.0 tools.

• Learn More about Exchange 2.0 and Connect All Schools on Facebook

Facebook DC Live: Facebook for Educators

Join Linda Fogg Phillips, co-author (along with myself and BJ Fogg) of the new Facebook for Educators guide, Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, and other panelists for a discussion of how teachers and administrators can connect safely and appropriately with students on Facebook and other social media sites to extend learning outside the classroom.

Facebook will also discuss some recent efforts both on and off of Facebook to thank teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week.

To watch at 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT on Tuesday, click the "FB DC Live" navigation link on http://www.facebook.com/FacebookDC or go directly to: http://www.facebook.com/FacebookDC?v=app_141125442599532.

Ask questions for our guests on the wall of this event.

North Carolina School Engages Tech Generation With Digital Learning Tools

John Tulenko of Learning Matters, which produces education stories for the NewsHour, reports on a North Carolina school district switching from textbooks to all-digital learning materials.

My favorite quote is this piece comes from Mark Edwards, Superientendent of Schools in Mooresville, North Carolina:

"For years we would tell students "We will prepare you for your future." But their experience in school didn't have much to do (with the future).

I would say it would be the same to say "We are going to prepare you for driving a car, so get on this horse." And the kids say "That doesn't make sense, i'm not going to be riding a horse."

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

 

 

Speak Up National Findings 2010: How Students Are Leveraging Technology for Learning

Earlier this month 2011 Project Tomorrow released the report “The New 3 E’s of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered – How Today’s Students are Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Learning” at a Congressional Briefing held in Washington, D.C..

The Speak Up 2010 project surveyed almost 300,000 students (along with 43,000 parents, 35,000 teachers, 2000 librarians and 3500 administrators) from over 6500 private and public schools last fall about how they're using - and how they want to be using - technology for learning.

Key findings:

• 67 percent of parents said they would purchase a mobile device for their child to use for schoolwork if the school allowed it, and 61 percent said they liked the idea of students using mobile devices to access online textbooks.

• 53 percent of middle and high school students reported that the inability to use cell phones, smart phones or MP3 players was the largest obstacle when using technology in school.

• Additionally, 71 percent of high school students and 62 percent of middle school students said that the number one way schools could make it easier to use technology would be to allow greater access to the digital content and resources that Internet firewalls and school filters blocked.

• Parents are increasingly supportive of online textbooks. Two-thirds of parents view online textbooks as a good investment to enhance student achievement compared to 21 percent in 2008. However, E-textbooks are still a relatively novel concept in the classroom. Slightly over one-third of high school students report they are currently using an online textbook or other online curriculum as part of their regular schoolwork.

• Nearly 30 percent of high school students have experienced some type of online learning.

Speak Up National Findings 2010

Skype In The Classroom: An International Social Network For Teachers [VIDEO]

Skype realizes full well its software is used by many school teachers and students from around the globe, and today announced that it has built a dedicated social network to help them connect, collaborate and exchange knowledge and teaching resources over the Web.

This morning, the company launched a free international community site dubbed Skype in the Classroom, an online platform designed to help teachers find each other and relevant projects according to search criteria such as the age groups they teach, location and subjects of interest.

How to create a profile and find a teacher from Skype in the classroom on Vimeo.

The platform, which has been in beta since the end of December, already has a community of more than 4,000 teachers, across 99 countries.

Teachers need only sign up with their Skype account at the website, create a profile with their interests, location and the age groups they teach and start connecting with other teachers by exploring the directory, where they can also find projects and resources that match their skills, needs or interests.

A members-only community, Skype in the Classroom lets teachers easily add each other to their Skype contact lists or message one another.

via TechCrunch

Togetherville Named One of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in Education

Fast Company just released its list of the most innovative companies in the world, and Togetherville ranked #5 on their education list! Other notable mentions on this list include LinkedIn and the Discovery Channel.

To learn more on how Togetherville, the social networking site for kids,families and teachers, is building a platform for these communities to share and express their thoughts on educational issues, click here.

Congrats to the Togetherville team!