Yearly Archives: 2012

Ideas for Fun and Learning During the Holiday Break

December 24, 2012 | 8:00 AM | By

Flickr: Andrew Beeston

With two weeks of holiday break stretched out ahead, here are some fun ways to keep kids occupied and engaged, as collected over time on MindShift.

1. DIVE INTO MINECRAFT.

Simply put, Minecraft is a game that lets you build worlds out of blocks. But Minecraft’s visual simplicity belies what is a completely open-ended and therefore terrifically complex world. And the best of that world: it’s up to the player to design. Minecraft is what’s known as a “sandbox” game, giving players almost complete freedom to build within it. While many video games are focused on certain goals — level up, save the princess, destroy the aliens, for example — Minecraft has no clear-cut missions, at least not in that way. Players in Minecraft must scavenge for resources in order to build things — mining for stone to build buildings, mining for coal to build fire. One of the only limitations in-game is time — the sun sets each evening and when it’s dark, spiders and skeletons come out and can attack the characters.

2. MAKE A FILM.

The next Steven Spielberg might emerge from a summer movie-making project. Kids can exercise their writing, creativity, organization, and artistic skills by making their own movies, just as any director does: writing scripts, choosing actors, practicing lines, not to mention actually filming and editing. For those who own an Apple computer, iMovie makes the process very simple. YouTube also offers free editing, and you can find other editing software online.

3. START A DIY PROJECT.

Refrigerators and fireplace mantles might still be covered with children’s projects, but more and more, those projects are finding a home online. That’s just one of the purposes for DIY.org, a site that allows kids to upload photos of their projects and share it with their friends, family, and the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, apps, Games, Minecraft

For Low-Income Kids, Is More Time in School the Answer?

December 21, 2012 | 10:51 AM | By

TB

To help disadvantaged kids who are struggling to keep up in school, some education advocates believe that extending the school day could give them the extra boost they need. They argue that many parents can’t afford to send their kids to the varied extracurricular activities that wealthier children enjoy – leaving poorer kids with a sparse education that focuses primarily on testing.

On that premise, five states recently announced that select school districts will participate in a three-year extended time pilot project funded with a mix of federal, state and district funds, along with private philanthropy from the Ford Foundation and National Center on Time and Learning.
Extended-time advocates cite studies showing a gap in childhood opportunity that mirrors the widening income gap. Wealthy families can and do spend more money on music and art lessons, tutors, and summer camp for their children that help them get ahead, while low-income kids often go home after school to unsafe neighborhoods, with little supervision and fewer positive outlets for their time and energy. The extended time movement is meant to correct those inequalities by offering the same diverse array of activities and adult mentors to disadvantaged children.

But simply tacking on hours at the end of a school day is not the solution, according to some.

“The issue is that many of the schools that poor kids go to are not good schools,” said Elena Silva, a senior associate at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. “If that’s the case, the obvious question is, why would you extend more time? You don’t need more of a bad thing.” Silva has researched the efficacy of extended time and come up with mixed results. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Research, extending-learning-time

For Advice, Ideas and Support, More Educators Seek Social Networks

December 20, 2012 | 9:32 AM | By

Ted Aljibe/Getty

Social networking is hardly a new phenomenon, but teachers have come a long way in their use of sites like Facebook and Twitter. These forms of communication and collaboration have become so common, it’s easy to forget that even a social networking heavyweight like Twitter only gained popularity in the last three or four years.

Results of a survey conducted by MMS Education show that between 2009 — when the survey was last conducted — and 2012, teachers have significantly increased their use of social networking for both personal and professional use. According to a Survey of K-12 Educators on Social Networking, Online Communities, and Web 2.0 Tools 2012,  the percentage of educators who replied that they were part of at least one social networking site went up from 61 percent in 2009 to 82 percent in 2012 — a significant 34 percent gain.

It’s not too surprising that Facebook is still the most popular site, with 85 percent of respondents saying they are members, but educators also favor Google+, Twitter and Pinterest, a surprise write-in. Even more impressively, participation on education-focused sites, some of which didn’t exist during the 2009 survey, has increased dramatically. The most popular is Edmodo with 27 percent, but more established sites like edWeb saw significant increases in participation as well.

“Teachers often tell us that they feel isolated in the classroom because they find it difficult during a busy day to connect with colleagues and get feedback.”

While teachers understand how important social networking sites are to students’ lives, most indicated that they haven’t been able to capitalize on that energy for the purposes of learning. Access to sites is still a huge problem; 47 percent of educators said they felt the rules were too restrictive for their students and even for themselves when at school.

“When educators do find value in an education-based site, they visit frequently,” said Susan Meell, CEO of MMS Education in a webinar explaining the survey results. Many educators reported getting a lot of use out of their interactions on social media sites, especially from free professional development and sharing ideas. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, edWeb, social networking

2012 Ed Tech Trends: Insights From Insiders

December 19, 2012 | 12:12 PM | By

At the end of the year, pundits love to share their versions of summarized lists of what was hot in ed tech in 2012. In addition to the obvious — Common Core curriculum and assessments, games in learning, consumer tech in education — there are others that may be more subtle or even counter-intuitive.

Here are five, drawn from first-hand observation at major 2012 industry conferences ranging from the more traditional Association of Educational Publishers’ and Association of American Publishers’ Content in Context to the edgy SXSWedu event in Austin. These represent one perspective of what the education industry itself is seeing, cutting across individual conferences and events.

 

Flickr:remiforall

1. PAPER IS NOT DEAD

While digital is firing up imaginations and well-equipped classrooms, paper is still the pervasive medium of choice. Digital instruction is simply finally achieving equal billing for serious consideration and state and federal funding. Despite this year’s declaration from the FCC and U.S. Department of Education that the industry should replace paper with digital textbooks by 2017, financial and technical hurdles remain.

For example, one high-profile Open Educational Resources pilot in Utah uses digital resources to create paper high school science textbooks — at an attractive per-copy price of about five dollars, versus $80 for commercial texts. Why paper? David Wiley of Brigham Young University explained at SXSWedu that the digital device cost per student was high and much of the benefit could be derived in how the material was customized, taking advantage of paper’s “unlimited battery life.”

Technical concerns were front-and-center at a Consortium for School Networking/SIIA Feedback Forum held with district and state officials during the ISTE 2012 conference. While WiFi and devices may exist in a school district, distribution can be lumpy, creating hurdles to smooth implementation. “We have schools that are one hundred percent textbook, and schools that are fully digital — a broad spectrum,” said a Louisiana-based tech coordinator.

It is, one administrator from a California district noted, the last mile Internet connection into schools and even individual classrooms “where things get interesting.” Which renders paper Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, blended learning, iPad, open education resources, Technology in Schools

It’s Time: Create Smart Policies to Support Student Tech Use

December 18, 2012 | 10:30 AM | By

Technology has become a seamless part of students’ lives in and out of the classroom, and schools must find ways to integrate it. This is one of the conclusions in a report by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), which states that policymakers at the highest level need to understand the trend and form a cohesive course of action for schools to follow.

In Born in Another Time: Ensuring Educational Technology Meets the Needs of Students Today — And Tomorrow the NASBE focuses on the importance of understanding students’ needs, ensuring that teachers are prepared to meet those needs, and shoring up the technical infrastructure that will allow schools to participate.

“Our kids are digitally savvy when it comes to gaming, texting, and social networking, but when it comes to information, even the best students can be digital doofuses.”

Up until now, much of the enthusiasm for education technology, blended learning, online courses and other digital aids in the classroom have come from teachers themselves. In fact, many ed-tech companies are pursuing a teacher-first strategy, opting to hook the educator and avoid the complicated bureaucracy of selling to school districts. That has left a patchwork of tools and uncertainty among some teachers who would like to take advantage of new tech tools, but aren’t sure how to get started.

“State boards of education along with their state education agencies are key to providing the leadership on education technology issues our school systems need to ensure students are ready for life and work in a digital era,” wrote the NASBE study group tasked with investigating emerging tech trends. At the same time the report acknowledges that the current landscape is a “wild, wild west” of various products and approaches. “Because of their formal responsibilities, state education systems are the only entities able to offer a sustainable platform for aligning these promising—but still fragmented and rapidly changing — forces,” the report said. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Research, Policy, teaching with tech

What Teachers Really Think About Game Based Learning

December 17, 2012 | 5:17 PM | By

Whether teachers are using jeopardy style questions to do test prep or bringing in online games like Minecraft to teach spatial reasoning, games have long been an effective way to engage kids. We Are Teachers, an online resource for educators, surveyed teachers about how they use games and found that 67% use traditional and digital games in the classroom. Just 22% said they didn’t have time to integrate digital games and 56% say they don’t have adequate access to computers for digital game time.

We Are Teachers

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, game-based learning