etc@bmc
Friday, December 23, 2005
K-12 students embracing technology
Area school district have incorporated technology into their curriculum, reports the Inquirer. What does this mean for us at the college level? Students who are technology proficient and use technology extensively in their learning tend to have different expectations of their learning environment. They expect to have a little more control over it and to explore it in different ways. We're already seeing this a little as high schools, especially, have had more technology incorporated into their courses. I've talked to some students who've said that while they certainly enjoy their classes at college, they miss having access to different kinds of technology.
via Educational Technology
via Educational Technology
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Why we need to change the way we teach
This post by David Warlick gets to some of the reasons we're having our conference and why we need start thinking differently about the students we'll be teaching in the future. One of my mantras is recapitulated:
Read the whole post and the comments. This is what's coming, folks.
The answers to today’s questions will not be their answers tomorrow. Science, health, culture, politics, economics, and even history are all changing. In a rapidly changing world, it becomes much less valuable to be able to memorize the answer, and much more valuable to be able to find and even invent the answers.This is true of learning new technology as well. Information and technology changes so quickly, there's no way any one person can know all the answers. What we must encourage our students (and ourselves) to do is to learn to find the answers. That means learning how to use search tools and how to evaluate the sources you find. It means learning to tap into communities who have their finger on the pulse of whatever field or topic you're interested in.
Read the whole post and the comments. This is what's coming, folks.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Philadelphia Area Educational Technology Conference
We're having a conference! If you're nearby the Philadelphia area, please consider submitting a proposal.
Please email submissions to lblanken@brynmawr.edu.
More info coming soon here.
conference
Bryn Mawr College, Drexel University, and Haverford College are organizing a Philadelphia area Educational Technology Conference to be held February 22 at Haverford College. We invite you to submit proposals for presentations and poster sessions. We will have several formats for the presentations. Some will be standard 15-20 minute per presenter panel sessions, but we would also like to see suggestions for shorter presentations with more time for discussion and perhaps longer presenations of 30 minutes or more. In addition, we will have a poster session. When submitting your proposal, please let us know what format you'd prefer. We also welcome submissions of entire panels. Some suggested topics include the following:
- Where are we going? What's new in ed tech?
- Web 2.0
- RSS, Blogs and Wikis
- Podcasting/Screencasting
- What are our future students like?
- What are area (or national) K-12 schools doing in terms of technology
and what does that mean for us? - Technology Literacy/Fluency
- Video Games in Education
- The impact of sites like Facebook and MySpace
Please email submissions to lblanken@brynmawr.edu.
More info coming soon here.
conference
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Click and Double-Click: Episode 10, Libre and Tablets
New episode of Click and Double-Click is here! We wax poetic about handheld book devices and tablets.
Come see these on display on Monday, Dec. 12 at 1:00 in Campus Center 200.
click and double-click
Come see these on display on Monday, Dec. 12 at 1:00 in Campus Center 200.
click and double-click
Best Edublogs
Nominations have been announced for the best education-related blogs. I read many of these and they are a great way to keep up to date on what kinds of technology-related issues are circulating around the education world. There are both K-12 blogs and higher ed blogs among the list. Well worth reading and, if you're so inclined, you can vote for your favorite.
via Will
via Will
Monday, December 05, 2005
RLG and Hanging Together
RLG is an organization of educational institutions--libraries, museums, and archives--working on issues of information management and access. The group investigates what's happening at the intersection of these kinds of insitutions and considers the effect of technology on them. They also have a blog, HangingTogether, where they share information about conferences, projects, happenings at their membership institutions and more. Both the web site and the blog are worth exploring. I know I'll be visiting often.
via Beth
via Beth
Friday, December 02, 2005
Reflecting, looking forward
In this space, I usually point to articles or blog posts I've read that I think might be of interest. I write here primarily for my local audience though I know others outside of Bryn Mawr College read this. Today will be different. I am in the middle of catching up on my blog/article reading, but I've also been thinking a lot about technology integration. A few local events have spawned some of that thinking. I've been talking to several faculty about tablet pcs and their use of them. I'm planning an open house/showcase to demonstrate some of what these faculty have been doing. In many ways, their use of the tablets has changed or will change the way they teach and/or the way they give feedback to students. I, myself, experimented with the tablet this semester, using it to create both audio and visual markup on student papers. Doing things differently really makes you rethink the way you do things and your pedagogical goals.
Another thing that has me thinking is the CSEM course I taught with Doug Blank, using blogs extensively. It's really interesting to turn over control to the students, to let them explore and write and think on their own. Yes, we've had to come in and guide them and no, the results aren't perfect, but I think they've learned about more than just writing. They've learned what it's like to have an author of an article you've critiqued respond and defend themselves. They've learned what it's like to have their opinion challenged by someone other than a teacher or fellow student. I think they need more practice in dealing with the latter as they sometimes have a tendancy to become defensive and lapse into ad hominem attacks, but having a real conversation about why ad hominem attacks are bad based on real examples is something I haven't been able to do in the many years I've been teaching writing. Ultimately, I think we've given them some real experience in navigating the public sphere via blogging.
Additionally, I had some nice conversations with faculty, staff, and librarians along with David Green from Wesleyan University about the use of images in teaching. It was really interesting to hear Linda Caruso-Haviland talk about the sense of movement she liked to create with her slide shows. And we had a nice discussion about setting students loose in image collections versus a more constructed collection. We also talked about students created their own image collections or presentations. I also spoke with Linda afterwards about the possibility of supplementing her image collection with images from Flickr. Serendipitously, Claudia Ginanni stopped by and pointed me to a wonderful collection of images by a current student, some of which include dance images. I hope to continue this conversation in the fall.
In essence, technology is in the air right now. It's a good time to reflect on what we've done and to think about where we're going. I'm thinking that tablets are going to take off fairly quickly. I also think people will be podcasting/screencasting more. Digital images will increasingly become part of more and more disciplines. Students will be (as they already are) constructing their own multimedia works. We will continue to find ways to help students think critically about the wealth of information available to them at their fingertips in a variety of media. We will do this through the use of tools such as blogging, social bookmarking, and in having them create their own information and publishing it for the world to see. In other words, we will encourage them to analyze and reflect on information and respond to it publicly rather than be passive recipients of it. And it is this latter element that has the potential to change what we do. We have to continue to think of students as active participants in their own learning. In some cases, that means a change in the way we do things, trying out new ways of presenting information. In others, it means asking the students to change, to respond more, to engage, to ask questions.
Hold onto your hats, it's going to be a crazy ride.
Another thing that has me thinking is the CSEM course I taught with Doug Blank, using blogs extensively. It's really interesting to turn over control to the students, to let them explore and write and think on their own. Yes, we've had to come in and guide them and no, the results aren't perfect, but I think they've learned about more than just writing. They've learned what it's like to have an author of an article you've critiqued respond and defend themselves. They've learned what it's like to have their opinion challenged by someone other than a teacher or fellow student. I think they need more practice in dealing with the latter as they sometimes have a tendancy to become defensive and lapse into ad hominem attacks, but having a real conversation about why ad hominem attacks are bad based on real examples is something I haven't been able to do in the many years I've been teaching writing. Ultimately, I think we've given them some real experience in navigating the public sphere via blogging.
Additionally, I had some nice conversations with faculty, staff, and librarians along with David Green from Wesleyan University about the use of images in teaching. It was really interesting to hear Linda Caruso-Haviland talk about the sense of movement she liked to create with her slide shows. And we had a nice discussion about setting students loose in image collections versus a more constructed collection. We also talked about students created their own image collections or presentations. I also spoke with Linda afterwards about the possibility of supplementing her image collection with images from Flickr. Serendipitously, Claudia Ginanni stopped by and pointed me to a wonderful collection of images by a current student, some of which include dance images. I hope to continue this conversation in the fall.
In essence, technology is in the air right now. It's a good time to reflect on what we've done and to think about where we're going. I'm thinking that tablets are going to take off fairly quickly. I also think people will be podcasting/screencasting more. Digital images will increasingly become part of more and more disciplines. Students will be (as they already are) constructing their own multimedia works. We will continue to find ways to help students think critically about the wealth of information available to them at their fingertips in a variety of media. We will do this through the use of tools such as blogging, social bookmarking, and in having them create their own information and publishing it for the world to see. In other words, we will encourage them to analyze and reflect on information and respond to it publicly rather than be passive recipients of it. And it is this latter element that has the potential to change what we do. We have to continue to think of students as active participants in their own learning. In some cases, that means a change in the way we do things, trying out new ways of presenting information. In others, it means asking the students to change, to respond more, to engage, to ask questions.
Hold onto your hats, it's going to be a crazy ride.
