Keep IT Simple!

Be a Super Teacher… 🙂 sounds nice…

Going beyond the old-fashioned out-dated slide-projector metaphor behind powerpoint & co. — think different!

Free online multimedia material for learning

Shulman believed that teaching was no less cognitively complex than medicine, and that teachers, like doctors, engaged in acts of decision- making and professional judgment that informed their practice.

I’m quite happy to see that I’m not the only one who thinks that there are certain analogies between becoming a medical doctor and becoming a professional of learning & teaching, i.e. a teacher…

Both “jobs” imply that you rely upon “state-of-the-art” scientific knowledge to make appropriate decisions and formulate sound “diagnostic” judgments, if you want to be a real professional! Simply relying on “gut-feelings” or “hear-say” will eventually lead you to “successful” actions and reactions, but it will be impossible to know why… and it will be a matter of chance. We should better make “educated guesses” rather than just “maybe-right” guesses.

And simply invoking the “authority-argument”, i.e. “I do this, because I was told that this is the good and right way”, will not save you from justifying your interventions.

A Special Focus on Where and How Technology Can Transform Teaching and Learning

Technology is changing how we live and learn and will surely transform how we educate going forward. New developments in this domain hold great promise for supporting a more efficient and purposeful educational system, for enhancing the quality of those who teach, and for making knowledge and access to expertise broadly accessible to all. In fact, productive developments in educational technology may well be essential if we are to realize our goals of more engaging, and deeper learning experiences for all children.

In this regard, Carnegie will focus on where and how technology can add value as we seek to advance more ambitious learning goals for all students, and where we can assist educators as they move toward making these new learning goals universal. It is a question that Carnegie has been grappling with during the past decade and we will continue to parse with renewed vigor as we move forward.

We are currently planning a 3rd conference on eLearning in the Greater Region and we want to give it this very focus: how educational technology has transformed higher education and how it will continue to do so in the years to come.

I really think that educational technology or learning with new media should not be about learning to use certain tools (as such), like how to use computers, mobile phones or certain pieces of software. But it should be about the transformative, corrosive, erosive and mind-set-changing effects of technology on our conceptions and practices of learning & teaching.

Beginning in school, and continuing at successively higher levels across their college studies, students should prepare for twenty-first-century challenges by gaining:

Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World

• Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences, humanities, histories, languages, and the arts

Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporary and enduring

Intellectual and Practical Skills, Including

• Inquiry and analysis
• Critical and creative thinking
• Written and oral communication
• Quantitative literacy
• Information literacy
• Teamwork and problem solving

Practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards for performance

Personal and Social Responsibility, Including

• Civic knowledge and engagement—local and global
• Intercultural knowledge and competence
• Ethical reasoning and action
• Foundations and skills for lifelong learning

Anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges

Integrative Learning, Including

• Synthesis and advanced accomplishment across general and specialized studies

Demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and complex problems

via aacu.org

That’s an interesting and nicely-structured list of “new skills” that could guide our teaching efforts as well as be a stimulating input to use in our EdTech1 seminars.

ISTE’s membership magazine, Learning & Leading with Technology, is one of our best! Learning and Leading is more than just the name of the magazine—the simple phrase encapsulates ISTE’s philosophy that technology is essential to school transformation and future opportunities for the 21st-century learners around the globe.

This is a really cool online journal about educational technology with a very nice layout…

This is so cool! Online Comic Creation… and it’s free! Check this out!

“Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge.” (Aldhous, 2009, para. 2)

Maybe this explains why pre-service teachers and educational sciences students prefer advice from “experienced” in-service teachers rather than from us, doubting scientists 🙂

Or would this be too far a stretch of argument?