To start, Bloom's Digital Taxonomy is a fairly long winded, but valuable resource for technology. You are able to find posts about new and emerging technological advances. This resource also describes traditional classroom practices, behaviors, and actions. It isn't really about tools or technology, but more about using them to facilitate learning. Bloom was an educational psychologist working at the University of Chicago. He proposed that learning fits into three domains:
1. Cognitive - Processing info, knowledge, mental skills
- Ordered thinking skills and objectives
- You cannot apply knowledge if you don’t understand it
2. Affective - Emotions, attitudes, feelings
3. Psychomotor - Manipulative, manual or physical skills.
These major learning domains can also be broken down into several sub-categories:
1. Remembering
- Retrieving, recalling or recognizing knowledge from memory. Remembering is when memory is used to produce definitions, facts or lists, or recite and retrieve material.
2. Understanding
- Constructing learning from different types of function (written or graphic)
3. Applying
- Carrying out or using a procedure through executing or implementing. Applying related and refers to situations where learned material is used through products like models, presentation, interviews and simulations.
4. Analyzing
- Breaking material or concepts into parts, determining how the parts relate or interrelate to one another or to an overall structure or purpose. Mental actions include differentiating, organizing and attributing as well as being able to distinguish between components.
5. Evaluating
- Making judgements based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.
6. Creating
- Putting the elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning or producing.
Next, an article about Web 2.0 and K-12 Challenges detailed issues that arise from implementing Web 2.0 technology into a K-12 classroom.
System Changes:
- According to Daniel Willingham, teachers prefer easy to manage, direct instructional methods to the project-based approach that is more suited to the use of Web 2.0 tools.
- Additional training means teachers will note feel effective in the use of these tools.
- A recent skills-gap report from the National Association of Manufacturers/The Manufacturing Institute (Eisen, Jasinowski, & Kleinert, 2005) found that a majority of American manufacturers are experiencing a serious shortage of qualified employees.
- High schools are not adequately preparing students for the work force
- Employers are dissatisfied with graduates’ ability to read and understand complicated material.
- In addition to preparing students with knowledge about life, it is important for schools to begin the process of developing students with skills for life and work
- Many teachers know that students understand technology, but the students may not know how to apply it to learning
Learning To Collaborate:
- Students who know how to evaluate a problem or situation; assess what information and resources are needed and what others have and can contribute to the challenges; maximize all of the resources and build on what is available to meet and address; and, hopefully, solve the problem or challenge posed.
- Web 2.0 tools provide easily accessible forums or contexts within which this kind of collaboration can take place.
Learning how to manage content
- Knowing what to look for
- Capturing relevant data
- Organizing data effectively
- Reproducing data in a relevant context
A third article, from the Huffington Post, included a great list of ways for a teacher to bring technology into the classroom without gadgets.
1. Be clear about what your community needs and values
- Avoid what has already been done
- What skills do students need?
- Time at school is too valuable to focus on things that don’t help them develop those skills
2. Adjust your schedule so that students are spending time doing the things and having the experiences that you value.
- Let things like memorization be learned through a flipped classroom
3. Adjust teachers’ roles and schedules so they can spend most of their time on activities that will help students achieve what you value for them.
4. Look at your physical space, including school lay-out, room lay-out, furniture and equipment.
5. Look closely at the culture you are building through your policies and systems.
6. By now you’re probably feeling like there is not enough time to “cover” everything you want your students to learn.
7. Make more time for collaboration and problem-solving among students.
8. Provide more opportunities for exposure to the “real world,” including the workplace experience and emerging career fields.
9. Collaborate with other schools to broaden your course offerings.
10. Bring professional development to your teachers by exposing them to exceptional teachers outside of your school through video conferencing.
The article "10 Emerging Technologies and how they are being used across the globe" brought up many great examples of how mobile and cloud technology are taking over the educational world.
1. Cloud Computing
- Helps teachers produce and share digital learning objects and activities for their students.
2. Mobile Learning
- Students at Institut International de Lancy in Switzerland use their tablets to create music in the school’s first iPad Orchestra. The iPads have provided opportunities for students with little to no training to create their own music with classmates.
3. Tablet Computing
- Apps create a personalized learning environment
- At Plymouth University in the UK, students working toward their Illustration degree are using iPads with an illustration app called Brushes to produce drawings that can be played back as video. This activity is encouraging reflection and discussion on the drawing process and enabling students to contrast techniques and highlight and correct any bad habits.
4. MOOC
- Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Purdue University Department of Music and Arts Technology began offering their first MOOC, “Music for the Listener” that can be converted into credit. The learning environment is being delivered through Course Networking, with full translation features, rich media, and social networking tools.
5. Open Content
- The use of open content promotes a skill set that is critical in maintaining currency in any area of study—the ability to find, evaluate, and put new information to use.
6. Learning Analytics
- In the coming years, as learning analytics platforms become increasingly complex and effective, outcomes of learning analytics will have a significant impact on the evolution and refinement of both K-12 and higher education, especially in the design of personalized and online learning platforms.
7. Games and Gamification
- The University of Minnesota’s School of Nursing has partnered with the Minnesota Hospital Association and the technology firm, VitalSims, to develop web-based interactive games that engage nursing students with real-life scenarios. With initial versions of the game already completed, health care educators are expecting to launch these digital learning tools later in 2013.
8. 3D Printing
- Students at Glacier Peak High School in Washington can receive college credit for taking computer-aided design classes featuring the incorporation of 3D printers for rapid prototype development. The courses include modeling and design, tolerance specification, documentation drawing, and assembly modeling.
9. Virtual and Remote Laboratories
- High School students in North Carolina are using Geometer’s Sketchpad to understand how theorems are developed. The software is accessed through North Carolina State University’s virtual computing lab, a cloud-based learning environment with an interactive online community where teachers share tips on the software used as well as the projects undertaken.
10. Wearable Technology
- A team from the Centre for Sensor Web Technologies at Dublin City University is building a wearable sensor that detects hazardous gases and immediately alerts the user of these conditions.
Finally, a video, "School in the Cloud", brought up many great issues regarding the future of schooling, and how students learn. We learn that the type of learning that we do in school comes from the British Empire, roughly 300 years ago. Schools are producing graduates who become part of the bureaucratic administrative machine. Students should be identical, have good handwriting, read, and do math in their heads. Unfortunately, schools as we know them have become obsolete. How will present day schooling prepare students for future work?
In a study, the speaker gave a computer to poor kids in India. Within 8 hours, they learned how to use the computer, and were already browsing the internet. The study was then expanded to include pronunciation of words. A speech to text engine was included in the computer. The students would input words, and the computer would talk. Quickly, they learned english!
Next, the speaker tried a more difficult concept, DNA replication - in english! Older kids helped the younger ones, and by saying things out loud, they began to understand the concept fairly well.
As we later learned in the video, threats and punishments tend to shut down our brains. The teacher must let learning happen on its own. The speaker provided an interesting equation:
Broadband + Collaboration + Environment = Learning.
This proves that technology must be a part of the classroom, but I sure hope that it doesn't put teachers out of business!
