How can we maximize the potential of learning apps?

Let’s dive directly into the world of educational apps. Our survey suggests that the majority — one might even say, the vast majority — of educational apps encourage pursuit of the goals and means of traditional education by digital means, Mind/Shift reports. They constitute convenient, neat, sometimes even seductive pathways to accomplish what were already goals in an earlier era: mastering concepts, learning arithmetical operations, identifying geographical locations or historical figures or key biological or chemical or physical processes. We could dub them “digital textbooks” or “lectures” or “pre-programmed educational conversations.” Decades ago, major behaviorist B. F. Skinner called for teaching machines that would automate the traditional classroom, allow students to proceed at their own rate, provide positive feedback on correct answers, and either repeat a missed item or present that item via another pathway…

Read more

…Read More

The two-horse smartphone race

Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. should make it abundantly clear this week that the smartphone industry is increasingly dividing into the haves and have-nots, The Wall Street Journal reports. The two companies are expected to report record earnings for the first three months of the year, largely on the strength of smartphone sales. They together ship nearly half of all smartphones, pushing aside weakened competitors such as Nokia Corp., HTC Corp., and Research In Motion Ltd…

Read more

…Read More

When this New Zealand school got rid of playtime rules, it actually got safer

One school has found that eliminating rules can actually be a good thing, The Huffington Post reports. After Swanson Primary School in New Zealand got rid of rules during recess as part of a study, administrators saw a decline in rates of bullying, injuries and vandalism, as well as an increase in students’ ability to concentrate during class, according to New Zealand outlet TVNZ. The AUT and Otago University study, which began several years ago and concluded at the end of last year, eliminated recess rules in an effort to discover ways to promote active play, according to the outlet. As a result, kids were more engaged in their activities…

Read more

…Read More

The Netflix of kids’ books? Epic launches on iPad for $9.99/month

The Netflix monthly subscription model is a hit for movies and TV, and is spreading to music with paid versions of services like Pandora and Spotify. In 2014, it looks like the model could finally catch on for eBooks, Gigaom reports. On Tuesday, a company called Epic launched a service that offers children a monthly library of over 2,000 children’s books on the iPad, including popular titles like Olivia, the Berenstain Bears and  Mr. Popper’s Penguins. The books arrive instantly through streaming, and the service also provides features like personalized recommendations and off-line access…

Read more

…Read More

Why support for Common Core is sinking

“Hit the delay button.”  That was the message New York’s senators sent to state Education Commissioner John King during last week’s hearing, the Washington Post reports. Education Committee Chairman John Flanagan made it clear that if King did not act, senators on his panel would.  Senator Maziarz observed that the only Common Core supporters remaining are “yourself (King) and the members of the Board of Regents.”  To make his position crystal clear, Senator Latimer emphatically smacked the table while calling for a delay, likening the rollout of the Common Core to “steaming across the Atlantic” when there are icebergs in the water…

Read more

…Read More

Teaching the essential skills of the mobile classroom

Think back 20 years, Edutopia reports. Pay phones still worked, and only doctors carried pagers. Laptops weighed as much as bowling balls, and few of us had Internet access. In fact, much of what we now consider commonplace — Google, email, WiFi, texting — was not even possible. If that was 20 years ago, where are we going in the next 20? We are all going mobile! Tablets, smartphones, Chromebooks — and yet, these devices only serve as the most recent iteration of mobile technology in the classroom. Remember Netbooks? How about those old-school Macbooks that looked like toilet seat covers? What if we go back further? What about chalk and slate?

Read more

…Read More

50 reasons it’s time for smartphones in every classroom

There are many ways to use a smartphone in the classroom, but it continues to be a touchy subject, TeachThought reports. Privacy, equity, bandwidth, lesson design, classroom management, theft, bullying, and scores of other legitimate concerns continue to cloud education’s thinking about how to meaningfully integrate technology in the learning process. To be clear–learning can happen in the absence of technology. Integrated poorly, technology can subdue, distract, stifle, and obscure the kind of personal interactions between learner, content, peer, and performance that lead to learning results…

Read more

…Read More

Low-income California Latinos get computers from Latino Community Foundation for health, education

As part of a campaign to help increase low-income and monolingual Latinos’ access to online education, as well as health care information, some groups in California are providing personal computers and internet access, the Latino Post reports. One group in the San Francisco Bay Area have made strides, helped by a holiday-time campaign and fund drive. As we’ve reported previously, the Latino Community Foundation partnered this Christmas season with other Latino community nonprofits, as well as the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) with the goal of raising $30,000 to provide low-cost, internet-ready computers to monolingual and low-income Latino families in California…

Read more

…Read More

The impact of Google on our memory

What is the last time you memorized  something? do you still retain it in your memory or has it faded away? Memorization, though severely undermined  in progressivists works, is an important mechanism by which our brains keep their alertness and readability to quickly take in and absorb new information, Educational Technology and Mobile Learning reports. This intricate relationship between memorization and  brain powers is clearly documented in cognitive science and while the scope of this short post does not permit to go over some of the scientific studies in favor of this claim, I would  recommend for those of you keen on learning more about this to read Michael E Reese wonderful book Improve Memory: Boost Your Brain Power…

Read more

…Read More

Md. schools need $100 million in technology upgrades for new testing

Maryland schools will be scrambling to make $100 million in technological and other upgrades to give new state tests aligned with the Common Core standards next year, according to a report to the legislature by the Maryland State Department of Education, The Baltimore Sun reports. Some local school systems would need to shut down some of the normal uses of the computers, including sending email, to give the online standardized tests, the report said. Some districts reported that they need to buy thousands of new computers for the tests, which are required by the spring of 2015; others said they had nowhere to put the computers that they need to buy. Lawmakers said the magnitude of the hurdles that school districts face — and the price tags — are concerning…

Read more

…Read More

Chromebooks take other mobile devices to school

Chromebooks have come from nowhere to grab nearly a fifth of U.S. school purchases of mobile computers, posing problems for Microsoft Corp. and possibly even Apple Inc., the Wall Street Journal reports.

The inexpensive laptops, which run Google Inc. software but are mostly sold by other companies, accounted for 19% of the K-12 market for mobile computers in the U.S. in 2013, according to a preliminary estimate by Futuresource Consulting. In 2012, Chromebooks represented less than 1% of the market, according to the research firm, whose estimate includes both tablets and notebook PCs but excludes desktop computers.

Mobile computers running Microsoft Windows slid from 47.5% of that market in 2012 to 28% in last year’s third quarter, said Futuresource, which isn’t yet providing comparisons for all of 2013……Read More

Erased answers on tests in Philadelphia lead to a three-year cheating scandal

The first sign that something was wrong appeared more than two years ago when a company grading student tests from Philadelphia noticed that erasures from wrong to right answers showed what investigators delicately called “statistical evidence of improbable results,” The New York Times reports. Pennsylvania began an investigation, eventually instructing the school district to look into improprieties at 19 schools. Over the course of a year, the district found disturbing patterns in parts of the system that resulted in three principals being fired last week for test cheating in one of the largest such scandals in the country…

Read more

…Read More