PatSine

There's a new book out by Tony Wagner of Harvard with the attention-grabbing title The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need--And What We Can Do About It. In it, he addresses the current tension between teaching to the test and preparing for the 21st Century world of work.

Continue reading...

I've been asked to meet with a colleague to discuss what a smart classroom should look like in a school of education today. The jumping off question was "What kind of SmartBoard should we get?" That got me thinking about the way to think about the whole design.

The first thing I'd want to think about is how to structure the classroom so that the teacher isn't always the center of the classroom. But I know most higher ed classrooms and most K-12 classrooms still look like the teacher talking and the students listening so how can we rework that model.

Continue reading...

I just finished reading the article, Research Windows: The Two-Year Bump by Robert Kadel in the Dec-Jan issue of Learning and Leading with Technology, the magazine of ISTE. Kadel goes on to criticize the funding agenda and realities of the E2T2 provisions of NCLB. He describes how funding is generally used to purchase hardware and software in schools under the budgets of short-term grants. Continue reading...

The Sept./Oct. 2007 issue of the Educause Review has an interesting article called Wikis and Podcasts and Blogs! Oh, My! What Is a Faculty Member Supposed to Do? by Patricia McGee and Veronica Diaz. What particulary caught my eye was a chart which relates the new "web 2.0" applications to the kinds of work that goes on in every class, the function or purpose for the task and the tools to get the job done.

Continue reading...

The month of June brought two stories that are hard to hold in your head at the same time.

Schools banning iPods to beat cheaters
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports
June 1, 2007—

Continue reading...

I finally had a chance to look at the Software Implementation Checklist for Educators from SIIA. This is a helpful document for making sure that new software is successfully integrated into the curriculum. Continue reading...