Title: Mindful Tech: How to Bring Balance to Our Digital Lives
Author: David M Levy
ISBN: 0300208316 | 2016 | 256 pages
From email to smart phones, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools we’ve developed.
David M. Levy, who has lived his life between the “fast world” of high tech and the “slow world” of contemplation, offers a welcome guide to being more relaxed, attentive, and emotionally balanced, and more effective, while online. In a series of exercises carefully designed to help readers observe and reflect on their own use, Levy has readers watch themselves closely while emailing and while multitasking, and also to experiment with unplugging for a specified period. Never prescriptive, the book opens up new avenues for self-inquiry and will allow readers—in the workplace, in the classroom, and in the privacy of their homes—to make meaningful and powerful changes.
Title: Flipping 2.0: Practical Strategies for Flipping Your Class
Author: Jason Bretzmann with a foreward by Aaron Sams
2013 | 328 Pages | ISBN: 0615824072
If you’ve decided to flip your class, you probably have new questions: How do I do this? What will it look like? What will students do in class? How will I create learning experiences for students outside of class? What have other teachers done? Flipping 2.0:Practical Strategies for Flipping Your Class seeks to answer your questions. And it opens the dialogue for us to continue to learn together. In this book, you will follow practicing classroom teachers as they walk you through their flipped classroom journey; why and how they made the change, what obstacles they overcame, the technology they used, and where they are heading next. As a flipped learning teacher, you need time to check out workable solutions that other teachers have created. Look inside their classrooms and learn from their experiences. Watch flipped teachers at work. Pick the brains of those who’ve been there, and join the conversation.
You’ll find something useful in every chapter. And there is a chapter just for you in this book. With a chapter on mastery learning by Brian Bennett, two chapters on English by Cheryl Morris/Andrew Thomasson and Kate Baker, two chapters on social studies by Jason Bretzmann and Karl Lindgren-Streicher, two chapters on math by Audrey McLaren and John Stevens, two chapters on science by Marc Seigel and David Prindle, Google tools for flipping by Troy Cockrum, two chapters on technology by Cory Peppler and Tom Driscoll/Brian Germain, part-time flipping by Kenny Bosch, elementary school flipping by Todd Nesloney, middle school flipping by Nichole Carter, world languages flipping by Heather Witten, co-flipping by Cheryl Morris/Andrew Thomasson and even flipping your professional development by Kristin Daniels. Read Flipping 2.0 today and make your decision to flip a reality.
Note:All the books presented in this blog. Include the original cover and review provided by the publisher. This information is used to accurately promote and show respect for these resources, the authors and the publishers.
Welcome to Notability: powerful, yet wonderfully simple note-taking and annotation. Students, teachers, and business professionals use Notability daily to take notes, sketch ideas, annotate PDFs, mark-up photos, record lectures, provide audio feedback and more. It is uniquely designed for each device to provide the best note taking experience at school, at home, and at work. And with iCloud, your notes are always up to date.
Notability is designed for Mac
– Quickly create notes by dragging documents, photos, or audio recordings from the desktop and dropping onto the library.
– Enhance notes by dragging photos, audio recordings, and PDFs from the desktop and dropping onto a note.
– Get more done with smart keyboard shortcuts.
– Handwriting and sketches can be scaled, transformed, free and constrained rotated, nudged (with arrow keys), and restyled.
Capture memorable notes with these essential features
– Type reports and outlines in a variety of fonts, sizes, colors and styles.
– Text automatically reflows around images.
– Highlight typed text.
– Handwriting has been fine-tuned to be smooth and expressive using a trackpad or mouse.
– Sketch and write using a variety of colors, line widths, and styles.
– Record audio during lectures and meetings to capture more detail.
– Import audio recordings from other sources.
Audio Recordings: Review and Give Feedback
– Get more out of your lectures and meetings when you record them.
– Notes automatically link to recordings, so during playback, you can watch your notes animate along with the recording, or tap them to get to the spot that needs clarifying.
– Teachers can also use these features to provide audio feedback to students.
Import and Annotate PDFs
– Highlight, Copy & Paste, and Search PDF text.
– Mark up lecture slides and meeting agendas or complete class assignments.
– Fill-out, sign, and send forms.
– Import doc and ppt files with the help of Google Drive.
All Electronic Workflow
– Create a paperless classroom – handout and collect assignments via the cloud.
– Speed-up feedback to students and colleagues using Notability.
– Complete, sign, and share documents in Notability.
Organize and Share Notes
– Create subjects and simply drag notes into them.
– Share your notes via email, AirDrop, printer, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more.
– Retrieve recently deleted notes from the Mac OS X Trash.
iCloud Sync
– iCloud automatically syncs all of your notes to iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
Auto-backup
– Dropbox and Google Drive can be used to backup your notes and are great for archiving or recovery.
What’s New in Version 2.2.0
– Copy and paste pages into another note.
– Define button for non-English languages.
– Improved Text Box insertion on PDFs.
– Bug fixes.
Compatibility: OS X 10.9 or later, 64-bit processor Languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Turkish Home Page – http://www.gingerlabs.com/
This book discusses learning and teaching with modern technology in the new knowledge society. It focuses specifically on new literacy and technology in classroom environments. Based on a social-constructivist approach, this book covers a wide range of new technology use examples, such as participatory media, video recording systems and 3D computer graphics. A case study on a constructivist approach to teaching and learning, especially CSCL (computer supported collaborative learning), is discussed from a practical perspective for educators. It also includes specific in-class practices with detailed accounts of curricula featuring readily accessible yet new technology available for classroom use, such as Google Sketchup 3D computer models.
Note:All the books presented in this blog. Include the original cover and review provided by the publisher. This information is used to accurately promote and show respect for these resources, the authors and the publishers.
Author: Lynda.com and Oliver Schinkten MP4 | Video: AVC 1280×720 | Audio: AAC 44KHz 2ch | Duration: 1 Hours 11M Genre: eLearning | Language: English
Technology is changing the way we teach, and Google’s leading the charge. Google Classroom is the latest offering from Google Apps for Education. It gives educators access to a free tool that’s already seamlessly integrated with Google Drive, and is designed to simplify elearning, including paperless assignments and grading. In this course, staff author Oliver Schinkten explores how to create and administer a brand-new course in Google Classroom.
He covers adding students, sharing content, communicating with students, creating assignments, and integrating with other Google Apps. Plus, get a look at Google Classroom from the student perspective: Oliver simulates what it’s like to join a class, take an assignment, and communicate with a teacher.
How to use Google’s free online storage service and word processor.
Do you have 30 minutes to spare? It’s all you’ll need to get up to speed with Google Drive and Google Docs, two free programs in Google’s online productivity suite. Millions of people use Drive and Docs every day on their computers and mobile devices. You, too, can use Drive and Docs to perform the following tasks:
Write reports, letters, and resumes with Google Docs
Collaborate online with classmates and colleagues
Sync files from your home computer to a work computer, and vice versa
Perform limited editing of Microsoft Word documents
Print documents using Google Cloud Print
Export PDFs
Publish documents and spreadsheets online
Use the Google Drive app and the Google Docs app on your Android phone or tablet, or iPhone or iPad to create and edit files on the go
This 30-minute class is narrated by the author of the top-selling guide, Google Drive & Google Docs In 30 Minutes. The course includes lectures on registration, finding and organizing files, creating documents and formatting them, working with Microsoft Word documents in Google Docs, and a complete review of the interfaces for Google Drive and Google Docs on the Web and mobile devices. The tone of this guide is friendly and easy to understand, with lots of step-by-step instructions and examples that show exactly what to do.
In addition to serving as a solid introduction to new users, it’s great for people making the transition from Microsoft Office, not to mention teachers using Google Drive for education and Google Docs in the classroom.
Title: Google Drive: A Beginner’s Guide to Google Drive: Master Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides Now
Author: Steven Dota
English | Feb. 8, 2016 | ASIN: B01BLL9KUW | 79 Pages | AZW3/MOBI/EPUB/PDF (conv) | 2.36 MB
This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to use Google Drive to the fullest.
This eBook will explain the basics of Google Drive and how people can benefit from it. By reading this book, you will know how to create, upload, edit, share, remove, and restore files using the Google Drive system. In addition, you will learn how to use Docs, Sheets, and Slides – powerful services from Google that you can use for free.
Google Classroom for Beginners: Learn How to Use Google Classroom Effectively
One of the latest innovations from online giant Google, Google Classroom is deemed as an online web-based educational platform that’s set to change the face of academics anywhere in the world.
This book contains proven steps and strategies on how to understand Google Classroom—from what it is, to how it works, and everything else you can do with it, you’ll find them all right here!
Even proponents of educational technology admit that a lot of software sold to schools isn’t very good. But they often highlight the promise of so-called “adaptive learning” software, in which complex algorithms react to how a student answers questions, and tailor instruction to each student. The computer recommends different lessons to different students, based upon what they already know and what they still need to work on.
Wonderful in theory, but does it work in practice?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation sought to find out, and gave money to 14 colleges and universities to test some of the most popular “adaptive learning” software in the marketplace, including products from a Pearson-Knewton joint venture, from a unit of McGraw-Hill Education called ALEKS and from the Open Learning Initiative. Most of the universities combined the software with human instruction, but a few courses were delivered entirely online. Almost 20,000 college students and 300 instructors participated in the experiment over the course of three terms between 2013 and 2015. It’s probably the largest and most rigorous study of adaptive learning to date. Then Gates hired SRI International, a nonprofit research institute, to analyze the data. (The Gates Foundation is among the funders of the Hechinger Report.)
What SRI found was sobering. In most cases, students didn’t get higher grades from using adaptive-learning software, nor were they more likely to pass a course than in a traditional face-to-face class. In some courses the researchers found that students were learning more from adaptive-learning software, but even in those cases, the positive impact tended to be “modest”. (Lessons Learned From Early Implementations of Adaptive Courseware: almap_final_report)
“I wouldn’t characterize our report as cynical, just cautious,” said Barbara Means, director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International and one of three authors of the report.
Although the study was conducted exclusively at colleges and universities, Means said she suspects researchers would find similar results with adaptive software used at elementary, middle and high schools.
Means emphasized that it was an analysis of the technology available back in 2013, and that better products have come to market since. “It shouldn’t be regarded as though this is the last word. It’s just a very early snapshot,” Means added.
Still, two important lessons emerged from the report, which may continue to apply even as the software improves.
1. The software in and of itself isn’t a magical teacher
“Every piece of learning software I’ve ever studied gets positive effects in some places and not others,” said Means. “When you try to understand why that is, you find out that students and instructors used it in very different ways.”
When instructors use the same language that’s used in the software during the face-to-face instruction, it’s more potent. It also matters when teachers look at the data that the software is generating, and spend class time reinforcing ideas that were troublesome after students used the software. And on a most basic level, students need incentives to use the software. Sometimes, the instructor just says, go use it, but doesn’t monitor whether students log in or not. Not surprisingly, usage is low or sporadic. “Sometimes instructors give students the impression that what they do in the courseware doesn’t matter,” said Means.
The research also highlighted that the technology was more effective when the professor or the university completely redesigned the course around it. One example is flipping the classroom, where lectures are delivered online and the entire classroom time is spent in smaller groups with instructors who can review difficult problems, or conduct a socratic dialogue.
Another example is to use the technology to allow students to skip some prerequisite hurdles. Students still had to learn the material, but it could be taught online, by the adaptive-learning courseware, to fill in holes while the student was learning in a more advanced class. That can help students graduate on time within four years.
“We can’t expect all the power to be in a piece of software. Because we know it’s not,” said Means.
2. Universities aren’t monitoring whether the technology they’re using is working
In conducting the study, Means frequently found that colleges and universities weren’t prepared to measure student learning in a way that would stand up to academic scrutiny. To measure how much students are learning, you need to know what students knew before they started a course. You can’t just compare student grades in an adaptive-learning class with those in a traditional class because you might have stronger students in one of them. It was a particular problem to compare different semesters, because students who fail an introductory course in the fall often retake it in the spring, and the spring classes were filled with students who struggle more.
A lot of the data collected in the study couldn’t be analyzed because it was hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons.
“I think education institutions making major changes in the instruction, such as a reliance on adaptive courseware, have a responsibility to be monitoring the effectiveness of what they’re doing,” Means said. “And then try to improve it, in a kind of continuous improvement framework that you would see in some of the leading companies in any field.
“They don’t really know if what they’re doing is a change for the better, or not,” she said. “Given the cost of higher education today, which we all know a lot about, students and the public really have a right to expect this kind of attention to the quality of the product.”
This is not just in the public interest. SRI is also in the business of selling analytical tools to universities. But if universities were to start tracking student learning, it might eliminate the need for “snapshot” reports like this, which quickly become obsolete.
Gail Robinson is a writer who specializes in education and other public policy issues. Based in New York City, she also is an adjunct professor
Is this the future of education? What digital learning looks like when third-graders use it all day in one suburban district.
Third-graders follow and annotate a text on climate as their teacher reads it aloud. Later the children will be asked to post photographs related to the topic. Photo: Gail Robinson
MINEOLA, N.Y. — When the 24 third-graders in Morgan Mercaldi’s class arrive at the Jackson Avenue School every morning, they take their iPads out of their backpacks and put them on their desks. The tablets will remain there, or in hands and laps, until the children put them in their packs to take them home.
Last year Mercaldi had her students stash the iPads away when they weren’t using them. But she has abandoned that. “Putting them away serves no purpose. We use them constantly,” Mercaldi says.
Mercaldi’s class in Mineola, N.Y., is in the fifth year of a district initiative that now provides iPads to all students in grades three through nine. At Jackson Avenue, which houses the third and fourth grades, all 417 children, including those in special education, have their own tablets, and they spend about 75 percent of their instructional day on the devices, more than many other schools that have embraced digital learning.
Despite a lack of hard data on how digital learning affects student achievement, Mineola, a fairly affluent New York City suburb, is betting heavily on technology to help children meet an array of tough Common Core standards. By embracing iPads while keeping the traditional model of one teacher working with 20-some children, the small school district offers a vision of what the future of digital learning might be.
Here’s a typical day in a third-grade classroom.
10 – 11:20 a.m.
At around 10 a.m. on a late-winter day, Mercaldi’s students sit scattered around the sunny classroom, some at their desks, some perched on a shelf running along one wall and some on the bright blue rug. All the children have their iPads out as they read and do English language arts exercises. Many use eSpark, which creates a “playlist” of education apps geared to each student’s needs.
Third-grade teacher Morgan Mercaldi conducts one of several math classes she will sprinkle throughout the school day. Photo: Gail Robinson
After about 25 minutes, Mercaldi calls the students together to revise the first-person pieces about frogs that they each researched and wrote. Like so much in the class, the assignment has had digital and paper elements. Mercaldi’s students received their iPads in October, and now move smoothly from pencil to touch screen and from paper to tablet. The children did their frog research both online and in books, organized the materials on their iPads, and did their writing on paper.
Now, Mercaldi tells the students to begin revising their narratives. “I want you to work on communication skills with a partner,” she says. The children leave their iPads on their desks and sit on the floor in two concentric circles. Working in pairs, they alter words in their texts. One suggests changing “scary” to “frightening”; another, “animal” to “creature.”
At 10:45 a.m., after a short snack break, the students take out their iPads for the first of several math lessons that Mercaldi will sprinkle throughout the day. Today, the main topic is finding the area of rectangles and the multiplication needed to do that.
As Mercaldi stands at a large interactive whiteboard, the children follow along on their tablets, trying to figure out the area of a 7-by-13 rectangle. “Do we know 7 times 13 just like that?” she asks the students. Most agree they do not, and so break the number down, eventually coming up with 3 times 7 plus 10 times 7.
Staying with math, the students then use their iPads to answer questions Mercaldi has posted on Edmodo, which helps students and teachers communicate electronically and lets Mercaldi see the children’s answers. (Last year Mercaldi used regular email and was bombarded with messages. She finds Edmodo “more efficient … a little more teacher-student.”) Reviewing the students’ work, Mercaldi says, lets her assess whether every child is meeting the standards and, if not, where he or she needs help.
Keira McCaffrey uses her iPad to figure out the area of a rectangle. During the math lesson, she and the other third-graders will use their tablets for some problems, paper and pencil for others. Photo: Gail Robinson
Now in her second year with the iPads and her seventh year as a teacher, Mercaldi seems unfazed by the technology. “I kind of grew up with technology. It’s the future,” she says.
Most children also seem comfortable with the devices. “I have one at home but I was excited to get it at school because I thought it would be an interesting experience,” Brianna DiVirgilio says.
11:20 a.m. – 12:55 p.m.
When students finish their math questions, they can move on — to reading on eSpark, working on an app or watching a video. Then, at around 11:20, the class divides again, this time into four groups, each designated by a color. The group assignments are geared to the students’ individual levels and what they need to know. One group reads with Mercaldi. The other three do lessons on their iPads: one on eSpark, one answering language arts questions on Edmodo and the third on MobyMax, a provider of electronic curricula.
The students seem to like MobyMax the best because it begins every day’s task with a joke. While the technology may be new, the gags aren’t (“What has four wheels and flies?”). The children also like the badges — usually a nature photograph — that they get when they answer a set of questions correctly.
At Mercaldi’s prompting, three girls explain how they made videos about the imaginary organizations all the students created: Clothes Court, Rockin’ Socks and Shoes and Books for Reading. The videos are accessible by scanning a QR code with a mobile device.
A couple of boys are big fans of a drawing app. Demonstrating how it creates various visual effects, Brendan Ludwig observes, “You can do all the basics. You can make a perfect house, and if you want to make changes, you don’t have to delete it.”
With two dozen third-graders using all these apps and programs, technical glitches are inevitable. One girl discovers that the camera on her device is not activated, something Mercaldi promises to fix.
Working on MobyMax, Angelica Moreira cannot call up the math quiz she wants. Other children try to help her, something the school encourages. “We teach the kids how to troubleshoot,” Jackson Avenue principal Janet Gonzalez says. “Some of the kids are teaching the teacher.”
In the meantime, Angelica selects new backgrounds for her tablet. “I do this a lot while I wait around,” she says. But even after her new wallpaper is in place, the quiz will not load. Eventually someone realizes that MobyMax is preventing Angelica from trying a second quiz too soon after taking the first.
As Joshua Parr (left) and Timothy Gorman work on a math problem on iPads, their old-fashioned notebook lies within reach. Their teacher, Morgan Mercaldi, says she strives to balance the amount of time her students spend on and off their electronic devices. Photo: Gail Robinson
Despite being so-called digital natives, the students vary in how expert they are on the iPads and how much they like them. “Some people know more than other people on the iPad and they get jealous,” says Joshua Parr. Joseph Parrino has had trouble with the iPad’s flat electronic keyboard — “my fingers slip,” he explains — and so has brought a plug-in keyboard from home. And several children say they prefer old-fashioned books to the digital alternative.
By 11:40 it’s time for the second of the day’s math lessons, a drill — Mercaldi calls it a “sprint” — in which the students use paper and pencils to rapidly solve a series of problems, this time involving number patterns. After that, they will break for lunch.
12:55 – 2:30 p.m.
Shortly before 1 p.m., the children return from lunch for another math lesson and open their paper workbooks to exercises on finding the area of a rectangle. At Mercaldi’s urging, the students offer various strategies for the same problem. “Use what works,” she says.
After several students depart for music class, those left behind alternate between iPads and paper to solve problems about rectangles and the properties of multiplication.
The tablet has one advantage with the children. “They’re engaged and they like it; it doesn’t seem like a job,” Mercaldi says. But the device also can be too much of a good thing. “It can’t consume their every day,” she says, adding, “The hardest thing was finding the balance.” In general, she tries to take the students off an app after 20 minutes. With several hours during the school day on the iPads, plus homework time and other afterschool use, it’s not hard to imagine that some Jackson Avenue students may look at their tablets for six hours or more a day.
Andrew Basel and Sebastian Knight put aside their tablets as they help each other revise a piece they wrote about frogs. Teacher Morgan Mercaldi says the exercise is designed to help improve the children’s communication skills. Photo: Gail Robinson
The day’s math lessons end with a problem set, to be done on the iPads. Most students come to the rug to work on the questions with Mercaldi and the other children. A few, though, go it alone. Mercaldi tells the children to list all possible rectangles with an area of 48 square centimeters and to consider what the various shapes might look like.
“When the numbers are closer, don’t they kind of look like squares?” Brianna proposes.
Once they have completed their work and submitted it to Mercaldi, the children can read on eSpark. One boy, though, finds something more enticing to call up on his screen: “Road Crossing.” Some students quickly call him out — “Isn’t that a game?” one asks. Mercaldi picks up on the buzz and asks the boy what he’s doing. Caught, he answers, “I’m playing a game.”
While some parents may have had qualms about giving young children access to the web, Gonzalez says there have been surprisingly few difficulties. The students clearly know the situation: “If you do stuff that’s bad on it, you can have it taken away,” they say.
The day’s final lesson has the children gathered on or around the rug with their iPads for a science class on climate and seasons. Mineola is in the midst of a severe cold spell, and the students chatter with the teacher about this. As that dies out, Mercaldi takes up a reading that is posted on the whiteboard, and the children follow along on their tablets. The text has lots of information and complicated vocabulary, so Mercaldi offers tips. “I would definitely use highlighter to mark something interesting or something you learned,” she advises.
Once they have completed reading the passage, Mercaldi challenges the children to write down something interesting from the reading and to post on Edmodo a picture of the climate zone where they would like to live. She advises anyone who’s not certain of the assignment to take a picture of the whiteboard.
“Can I send you back to your seats? Can you do this without talking? Then you’ll earn three marbles,” she tells them. Students can cash in the marbles for purchases at a classroom store or for a class prize (the children have chosen unstructured tablet time).
The posting of the pictures is a bit slow, and they overlap one another when Mercaldi tries to put them on the whiteboard. She pledges to return to the project the next day. Now it is 2:40, and the children pack up their iPads. It’s time for a hockey game in the gym, and, for now at least, there is no app for that.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about blended learning.
Title: Technology and the Politics of University Reform
Author: Edward Hamilton
English | 27 Feb. 2016 | ISBN: 1137503505 | 237 Pages
Examining cases in educational technology from computer assisted instruction to MOOCs, this volume shows how social interests frame reform programs and realign organizational and pedagogical strategies around them to produce a particular environment for change in higher education. Technology is a contingent product rather than a driver of such changes, suggesting that the politics of reform in higher education is not a struggle against technology, but for it, and that the critique of online education could be re-imagined as a basis for innovation.
Note:All the books presented in this blog. Include the original cover and review provided by the publisher. This information is used to accurately promote and show respect for these resources, the authors and the publishers.
Authors: Brian Sargent, David Watson, Graham Brown
2015 | 312 Pages | ISBN: 1471807215
Endorsed by Cambridge International ExaminationsNow including Brian Sargent in the expert author team, alongside first edition authors Graham Brown and David Watson, this book has been fully revised and updated to cover every part of the latest Cambridge IGCSE ICT (0417) syllabus.- Ensures that students are fully prepared for both the written theory paper as well as the two practical papers- Covers each section of the syllabus with clear explanations and plenty of tasks and activities.
Note:All the books presented in this blog. Include the original cover and review provided by the publisher. This information is used to accurately promote and show respect for these resources, the authors and the publishers.
As technology advances, so must our education system. Cloud computing serves as an ideal method for e-learning thanks to its flexibility, affordability, and availability. Cloud-based learning is especially dynamic in STEM education, as it can significantly lower the cost of building cumbersome computer labs while fostering engaged learning and collaboration among students. The Handbook of Research on Cloud-Based STEM Education for Improved Learning Outcomes prepares current and future instructors for exciting breakthroughs in STEM education driven by the advancement of cloud technologies. From virtual lab and app construction, to information sharing and course material distribution, this volume touches on a variety of topics related to the benefits and challenges of adopting cloud technologies in the classroom. This book is an invaluable reference for educators, technology professionals, administrators, and education students who wish to become leaders in their fields.
Note:All the books presented in this blog. Include the original cover and review provided by the publisher. This information is used to accurately promote and show respect for these resources, the authors and the publishers.
Here is a great article from the most recent newsletter to whet your appetite.
Title: District’s One-to-One iPad Initiative Results in Constant Use for Elementary Students
In third and fourth grade classrooms in a school in Mineola, N.Y., students use about 75 percent of the school day on their iPads following the district’s adoption of a one-to-one iPad initiative, raising questions on the future of instruction in the digital world.
According to the Hechinger Report, “[a]t Jackson Avenue, which houses the third and fourth grades, all 417 children, including those in special education, have their own tablets, and they spend about 75 percent of their instructional day on the devices, more than many other schools that have embraced digital learning.”
The article describes Mineola as an affluent district attempting to use heavy reliance on technology to help students meet Common Core standards.
“By embracing iPads while keeping the traditional model of one teacher working with 20-some children, the small school district offers a vision of what the future of digital learning might be,” the article said.
In Morgan Mercaldi’s class, assignments are mix between digital and paper elements. Students begin and end their day using their devices to do research while using paper to actually write their assignments.
“Mercaldi’s students received their iPads in October, and now move smoothly from pencil to touch screen and from paper to tablet.”
Though the students use the iPads regularly, some are better at using the technology than others. And of course, the technology is not immune to glitches that need attention every once and a while.
One student, “Joseph Parrino has had trouble with the iPad’s flat electronic keyboard — ‘my fingers slip,’ he explains — and so has brought a plug-in keyboard from home. And several children say they prefer old-fashioned books to the digital alternative,” the article said. In other words, not every digital native is entirely comfortable with the technology as might be assumed.
Students use their iPads for all subjects in Mercaldi’s class. Beginning with English, ending with science and studying math in-between, students rely on their devices and educational apps to get work done.
Mercaldi says she has worked to find a balance between students being on and off the iPads, but, “[w]ith several hours during the school day on the iPads, plus homework time and other afterschool use, it’s not hard to imagine that some Jackson Avenue students may look at their tablets for six hours or more a day.”
Of course, with one-to-one initiatives the question is always posed as to whether students will get distracted by the opportunity to use their devices for non-education related things. Studies have shown that students who use devices for learning can learn faster, but those who use for them for non-learning and give into distraction perform worse than all.
Educators within the district claim that this has not been an issue as students mostly know to stay on task in class.
nes, and from social media to Google searches, digital technologies have transformed the way we learn, entertain ourselves, socialize, and work. Despite their usefulness, these technologies have often led to information overload, stress, and distraction. In recent years many of us have begun to look at the pluses and minuses of our online lives and to ask how we might more skillfully use the tools we’ve developed.
2013 | 328 Pages | ISBN: 0615824072
Spreading The Word 