In almost any school in the country today, you can find an app or program that claims to change education as we know it. Yet schools are littered with products that have not changed anything beyond teachers’ desktop screens.
As researchers focusing on education technology, we see this often: interactive whiteboards covered in posters, desktop computers holding up plants, older devices that do not work with a newer assessment system. The list goes on.
Our work at the nonprofit Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology focuses on how education technology can be used to support learning. The truth is edtech products that foster more learning than would happen in analogue settings can be difficult to find. When we get to see effective edtech products in practice, the view is exciting: We see kids engaged, teachers energized about the kinds of thinking their students are generating and strong learning outcomes that result from well-made
The ninth UCISA Survey of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) for higher education Report has been published. The Report offers a longitudinal perspective of TEL developments across the UK higher education sector, focusing on the current provision within universities and other higher education providers and the emerging and planned patterns of learning technology usage. This year’s Report draws on data going back to 2001 in its longitudinal analysis of TEL trends. In this blog post, we will explore some of the key findings from this year’s Survey, updating the picture that was reported on in 2016 (see corresponding blog post).
This is a very special keynote to me and I am grateful to the Trustees of ALT to invite me to speak at ALT’s 25th Annual Conference. This post shares the slides and some of my notes for the talk and you can also watch a recording from the conference here . Thanks to James Clay for this video sketch note of the talk.
Perhaps the main reason for this disappointing impact is that the inclusion of technologies in schools has done little to change the ‘tell and practise’ approach to teaching and learning – the predominant pedagogical practice of our time.
In this model, teachers tell students what knowledge is and what is worth knowing; meanwhile, students invest their limitless capacity for investigating, thinking critically, creating, hypothesising, and collaborating by memorising and practising what they’re told.
"...when technology tools are used to enhance innovative practices that are grounded in sound research and theory, one can expect large to very large gains in student achievement and learning productivity."
Today is the last day of the 24th Annual Conference of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT-C), which has been taking place over the last few days (5 – 7 September 2017) at the University of Liverpool, UK. They have been livestreaming and recording a selection of sessions every day.
Technology can empower higher education students to boost their grades or attend classes despite other responsibilities — or locations. The Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology hopes that all universities will take advantage of the possibilities technology can create for students.
In “Reimagining the Role of Technology in Higher Education,” the 2017 addendum to the 2016 National Education Technology Plan, the OET outlines how leaders in higher ed should use tech to create “everywhere, all-the-time learning and ensure greater equity and accessibility to learning opportunities over the course of a learner’s lifetime.”
Enrollment in higher education has increased for many years,
The Technology Literacy Collaborative (TLC) is a community of organizations that care about youth and learning, in particular, learning technology and digital literacy. Perhaps the best way for TLC to better realize their mission is to join with thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations world wide that are joining together May 12, 2014 for free online training .
The strategy sets out our shared vision for developing the Association as an influential, innovative and independent membership organisation, clearly defining our aims for the next three years. The strategy also articulates our values as a community of practitioners, researchers and policy makers, values that define who we are and how we work together. It is the result of active consultation with our members, the wider community and stakeholders .
Recently, a town-wide power outage resulted in my son’s school being ‘in the dark’ for about four hours. Most classes didn’t need to skip a beat – it was a sunny day and electricity is not require...
Like another eight or so Institutions around the country, Sheffield has relatively recently become a full "customer” of Google Apps for Education (GAFE). After moving our student email service to Gmail in 2009, and then a phased transition of our staff email service about 12 months ago, we then enabled Calendar, Docs and Sites for all staff and students alike.
With its readily usable platform that enables collaborative working amongst our students, and apparent popularity, there’s lots to like about using Google Apps in learning and teaching. In the last year we’ve seen a few really exciting examples of innovative practice, and there’ll no doubt be more to come. But before we just wade in with wholesale promotion of using the Apps with our students, we need to think about some of the broader issues, starting with policy and guidelines. Here are some of the areas I’ve identified over the last few weeks that require such attention.
This blog post is a reflection of two events I went to at the end of October at Keele University and at the UK Council of Graduate Education, both where I presented and spoke to some brilliant people, but it made me think of the well known English phrase ‘rhetoric and reality’. To
In this session, we will present data from a University of Leeds ESRC Newton funded research grant conducted in collaboration with the University of Cape Town. We will contextualise the study in the existing literature around marketization, unbundling and digital technology, and give an overview of our research in South Africa. We will then focus on data collected from the UK higher education sector, through desk research and interviews with senior HE leaders. Our session will involve a presentation of our research data, including demonstration of novel interactive visualisations. Participants will be able to view these visualisations themselves during the session, and manipulate the data. We will pose several critical questions to the audience during the session, and invite responses digitally through a Padlet wall. At the end of the session, we will take questions from the audience about our research findings. The session strongly relates to the theme of critical perspectives of learning technology, as our research project is focussed on the benefits and challenges of the growth in unbundled online learning from universities, and the impact this is having on access, equality, flexibility, institutional mission and the changing nature of higher education.
The ongoing transformation of how learning takes place means that learning providers need to look again at physical delivery spaces – what learners actually do in these spaces (not what we think they do in them). This will, he argues, help to make sure that people can learn optimally and also ensure that the best use is made of available space.
Learning technology is just about everywhere in education. Universities are replete with lecture capture tools, interactive media, web based content and more…
I missed 2008, but every year since then I have participated in ALT’s Annual Conference. While I work for ALT in my ‘day job’ I also attend the conference as a Learning Technology…
Most of today’s classroom teachers are digital immigrants, who need to not only learn the latest technologies but also help students learn skills for workplaces that don’t yet exist.
CES 2014 was all about wearable technology [ http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/7/5284144/the-best-wearables-of-ces-2014-stream ]. Naturally, I’m left wondering what this trend (fad? tip of the iceberg? beginning of the end?) might mean for education. Whether it is here to stay or not, I think wearables have some really neat potential.
Often, we talk about a need for authentic real-world contexts content. Imagine basing all word problems on data about students’ own lives collected by their bracelets! Now that would be authentic.
Related, we want students to think about their learning all day, every day, and not just while they’re in our classes. Wearables integrate technology more seamlessly than even a smartphone does; while a smartphone is designed to be put away in a pocket, a wearable is as much a part of a person’s everyday as his/her clothing. Developing apps for these devices that introduce information, offer challenges to be solved, and allow students to identify examples of their learning in real life will show them how meaningful their learning really is.
How to make the most of your creative mind Tony Buzan, Author, educationalist and the creator of Mind Mapping (R) Very few people can claim to have invented ...
Epic Learning Group - UK Leaders in Learning Technologies
Accessibility is important for improving the learning experience. You should be mindful of all of your learners and those with different learning abilities and disabilities, who require specific methods of learning.
In this month’s Provost Report at the University of Washington, “Putting Learning First: How Students Learn and How Technology Can Help“, the focus was on strategies for teaching and learning with technology. Although technology in the classroom is something that is fairly widespread, it is still something that needs careful planning and consideration. The report is a great guide of ideas and “best practices” when taking steps toward a tech-friendly classroom.
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