Greater student engagement and higher test scores are the results teachers are reporting, since hundreds of California middle school students started using school-issued iPads, eSchool News reports. In the four-district pilot, the students are "using curriculum apps for their classwork and homework" in a variety subjects, including language arts and math. One district told eSchool News that "90.5% … [Read more...] about 1 iPad per student: Experiments in 2 states
education technology
‘Digital literacy’ defined – by students
Cathy Davidson, a professor of English and interdisciplinary studies at Duke University, teaches a couple of undergraduate classes that are "peer-driven, peer-assessed, and peer-led": "This Is Your Brain on the Internet” and “Twenty-First Century Literacies.” In these classes, students have to master traditional media too ("whether regarding neural networks or novels," Davidson writes), but these … [Read more...] about ‘Digital literacy’ defined – by students
Social media in the classroom: +1 or -1?
Not entirely unlike using chalk and a blackboard, whether or not using Web 2.0 tools is a positive or a negative has a lot more to do with how a teacher views and uses them than with the tools themselves. Two college professors who do use social media as teaching tools "view new literacies as additive rather than an annihilation of traditional literacy practices," writes Prof. Todd Finley of East … [Read more...] about Social media in the classroom: +1 or -1?
Students learning with digital tools in spite of school: Study
It's no surprise, but it's encouraging if true: America's students are not waiting for the rest of us to "catch up to their vision for 21st-century learning," reports Project Tomorrow, which conducts the annual Speak Up survey, having surveyed 294,399 K-12 students, 42,267 parents, 37,720 teachers and librarians, and 4,969 school administrators and technology leaders in 6,541 public and private … [Read more...] about Students learning with digital tools in spite of school: Study
Toward social media tools in school
You all may have noticed I'm a strong proponent of educational social media in school – in the core curriculum, pre-K-12. Why? So students can not only collaborate in basic civic engagement (the class being a tiny community in which they're engaging) and maybe broader participation beyond the classroom, but also practice media, tech, and social literacy (citizenship) while they're in core classes. … [Read more...] about Toward social media tools in school