iSchool - is the world ready for it?

[hh5]

This is real play

iSchool Musical, anyone?

 

will it make it on disney with moviestar (pee on) Zack Efron n Nicole Kidman

 

[hh5]

 

 

As goes Maine

The state of Maine has made Windows 8 on HP laptops the official default mobile computer for schools, unseating Apple, which has enjoyed years as the primary laptop vendor for schools.

 

Schools have the option to buy any of the five proposals the state considered, but they have to pick up the difference between their cost and the cost of an HP ProBook 4440, according to the Associated Press.

 

 

[hh5]

 

 

Three U.S. cities try out $40 tablets in schools

Three U.S. cities are rolling out DataWind's Aakash tablets into schools

 

Three U.S. cities are taking part in a pilot plan to roll out cheap tablets to schools.

 

DataWind's Aakash tablets are being given to children in Silicon Valley and Atlanta, with Las Vegas beginning its trial soon.

 

The cheapest tablet, called the Aakash 2 tablet costs just $40.41 and features many aspects either better, or comparable to the original iPad.

 

 

[Sasha Distan]

short and to the point: an ipad cannot teach a child. no piece of technology can take the place of actual learning in a classroom. Yes there are a minority of very bright students who can work independently on these things, learn and absorb information. They are a tiny minority.

 

Thousands of years of teaching and learning have shown us that children do not learn by themselves, every skill must be taught and shown (granted with very few exceptions) and while as adults we can learn and grasp new skills quickly and find the relative resources on help us online, children can not. they are developing, things take them longer, and autonomous teaching is one of the worst ideas i have even heard.

 

I teach 11 to 16 year olds.

[Lugh]

Actually Sasha....

 

Put this technology in the hands of a five and six year old and give them instruction...  and you teach them to be self-learners.  It is a well-known fact among homeschoolers that if you give a child a love for learning and some basic skills such as reading and basic math -- they can do just about anything they want.  There are test scores that back this up.  

 

I have taught pk - 3rd (4 to 8 year olds)

and

currently home school a 5 year old who uses technology daily, prefers to read ebooks, and keeps a blog.

[Mark Arbour]

short and to the point: an ipad cannot teach a child. no piece of technology can take the place of actual learning in a classroom. Yes there are a minority of very bright students who can work independently on these things, learn and absorb information. They are a tiny minority.

 

Thousands of years of teaching and learning have shown us that children do not learn by themselves, every skill must be taught and shown (granted with very few exceptions) and while as adults we can learn and grasp new skills quickly and find the relative resources on help us online, children can not. they are developing, things take them longer, and autonomous teaching is one of the worst ideas i have even heard.

 

I teach 11 to 16 year olds.

 

The argument is not that children can't be taught or shown (and it is an argument, not a fact), the issue is whether they can learn from an iPad (or similar device).  The answer is that it depends on the child and their aptitudes and learning style.  The iPad is only a medium to deliver knowledge. 

 

The idea that kids can't find what they want or need online is laughable, but if you can cite some credible sources to show me otherwise, I'm more than willing to listen.

Edited May 31, 2013 by Mark Arbour

[Sasha Distan]

The idea that kids can't find what they want or need online is laughable, but if you can cite some credible sources to show me otherwise, I'm more than willing to listen.

 

Spend a year teaching ICT and computing to secondary school kids. I have all the credible experience you could need.

 

Ask them to find stuff on Tumblr, not a problem. Ask then to research three different ways they can develop a recipe and you get a lot of kids typing "three ways to develop sacher torte" into google and getting no usable results.

[Lugh]

Sasha I asked my 18 year old to do this... his first guess was to put "food service recipe development" into google.... not whatever you said.

[Sasha Distan]

Sasha I asked my 18 year old to do this... his first guess was to put "food service recipe development" into google.... not whatever you said.

 

the three years between an 18 year old and a 15 year old are massively important. one is a child, one can vote, drink, drive and join the army.

my point stands.

[Lugh]

want me to ask the five year old?

[Lugh]

ok that was interesting... his first response was to tell me you need to put in "cooking food more than one way" which is damn close... but there is a vast difference between a five year old who has been taught to use search engines and look things up on his own rather than me give him all the information than a teenager (who by the way CAN drive a car in this country at 15 in some states and take drivers education in all of them) who has been given free reign and no skills on the technology they have at their fingertips.

 

Bump uses an online dictionary and thesaurus daily for his lessons.  BUT he can also use a paper one that is age appropriate.  He can find a book in the library card catalogue which is computerized.  He loves to browse it.  

 

I'm not saying that a tablet should replace a teacher.  I'm saying that a tablet in the hands of a child with a teacher who knows how and when to use them in the classroom and who is willing to allow the children to explore and expand their educational boundaries, can allow wonderful things to happen.  Don't let the concept of "this is how I learned so it's how my child should learn" stifle the forward expansion of how education can and does take place in a world of changing technology.  This is no longer a world where children travel no further than they can walk in a week.  Now they can travel the globe -- or the universe -- in their living rooms and we as educators are here to make ways for it to happen, to allow it to happen, and to encourage it to happen.  

 

Technology is moving forward.  Children are the first to adapt.  Teachers are slower.  School systems even slower.  Change must and will happen..  This is one of the fundamental reasons I homeschool.  Bump has been on a computer since he was two.  Not just pushing buttons, but actively engaged.  By the time he was three, he could properly open the laptop, turn it on, 'log on', open his folder, choose his activity, and when he was finished, properly log out of the activity, log out of the computer, turn it off, and put it away.  This is at three.  He was using a touch pad on the laptop.  Now he uses a mouse, touchpad, or touch screen, all with the same ease.  Technology is what it is, and that is nothing more than what you make of it.  If you, as a parent or a teacher, don't embrace it or allow access to it, or teach how to use it then the children at whatever age will remain ignorant.  

 

As someone else said...

 

Teacher --- teach.  

[Sasha Distan]

What I am saying is, using ipads or not isn't going to change how well children learn. All it will do is possibly reduce the amount of paper in the classroom. Good teachers teach well regardless of the tools involved. 

Most studies agree that the fewer children per teacher, the better their education is. this is true in private schools where children have access to all sorts of technology in the educational lives. the answer is more better trained and motivated teachers and not keeping bad, lazy teachers on payroll just because they have tenure. 

 

also, Lugh, your 5 year old is one smart kid, well done.   But he will be the exception to the rule unfortunately.

[Thorn Wilde]

I read a really interesting article a while back on how technology is changing the way our children's brains function. Not just changing how they think, but actually physically changing the way neural pathways are formed. I've been trying to find it for the better part of fifteen minutes, but it was a couple years ago, and google is being no help to me as there's so much out there on the subject. But the bottom line was that the world is so fast-paced now that kids' brains are developing differently simply because of all the input they're getting from their surroundings. This would be why so many kids seem to have a hard time concentrating on specific tasks, because their brains are made for multitasking.

 

I thought of it again a couple of months ago when I saw the latest Madagascar movie. Everything was going so fast I was having trouble keeping up with the plot, but the kids I was watching it with seemed to have no such trouble. Even people only a few years younger than me seem to get bored from movies and stories where the plot develops slowly or where there's a lot of dialogue and not so much action, no matter how good the story/actors/production/whatever is.

[Sasha Distan]

I read a really interesting article a while back on how technology is changing the way our children's brains function. Not just changing how they think, but actually physically changing the way neural pathways are formed. I've been trying to find it for the better part of fifteen minutes, but it was a couple years ago, and google is being no help to me as there's so much out there on the subject. But the bottom line was that the world is so fast-paced now that kids' brains are developing differently simply because of all the input they're getting from their surroundings. This would be why so many kids seem to have a hard time concentrating on specific tasks, because their brains are made for multitasking.

 

I thought of it again a couple of months ago when I saw the latest Madagascar movie. Everything was going so fast I was having trouble keeping up with the plot, but the kids I was watching it with seemed to have no such trouble. Even people only a few years younger than me seem to get bored from movies and stories where the plot develops slowly or where there's a lot of dialogue and not so much action, no matter how good the story/actors/production/whatever is.

 

I read that article, they had a copy in the TES (teachers newspaper) over here. the kids are great at 5 minutes tasks and awful at coursework generally because by the time they get to 14 they have never been asked to concentrate on one subject for more than like a week and we make them focus on one (quite complex) thing for like 6 months. a lot of them really can't cope well.

Modern teaching exploits this whole "pace" thing but it really lets the kids down when they move on to HE and work because they get bored really easily.

[Lugh]

well shit.... 

 

I need to stop right now I'm ruining bump... we studied grammar all year (a month on each part of speech), geography (one continent a month and a month for oceans) this year, a whole year on astronomy, some other science and history unit  studies that took 4-6 weeks...  we spend 20 - 45 minutes on a single subject a day... lawdy lawdy... I'm screwing him up horribly.

[Sasha Distan]

well shit.... 

 

I need to stop right now I'm ruining bump... we studied grammar all year (a month on each part of speech), geography (one continent a month and a month for oceans) this year, a whole year on astronomy, some other science and history unit  studies that took 4-6 weeks...  we spend 20 - 45 minutes on a single subject a day... lawdy lawdy... I'm screwing him up horribly.

 

Not that you need telling, but you are doing a great job. Thousands of parents do right by their kids every day and teach them read to them, tell them things and generally be awesome parents.

Unfortunately there are millions of parents out there really screwing up their kids, or ignoring them (debate about which of these things is worse: wrong knowledge or no knowledge?) and those are the kids the education system has to be designed for, there are so many more of them. I try and do the best by each kid i teach. Some can cope with long projects (OwD, nicest 15 year old boy on the planet is a great example of this) and some just can't. Good teachers personalise their teaching and their lessons, just like a parent would (eg, what my parents did for me was not the same as what they did for my ASD, Dyslexic brother)

 

Bizzarely my friend (who teaches secondary maths) has been asked by her 4 year-olds teacher to stop teaching her to read because the school want them to learn in phonics not real letters. She rightly told them where to stick their advice.

 

Anyway, i feel we have sort of gone off topic a bit.

Teachers = can be good, can be bad

ipads = can be good, can be bad

ipads instead of teachers = disaster waiting to happen

[hh5]

Not all will copy one another ... some will actually review each "sacher torte" recipe and start to compare the recipes some might notice the origin of where they found the recipe ... the progress of doing the assignment is to start to understand what the assignment is asking them to do .. of course each student won't all be doing the same recipe

 

given the medium of learning is the digital age the tools and equipment must really become the useable tools of the future

 

so lets say the students more or less did their assignments ... the teacher reviews of assignments as the basis to teach the kids better skills at doing such an assignment

 

now for the tools ... the teacher would call on a student ... he will share about his assignment .. he brings it up on his tablet and swipes it to the main board .. or he swipes it to be shared to all students in the class .. goes in front of the class and explains it on the big board

 

depending upon the teacher's teaching ethics ... one possible thing that may happen after going over a couple assignments ... the teacher will pair up the ones that did the assignment correctly or nearly with the ones that could not do their assignment at all

 

another scenario ... if this is an advanced class like a cooking class ... a student could explain why (for example) each recipe is a little different but still is pertinent to his chosen source recipe

 

another scenario ... the teacher could be teaching about the origin of our meals and how they developed over the years

 

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the purpose of better tools, tablets, touch screens, ibooks, ieducation plans ... is the ability to do a better job at sharing information and lessons than what is done manually ... so perhaps the "i" is about interactive not internet nor electronic nor apple trademark

 

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I saw a news piece about how african students are doing in classes ... one teacher challenges his students to learn among themselves .. engage in meaningful dialog ... this reminded me that a good learning experience is all dependent upon student placement in the classes as well as the purpose of the class and the caliber of the teacher

 

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my friend who is from the phillipines and teaches in thailand ... he teaches 3rd grade science ... gosh I think those students are learning far more than the usa counterparts .... or have I forgotten what I learned in 3rd grade ... the issue for the catholic private school is ... the admin is bad about student placement, use of resources, etc ... the teachers are stressed out ... but the teachers bond by their ethnic culture to share their time together to relieve the stress of working like 14x6 days ... there is no regular family life .... having some students with ADHD disrupts the progress of syllabus much like in the usa we have bad students disrupting classes ... this school is also about getting more and more new students enrolled ... they have monthly sales drives ... its not about improving the education system ... its about profit ,,, its not about a teaching being rewarded ...

 

this just a share about noticing how different our educational systems are ... I hate when our domestic news makes an apple and orange comparison of how good our education system is with the global economy ... are they saying to make ours better ... we have to culturally change as well as use the same methods of the better country??

 

if someone describes the life of a jap student to a usa student .,. how many will find it appealing? no time for baseball ... but then not many jap students go to college because they can't afford it

 

some how we do need to preserve what makes this country great ... so perhaps that school that tries to place a student in an area of interest as like a major after completing elementary education ... we'll see that the student getting an education while pursuing their interest ... regular generic schooling seems to put big time stress on the student while having a big chance of failing courses ... perhaps this is still part of the debate about what is education

 

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anyone remember a long time ago when the movie studios took in potential stars and gave them their version of star schooling n star community while making movies ... its great but its when the studio that made big bucks ... today the stars make big bucks ... but that didn't mean they got a good education ...

 

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the purpose of equipment n tools is to help speed up learning in classes as well as make it fun ... the idea of the next generation of school is to be able to manage all this ... this means that the teaching program must be better than rudimentary it has to be interactive

 

but what is apparent in this topic ... its about budget ... its about planning the 21st century education system ... its about maturing society to not destroy these tools n equipment ... sure it be a struggle but if we get the young to learn the 21st century teaching ... then in 20 to 50 years ... society as whole will decrease the problems it is suffering today ...

 

syfy was trying to tell us in the last 50 years or more about improving our society ... we, society, didn't heed those warnings ... so that futuristic thing we all look for is up to at least another generation to make those changes ... we're still dealing with the muck n the mess because someone short the future investments for short term gains or other reasons

 

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lol, I saw on the news it was about a school in virginia ... (it was like the movie "teachers" or "lean on me") ... that had a poor environment for its students ... because it was a low class town ... it took someone to become the force of change to get this school on the right track as well as inform the state that this school needs help ... u think that this scenario should have been solved like ten to twenty years ago ... not ... education is just like our aging infrastructure ... we outlived our inheritance usability and had not reinvested in our future ... the news reports that the state will drastically change the forgotten school in the next year but the question is it an empty promise?

 

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there seems to be the question what is teaching ... the past was about cultivating individual excellence ... in different schools its about groups of students with a varying degrees of skills in a community\group base learning ... in another school ... its about focusing the students in a area of study they like to get into while learning the skills to get them there ... in another education system its about fulfilling a fix way of teaching on a limited budget and limited teaching resource to a large mass of students thats not evenly distributed ... not even manage well

 

the interesting question to discuss is ... what is 21st century education?

 

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yes, I did forget to address home base schooling ... I only noticed and heard mix results ... but again it should not be ignored in the 21st century .,, could be useful for the mobile family

Sasha Distan, on 31 May 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

 

Spend a year teaching ICT and computing to secondary school kids. I have all the credible experience you could need.

 

Ask them to find stuff on Tumblr, not a problem. Ask then to research three different ways they can develop a recipe and you get a lot of kids typing "three ways to develop sacher torte" into google and getting no usable results.

Edited June 1, 2013 by hh5

[hh5]

 

Microsoft Offering Schools/Colleges $199 Surface RT Tablets