Day: November 12, 2014

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10 Ways To Fake A 21st Century Classroom

Well more than a decade into the 21st Century there’s still loud debate about just what “21st Century skills” are. There are many who equate technology with 21st Century learning. As we have come to expect, in this February, 2013 Teachthought article, the incredible Terry Heick once again nails it.

Posted By Sherwen Mohan 

Original Source 

21st century learning isn’t a trend as much as a reality.

It’s 2013, so whatever you’re doing in your classroom right now is technically 21st century learning. Semantics aside, we all can improve, and many of us are being held accountable for improvement by administrators, blogs, and the local PLC to “bring the next generation into the 21st century.”

With that kind of pressure—and constant district walk-throughs—it may be necessary for you to fake a 21st century thinking and learning environment to make the right kind of impression with the right people, and give the appearance of forward-thinking.

10 Ways To Fake A 21st Century Classroom

1. “Do Projects”

Projects are what students do in the 21st century. (This is distinctly different than project-based learning, mind you.)

One of the most powerful ways to employ a 21st century learning tone and process is to start big–with broad, sweeping projects that change the world, and give students constant opportunity to revise thinking, innovate, design, publish, and curate.

2. Create a class twitter account

Then use it to announce trivial things like due dates of 20th century work. (No one will notice—you’re on twitter, and that’s all that matters.) And when you bring up a new idea in a data team meeting, tell them you heard it on twitter. #streetcred

3. Force collaboration

And when students have trouble collaborating, tell them collaboration is a 21st century skill, throw a calendar at them (or maybe just toss it on their desks casually) and tell them to get with the program.

If that doesn’t work, find the closest map and pound your index finger on China and tell them everything’s about to get real in the next fifty years if they don’t wake up.

4. Video conference with strangers!

Video conferencing with classrooms in India—or even in surrounding counties—is a sure-fire example of a 21st century classroom if there has even been one. Fire up the ol’ Mac, exchange awkward questions, smile a lot, and it’ll be over before you know it. No in-depth planning or technology integration necessary! Just conference!

Bring on George Jetson!

5. Be dramatic

Play Ken Robinson and Shift Happens videos every 6-8 weeks to keep students on their toes and increase the sense of urgency in your classroom. When parents ask what students learned at school, they’ll definitely remember the video, play it on their iPhone, and create an instant certainty in the mind of the parents that good stuff is happening in your classroom.

6. Buy iPads

iPads support mobile learning, allow access to hundreds of incredible apps, and make children grin. If it’s a 21st century learning environment you’re looking for, a classroom full of students pinching and zooming on little glass rectangles will give it to you in spades.

7. Make students blog

The blog is the new novel. (I read that on a blog.) It gives students an instant audience with millions of potential readers, allows for constantly fluid text to be revisited and revised, and can be even be seen from outer space.

Do it yesterday.

8. Apps on apps on apps

And lots of them. Download more than you use, to the point that your iPad can’t even update the ones you actually use because there’s no room left. Try for at least a 10:1 ratio here of download-to-use rate.

9. Blend, blend, blend!

Go all Kitchen Aid on your curriculum and blend it until it’s unrecognizable from what you taught 3 years ago.

Create short YouTube videos, prime students with questions, and watch them all show up to class chomping at the bit to make magic happen. Ignore that many of the students who need the “flip” lack either the access or the thinking habits to make use of it all.

Like a great margarita, if you blend good things happen.

10. Add a column for “Creativity” on every rubric

Creativity is a 21st century currency, and the best way to make sure it happens is to give points for it. They’ll get with the program stat.

Conclusion

So there you have it–10 ways to fake a 21st century classroom. 

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Scientists Develop A Brain Decoder To Hear Your Inner Thoughts

Imagine a teacher in a classroom full of student thoughts. Or being able to hear the thoughts of family members at an otherwise quiet family dinner. Are we sure we want this technology? Only if we also create a thought blocker helmet too

Posted By Jason Ohler 

Original Source 

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have invented a brain decoder device that’s able to work out what you’re thinking based on neuron activity inside the brain — essentially, the experimental system means your private inner thoughts are no longer so private. Researchers invited test subjects to read a passage of text out loud and then again in their mind, monitoring brain activity each time to look for linked patterns.

This is about more than spying on your secret thoughts, though — it could be an invaluable method of communication for people who have lost the ability to speak, for whatever reason. Further down the line we could find ourselves controlling smartphones, computers and other devices using nothing but the power of our minds.

Related: Brains are being hacked to fight mental illness, mine marketing-friendly data

“If you’re reading text in a newspaper or a book, you hear a voice in your own head,” the University’s Brian Pasley told New Scientist. “We’re trying to decode the brain activity related to that voice to create a medical prosthesis that can allow someone who is paralysed or locked in to speak.” Pasley and his team based their work around the hypothesis that hearing words in our head causes the same kind of brain activity as hearing them spoken.

The hardware required for this sophisticated decoding is still at the developmental stage and isn’t accurate enough to be used outside of the lab yet, but the signs are promising. “It’s preliminary data, and we’re still working on making it better,” says Pasley. The researchers are also looking into the effects that hearing music has on the brain.

At the moment, the technology only works if the subject has been carefully monitored for some time, and the algorithms underpinning the system can vary from person to person. Still, when an all-encompassing instant mind reading device does appear, remember that you heard it here first.

 

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Gaming

All Fun & Games? Understanding Learner Outcomes Through Educational Games

Teachers rely on the use of informal and formal assessment data to drive classroom instruction. However, traditional assessments can interrupt pacing and do not measure all of students’ abilities, such as their ability to collaborate with others, use of communication skills, the process of problem solving, or creativity. Kristen DiCerbo at Edutopia promotes an innovative assessment tool–educational games! The proper use of educational games can engage students in the curriculum, and yield useful data on students’ knowledge and skill abilities helping to drive teacher instruction.

posted by: Devin de Lange

Original Source

Over the past several years, there has been tremendous interest among educators in the use of digital games as serious learning. Advocates of game-based learning for K-12 students cite the value of digital games to teach and reinforce skills that prepare students for college and career, such as collaboration, problem solving, creativity, and communication.

Not as often discussed is our ability to use students’ in-game actions as evidence for the assessment of skills and knowledge, including those not easily measured by traditional multiple-choice tests.

The Potential of Games as Invisible Assessments

Traditional assessment methods often require teachers to interrupt classroom learning and administer tests. In contrast, invisible assessments make use of technology to record information about the ways students interact with learning material in a seamless manner, without interruption. Hence the term, “invisible.”

Invisible assessments such as games provide teachers, students, and parents with immediate feedback about progress, enabling them to make timely adjustments to teaching and learning approaches. They also enable educators to build models of student learning and proficiency by capturing many observations of a student over time, without the pressure of performance on a single test.

In games, educators can observe a student’s sequence of actions, time spent on tasks, multiple attempts at activities, requests for help, communication process, and so on. In other words, games allow us to examine a student’s process of problem solving, not just the final product at the end. These observations can help educators make valuable inferences regarding students’ mastery over skills, while offering new ways to assess factors not easily measured on multiple-choice tests, such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, persistence, and creativity.

It is important to note that the term “invisible” does not imply that learners or teachers do not know that assessment is happening. Rather, it implies that the actual activity of assessment is not visible, or interrupting the classroom. Just as when playing a game, players get feedback and scores as a regular, expected part of play, so with all digital learning activity, we can be providing information about proficiency and suggestions for other activity.

Game or Gamification?

Educators must be careful, however, not to confuse educational games with the “gamification” of education. Gamification is generally defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. A game, on the other hand, is a system where changing one element results in (often unforeseen) changes to many other parts of the system. There is little to no evidence that applying only selected game elements outside of a game will yield positive learning outcomes.

Quality educational games must balance engagement, assessment, and learning as three equally important components. Engagement relates to a game’s “fun factor.” Assessment is the ability for educators to gain key insights from a game regarding student abilities, and learning is the level to which a game effectively teaches skills and information. The key is to balance these factors so that games are both fun and educational, while providing the information educators need to assess and improve student outcomes.

A Look Toward the Future

A number of quality games exist today that successfully balance these factors and have tremendous potential as tools for both learning and assessment. However, much work is still needed to maximize their value, particularly in the area of integration. As of today, games and game data often exist in a silo. By making them a seamless part of curricula, there will be less of a burden on each individual teacher to determine when and how to integrate games into the classroom. By integrating the data with other gradebook-type information, teachers, parents, and students will get a richer picture of student knowledge, skills, and attributes.

While games do not fit into the current model of assessment for accountability, they do offer the opportunity to engage and attract learners while providing information useful for making immediate on-the-ground adjustments to teaching and learning plans. The potential of educational games will continue to grow as computers become increasingly ubiquitous in schools, and as game developers work ever more closely with education experts. If schools and teachers can collect and accumulate meaningful evidence from students’ everyday interactions with games and other digital tools, we have the potential to create new models of students’ knowledge and skills that expand our ability to both understand and influence student learning.