Using Open Badges at Hamilton
We’re exploring a new way of tracking professional development and learning. The internet has quite profoundly changed the way we learn. Skills and questions are really one Google (or Bing, or Pinterest, or Instructable, or Tweet) search away. Learning happens. Constantly. But how do you quantify and demonstrate that learning? If you say you know […]
Be Less Helpful
Dan Meyer – my favorite math teacher to follow on the internets – ran an interesting presentation that focuses on a great pedagogical concept: Be less helpful. I’m simplifying a bit, but the main idea is to set your students up with the puzzle, and then let them wrestle with it. Don’t give students answers. […]
Facebook, Trust Engineers, and 1 Billion People
On August 24 , 1 billion people accessed Facebook on the same day. That’s 1/7 of the world’s population. This bears a moment of contemplation and question: What does it mean when 1/7 of the world logs into the same the site on the same day? This isn’t a scaremongering post or a melancholy reflection […]
Teacher Academy Visit
A highlight of the year is when Mike Neri invites me to his Teacher Academy Class to talk about technology and education. Given the fact that these kidoes won’t be in the classroom for a 1/2 a decade of so, the talk is usually a bit of exercise in predicting the future and identifying trends […]
Hold on, laptops may NOT be bad for learning
Around a month ago, a corner of my Twitterverse erupted with a study that indicated that laptops in the classroom discourage learning. Titled “The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard“, one could easily conclude it best to have students close their screens and pick up a pencil if you wanted more retention in your sit and […]
Teacher Feedback VS Machine Feedback
Do students prefer to learn from a machine? A bit of a professional disclaimer to this week’s geek study. I do not believe that technology is ever an effective substitute for good teaching (and this is a belief rooted in quite a few empirical studies as well). Technology is a tool. My interest is how tools […]