Here are more fun stories from my neglected inbox of newsletters and blog posts:
- Ideas on overcoming a culture of learned helplessness
- A critique of education blogs that don’t update old posts to reflect what has been learned since the original post
- Open eBooks, an online library for eBooks – for Title I schools, special ed teachers, and Department of Defense schools
- A cool overview of how students use their smartphones for studying, help with homework, and communicating with classmates/friends for help
- Larry Cuban, who is skeptical of educational technology, shares his insights on the educational technology industry and its operations
- Interesting results about what factors may have affected student completion of a MOOC
- How letting students struggle and problem solve to complete a project (and lead the learning) can keep them engaged and teach them valuable skills
- Thoughts about various approaches to teaching primary students how to code — intriguing parallels to Latin if we’re imaginative
- A post about how the online courses for Trump “University” were once well designed in a way based on simulations that would work well if “someone wants to learn to do something specific in an area where there is consensus on what constitutes good practice, the method is a perfect fit. And apart from being an example of Schank’s approach to education (simulations, war stories, just-in-time expertise, etc.) it’s well designed from a more traditional standpoint as well. It’s well scaffolded, expertly sequenced, and focused on application of knowledge in authentic contexts. It uses peer evaluation guided by expert feedback. It makes clear to the student what is being taught, and why it is important beyond the classroom.” — I include the quotation because the in-person seminars of Trump University were a scam and it was not a university (see disclosures at the bottom of the post and this TIME story)
- Rumination that textbook costs could be dissuading students from taking courses — remember my post on textbook costs
- Curriki (open educational resources websites)’s ancient Roman history materials
- An idea for how to differentiate learning based on practicing different skills with students at different reading levels
- Ideas for incorporating video into classes
- Thoughts on how furniture–not just its formations–affect learning
Some helpful and intriguing thoughts on “personalized learning”
- David Willey says how edtech needs to design “personalized learning” software so that it works with teachers rather than seek to replace them
- Michael Feldstein and Phil Hall use empirical observations to define “personalized learning” as “undepersonalized learning” and a process. They offer recommendations for how to successfully incorporate personalized learning techniques and software
- Michael Feldstein and Phil Hall clarify their definition of “personalized learning” by distinguishing it from “adaptive learning” software
- A definition of “adaptive learning” and things to consider when implementing it
- More from Michael Feldstein and how personalized learning removes teachers from educational practices in a negative way
- Feldstein’s last post was in response to Amy Collier’s post about “learnification” — the focus on learning (instead of teaching)–and how this relates to accountability and the commodification/measurement of education (i.e. we eat up knowledge like Pac-Man but without a clear why and not in a learning community). Along with personalized learning edtech, she argues, it decomplexicates education into learning. She argues we shouldn’t abandon new techniques, but we should consider the goals for education, enjoy the complexity and questions involved in education, and accept that solutions aren’t always possible or at hand.
