I was at a technology and education conference, earlier this week. But as I reflected on my learning from the conference, I came to the conclusion that it didn’t seem like a technology conference.
Instead, it was a mindset conference. It was an innovation conference. It was a conference about the power of connectivity. It was a conference that encouraged people to shift the way they think.
It was amazing!
One presenter at the conference, the keynote, George Couros, went so far as to discourage participants from applying the “tech” label to themselves. What?! He was talking to a room full of the “tech” people!
Technology isn’t something new, personal computers have been around for almost 40 years now. It is all in the mind and how you’re going to use technology to extend learning.
So knowing your audience is extremely important to you? That’s the only way you know you’re communicating. Otherwise you’re just giving a lecture, you’re facing the board and talking to the board, and people in the classroom behind you have to meet you at the board. The educator who says ‘Oh, these people just don’t…
On a bright July morning in a windowless conference room in a Manhattan bookstore, several dozen elementary school teachers were learning how to create worksheets that would help children learn to write. Judith C. Hochman, founder of an organization called the Writing Revolution, displayed examples of student work. A first grader had produced the following…
My mom is my role model for happiness. She taught me, years ago, that you do not just have good days, you CREATE them. Throughout the years, this quote has stuck with me and has shaped me into the person I am and the person I strive to be. This overarching idea of positivity has inspired…
Players seek risks, challenges, rewards, and recognition when they play a game. Application of various game mechanics to learning experiences can help fulfill these ‘human motivations’. When you design a learning game, you need to choose mechanics that seem appealing for your students, whilst also ensuring that they gel well with the context and the…
There’s new evidence that excessive screen time early in life can change the circuits in a growing brain. Scientists disagree, though, about whether those changes are helpful, or just cause problems. Both views emerged during the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this week. Source: TV And Videogames Rewire Young Brains, For Better And Worse…
Fans of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy treasure the bit where a group of hyper-dimensional beings demand that a supercomputer tells them the secret to life, the universe and everything. The machine, which has been constructed specifically for this purpose, takes 7.5m years to compute the answer, which famously comes out as 42….
