You don’t need to be a Dickens scholar to understand that for many teachers it is both the best of times and the worst of times.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Digital innovation is inspiring imagination. Educators from all over the world are learning how to responsibly blend technology into their teaching, while sharing resource suggestions and best practices with colleagues and their growing professional learning networks.
The freedom to choose an assortment of apps, videos and open educational resources that can augment – if not replace – traditional curriculum for any given unit or lesson plan is empowering. Learning how other teachers put these tools into their own practice via Twitter Chats, EdCamps and other collaborative environments is exhilarating.
Computer note-taking was a point of contention at my school. Almost every teacher used laptops. But we varied in how much we allowed students to take notes on them during class. Those in the no-computer-notes camp pointed to how often students were distracted by messaging and social media. Those who allowed laptops for notes argued that…
Five years ago, University of Kentucky CTO Doyle Friskney realized that the campus’s classrooms mirrored those of other colleges: Lecture-based halls where students would sit and listen to a professor, with little interaction among one another. Something had to change, Friskney said. “Millennials don’t necessarily like lecture classrooms as well as faculty members do—they like…
Dr. Anna Konopka, the 84-year-old New Hampshire physician who recently lost her medical license in part due to a lack of computer skills, has an uphill battle ahead of her. In two lengthy phone interviews with Ars on Tuesday, Konopka said if she is reinstated by the state’s medical board—at this point, a big if—she would…
A robot has just moved into the cubicle next to you, and you’re wondering whether it will soon take your place. Experts say humans are better at jobs that require empathy, creativity or physical dexterity than our robot competitors. For instance, in the graphs above, empathetic nurses, creative CEOs and dextrous tree pruners are all on…
Why, all of a sudden, are so many successful business leaders urging their companies and colleagues to make more mistakes and embrace more failures? In May, right after he became CEO of Coca-Cola Co., James Quincey called upon rank-and-file managers to get beyond the fear of failure that had dogged the company since the “New…
