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.
Designed for kids ages eight and up, the Educator Kit contains over 300 building blocks and 30 hours of educational STEAM curriculum to teach kids Scratch, an introductory programming language on the KOOV app to control the robots they build. There’s 23 different robots you can make using pre-coded “Robot Recipes”, which are jumping-off points…
As kids head back to school this fall, which class should they enroll in? French — or programming? Apple CEO Tim Cook told a company conference this year that computer programming should be taught in schools as a second language. Others have echoed that view, arguing that programming should be considered a necessary skill for the 21st century, right alongside…
Kids, and adults, can certainly learn stuff from watching videos of the type Green produces (and I have). But those topics exist in isolation. And connecting them into something actually useful is a far more difficult process. One that requires teachers. Source: Video Will Not Fix Education – Assorted Stuff Skills in isolation is never a…
When schools try to innovate, they often take a traditional top-down approach: devise a strategy, roll it out to teachers and support a high-fidelity implementation. The end result is often one that lacks teacher support or genuine enthusiasm — initiatives putter along and change is sporadic or modest.In education and beyond, innovation is usually the…
New research conducted by Allison Gabriel, McClelland Professor of Management and Organizations and University Distinguished Scholar in the University of Arizona Eller College of Management, suggests that the camera may be partially to blame. Gabriel’s research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, looks at the role of cameras in employee fatigue and explores whether these feelings are…
