Chromebooks have become popular educational devices that are used in thousands of schools across the US and worldwide. They offer an attractive price and can be used very effectively to target many 21st century skills such as connecting, critical thinking, and collaboration. However, one very important skill that we don’t generally associate as much with…
It’s terribly confusing, but perhaps no coincidence, that three of the world’s most prominent consumer technology companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft—each boast a “Classroom” tool aimed at K-12 educators and students. After all, what better way to secure a foothold in the market than impressing one’s brand to future consumers at a young age? Source: Battle of…
At first I thought it was a teacher thing. I would ask how someone was doing and they would say, “I’m really busy.” This was often followed by a description of how little sleep they had gotten and how much grading they had done. Teachers weren’t whining. It wasn’t a “poor me” attitude. It was…
Cognitive biases are systematic ways in which people deviate from rationality in making judgements. Wikipedia maintains a list such biases and one example is survivorship bias, the tendency to focus on those things or people which succeed in an endeavor and discount the experiences of those which did not. Source: A cognitive bias cheat sheet It’s all too…
Cloudpets sound like a cool idea. Use a teddy bear as a microphone and speaker to allow children to communicate with loved ones. It’s such a great idea that over 800,000 of the stuffed animals have been sold. How do we know this? Because the company has no clue how to do security. A maker…
In a recent interview on Bloomberg TV, Cuban warned that even people with in-demand skills like computer coding could soon be displaced. “That might have been a great job a few years ago, but you might be out of work in five years,” he said, citing what he called “the automation of automation,” where computers…
Google catches a lot of flak for having too many messaging apps, but there’s another messaging-style app that you almost surely forgot about. It is called Spaces and it’s shutting down on April 17th. Google’s traditional Spring cleaning is starting early — and with it maybe the company is showing it can be a little…
\Recognize this language? ¿Cual es su nombre? How about this one? { console.log(“Name: “ + myString); } The first one is Spanish. The next, although those are English words, is JavaScript, a computer language. Computers are everywhere, from microwaves to phones, from cars to the international space station. They may have different functions, but they…
A few months ago, I noticed an increased amount of discussion around the notion of blended learning. Many of these conversations started on a similar note: “We’re blended—all of our teachers use Google Classroom” (or Edmodo, Schoology, Canvas, Moodle, etc.). However, in probing further, I often discovered that these tools had merely digitized existing content…
Today’s updates for the Class Notebook add-in for OneNote desktop update include: Grade scale support for Canvas and Skooler. Skooler joins the OneNote add-in family. Stickers—now includes the ability to customize. Source: OneNote Class Notebook add-in now includes grade scales, improved LMS integration and sticker customization – Office Blogs Some great additions to OneNote Class…