Simplifying teacher expertise is no big deal– heck, textbooks are an old tech version of that, saving us all from the trouble of coming up with our own materials. I actually have spent some time thinking about this, resulting in my decision a few years ago to stop using the grammar textbooks my school bought for our classes. I dumped them because they kept my teaching tied to their pace, their ideas, their examples, and their limited practice materials; I decided I would rather take my cue from my students and what they needed and how they could best be helped to understand. Could i have done this when I first started out? Probably not enough hours in the day– and the fact that I can type materials up on a computer and have them printed out on a machine on the other side of the building certainly helps, so I guess I both object to and agree with Arnett’s point.
Or maybe my point is that if you aren’t very careful, labor-saving (or labor-transferring) technology will tell you how to do your job instead of helping you do it.
I do believe that technology will be coming for almost all jobs, including teachers. How soon? It could be 30 years off. Or, it could be 10. Alexa and Siri still can only answers half the time, but they are improving.
…a year ago we called for better methods for evaluating educational apps to help states, districts and schools have more transparency into what technology was really making a difference for teaching and learning. The need to make good decisions based on evidence, as opposed to relying on marketing hype or the buzz among a small…
It’s safe to say that “the career for life” is over. People now hold an average of 15 jobs in their working lifetime. What’s more, according to Deloitte the lifespan of a skill has decreased to just five years from 30 on average. Rapid technological advancements are increasingly impacting the traditionally steady trajectory of professional…
Are you a Chromebook user under the age of ten? While you may not be, quite a few students among the almost thirty million students in U.S. schools. Luckily, there are many Chrome add-ons which are age-appropriate for young learners. In this blog entry, we will explore a few common Chromebook apps. Source: Chromebook Apps for Young…
Inquiry or interrogation? What if you asked your students which of these best describes their experience with classroom questioning? How do you think they would respond? Source: Students Learn Best from Inquiry, Not Interrogation More wisdom on the student centered classroom.
For years, the knock on Chrome OS was that it was “just a browser.” A PC, people thought, had to be more than that. But now, almost six years since that first Chromebook, just a browser has turned out to be just enough for a growing group of users. Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first…
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…
