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 result of iteration rather than central planning. In schools that succeed in implementing real instructional improvements, teachers figure out how to improve teaching and learning by journeying through multiple passes of a cycle of experiment, reflection and adjustment.
Number one on their list is, what I feel, an important and overlooked aspect of education. Research and development is all too often replaced with, “the research says we should be doing this, so let’s implement this across the building or district, without doing any R&D”.
As a teenager, Pete Etchells lost his father to motor neuron disease, and often, when the anniversary of his death rolled around, he found solace in playing video games, like hunting for the elusive Time Lost Proto-Drake in World of Warcraft. Gaming started as an escape, but over time, he found those virtual worlds helped…
Quill is a is a free, web-based tool that provides personalized, interactive writing and grammar activities. ‘Students using Quill learn writing and grammar skills by writing sentences and proofreading passages. Source: Two New Tools to Enhance Students Writing ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning I had never heard of Quill before, but it looks like…
Microsoft has been trying to keep PC makers away from Chrome OS for years, and consumers far away from Apple’s iPad alternative. While Windows RT largely failed at going mainstream, and Windows 8.1 with Bing was never widely used, the software giant is experimenting with another low-cost version of its popular Windows operating system: Windows…
The future impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on society and the labour force have been studied and reported extensively. In a recent book, AI Superpowers, Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China, wrote that 40 to 50 per cent of current jobs will be technically and economically viable with AI and automation over the next…
Few saw the Chromebook coming. When it launched half a decade ago, the category was broadly maligned for its limited feature set, middling hardware specs and operation that required an always-on internet connection to work properly. But things change in five years. In 2015, the category overtook MacBooks in the U.S. for the first time ever, selling…
As a parent, it is obvious that children learn more when they engage their entire body in a meaningful experience than when they sit at a computer. If you doubt this, just observe children watching an activity on a screen and then doing the same activity for themselves. They are much more engaged riding a…
