Eclectic Technology

New research suggests that American schoolchildren are becoming less creative.

This post looks at research that documents "a continuous decline of creativity among American schoolchildren over the lats two or three centuries." At the same time research has pointed to the fact that "American ingenuity" is a strength, that Americans are "great innvoators, specialists in figuring new ways of doing things and new things to do."

The post includes references to a number of studies and is a part of a series.

A look at what hapened at Plymouth South High School last year when one class "attempted to transform the traditional research process to a completely paperless one using a fresh cart of iPads."

A number of goals were "outlined prior to the research process" and included (quoting from the post):

* Students will crowd-source their research to a collective research group.

* Students will incorporate varied media types into their research: web based text, traditional text, audio and video.

* Students will work collaboratively with their teacher and classmates on their research and writing process.

* Students will become proficient researching and writing in a digital environment.

The post alos discusses the process of going paperles and  "moving forward and going paperless."

Have you heard the terms digital native and digital immigrant, and placed yourself in one space or the other? Have you seen a generation divide in learning and teaching? The article ‘The Fallacy of Digital Natives’ explores these issues. One source quoted is the Berkman Center for Internet and Society (Harvard University) “Those who were not ‘born digital’ can be just as connected , if not more so, than their younger counterparts.”
A follow-up to this article is ‘Introducing the Digital Learning Quadrants’ where Dan Pontefract introduces “a classification that encompasses all ages and takes into account the realities of access and participation levels…”  (at http://www.danpontefract.com/?p=1309)

Both articles are worth checking out.  

"Slate magazine has been running several articles on education this week, including two today that are of interest. This one by Konstantin Kakaes is worth looking at more closely, if only because it somehow manages to gather almost every wrong idea about technology in education in existence into a single, compact article."

Talbert critiques the article 'Why Johnny Can't Add Without a Calculator' making the point "Technology neither improves or diminishes learning. It’s the instructional design choices made and instructional practices used by individual teachers with individual students that do this."

Can technology transform education? Read on to learn more.