Inspiring New Futures

Why the Internet Is Making Us Smarter--in One Way - Forbes : Lots of commentators — like my old friend  Nicholas Carr , for example –  have bemoaned the rise of the Internet, and before that television, arguing that these evil distractions have shortened our attention spans and caused us to become digital idiots, capable of only the briefest moments of focus.  Email, too, has come in for its share of blame and experts have recommended that you schedule it, or ration it, or avoid it altogether. But all of this handwringing is missing the real point.  It’s not that we’re becoming dumber, it’s rather that the object of our focus has changed.  In one way, we’re actually getting smarter – much, much smarter. Here’s what’s going on.  Society – work, entertainment, and the arts – have been shifting from print to visual at a rapidly accelerating rate over the past half-century years.  In the past decade, with the rise of broadband and the Internet, ...

Students Solving Real-World Design Problems - Teaching Now - Education Week Teacher : Last month, the Chicago Architecture Foundation launched  DiscoverDesign.org , a free Web-based learning tool aimed at getting students excited about architecture. According to the website, it "empowers teens to gain architectural skills, learn green design principles, engage in problem solving, and connect to an online community of their peers, their teachers and design professionals around the world." The site lists various design projects with step-by-step guides to help students develop and implement their ideas. Students can choose to design anything from a new school locker to a new technology wing for a school. Once their projects are complete, students can upload their work to the site and receive feedback and comments from teachers, architects, design professionals, and other students. This month, the foundation announced that they will be conducting a national  design competit...

The Flipped Classroom: Turning the Traditional Classroom on its Head : The Flipped Classroom Infographic A new method of teaching is turning the traditional classroom on its head.

After launching what was dubbed the  "world's cheapest tablet"  by the Indian media last year, the national government and a technology company recently released an upgraded model of the low-cost device. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2012/11/tech-company_launches_low-cost_tablet_device_for_indian_students.html 

Last week, the news media,  including   Education Week , wrote about a new study from the Pew Research Center surveying 2,000 teachers on how their students do research in the digital world. Many of those teachers, 77 percent, believed digital tools have an overall positive impact on research, but 87 percent said the tools were a distraction causing short attention spans. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2012/11/can_the_digital_generation_do_anything_right.html

I have noticed a fair amount of vitriol spewing from the education blogosphere (and whatever other forms of media still exist today, if any) in the past few months, most of which has centered on the idea of technology (led for the most part by an energetic private sector) infiltrating the classroom (and to be fair, I can't say  I've helped the matter ). http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/reimagining/2012/11/we_all_support_the_teacher.html

Karen Cator, a vocal advocate for the use of technology in education and a familiar face at virtually every major ed-tech conference or event in the past four years, told Education Week  in an email today that she will be stepping down in 2013 from her post as the director of educational technology for the U.S. Department of Education. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2012/11/karen_cator_stepping_down_as_h.html