Useful links

  by  gcouros 

• Kids Who Read Beat Summer Slide – First Book BlogFirst Book Blog Graph supporting argument is useful for reading promotion. “Studies show that kids from low-income families who have access to books over the summer not only beat the summer slide, but make even greater gains than kids from wealthy and middle-class families.”

• Mobile Devices for Learning: What You Need to Know | Edutopia Learn how cellphones, e-book readers, and tablets are getting kids engaged with learning, focused on working smarter, and ready for the future. Download PDF

• Listly List – Surprisingly Educational Apps The free apps listed can be used for educational purposes in the classroom – across content areas and year levels. Each app is featured in a “Surprisingly Educational” episode with integration ideas.

• Kim Garst: 4 Reasons Why Social Media Should be Taught in Our School Systems Succinct arguments. Teaching social media is preparing our children for the future. Employers today have been surveyed and the result is that most planned on using social media to recruit and hire new employees. Schools are supposed to be places where we teach our children the knowledge and the skills they will need to compete and succeed in their adult lives. The good use of social media IS one of those skills.

• “Teens and the Future of Libraries: Sharing Best Practices” Webinar Archives and My Questions for Thinking | The Unquiet Librarian “The roles of librarians are being remixed and re-interpreted by these challenges, issues, and lines of questions; in addition, the work we do will be more organic and strategic if we have the humility to truly listen to those we serve and engage in conversations.”

• Network Learning: Working Smarter | Harold Jarche Harold Jarche highlights the potential acceleration of learning with emerging social media tools. Informal learning is nothing new but in the digitally-connected workplace it is becoming more important. Social network learning provides an unprecedented platform for personal knowledge management through a continuous process of seeking, sensing and sharing. Making sense of information in a timely manner is becoming a key part of work. Harold discusses the workplace evolution and reflects that more attention needs to be paid to how we can support and encourage informal learning in the workplace. Good use of some graphics also help explain his arguments. It dovetails quite well into curation discussions.

• Is Content Curation in Your Skill Set? It Should Be. by David Kelly : Learning Solutions Magazine A good piece by the curation guru, David Kelly. The term curation has become a hot topic in many online discussions but this does not mean that it is clearly understood. David Kelly tries to explain in simple terms what “curation” is, how it can be useful in the workplace and what can be done to improve competency. There are many aspects very valid to the educational world.

• Content Curation for Social Media | Social Media Today Written from a business point of view but interesting take on content curation with  a few curation tools discussed that are different from the ones discussed in my education learning networks.

21st century learning – a presentation

We heard Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach speak to teachers at a forum yesterday. Her presentation to the teaching staff at the school was about 21st century learning. To get everyone focussed she used the following video, “The Cisco anthem” but a powerful snapshot of what is happening around, and in, the world today. 

Sheryl illustrated how far we have come, and how quickly, in the world of technology, discussing terms Web1.0, Web2.0 (the ReadWrite web) and Web3.0 (immersive worlds (eg.SecondLife), artificial intelligences, etc.) I researched SecondLife, as part of the Web program I took part in, and I thought, that at present, there seems to be many barriers to schools effectively making use of virtual worlds for education, but there are future possibilities. As with many such options, as more people take part in, and improve on, them, this situation will most likely change.  

If schools are to part of preparing students for life in the 21st century, then there needs to be a change in the general approach to learning and teaching. Sheryl questioned the relevance of education today. What is being taught and what is being learnt? The following video has become quite famous, as it portrays what 200 students at Kansas University think.

Sheryl then began talking about students having network literacy, to equip them for a world beyond the industrial age. There have been some who claim that, in 2020, information will double every 72 hours. How will people cope with this? The expansion of the “knowledge world” will mean that education won’t be able to remain linear and information may become obsolete much more quickly. In this world education cannot be about content or memorization of facts alone. Sheryl went on to talk about students having innovative/adaptive expertise, about students who will be self-motivatating, self-educating, self-directed and effective communicators. We were then shown tne video that Darren Draper created and Have you been paying attention?

Have those in education been watching their students communicate with each other? Have they seen how they have been using the technologies in their lives and have they used this knowledge to engage students in their learning? From the experiences related by students in the video “a vision of students today“, probably not a lot of attention has been given to how students live in today’s world.