Teaching for the Future

NEWS: In Memory of Chris Essex: One of my favorite podcasters and technology educators, Chris Essex, has passed away recently. If you have ever listened to Teach with Tech you know how insightful and helpful he was.

In lieu of flowers, an award scholarship will be established in his name at the IU School of Education. Please send donations to the IU School of Education Staff Council, c/o Patty Mitchell, IU School of Education, 201 Rose Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405.

91.2% of Class Time in Their Seats from Weblogg-ed: Will Richardson discusses an USA Today article that discusses a Science article that I can't get access to. The study published in science gives evidence that teachers are not engaging students and not teaching them problem solving and critical thinking skills.

The article sites a lack of movement and group work during class time, with 91.2% of student's time is spent in their own seat.

Sao Paulo goes advertising-free from BoingBoing: Brazil's capital city has banned outdoor advertising and billboards. City officials and advertisers were arguing about where certain kinds of advertising can go where. You can check out some of the images on Flickr. I have been a graffiti and street art enthusiast for a long time and I think this is the first time I've seen a municipality actually perform some culture jamming on their own. It would be intereresting to see how long this lasts and if they plan on replacing the billboards with something else.

Study: Educational software doesn't work from Joystiq: The U.S. Department of Education has released a study that finds that video games have "no significant impact on student performance." I found one of the comments by a user who called themselves "atsui" particularly interesting:

"When I was very young, I wasn't all that good at math, then I played this video game with aliens coming at your space ship all around you at fast speeds, and the only way to kill them was to solve the multiplication problem on the alien, then a beam would fire at it and kill it. Some moved faster than others and their actions were random, so the game forced me to be good at math, and boy did it work.. because of that game, multiplication became a lot easier for me.

With brain age, I've become very quick with certain tests.. and any form of similar tests at a school would be easier to do because of brain age..

I don't want to hear any studies on this type of crap.. from my own experience, and a lot of others based on what I've heard from reviews of brain age, and talking to people about these games that challenge the mind."

Schools say iPods becoming tool for cheaters from CNN.com:
Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious -- students were
writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell
phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each
other. Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media
players as a potential cheating device.

RESOURCES:
NYTimes Resource Center and Learning Network


OTHER LINKS:

• YouTube Obeys Fake Takedown Request From 15 Year Old from Mashable.com
• Hip hop's Simmons: Restrict offensive words from CNN.com
• Senators Discuss Preventing College Attacks from NYTimes.com
• Schoolgirls bullied into stripping online from Reuters
• Students attend school's first integrated prom from CNN.com
• In U.S. Absence, States Take Lead in Student Loan Cases from NYTimes.com

EDITORIAL:
A MySpace Photo Costs a Student a Teaching Certificate from The Chronicle of Higher Education: This is something that we have been talking about for over a year and I could have written this story.

If you want to help out or participate with Teaching for the Future you can leave a comment on the homepage or link to us on your blog or podcast. If you want to get in touch, feel free to email at teachingforthefuture@gmail.com.

Tags: Dave LaMorte, teaching for the future, technology, education, podcast, teaching, media literacy, visual literacy, new media literacy

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Posted by Dave LaMorte on Sunday, May 06, 2007 at 5/06/2007 04:50:00 PM | Permalink