Karen Greenwood Henke is a professional writer and speaker on emerging technologies and their role in education. She is also the founder of Grant Wrangler, a free grants and awards listing service.
iPhones and iTouches have quickly taken the lead over laptops as the preferred student device for school. Further evidence of this trend is the development of apps with educational information. Discovery Education just launched an app for learning U.S. Geography by Discovery Education:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/u-s-geography-by-discovery/id374922243?mt=8
Bravo! More development for these tools means more engagement of students in real learning.
Teachers are starting to give up the cell phone battle. Think about it. Kids walk into a classroom with a powerful, tiny communication device and are told to turn it off and put it away. So the devices go under desks and into pockets where students continue to use them. When technology goes underground it becomes subversive and a classroom management headache. On Tuesday, I heard a student panel at Forsyth County Public Schools who were frustrated with the class time wasted by teachers asking students to put away their technology. Read more »
The winners of the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition show a fascinating range of projects, technology tools, and locations. Reading the briefs, I’m struck that these projects focus on creating and publishing with technology, giving voice to those without mainstream media access. They are not just ways to get youth engaged in learning, but to get them engaged in their community as creative, empowered forces. What a terrific award.
Women videoblogging in India
Students worldwide collect and share data on fish populations
MetroVoice gives students a media platform on city buses
Hole-in-the-wall reaching children in the most remote communities
I attended a workshop at the American Architecture Foundation on Great Schools by Design to talk about how to design learning spaces for schools in Los Angeles and New York City. Listening to architects and school leaders talk about the actual shape and functionality of classrooms and school spaces, I realized that the architecture of the virtual learning space is as important as the physical space.
These students created a centralized web site for their school and recently won a Digital Open award, a tech expo for teens.
I’m a writer who specializes in writing for the Web and I’m a reader. Lately, I feel like I’m going out of fashion. I feel like my grandmother who lived to be 100 years old and could no longer find comfortable shoes. Her feet had conformed to a certain heel height and shoe width sometime during the first 60 years of her life. Shoe makers stopped making it–no market.