For years we've heard about the potential of virtual reality, but even when the virtual world Second Life was a hot tech-news story, it hardly felt like a second life to most people. I wrote about it a number of times because of the amazing work some very cutting-edge educators and their students were doing in Teen Second Life, when it existed. Then it faded into the background, and those teachers … [Read more...] about FB & Oculus VR: The potential of a virtual-reality platform
tech ed
All kinds of learning all at once with ‘BYOT’
With their bring-your-own-technology (BYOT) program, teachers in the Forsyth County (Ga.) School District are "learning along with our students how their devices work for their learning," Tim Clark, the district's instructional technology coordinator, told me in a phone interview. My excitement about the promise this represents for students grew as we talked. What this school district is doing … [Read more...] about All kinds of learning all at once with ‘BYOT’
So what good is social media?
I hadn't seen this figure: Social media use is forbidden in 52% of US classrooms, writes writes Prof. Todd Finley at East Carolina University in Edutopia. He suggests that this prohibition is working about as well as did Britain's royal decree in 1763 that North American colonists were not to settle west of the Appalachians. Professor Finley doesn't stop with why today's containment effort is … [Read more...] about So what good is social media?
Social media in the classroom: +1 or -1?
Not entirely unlike using chalk and a blackboard, whether or not using Web 2.0 tools is a positive or a negative has a lot more to do with how a teacher views and uses them than with the tools themselves. Two college professors who do use social media as teaching tools "view new literacies as additive rather than an annihilation of traditional literacy practices," writes Prof. Todd Finley of East … [Read more...] about Social media in the classroom: +1 or -1?
What social media in school looks like
If any parents think social media in the classroom sounds absolutely crazy, watch this video. In a little over 3 minutes, a student explains how her "paperless" 7th grade science class uses blogging, online games, Google docs, videoconferencing with scientists in the "real world," social notetaking, and a digital poster tool for posting text, photos, and video in a Web page (the digital poster's … [Read more...] about What social media in school looks like