In the recent move to remote teaching, the interest in and “need” for online proctoring of tests students complete at a distance has come to the front of many educators’ and instructional leaders’ attention. increasingly, as well, this discussion focuses on the question “Should we use these tools?” Personally, I see little value in these Read More
Category: Technology
Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology
For all of the rhetoric around being data driven for the last few decades, educators are generally woeful users of data when it comes to making classroom decisions. In my opinion, this is due to the fact that data (quantitative date that is) can only be meaningfully be applied to large data set. We might Read More
Small Teaching Online
The stream of “how to teach online” books and materials to support those faculty who are teaching online. I enjoy these. They are increasingly aligned with what we know about learning (and we know much more than my teachers did… we know more than any teachers did even 10 years ago). One of the great Read More
Lessons from Remote Teaching
In the months since “remote” teaching became a “thing,” the tension between educators and technology professionals seems to have become more obvious. I believe this arises in port form the fact that many who were successfully avoiding technology in their teaching no longer have that option. This hassled me to revisit the “technology planning cycle” Read More
A Teacher Enters #edtech
In the time between when I left high school (in 1983) and I entered the classroom as a teacher (in 1988), computers entered schools in a serious way. Whereas my high school had a small computer room for students to use (I recall four computers in the room which was a converted storage room), my Read More
Proprietary File Formats… Can We Just Stop?
Spoiler alert: This is the rant of someone who is ticked off at a sub set of the individuals in his profession right now. Faculty are in the business of helping students make sense of information and ideas and procedures. This requires they communicate, and we communicate today with files we create on word processors Read More
What Larry Cuban Wrote About Technology
In 1986, Larry Cuban, a professor of education at Stanford University, reviewed the history of radio, movies, and television in schools and he observed a common pattern. First, advocates argued the technology could be used to make teaching more efficient and more effective. Second, dubious research (frequently supported by the manufacturers of the technologies) was Read More
Brief Introduction to Hashtags
I was amazed to encounter some educators recently who did now know what hashtags are… here is the answer I gave them. Hashtags are terms added to tweets that follow a # sign. These can be used to indicate the subject of a Tweet, so that different users can contribute to a topic; users can Read More
No One Has All of the #edtech Expertise
One lesson that has arisen from the spring of 2020 for educational technology professionals and the faculty and staff whose work gives ours purpose is (ostensibly) improved by ours is that no one individual has all of the expertise that is necessary for effective online or remote teaching and learning. While few will be surprised Read More
Education in Spring 2020: The Digital Divide
When I started working in educational technology, scholars and practitioners were concerned with the “digital divide” that existed in schools. Some populations (white, male, and rich) were more likely to have access to computers in schools. When it was first recognized, the digital divide was specific to access to hardware at school. Over time, schools Read More