What comes first, the chicken or the egg? What comes first, curriculum or technology? This is the question proposed by Elise Ecoff on Edudemic. Technology integration is more than buying devices, “every school must first have a great, robust and adaptable academic curriculum,” Ecoff says. “Only then can you begin to find ways in which technology can help to elevate it. It’s important to never force fit technology.”
Think Curriculum Enhancements, Not Technology Implementations
Here are five ways to ensure you’re putting the curriculum before the technology:
1) Learn How Students Are Using Technology at Home
2) Don’t Use Technology for the Sake of Using Technology
3) Focus on Just One Tech Implementation
4) Utilize the SAMR Model
5) Actively Seek Out Professional Development Opportunities
Many schools are thinking about or already have a “Geek Squad” type program in their schools. Students providing tech support for students in a 1:1 or BYOD environment. Andrew P. Marcinek from Burlington Public Schools (MA) decided to add even more to the idea. He developed a graded, half-year elective class where students would take part in:
hands-on study of technology integration
assess problem sets throughout the day
solving problems for students and teachers
developing resources for staff
complete and maintain several running projects that address technology integration
Rather than students being on the outside of the process, they can help influence and shape it. “One of the biggest mistakes a school leader or district technology director can make is to think that they can honestly control every aspect of a students’ digital life” says Marcinek. “It’s an impossible task. Instead of working within a culture of restrictions and redactions, school leaders should develop and design paradigms that empower students to use technology.”
The Chronicle for Higher Education recently had an article about Colgate University using MOOCs to engage with their alumni and community members.
Basically, Colgate offered them as “fusion” courses: in-person courses for Colgate students with an additional online component that brought in alumni. The fusion courses were free for alumni, but “that doesn’t mean the university wouldn’t take donations,” said Kevin Lynch, the university’s chief information officer, “and those types of courses could serve as an indirect approach to fund raising in the future.”
Early results seem promising. “Colgate officials consider the program a success because it exposed students to new perspectives and encouraged faculty members to try new things and re-evaluate their teaching methods.”
With colleges continually trying to reach and engage their alumni, besides sporting events, online MOOCs might just be another way.
March is makerspace month here at CMLE! This month we’ll have a series of blog posts with the makerspace theme. This week we try to figure out what makes a makerspace?
Can you define something that can really be anything? That seems to be the quandary with makerspaces. Is a table full of LEGOs a makerspace? How about a place where you can take apart air conditioners? Makerspaces seem to be things that are only limited by the creator’s imagination. One definition:
Makerspaces are spaces where people can gather to create, invent, and learn.
But we can go deeper than that! Recently in Information Technology and Libraries, the editorial board wrote about makerspaces. “After all, in a very real sense that is what libraries do—and have done, for thousands of years: buy sometimes expensive technology tailored to the needs and interest of the local community and make it available on a shared basis.”
Makerspaces are spaces where people are creating, inventing, and learning, but they also provide a space where everyone has equal access.
The O’Reilly/DARPA Makerspace Playbook can also help us describe the goals of a makerspace: “By helping schools and communities everywhere establish Makerspaces, we expect to build your Makerspace users’ literacy in design, science, technology, engineering, art, and math. . . . We see making as a gateway to deeper engagement in science and engineering but also art and design. Makerspaces share some aspects of the shop class, home economics class, the art studio and science lab. In effect, a Makerspace is a physical mashup of these different places that allows projects to integrate these different kinds of skills.”
Makerspaces are skill-based learning spaces that are open to all, where people are creating and inventing.
Finally, we include a video from Mita Williams, user experience librarian at the University of Windsor, where she talks about makerspaces.
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/l92kuy3, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
So much of what students are creating in school these days is online rather than on paper. Instead of putting projects on refrigerators, how can we allow parents to still view these materials?
Digital portfolios, online repositories for student work, might be the answer.
“Because digital portfolios live online, parents can easily access them as well and see what their kids have accomplished throughout the year. Students can share them with each other, share them with family members, and even use them as a tool for college admissions.”
Edudemic recently had 5 tools that might help students create their digital portfolio:
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? What comes first, curriculum or technology? This is the question proposed by Elise Ecoff on Edudemic. Technology integration is more than buying devices, “every school must first have a great, robust and adaptable academic curriculum,” Ecoff says. “Only then can you begin to find ways in which technology can help to elevate it. It’s important to never force fit technology.”
