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The Need For Speed

May 28, 2013 by JPSchwartz Leave a Comment

Why is there a NEED for Speed in technology assisted learning?  Isn’t a lack of speed something that can just be compensated for with a little patience?

Our answer is no way, no how, not ever.  Just ask any frustrated teacher, presenter, or child that is waiting for a presentation, video, or game that has a poor connection.  You can’t even access, much less use certain types of interactive or synchronous sites and applications at all without adequate speed.

While system performance as a whole is what matters, and most issues can be addressed locally, an area of specific concern is high speed internet access.  Even in developed countries there are many rural locations without any good options for a high speed internet connection.  To ensure quality learning for everyone, we must start to view quality internet access as just another utility like electricity, roads, and clean water.  As we transition, we must do our best to design content for differentiated connections as well as differentiated learning styles.

The promise of technology in areas of motivation, engagement, enrichment, self direction, equality, and positive experiences are tied to how distributed, transparent, and functional the technology is.  Speed, or at the very least, the perception of speed, is a big part of access and minimizing frustration so that focus can be maintained on the subject, rather than the delivery of the material.  Otherwise frustration can make the very problems we are trying to solve with technology even worse.  Take a tip from online sales companies, they know anything that takes longer than a fraction of a second, costs them sales.  In education, even seconds of delay cost you engaged students.

How does computer performance impact your learning or classroom experience?

30min-wait

Filed Under: All Posts, Education, Technology

Dan Meyer: Persistant Problem solving in the Real World

May 18, 2013 by JPSchwartz Leave a Comment

Today’s math curriculum is teaching students to expect — and excel at — paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. At TEDxNYED, Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the “Sixth Sense” wearable tech, and “Lost” producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWUFjb8w9Ps]

Filed Under: Education, Our Favorite Videos

Salman Khan: Using Video to Reinvent Education

May 18, 2013 by JPSchwartz Leave a Comment

Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs]

Filed Under: Education, Our Favorite Videos

Sir Ken Robinson: How to escape education’s death valley

May 18, 2013 by JPSchwartz Leave a Comment

to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc]

Filed Under: Education, Our Favorite Videos

David Foster Wallace:Graduation Speech about the Overlooked Value of Education

May 18, 2013 by JPSchwartz Leave a Comment

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 — September 12, 2008) was an award-winning American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005 by Time magazine.

Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace “one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years”.[13] With his suicide, he left behind an unfinished novel, The Pale King, which was subsequently published in 2011, and in 2012 was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A biography of Wallace by D. T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, was published in September 2012

In May 2005, Wallace delivered the commencement address to the graduating class at Kenyon College. The speech was published as a book in 2009 under the title This Is Water.

Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on September 12, 2008. In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace’s father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive. When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine. On his doctor’s advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007, and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found it had lost its effectiveness. In the months before his death, his depression became severe.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFt7EzpsZQo]

Filed Under: Education, Our Favorite Videos

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