Bye bye textbooks, buy buy laptops

by | Thursday, July 10, 2008

Reuters story titled Technology reshapes America’s classrooms. Couple of quotes worth noting:

“Why would we ever buy a book when we can buy a computer? Textbooks are often obsolete before they are even printed,” said Debra Socia, principal of the school in Dorchester, a tough Boston district prone to crime and poor schools.

and

Unlike traditional schools, Frederick’s students work at vastly different levels in the same classroom. Children with special needs rub shoulders with high performers. Computers track a range of aptitude levels, allowing teachers to tailor their teaching to their students’ weakest areas…

And finally, the rise of online learning:

U.S. enrollment in online virtual classes reached the 1 million mark last year, 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning… Our projections show that 50 percent of high school courses will be taught online by 2019

Hmm…

Topics related to this post: Essay

A few randomly selected blog posts…

TPACK on Vimeo & in the Netherlands

Dr. Clare Kilbane, Associate Professor at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio recently created an enhanced podcast/vodcast explaining TPACK as a part of an ARRA grant implemented in the state of Ohio last spring. This podcast/vodcast was designed in the style of...

Educational Futures Thinking: New book chapter

Educational Futures Thinking: New book chapter

The philosopher George Santayana (1910) famously stated, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (p. 284). In other words, the “best” way to prepare for the future is to study the past and through that, identify patterns and trends, and then...

Serendipitous Connectability… a short history of an idea

A while back I had written about the idea of "serendipitous connectability;" the idea that the web allows us to "to run across things that are stunning in their ability to connect to us in powerful, emotionally touching ways." I was prompted to do this by clicking on...

Ambigrams in new book

The Art of Deception: Illusions to Challenge the Eye and the Mind is a new book edited by Brad Honeycutt. Brad is a graduate of Michigan State (Go Spartans!) and maintains a blog (anopticalillusion) devoted to optical illusions. A few of my designs have ended up on...

On surviving a Ph.D.

I just discovered (H/T Daily Dish) Matt Might's website and his writings on graduate school, academia, and the professoriate. Matt is funny, cogent and most importantly insightful. I recommend his writing to anybody who is interested in getting into graduate school,...

Best practice v.s. PGP

Best practice v.s. PGP

I was recently in a discussion with members of the AACTE committee on Innovation and Technology about the term "best practice." This search for best practice (or practices) is something one hears about all the time in educational (and ed tech) circles. We want to list...

Handbook of TPCK

Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) for Educators, Edited by The AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology
A Co-Publication of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group and the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education

Buy it at Amazon.com (Now available!)

This handbook addresses the concept and implementation of technological pedagogical content knowledge — the knowledge and skills that teachers need in order to meaningfully integrate technology into instruction in specific content areas.

Links of interest

During Dr. Jalaluddin's keynote I took some time to search online for some reports, prompted by what he had been saying. (Yes I was listening not just browsing). The first is an European study: ICT in Schools: Trends, Innovations and Issues in 2006-2007. You can...

SITE2013 New Orleans

All my photos from the recently concluded SITE2013 conference at New Orleans. These include photographs from multiple sessions (chronicled here, here, and here) as well as from all the fun we had (at the MSU dinner, just hanging around in Burbon St., as we as other...

2 Comments

  1. Aaron

    Hi Punya. I see you posted this some time ago, but with the explosion of mobile devices, I believe it further supports these findings. Most schools are adopting mobile applications these days that support their classroom platforms. It is kind of hard not to believe that a majority of education in the future will be conducted online.

    Reply
  2. Weeffitoexisp

    Thank you

    Reply

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