Virtual Reality and Education have a long and checkered history. On-line worlds give students opportunities to experience things that would be too expensive, too dangerous, or too time consuming in the “real” world. It allows us to distill an experience into it’s essence while allowing learners to be active agents…
Here is some food for thought from Seth Godin on how social networking can help us organize. His main point – the side in an argument that is better organized usually wins. Whether your issue is education reform, textbook and software adoption, privatization, highly qualified teachers, NCLB, or any of…
A family member – who works in a Texas middle school – forwarded this bit of wit and wisdom to me today. A teacher dies and goes to Heaven. When she gets there, she meets Peter at the pearly white gates. Peter says to her, ‘Welcome to Heaven. Let me…
An instructional monoculture is a world where all children are expected to learn the same things, the same way, at the same time. Are we building instructional monocultures in our schools? By we I mean publishers, policy makers, and district level decision makers. The forces of conformity are driving hard…
New York, Texas, California, and Florida have opted out of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and will be abandoning all high stakes testing. It is unclear at this time if other states will follow, although indications from across the political spectrum are clear there is strong interest. In a joint…
Tom Chapin’s satirical song “Its Not On The Test” is worth a look. Even if you are a fan of No Child Left Behind this issues he raises need an answer. I particularly like the jab at shout TV which reduces all discourse to name calling. Education reform is a…
Crayon Physics from Kloonigames is a very cool serious game. I can see young kids in particular playing with this for hours. The designer said about one comment “Chris Baker wrote a great article about Crayon Physics Deluxe for Slate. He wrote that the game looks like it was designed…
Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look. While…
Advertising isn’t working as well as it used to. In an age of information overload people are tuning out distractions as a matter of survival. Here are two visuals to help make this point. 1. It is far more important to be found when someone is looking these days than…
Curious about how Web 2.0 is going to affect education? Steve Hargadon has distilled into one blog post an excellent summary of the trends that are leading us there and what teachers can do to help their students thrive in this new environment. Much of what Steve talks about has…