MacKenzie wants us to think in the classroom

In his november posting for FNO "Getting Attention in the Laptop Classroom"

• tags: laptop, dissertation, professional_dev, mckenzie

  • 
    • need to get a copy of this and read for dissertaion. also give to clt @wis - post by leekevp
  • chart on the white board
  • teachers being able to see the students' screens when they are working on challenges and tasks assigned by the teacher
  • teacher who ignores landscape in laptop classrooms is likely to encounter difficulties with classroom management
  • Authentic discussion of alternatives is often blocked by the egos of so-called visionaries who are intent on imposing their ill-considered dreams on others

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

What does your horizon look like?

Have just finished reading the Horizon Report 2008 as part of both my dissertation and group assignment for uni course. What I find interesting is the emphasis that has been placed on each of the chosen technologies.

I found it very interesting that "collective intelligence" is relegated to the mid-distant horizon... 4/5 years away... weird as this is the one that I see most people using and is one of the easiest sells in my role as a LT co-ordinator. So many people are using wiki's and blogs in their classrooms as a way for students to collaborate and construct knowledge, so why the long time frame? The bigger question I suppose is how we value this type of knowledge construction. Is the use of collective intelligence just replacing pens and paper for taking notes? or is it making a real difference in the way we collect and value student work? Is the wiki the process or the end product?

The report looks at collective intelligence as more than just a wiki - it looks at how the open source approach to a problem means that in the business world collective intelligence is used to solve problems in a way that is quicker and more cost effective. It also looks at collective intelligence as having 2 subparts; 1) the wiki or explicit collective intelligence where students can contribute as well as consume (something that I think is already often used in education settings), 2) Implicit collective intelligence where data from a wide variety of sources is combined and analysed to reveal patterns that lead to new learning.

I think that the explicit is easy for us to get our heads around, easy for us to see uses in our everyday learning in the classroom. The implicit by definition I think will be a little harder - at least until the tools to make it accessible to the everyday teacher (read tech-phobic) are as easy as YouTube.