Archive for the ‘ICT’ Category
Facilitating Effective ICT-Pedagogy Integration Project
ICT remains abysmally under-used by students and teachers in classrooms, and ICT-enabled student-centred teaching and learning approach finds no ground of pervasiveness within school systems, especially for developing countries. Three obstacles still remain in the way of teachers’ using ICT to its full potential toward enhancing student learning and improving the quality of education: 1) the lack of policy encouragement (especially at the school level), 2) the lack of knowledge on new pedagogy and techniques of integrating ICT in student-centred teaching and learning activities, and 3) the lack of long-standing professional support which further leads to teachers’ lack of confidence.
In response to these, UNESCO Bangkok implemented the “Facilitating Effective ICTPedagogy Integration Project” from January 2010 to March 2013 with the goal of creating an enabling environment that facilitate students’ direct and effective use of ICT for more meaningful and productive learning activities, with a specific focus on project-based tele-collaboration.
Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn
A brilliant combination of science and its real-world application, Now You See It sheds light on one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: our schools and businesses are designed for the last century, not for a world in which technology has reshaped the way we think and learn. In this informed and optimistic work, Cathy N. Davidson takes us on a tour of the future of work and education, introducing us to visionaries whose groundbreaking ideas will soon affect every arena of our lives, from schools with curriculums built around video games to workplaces that use virtual environments to train employees.
Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade
The contemporary classroom, with its grades and deference to the clock, is an inheritance from the late 19th century. During that period of titanic change, machines suddenly needed to run on time. Individual workers needed to willingly perform discrete operations as opposed to whole jobs. The industrial-era classroom, as a training ground for future factory workers, was retooled to teach tasks, obedience, hierarchy and schedules.
That curriculum represented a dramatic departure from earlier approaches to education. In “Now You See It,” Ms. Davidson cites the elite Socratic system of questions and answers, the agrarian method of problem-solving and the apprenticeship program of imitating a master. It’s possible that any of these educational approaches would be more appropriate to the digital era than the one we have now.
Read also: Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn
The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education
Technological development and the Internet have opened up learning to the point where anyone can learn anything from anyone else at any time. To help explain this highly complex situation and its implications for education, both formal and informal, Curtis J. Bonk outlines ten key technology and learning trends. Using a model called “WE-ALL-LEARN,” Dr. Bonk shows how technology has transformed educational opportunities for learners as well as of innovators from the worlds of technology and education that reveal the power of opening up the world of learning.
The 10 openers of the WE-ALL-LEARN model are outlined below. They are discussed in detail in Chapters 2-11. The Introduction plus Chapter 1 kick off the journey into the Web of Learning and unveils the WE-ALL-LEARN model. Chapter 12 recaps the book and push toward future visions as well as reflect on the past century of distance learning.
Read also: The World Is Open Blog
The ICT Landscape in BRICS Countries: Brazil, India, China
This report is a synthesis of a set of reports on the ICT industry and its R&D in emerging economies. The data provided here is based on specific research complemented by desk research, expert workshops and interviews. The analysed countries are not members of the OECD, therefore it is probably needless to state that the data, when available, are heterogeneous, little comparable and usually based on non-governmental statistics. The author tried as much as possible to make the figures as valid and consistent as possible.
This research takes part of the PREDICT project, a research line started some five years ago at JRC-IPTS and aiming at describing the dynamics of the ICT industry and its R&D worldwide. In 2011, the PREDICT report series offered a country-level approach to ICT R&D internationalisation by analysing the ICT industry in China and India, the two largest emerging economies. This report complements these 2011 PREDICT reports but from a somewhat larger perspective, including Brazil in the analysis and considerations about the structure of the markets, their regulation as well as trade aspects.
A radical manifesto for teaching computing
The biggest justification for change is not economic but moral. It is that if we don’t act now we will be short-changing our children. They live in a world that is shaped by physics, chemistry, biology and history, and so we – rightly – want them to understand these things. But their world will be also shaped and configured by networked computing and if they don’t have a deeper understanding of this stuff then they will effectively be intellectually crippled. They will grow up as passive consumers of closed devices and services, leading lives that are increasingly circumscribed by technologies created by elites working for huge corporations such as Google, Facebook and the like. We will, in effect, be breeding generations of hamsters for the glittering wheels of cages built by Mark Zuckerberg and his kind.
More pedagogic change in 10 years than last 1000 years – all driven by 10 technology innovations
Pedagogy – one of those words that’s used when people want to sound all academic. So let’s just call it learning practice. Of one thing we can be sure; teaching does not seem to have changed much in the last 100 years. In our Universities, given the stubborn addiction to lectures, it has barely changed in 1000 years. So what’s the real source of pedagogic change? Here’s my theory – the primary driver for pedagogic change is something that has changed the behaviours of learners. independently of teachers, teaching and education – the internet.
Asynchronous and online should be the default to argue against
Broadband, Social Networks, and Mobility Have Spawned a New Kind of Learner
Students are different today because of technology. Every educator knows this, of course, but this change is about much more than agile thumbs, shriveling attention spans, and OMG’d vocabularies. According the Pew Research Center, the combination of widespread access to broadband Internet connectivity, the popularity of social networking, and the near ubiquity of mobile computing is producing a fundamentally new kind of learner, one that is self-directed, better equipped to capture information, more reliant on feedback from peers, more inclined to collaborate, and more oriented toward being their own “nodes of production.”
A Computer-Controlled Future?
Computers dominate how we live, work and think. For some, the technology is a boon and promises even better things to come. But others warn that there could be bizarre consequences and that humans may be on the losing end of progress.
According to a recent study, a person who knows that he or she can readily look up a piece of information online doesn’t remember it as well as someone without Internet access. The study finds that the human brain treats the Internet as an extension of itself, as a kind of external memory. Ideally, this means that trivial knowledge can be stored in this external memory, freeing up brain space for creativity. But, in the worst case, the computer becomes a prosthetic brain.
Millennials will benefit and suffer due to their hyperconnected lives
Teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders, according to a new survey of technology experts.
Many of the experts surveyed said the effects of hyperconnectivity and the always-on lifestyles of young people will be mostly positive between now and 2020. But the experts in this survey also predicted this generation will exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep-thinking ability due to what one referred to as “fast-twitch wiring.”
