Archive for the ‘Students’ Category
ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2012
ECAR has surveyed undergraduate students annually since 2004 about technology in higher education. In 2012, ECAR collaborated with 195 institutions to collect responses from more than 100,000 students about their technology experiences. The findings are distilled into the broad thematic message for institutions and educators to balance strategic innovation with solid delivery of basic institutional services and pedagogical practices and to know students well enough to understand which innovations they value the most. See the 2012 report for a full list key messages, findings, and supporting data.
- Blended-learning environments are the norm; students say that these environments best support how they learn.
- Students want to access academic progress information and course material via their mobile devices, and institutions deliver.
- Technology training and skill development for students is more important than new, more, or “better” technology.
- Students use social networks for interacting with friends more than for academic communication.
Teens and Mobile Phones
Text messaging explodes as teens embrace it as the centerpiece of their communication strategies with friends. Cell phones are not just about calling or texting – with expanding functionality, phones have become multimedia recording devices and pocket-sized internet-connected computers. Cell phones are seen as a mixed blessing. Parents and teens say phones make their lives safer and more convenient. Yet both also cite new tensions connected to cell phone use. Cell phones help bridge the digital divide by providing internet access to less privileged teens.
Text messaging has become the primary way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face contact, email, instant messaging and voice calling as the go-to daily communication tool for this age group. However, voice calling is still the preferred mode for reaching parents for most teens.
How College Students Use Their Cellphones
College students summarize educational technology in the single act of using cellphones, not all of them of course but the majority do. Everywhere you turn to you see students deeply engaged in using their phones, some are hooking up a kit to talk while walking , others are immersed into their mobile screens reading and exchanging text messages. Is this annoying to teachers and college staff? Is is a healthy practice on a college campus ? Well, I will let you use your common sense to answer those questions.
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.”
Are they Students or are they Innovators?
I’ve always been interested in inquiry based learning and the opportunities that providing different spaces or different tools can do for expanding outside of normative ways of classroom production.
What are the connections between social affordances and identity and learning? If we do bring tools into classrooms, it has to come from that angle first, because that’s the human angle.
If you change schools to emphasize youth as creators, you are going to see different kinds of products. If you allow youth to be genre creators and not just reproducers, I think you’d see a lot of innovation.
Youth and teachers have so many creative resources that they bring to these spaces that aren’t really valued or allowed…it’s like this stop gap — you’re not supposed to bring in the digital tools that you have, you’re not supposed to bring in your interests or relationships…these are incredible resources. I think it’s more dire that we’re not allowing those resources in.
14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging
So you have heard about blogging with your students and you are considering taking the plunge but just not sure what or how to do it? I am here to tell you; blogging with my students has been one of the most enriching educational experiences we have had this year, and that says a lot. So to get you started, here is what I have learned:
Lawmakers Target Email, Texts Between Teachers and Students
Missouri lawmakers are proposing a law that would prohibit teachers and students from having “exclusive contact” through email and on social networking sites such as Facebook.
State Sen. Jane Cunningham, a Republican from St. Louis, sponsored the
law and argued that she only wanted to limit “hidden communications”
between teachers and students that could not be monitored by third
parties, such as parents or school administrators.
Top 12 Ways to Motivate Students
If there is one thing we know about kids, it’s that they have short attention spans and prefer now to later. This is especially true at the end of the year. Teachers, more than any district or schoolwide programs, have the most power to motivate students because they’re on the front lines. They can influence students in a way that kids can actually understand: here, now, today, in this room.
The Courage To Blog With Students
When I asked my students recently how blogging in class makes a difference to them, they had lots to say. Blogging has allowed them to meet students from all over the world and discover new interests. It’s also helped them improve their technology skills and write more on assignments than they could if they had to use paper and pencil.
But for the teacher, bringing blogging into the classroom can be both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. No doubt about it, making the decision to try student blogging is an act of courage. With that in mind, I’d like to share eight things I’ve learned that can help ensure your brave step is also a wise and successful one for you and your kids.
