Digital Education
The Digital Education blog covered personalized learning, artificial intelligence, adaptive testing, digital curricula, data privacy, future of work, and all things technology. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: classroom technology, personalized learning, future of work, and digital learning.
Education
Two White Papers: Gaming in School
I'm currently digging up lots of research for a story I'm writing for Education Week about the role of games—like video games, computer games, and simulations—in the classroom. Last week, I came across two white papers, published by Education Arcade, a research initiative on gaming and school primarily by researchers from MIT.
Education
Is Web 2.0 Working for You?
I've joined LinkedIn and Facebook. I blog and Twitter. I've hosted Web chats, downloaded and posted video, and I've even fiddled a bit with wikis and podcasts. But I'm still wondering if all this has been an effective way to reach Ed Week and Digital Directions readers.
Education
Television As a Learning Tool?
In this Ed Week article I look at educational television and the latest efforts to study its impact on children's literacy development.
Education
CoSN Offers More Online Resources, Forums
The Consortium for School Networking, the Washington-based association for school district technology leaders, has revamped its Web site to include more interactive tools and social networking features.
Assessment
Discussing a New Generation of Assessments
A couple weeks back, Education Sector released a new report about the role of technology in assessment. The report, "Beyond the Bubble: Technology and the Future of Student Assessment," talked about how technology could be used to automate assessments to provide quicker feedback. But it also looked at how it could help transform assessment to provide meaningful data on students' test answers and, perhaps more importantly, how they got them.
Education
Quality Journalism Should Matter to the Digital Generation
This video of the last day at the Rocky Mountain News, the latest newspaper to close up shop in the midst of a spiraling downturn in the news industry, was posted on Vimeo a few days ago by Matthew Roberts. Over at The Joy of Children's Literature blog Denise Johnson wonders if today's generation will remember how the news "used to be published."
Federal
Stay Tapped In to Stimulus News With EdWeek Widget
Edweek.org now has a widget for our coverage related to the federal stimulus. You can embed this widget in your blog or on your Web site to help readers follow the latest news and analysis on how the huge infusion of federal money is being targeted for schools.
Law & Courts
Copyright for the Digital Age
As I learned from my story about open content licensing, there's a lot of confusion on the part of both teachers and students about copyright law. The Internet in particular has made copyright even more difficult to figure out, since it's so easy to copy information, pictures, music, and other forms of multimedia, whether it's legal or not.
Education
State of the Union: Twittering Lawmakers
There's been a lot of debate about the role of personal technologies in schools, particularly cell phones and text devices. Schools generally try to prohibit students from phoning and texting when they are supposed to be listening in class.
Education
Digital Lessons for Little Ones
One segment of the K-12 population that I think is sometimes forgotten about by ed-tech folks (and I admit: I'm guilty of it as well) is the "little folks" as Tammy Worcester, author of several books about computer activities for K-3 students, would say. The last session I attended at NCCE was her talk on "Computer Activities for Little Folks," which went through many suggestions of activities that could be used for K-3 students.
Education
Open-Source Talk and Revising Tech Standards
As I mentioned before, I attended two sessions at the NCCE conference last week that were great. The first session I went to, which was standing-room-only, was about open-source tools and content for teachers by Karen Fasimpur. She spent the first part of her talk explaining the different licenses that are available to create open resources, something that I wrote about awhile ago after I realized how much confusion was out there about those licenses.
Education
Conference Lesson: Using Technology Effectively
Working from home can be isolating at times, and it's always a treat when I can get out of the house and talk with real, live people about ed-tech issues, which is what I spent all day Friday doing at the Northwest Council for Computer Education's "Navigating the New World With Technology" conference here in Portland.
Education
AFT Ruffles Mobile Learning Advocates
Most of the attendees at the Mobile Learning Conference in Washington this week are among the true believers when it comes to the potential value in putting handheld devices, along with well-designed content, into the hands of more students and teachers. So you might expect them to get a bit ruffled when someone suggests that cellphones and other small, wireless electronics have no place in the classroom.
Education
You Want to Embed My Mobile Device Where?
There are certainly a lot of cool tech tools and projects available or in the works to enable broader use of mobile devices, like cell phones and handhelds, by schools and students.