Introduction
A few months ago I read a book called Cats: The Nine Lives of Innovation by Stephen C. Lundin, Ph.D. I had actually read it in hopes of gaining inspiration for some ideas for new inventions or to further refine some ideas I have had floating around in my head. However, this past week I have been attending some training at the Summer Seminar as part of the EAST Initiative. Something that was stressed over and over during the various training sessions was the need to be innovative and to break out of the mold of the status quo.
It has been a while since I have written much about my opinion of the iPad. Lately though, I have been thinking a lot about the possibilities of the iPad in education, particularly at the preschool level.
Scientia potentia est is a Latin maxim originally stated by Francis Bacon. The literal meaning of the phrase is “for also knowledge itself is power”, or more commonly paraphrased today as “knowledge is power.” Never has this statement been more true than today.
I apologize to my regular readers for not updating my blog in a while. Last week was the state’s high stakes testing and I had to proctor the test to a class of sixth graders, even though I don’t teach them. They were short on teachers last week for some reason. But if you’ve ever proctored state tests before, you know how tiresome they can be. Because of that, I have taken some needed time for some R and R. This gave me a great opportunity to play with my iPad some more though. And let me tell you again just how awesome it is!
A recent survey was conducted among app developers for the iPad in order to determine what types of apps they are working on. Take a look at the results of the survey, then I’ll discuss what this means for education. I found this in a Business Week article.
If you have a hard time determining what color corresponds to which category, the pie chart is read counter clockwise from the twelve o’clock position (Games: 44%, Entertainment: 14%, etc.)
I have recently been informed that I will be a new contributing writer on I Education Apps Review. The website offers many reviews for iPhone/iPod Touch apps and their educational value, particularly in the classroom. I am very excited about the chance to be a contributing writer on another blog that is making a difference in the use of technology in the classroom.
As promised, this is the second part of The Classroom of Tomorrow. The first article dealt with how the classroom of tomorrow would look given the current educational climate. There is hope though that the educational climate in the United States is changing to allow for more educational reform which could open up the possibility for dramatic changes in America’s schools. What follows is my vision for how the classroom of tomorrow could look, if the necessary education reforms were to be enacted to allow for these changes to occur.
Mar
I Pre Ordered My iPad
In a few short weeks I’ll have my own iPad to play with! I am excited for the possibilities of the iPad when it comes to education. Of course I’ll use it for my own entertainment purposes as well. I have even postponed purchasing some books so I can purchase them from iBooks instead.
I ordered the 32 GB Wi-Fi only version of the iPad. I don’t see the need for the 3G version AND I don’t want to wait until the end of April to receive it.
The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers released the first official public draft of the K-12 standards as part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, of which 48 states, 2 territories, and the District of Columbia are participants. You can read the press release here.
They have released standards for literacy and mathematics for K-12 education and are asking for feedback from the public. These standards are designed to be SKILLS-based, not CONTENT-based. If you would like to learn more about these standards and to provide some valuable feedback to improve the documents go to http://www.corestandards.org/.
This article is the first of two posts about the classroom of tomorrow. Click here for the second part. The first part will focus on the classroom of tomorrow given the current educational climate in the United States. In the current system, there are certain things which will not be able to be changed given the various rules and regulations imposed upon K-12 public education by the government. The second part will focus on the idealized vision for the classroom of tomorrow, which will only be possible if the current educational climate in America changes in such a way that true reform in the way education is handled in America will be allowed to prosper.
