Digital Ether

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/learning/concentration/old-school-new-school.html

With the advent of introducing new technology in to the classroom there is a coresponding shift in what is taught.  The risk is that as teachers we may “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, lossing the good with the bad.

It seams to me that there is now a push to develop critical thinking in our students, where before it was assumed.  Two changes that have happened during that time is the Computer has been introduced into school and has become more common place at home.  TV, & the Internet are all piped into our homes and this is leading to information overload in many people including students.

We now seam to live in a world of constant distraction, unable to focus our attention on a single object for any length of time.  Although Computers are an extremely powerful tool for processing and creating information and media.  What is the effect of using them in the long term?

Read http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=57612 for the full article

This one is interesting because at first glance it’s counter-intuitive.  Both the lecture & the podcast are a similar learning format (audio/lecture, with 5% retention), but with the podcast it allows you to rehear the same lecture again. This repetition allows for deeper learning, and this is one of the benefits of ICT.  Other factors to consider is wither;

• the Podcast has video for diagrams, images and such.
• The face to face contact to help the student read the body language of the presenter.
• The distraction of other students in the lecture theatre.
• The ability to digest the podcast in small parts, and at a time of your choosing, as apposed to having to show up to a lecture regardless of you condition.
• Been able to ask the lecturer questions to clarify your understanding (ie move up the learning pyramid) (http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/current/undergraduate/learning.shtml or http://www.tcde.tehama.k12.ca.us/pyramid.pdf).

Andrew Douch (http://andrewdouch.com.au/) ran an excellent PD on Pod-casting, and clearly showed that it improved his VCE Biology results.