ADP Center for Teacher Preparation & Learning Technologies

Educators are working to make sure the technologies elementary students are using are appropriate for their age and highly interactive.

Massive open online courses have the potential to change higher education, but people and schools implementing MOOCs face some emerging legal questions.

"In a country where we expect free Wi-Fi with our coffee, why shouldn't we have it in our schools?" Obama said.

Most U.S. schools have Internet access, but the connections don't have enough capacity or are slow, according to the blueprint.

Like the president, the commission calls for the FCC to update its E-Rate program to pay to connect schools to high-speed Internet. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the agency could start the process of updating the program as soon as this summer.

Jim Steyer, one of the LEAD Commission's chairmen, said it would cost at least $6 billion to wire schools.

The panel will call for a public-private initiative to put laptops, tablets and other devices into the hands of all students by 2020, beginning with middle school students and making sure that low-income students and those who attend schools in poorly funded districts are included. Money that is no longer being spent to buy printed textbooks, as is the case in Mooresville, could be redirected to help pay for the devices.

 

We've already looked at MOOCs, tablet computing, gamification, and learning analytics. For the first part of the 'third horizon', (or entering mainstream use in four to five years), 3D printing tops the list.

Folklorists often balk at the common usage of the word “myth” to mean “lie.” A myth, by their disciplinary definition, is quite the opposite. A myth is a culture’s sacred story. It involves supernatural or supreme beings — gods. It explains origins and destinies. A myth is the Truth.

So when I say then, that “disruptive innovation” is one of the great myths of the contemporary business world, particularly of the tech industry, I don’t mean by “myth” that Clayton Christensen’s explanation of changes to markets and business models and technologies is a falsehood. (I have an MA in Folklore, not an MBA — so that’s part of it, for sure.)

Rather, my assigning “myth” to “disruptive innovation” is meant to highlight the ways in which this narrative has been widely accepted as unassailably true. No doubt (as a Harvard professor) Christensen has faced very little skepticism or criticism about his theory about the transformation of industries— why, it’s as if The Innovator’s Dilemma were some sort of sacred text.

I've got a few ideas on how we can make iPads perfect for education. They're a bit crazy but, hey, so am I. Weigh in and share your thoughts!

Editor’s NoteThis post is part of Co.Exist’s Futurist Forum, a series of articles by some of the world’s leading futurists about what the world will look like in the near and distant future, and how you can improve how you navigate future scenarios...

This is an update from a post a wrote a while back. I've included some new resources to check out.  

Recently, my district began a huge initiative to combat bullying/cyberbullying and to help students become more aware of the choices they make both in their face-to-face lives and their digital decisions as well. There is no one right way or right answer that will stop the problems. However, I do believe that the classroom and our schools are the places where tough conversations need to be had.

I have been collecting several resources and I want to share. By no means is this all the stuff that is out there. And some of it may work or may not. The point is to find something (curriculum, activity, website, video, etc) and start having the conversations, not just with students but with teachers, administrators, parents and our communities.

To start, I want to share this powerful video that was recently shared with me. It's all about the choices our kids are faced with everyday and the consequences of their actions.

There's a terrific free tool from the People to People International folks that you can use to connect students with pen pals from other countries.

This generation of parents grew up with TVs, video game consoles, and computers, so digital media is one of many tools they use in their parenting repertoire.

What is it like to raise a child who's different from you in some fundamental way (like a prodigy, or a differently abled kid, or a criminal)?

The science of learning can offer some surprising and useful perspectives on how we guide and educate young people.

A decades-old family business, built on pleases and thank-yous, releases a guide to social-media manners.

Economist Andrew McAfee suggests that, yes, probably, droids will take our jobs -- or at least the kinds of jobs we know now.