As students experience deeper learning, they frame, understand, and attempt to solve problems as they interact with foundational knowledge. This facilitates their ability to remember what they learned, and they also become more skilled at assessing what they know and what they do not know. Advocates for deeper learning differentiate the use of foundational knowledge Read More
Some scaffolds are introduced to share the cognitive load or to draw attention to specific aspects of the work. Reiser & Tabak (2014) suggest scaffolding can be introduced to facilitate thinking in several ways. Especially when dealing with complex situations early in their studies, students may focus on irrelevant aspects of the problem or they Read More
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has been law in the United States since 1998. The intent of the law is to protect the privacy and the personal information of children, thus is requires the publishers of web sites that collect user information to have parental consent for those under 13 years of age. Read More
Educators are constantly reviewing what they teach. Many regulatory agencies require curriculum documents to be updated, and professional organizations update curriculum suggestions as well. IT professionals are often expected to participate in some of these efforts. Although IT professionals will not make recommendations about what should be taught, they will be asked to participate to Read More
One of the challenges for designing information technology for school populations is the broad range of skills that users bring to the device. When we build IT for business users, we can usually assume their skills fall within a narrow range. Consider the range of literacy and numeracy skills as well as the physical characteristics Read More
I had a discussion with some colleagues recently about active and social learning. We seem to have come to agreement on this elevator pitch: We know human brains are adapted to social learning. Just what we mean by social learning is open to interpretation and not every lesson is amenable to it. In situations where: Read More
Technology is a force that exerts strong influences on society and culture. For those living within a culture its effects are so familiar they are barely perceived and thought to be a natural part of every culture or society. What we expect of people (our peers, our leaders, our children, etc.) and out institutions (schools Read More
In science, we make our living as it were by measuring. As a human activity, measurement involvessome errors. When a making measurements, there are (usually) three potential sources of error: The person who is making the measurement could make a mistake. The same person who measures the same thing more than once is likely to Read More
In reality, lesson planning is one of the least certain tasks an educator undertakes. The lesson planner can be sure of what they intend to teach; it may even be articulated in measurable learning outcomes (the value of which is dubious). The teacher also believes they know how to present the material so that students Read More
IT professionals are familiar with system requirements, and they are comfortable helping to define them, exceed them in budgets and design specifications, test them, and confirm them. We write them when planning IT installation in schools as well. The reality, however, is that system requirements (the nature of the hardware, software, and connections) do not Read More