Technology for Educators: Internet Gateways

When you subscribe to your local internet service provider, you will receive a device that you can easily carry under your arm that is called a gateway. While a technician may arrive to install it, a reasonably tech-savvy individual can install and configure it using the directions they provide and the automated scripts programmed into Read More

On Collaboration in Decision making

To minimize the threats of incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the work done by others, effective IT decision-making in schools requires the collaboration of individuals who approach them from very different perspectives, and it is unusual to find single individuals who have expertise in more than one of these perspectives. When designing and redesigning IT Read More

School Users of IT

Compared to IT users in business, school populations are different. They bring different skills to the IT they use, they need more flexibility more often than business users, and their needs change over time (only to return to the original need). These characteristics arise from the facts that students have emerging literacies; it is not Read More

Elevator Pitch: Firewalls

Even before computer viruses and network security became a concern, the idea of a firewall was familiar. We construct them to prevent certain unwanted “things” from passing through. The firewall in your car prevents an engine fire from passing into the passenger compartment. In IT systems, firewalls enhance network security by ensuring only certain types Read More

How We Handle Ethics in #edtech

Ethics and Educational Technology: Reflection, Interrogation, and Design as a Framework for Practice by Stephanie L. Moore and Heather K. Tillberg-Webb (9780415895088) could not have arrived as a more propitious time. For six months, we in education (k-12, community college, university, professional, and all other settings) have been dealing with ChatGPT and other generative AI. Read More

Elevator Pitch on Aspects of Learning

Human learning has aspects that are cognitive, but it also has social and emotional aspects, and deeper learning requires students connect with the curriculum in all three ways. The emotional and social aspects of human learning appear to be deeply embedded in our nature. It is reasoned our brain evolved to pay attention to what Read More

Text Written by AI: Five Questions and Answers

Students are using generative AI to write papers. It seems scholars are as well. (https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-this-doctor-wrote-dozens-of-science-papers-with-chatgpt) So, what are we to make of all of this? What is the future of intellectual works when they can be generated by AI? I wonder, first, how is this different from the other tools we use to extend human Read More

Generative AI: Six Months In

I am no longer a full-time teacher, but I support a community of full-time and adjunct faculty and I am an adjunct faculty member. Throughout the almost 40 years of my professional life (I started my undergraduate preparation to be a teacher in the fall of 1983), I have been a user of technology in Read More

#edtech for IT: Digital Divides

Since about 2010, one-to-one computing and cloud-based computing have come to dominate school computing. In many schools, students carry Chromebook with them, and sometimes they take them home. (While the market share of educational computing devices is difficult to ascertain, estimates are that Chromebooks represent over 60% of the devices purchased for school users.)  Some Read More

On Teachers’ Technology Knowledge

Technological knowledge refers to one’s ability to use digital tools. Over time, the tools that provide educational relevant capacity have expanded. Today, we include: Exactly which tools one uses depends on personal preferences, those used in one’s profession, and those provided by the school where one teaches.      We can differentiate two types of technological Read More