Knowing vs. Using

This is interesting: faculty often know about new and 'high-tech' teaching methods and technologies, but often choose not to use them in their classrooms.

You can read more about this at Professors Know About High-Tech Teaching Methods, but Few Use Them on Wired Campus (including an interesting interactive table with data download option). The 157 comments are also quite interesting!

Full survey: U.S. Postsecondary Faculty in 2015: Diversity in People, Goals, and Methods, but Focused On Students by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Are You Smarter Than A Smartphone?

Students, Computers and Learning - Making the Connection was released by the OECD back in September 2015. Here's a rather lengthy quote from the Foreword section (shortened and emphasis added):

The report provides a first-of-its-kind internationally comparative analysis of the digital skills that students have acquired, and of the learning environments designed to develop these skills. This analysis shows that the reality in our schools lags considerably behind the promise of technology...And even where computers are used in the classroom, their impact on student performance is mixed at best. Students who use computers moderately at school tend to have somewhat better learning outcomes than students who use computers rarely. But students who use computers very frequently at school do a lot worse in most learning outcomes, even after accounting for social background and student demographics.

...And perhaps the most disappointing finding of the report is that technology is of little help in bridging the skills divide between advantaged and disadvantaged students....

One interpretation of all this is that building deep, conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking requires intensive teacher-student interactions, and technology sometimes distracts from this valuable human engagement. Another interpretation is that we have not yet become good enough at the kind of pedagogies that make the most of technology; that adding 21st-century technologies to 20th-century teaching practices will just dilute the effectiveness of teaching. If students use smartphones to copy and paste prefabricated answers to questions, it is unlikely to help them to become smarter. If we want students to become smarter than a smartphone, we need to think harder about the pedagogies we are using to teach them. Technology can amplify great teaching but great technology cannot replace poor teaching.

Hmm, something to think about. (found on Hack Education by Audrey Watters)

The Gameful Classroom

GradeCraft by the University of Michigan is a learning management system designed to support personalized 'gameful' courses - read more about it over at Wired Campus. The basic idea is to mimic learning as a video game where students chart their own path through the course material and mistakes don't come with any real consequences - you can simply start over and repeat the level.

The Ed-Tech Holiday Gift Guide

Just in case...here are some ed-tech and geography-themed gift ideas, some of which may actually be usable for teaching and learning:

• Are your students bored with your flipped classroom? Impress them with 360 degree videos (example) using the Ricoh Theta series that they can watch on Facebook.
• Turn any smartphone into an infrared camera with the Seek Compact or Compact XR and keep it charged.
• Or, use the visible spectrum better with the Creative Mobile Kit.
• Bored with your lectures, online classes or MOOCs? Experience them as virtual reality (oh...the irony) with the Samsung Gear VR. 
• A 3-D printer for every student? Why not with the M3D Micro!
• A computer for every student? Why not with the Kano or the Raspberry Pi Zero (for $5).
• A drone for every student? Why not with the Axis Wallet Drone!
• There must be some use for this in the classroom or lab: The Drop scale and app.
• For the map geek: Circle Maps or Below The Boat.
• Design your own map-based clothing or accessories @ Monochome.
• Design your own map-based wall art @ Woodcut Maps.

Still not sure? You can always Adopt-A-Glacier via the National Snow and Ice Data Center. One of my favs, Qori Kalis Glacier in Peru, is available.

Qori Kalis Glacier (June 2015)

Teens, Social Media & Technology

The Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015 by the Pew Research Center is fascinating, especially since most of the results are further stratified by gender, race, income, and other factors (see table below).

And once you are done reading that, how about the Millenials and Political News report (also by the Pew Research Center). One thing seems clear: our students get their new from Facebook (see chart below).

Story Mapping with ThingLink

This week is Geography Awareness Week and ThingLink is an easy way to make a story map: just upload a picture and 'map it' by adding tags and links to multimedia. Here's a simple example: GPS Survey of the Quelccaya Ice Cap.

ThingLink is basically a simpler (and commercial) version of StoryMap for Images, the tool behind the awesome 'map' of the The Garden Of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch which is featured prominently in this year's First-Year Read The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans De Waal.

Claim Your Domain!

And control your digital identity and digital citizenship!

• Problem: students and faculty lose control of their digital work once they upload it to the commercial LMS or E-Portfolio systems.
• Solution: claim your domain and put yourself in-control of your own digital academic or professional portfolio.
• Example: carstenbraun.us

And the institution can (and should) facilitate that by creating a Domains of One's Own initiative for students, faculty, and staff.

That's the short version of Audrey Watters new book Claim Your Domain - And Own Your Online Presence. This is a good and quick read, but you can also skim the Clif Notes version on her blog at The Web We Need to Give Students.