Screen Time
Screen time limits will address student distraction and compulsive technology use at the expense of using technology in meaningful ways to foster student learning. But it won’t solve the mental health crisis. Continue reading Screen Time
Tag: assessment
Where Credit is Due
I took an online graduate level course last month. The course was called “AI and Society: Redefining Learning, Work, & Human Potential” and it was offered through an accreddited instution of higher learning. I earned three semester workshop hours, which means that I can use those hours to renew my professional license. If I were a teacher, I could also use those hours for salary … Continue reading Where Credit is Due
What Should We Do About AI?
Artificial Intelligence is here. It’s embedded in the tools we use every day. There’s no practical way to block it in schools, and there’s no reliable method for detecting its use. We know our students are going to use it whether we want them to or not, and we know that there are lots of issues around privacy, safety, ethics, and security that we should … Continue reading What Should We Do About AI?
Don’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand
When I was in school, we weren’t allowed to use calculators. We did our calculations by hand. That included long division, and deriving square roots, and looking up logarithms and trig functions in computation tables. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that my physics teacher said, “you know, you could just use a calculator and save yourself a lot of time.” By … Continue reading Don’t Criticize What You Can’t Understand
Did I Really Write This?
A few years ago, MSN fired all of their reporters and replaced them with artificial intelligence. “Reporters” might be the wrong word. MSN didn’t report their own news. They used other news sources, and curated their own news site based on the content that they gathered from other places. They found that this could be done just as easily by software as it can by … Continue reading Did I Really Write This?
Cheating
“You are permitted to bring one 5×7 inch note card to the exam, with any notes on it that you want.” My eleventh grade American History teacher was explaining the rules for the semester exam. “The exam will consist of two essay questions selected from these five.” He gave us the questions. I went to work. This was going to be easy. I wrote the … Continue reading Cheating
Grading and Attendance
For years, we’ve been struggling with the idea of grades. If a student gets a “B” in seventh grade science, what does that mean? When I was teaching (back in the dark ages) most teachers used a point system. Bringing in a box of Kleenex is 5 points. Homework is 10 points. A quiz is 25 points. A unit test is 100 points. That big … Continue reading Grading and Attendance
How to Teach Online, Part 2
As I was writing the first part of this, I got to the section on keeping instruction brief and realized I wasn’t doing a very good job of that. So we took a little break. We were talking about how all schools are probably going to be blended to some extent. We need to easily be able to move back and forth between online learning … Continue reading How to Teach Online, Part 2
Next Steps
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what fall looks like. When we started this adventure six weeks ago, we told ourselves that it was temporary. We’re going to stay home for a couple weeks. That might drag into a month or so, but we’ll definitely be back. We needed to tell ourselves that. On a difficult journey, you have to focus on one step … Continue reading Next Steps
21st Century Cheating
There was a social studies test coming up in seventh grade. Jimmy is a conscientious student. He works hard, tries to please his parents and his teachers, and is helpful to others. Jimmy is a 21st century kid. He uses his Chromebook in most of his classes. He’s a self-directed learner. He has experience working collaboratively with his peers. He uses his information literacy skills … Continue reading 21st Century Cheating
Different Enough
Would you ride in a driverless car? Let’s say you’re in Pittsburgh or Phoenix and you call for an Uber. The car rolls up, and there’s no one inside. Do you get in? Your answer might depend on how the car is configured. If there is no driver, there is no need for a driver’s seat. If the car itself has no steering wheel, pedals, … Continue reading Different Enough
Do We Need Teachers?
A couple months ago, I surveyed the teachers in my district about classroom technology. Over the last few years, we have focused a lot on improving student access to technology. While this has meant unprecedented growth in tech resources available to students, it also means we haven’t devoted much time or resources on the technology that our teachers use. One problem with surveys like this is … Continue reading Do We Need Teachers?
Taste of Tech 