Technology-Enhanced Learning

Common Sense Media , a leading nonprofit organization that provides trustworthy information for kids and families to thrive in the world of media and technology, has produced Graphite , a great website for teachers  to discover, use, and share tools, apps, games, website, and digital curricula for their students. All resources are rated and reviewed by their trustworthy community of teachers. As a user, you can also suggest a product for review to get an honest professional advice from Graphite’s teacher community. Graphite is useful for teachers to explore more in depth the worthiness of a tool or website and possible ways they might be used in the classroom. Graphite is still in its first year of launch but has great potentials to grow its stock of reviews. Also, do not forget to check out their Common Sense Media for Educators .

Like any parent,I enjoy my kid’s engaging with an educational app assuming that it is useful and that it helps my kid comprehend a new concept. Although I see great benefits in the child’s engagement with an educational app, I have a conviction that the app alone won’t help the child understand concepts or prevent the child from developing “misconceptions”. The child needs a more competent person to guide and explain concepts guarding the child from incorporating misconceptions by observing nuances in the child’s behavior during his play that the app won’t recognize. Of course, if the educational app is well designed based on pedagogical models that work, the app would incorporate a tutor and/or tutee. that would take into account all misconceptions that children might develop.  However, if one looks at all the educational apps, only few are designed and developed based on proven pedagogical models. First, to explain my point, let me tell you about on instance with my child that ...

It’s been more than 8 years since I started using technology in the classroom. Ever since then technology has drastically and rapidly evolved concurrently with how I used it to support student learning. However, there was a pattern I have noticed in our students which is that they are technology comfy but not technology savvy. Throughout my years as a teacher and then senior teacher, edtech specialist and teacher trainer I have noticed that not only teachers lack the necessary knowledge base into incorporating technology into their content and pedagogy (TPACK deficit), students too are not aware and not well prepared to use technology to support their learning. Across all student ages, nationalities, and academic abilities there are but a few students who use technology in support for their own learning. This is chiefly due to lack of integration between ICT subject and other subjects, lack of understanding on part of the teacher on the importance of technology to help students solve...