Creating Significant Learning Environments
The ability to convey a large amount of information in a single graphic is priceless. The focus of this list is social media but the author has compiled other list of exceptional infographics.
Infographics for Web Designers: Information You Ought to Know
13 Infographics To Understand The Blogosphere Better
50 Informative and Well-Designed Infographics
Visual.ly
Randy Muller challenges IT professionals to have the the same level of skill of an average high student student. I would argue that educators, and anyone else involved in preparing our learners for the 21st Century should have most if not all these skills.
The list includes:
OK not everyone needs to program or be a Linux guru but having a fundamental understanding of these disciplines would be very helpful. I also question whether the average high school student is playing with Linux and not every high school kid programs. But everything else on the list makes sense.
If you consider yourself an IT professional or an educator then do your skills match up?
In the article What we say is not what we do: Effective evaluation of faculty professional development programs. Ebert-May and her five coauthors reveal that after attending a workshop and learning about inquiry-based learning 75% of attendees were not using what they had learned in the workshop but were still using traditional styles of teaching. The study looked at:
1) How learner-centered was the pedagogy that faculty implemented following PD? and,
2) What variables predict teaching practice by faculty following PD? Videotapes of faculty teaching were analyzed using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP), a reliable instrument that defines and assesses learner-centered teaching.
What is preventing these college faculty from implementing student centered learning. Participants in the survey reported:
that having insufficient time was the main impediment to their revising their teaching.
This issue of faculty not having enough time to implement effective teaching strategies keeps on coming up and yet very few people have really explored how we deal with this issue. If faculty need more time to be able to develop effective teaching strategies then what can we do to make this happen? Perhaps we need to look at just how much time traditional instruction takes compared to student centered learning. I know from personal experience that active, inquiry, and project based learning environments will take more time to develop initially but once they are up and running they are much more efficient than traditional methodologies. Perhaps we need to look at our educational systems as a whole and start asking questions that will result in radical change as opposed to looking at ways to improve our current system which many argue is fundamentally flawed.
A few weeks back I created a short video as part of a digital storytelling workshop and while I initially thought that this was just a proof of concept and would be something that I would return to and improve, I quickly realized that the message that the video tells is something that should be heard so I have put the video in its raw state up on Vimeo. I was moved by a faculty member at ACU who came up to me and indicated that I had provided a valid reason for the use of technology in the learning environment and that there may be students in his class who learn in unconventional ways. Since he thanked me for “opening his eyes” to these types of students I hope that I can open a few more eyes.
I am not the only person who has questions about ADHD and the way that children are treated who have this “condition” or “disability”.
Sir Ken Robinson addresses this issue in the later portion of his TED Talk Bring on the Learning Revolution.
We need to be continually reminded of the importance of creativity and there is no better authority on the subject than Sir Ken Robinson. This interview conducted by Michael Hyatt is another good reminder of how important it is that we reform our systems to support and promote creativity.
