If anyone is using or plans on using Wetpaint as a site for educational (ad free) wikis, look elsewhere because they have recently discontinued the "ad free" courtesy to educators: http://wikisineducation.wetpaint.com/page/Ad-Free+Education+Wikis |
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Report on Challenge Based Learning
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The New Media Consortium just released their report on Challenge-Based Learning. Though the report specifically deals with K-12 education, the issues presented (experiential learning; engaging students through through creative and applied problem solving) are applicable to any context. My own children were engaged in a similar type of learning environment for over a year and the benefits and experiences gained were pretty amazing. Here is a brief description of the report from the NMC release: "Challenge-based learning is not a curriculum. It is a strategy to engage kids in any class by giving them significant that have real-world implications. More than 320 students and nearly 30 teachers in the schools, all of which had implemented a policy of providing full-featured notebook computers to every student, worked together to research, formulate strategies, and ultimately implement local solutions to problems of global significance. Students used their laptops for just-in-time research, to document their rationales, and to present the outcomes of their strategies. The outcomes of the three-week experiment, conducted last fall, were overwhelmingly positive.
The study revealed that both teachers and students found challenge-based learning significantly effective and engaging, even with the students most at risk of dropping out. Teachers noted that students learned more, and produced more than expected. Students reported learning skills that overlapped almost completely with the critical competencies identified by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills."
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Check out this TED talk about the "6th sense" project given Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry from MIT's Media Lab. I saw this on a recent posting to a list I read and it's quite interesting (and only around 8 minutes long) |
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OK, I'll publicly admit that I am a closet musician. Over the years my interests have moved from acoustic performance towards electronic mediums for sound recordings so I am always interested in various aspects of sound creation and application. The College of New Jersey in Ewing is hosting a really interesting Music Technology Symposium this coming Wednesday (February 11th). The featured speaker is Dr. Perry Cook , Professor of Computer Science who has a joint appointment in the Music Department at Princeton University. Not only is this an interesting cross disciplinary fusion of interests, applications and tools but I think it would be a fun lecture to attend if you can! This lecture is open to the public, as per the information found on the TCNJ website.
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