education & tech

Karyn Romeis leads her L&D consultancy called Learning Anorak Ltd. but she also writes on her Karyn's erratic learning journey. We should nominate her for the Eddies as she calls it, but we are not making those list, for now.

There is a post of hers, that we really love it and we would like to share it with you. It's on the school experiences of her son. The heading said: Good teacher, bad learners? and she stressed, "I must remember that one if ever I run a workshop that doesn't go over well."

We don't pretend to make a presentation of her blog but to share with our readers, a blog that really deserve to be read. Today, she's suggested some interesting tips for parents and it's on the issue: Smart boys, bad grades. Karyn refers a link where you can easily spot that "the underlying reason boys get worse grades and attend higher education in declining percentages is because boys have different biological and neurological characteristics than girls". You should go over her blog and read her 'checks' for every item, we are solely going to list them:

1. Ask your boy, How was your day?
2. Every day, tell your boy, You are a good kid.
3. Allow and encourage computer work.
4. Minimize punishment for behavior that does not hurt others.
5. Give him $10. Immediate, unexpected reward is great reinforcement.
6. Advocate for your boy.
7. Talk to teachers.
8. Talk to your doctor.
9. Guys are critical.
10. Explore alternatives to your current school.
11. Talk to school counselors.
12. Ask about modifications.
13. Talk to other parents. It helps.
14. Let your boy know what is up with Smart Boys, Bad Grades.

Long list. But smart boys deserve the attention they've earned. Make sure you read the comments in the bottom of Karyn's post, as well.

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We've been tracking the developments on something still isn't probed scientifically:The myth of the digital native. About a year now, we cited an article written by G. Siemens and his Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants. We are still in a level where there is not enough empirical evidence to support the notion of netgen, digital natives, or millennial learners.

A study conducted by Anoush Margaryan and Allison Littlejohn at Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde Universities in the UK concludes among other things " that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content." See PowerPoint presentation for more on The Myth of Digital Native: Students' Use of Technologies.

If this were educational research we should go a bit deeper and on more findings. However, it seems still things haven't changed in a way that we can conclude as many, included myself can say that net-gen is a group which is globally, connected, socially-networked and technologically-fluent.

That's why we have to go back to June, during the 2008. Was in this month that George wrote a post saying that he was in support of changing education for two different reasons (differing from the 'changing learners' of Mark Bullen):" 1) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and create information, and 2) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and connect to each other."

We haven't heard more discussion on this topic. Chris Lott was the only one who wrote a post on this Net-Gen Nonsense:

"The two points with which you [G.Siemens] conclude your post... are changes in learners, and they are changes that happen as a result of living in a very different and quickly changing technologically mediated environment than others. Fight it all you want, but those learners are different. It has nothing to do with age and the biological origins are at best unclear… but it is immaterial. Anyone who pays attention to their students can see this in the divide they face within their classes between the haves and knows and the have not/know nots. Whatever the label, a host of educators nod in recognition of the characteristics regardless of the question of the origins, which has always been my central point in this debate: I don’t care about the reasons as much as I care about the solutions, and I won’t discount what I see and experience because the research (which hasn’t been an enviable guide when it comes to education so far, but that’s a different discussion) isn’t there or isn’t unclear. A refutation would make a difference, but there’s an obvious reason why there isn’t one, and I don’t mean the philosophical bit about proving a negative."

Looking forward to hear or read what had been your empirical findings.

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No doubt there are many kinds of writing educational projects, and networks may provide an excellent means to distribute and publish any student production, but clearly some genres are meant for print rather than screen and length and style are alike, in terms of publishing.

There is a growing sense that higher education is struggling to meet the needs of students and one of them is writing online.Contemporary scholarly work cites a fewer range of sources than work in the past. We haven't read the original source neither, but we are falling behind on other issues too, for example, I have to confess that even when I spend considerable time online I wasn't familiar with these two terms: Chemtrails and Spimes.

I have to recognize that I am not a among those Americans who might find it alienating to "have a president who speaks English as if it were his first language." as Andy Borowitz stressed. Being said this, let me recommend the reading of Digital Digs where Alex Reid explains what we didn't know until a few moments, his explanation of the coined spime. Wikipedia cites Sterling's book and the same source is used by Raid to explain what it means to tech junkies, the spimes as a new technology:

"The spime composes its own topological, discursive text, marking its passage through space and time. As Sterling notes, objects become processes, trajectories of mutation (and ideally mutations that result in an unproblematic decay into non-toxic elements). Of course objects have always already been this (well, not the non-toxic part), but the spime allows the composition of information regarding this process. Here is this recursive process of ripping, mixing, and burning information. Each singular spime rips data from the world about itself, mixes it with previously analyzed data to produce a timeline, and burns that data into a recorded trajectory. Then "we" as composers rip data from a network of spimes, mix that data together (making connections, conducting analysis, developing interpretations and arguments, etc.), and burn the composition into a format that is once again accessible through the network. And its not really a matter of choosing to compose in this fashion, but the becoming self-evident that this is our process--much in the same way as the web 1.0 made self-evident so many of the once difficult theories of postmodernism."

The questions is how we are going to keep up with such a load of information when we are only monkey guys with handy keyboards?

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MG Siegler & Eric Eldon are tech news junkies. In order to be any good at what they do (tech blogging), they kind of have to be. A tech news junky’s best friend is an RSS reader - We (as much as they) troll hundreds of sources and thousands of stories on a daily basis looking for that one piece of news worth covering. But sometimes, that simply isn’t feasible all the time, you need an aggregator.

Many of us in the tech community know and love Techmeme -We do prefer Twitlinks, though- a tech news aggregation site. For finding the newest tech stories that people are writing about, there’s simply nothing better. Of course, there are sites that are bigger, like Google News. But have you ever tried to use Google News’ technology section (technically called Sci/Tech) to find timely items? It’s awful

Find out about this broken new at VentureBeat

Results for the Deutsche Welle's BoBs Awards was announced today. Among the winners in all 16 of the competition's categories is a Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, who finished as top winner. She has received many awards now and Sanchez is thankful of all the support she received. In a translated Spanish post, she posted a video, writing: What else can we ask?

Generación Y managed by Yoani Sánchez, gives voice to a new entire generation of Cubans and most importantly, provides the world with a window into Cuba through her clear and poetic writing. She is a Hispanic Philology professional graduated in The Habana.

The BOBs Team stressed, "In addition to a slew of other obstacles in her way, Sanchez can't even post her own entries to the blog. Instead she is forced to e-mail them to friends outside of Cuba in order for her words to go online. Despite the challenges she has to overcome, she's managed to keep in contact with her readers and create a huge international community around her work."

We want to congratulate Yoani and if you are interested on contributing to this her moment, write to her an e-mail at: yoani.sanchez dot gmail dot com

In the mean time, head over to see the winners in all other categories. Education & Tech cheers them all up!

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