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How Classroom Tech Evolves Infographic The How Classroom Tech Evolves Infographic shows what the modern day classroom looks like and presents what the classroom of tomorrow will bring. It explores the tech gadgets that are already being implemented in different schools around the country, and how they’re beneficial to both students and teachers. Times have changed Technology has rapidly changed the way we do things in a relatively short period of time. We have gone from painstakingly slow dial-up and waiting minutes for a single image to load, to always on broadband access and streaming high definition video to our cell phones. There are children growing up who don’t know a world without Google, who don’t know the feeling of simply having to make do with not knowing something, "just Google it," they all say. These are the same kids who don’t know what the save button in Microsoft Word is for, or why people say "rewind" when they want to go back to something in a video. They grew up with iPads and touchscreens, wifi and blazing internet speeds. Without a doubt, technology has impacted nearly every aspect of our lives including education. Technology’s Role in the Classroom Technology’s role in the classroom has drastically increased in recent years - with technology funding jumping from around $800 million in the early 2000s to nearly $12 billion in 2015. With wireless connectivity, tablets, and video conferencing, classrooms are beginning to look less like rooms in a school building and more like the bridge of the Enterprise every day. And as we progress, teachers are realizing that technology is not just a source of distraction for their students, but is actually a tool that can help students with a variety of learning styles to absorb information more effectively. Adapting to Rapid Change Being a good educator means constantly adapting to changing conditions, and using the most effective educational tools. This means embracing technology in the classroom. A majority of students today believe that having tech in the classroom has helped them to learn, and educators agree. Giving teachers the tools, training and trust they need to provide their students with meaningful online experiences can help them make the leap from being users of digital technology, to capable citizens of an always-on digital world. It’s important to realize that this generation will change how educators formulate lessons and interact with students. They were brought up in the global community thanks to the Internet. With more and more technology being used in the classroom, teachers are slowly easing into the idea of using web-based programs to engage their students. Via: sungardk12.comThe post How Classroom Tech Evolves Infographic appeared first on e-Learning Infographics.

One of my favorite people in the workplace-learning space is Clark Quinn. Smart, passionate, and research-based, Clark has been consulting on learning and learning technology for decades. We worked on the Serious eLearning Manifesto together. We attempted—and failed—to build a community of workplace learning thought leaders. We commiserate frequently. I feel that I know some of what is in Clark’s heart. Now you can too! With publication of his new book, Revolutionize Learning and Development, Clark shares his unbridled passion for our field. His book is a cross between a furious Charles Bukowski poem and a winding Jack Kerouac road trip. His words stream like a molten-steel lava flow of wisdom, love, and thunder. Clark loves what we do. He just wishes with hope that we did it better. He puts the focus on on-the-job performance, saying that our learning solutions should be aimed at creating results in the workplace. Indeed, Clark nimbly changes our name from the Learning and Development team to the Performance and Development team! Learning is just a means to performance. Clark comes to his wisdom based on years of immersion in the learning research and working on practical learning-design issues. Early in the book he explains how the brain works and how its architecture should impact our learning designs. This is very helpful because too many of us in the learning field think that conscious information transfer is all that’s needed, when in fact most of our work is done subconsciously. In the book, Clark highlights the need for us to redouble our focus on two areas, performance consulting and development facilitation. Performance consulting looks at how to optimize execution. It requires that we analyze tasks and root causes before we develop appropriate solutions—and, incidentally, it demands that we not always look to training as the solution. Development facilitation is focused on how people develop their knowledge and skills over time. Where performance consulting works directly through our outside efforts, development facilitation helps "people improve while working on their own and together."   Nuggets From the Book: "Our species has in many ways survived because we learned how to physically augment our resources." We learned how to overcome our tendency to forget by providing ourselves with informational sources, including such things as reference materials, job aids, and performance support. We in the workplace learning-and-performance field used to have a responsibility to help people execute their job tasks better. Now we also have a responsibility to help them be innovative. We, as workplace learning-and-performance professionals, need to work backwards. "We need to identify the performance we desire and then decide how to distribute information among the individual, network, and resources—digital and real." "As much as possible, we should resist trying to change the individual, as this is difficult…Our focus must be on how we want people to perform, and we must figure out what can be ‘in the world’… and then what has to be ‘in the head.’" "The principle here is to recognize that, when we want people to perform in a resourced environment, we should develop the formal learning to incorporate the performance resources in the [learning] experience. If we can avoid formal learning, we can and should, be when we can’t, we should develop the resources before we develop the training." "The very first thing to do is to stop doing what we are doing. That, arguably, is impossible, yet there needs to be fundamental change. We have to stop being order-takers and start being performance consultants and improvement facilitators." On-the-job learning requires an environment where people feel safe to contribute and make mistakes, diversity is valued, people and groups are open to new ideas, and time is made for reflection. We, as learning professionals, can help enable these tendencies. "A performance support focus is a better starting point for organizations than courses!" "A real revolution in social tools has taken place…these capabilities need to be leveraged for learning as well." "The room is smarter than the smartest person in the room if you manage the process right. If not, the room might be only as smart as the most dominant person in the room or the one with the most authority." Workplace learning professionals should consider the "Least Assistance Principle." It’s counterintuitive for many of us, but it basically suggests that we answer the question, ‘What’s the least I can do to guide performance?’" So instead of jumping in with a training solution, we should consider alternatives first. Formal learning methods are fine for novices but for experts more informal learning methods are needed. See graph below.   Critiques of Our Current Practices: Our tendency to have a course/event mindset keeps us from achieving real change. Our tendency to focus on providing knowledge keeps us from focusing on decision-making and task competency. Instead of designing instruction to make the learning intrinsically interesting, we use all manner of attention-getting gimmicks like throwing rubber squish-balls around the room. One of the key things we do wrong is provide insufficient practice. "And we practice until someone gets it right, instead of practicing until they can’t get it wrong." As an industry we seem incapable of making job aids, even when they are often much more effective than training or training alone.   Criticism: There’s one thing that I regret about the book. Clark needed, and deserved, a better editor/publisher—one who would have wrestled his lightning-bolt wisdom into a tighter package. For example, the book uses the term, "To Hand," but even after going through the book twice, I still don’t get what that means.   Summary: Banging the drum for revolution, Clark Quinn has done our field a great favor! His research-based focus is on target. His call for a performance-focus captures the high ground. If you’re new to the idea of a performance focus, the book will help you see through the smoke of current practices. If you’re a performance true believer, you’ll deepen your passion and restock your armaments with fresh insights and imperatives. You can buy the book by clicking below.  

Nice slide presentation from Dean Shareski from a few years back. Still good information. What do...

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I’ve spent a great deal of time this summer preparing and facilitating professional development for teachers involving the integration of iPads into the classroom. So when I inadvertently came across this really neat iPad Bingo visual while searching for edtech infographics on Pinterest, I knew I had to further investigate this concept. Well, my surfing resulted in the following: Media technology specialist Josh Borzick from Oak Creek, Wisconsin created the iPad Bingo site to provide teachers with integration ideas related to six apps—Google Drive, Skitch, 30 Hands, Popplet, Doceri and Touchcast. The page includes the iPad Bingo card, which contains a set of activities for students to learn how to utilize each app at varying degrees of difficulty. What’s more—the iPad Bingo site contains tons of bonus resources related to each app—tutorials, examples and additional integration ideas as well as iPad tips and tricks and other recommended apps. Yeah, it’s pretty much a treasure trove of edtech goodness! Borzick claims on his site that "This is good stuff!" I couldn’t agree more! What a super cool idea! Check it out for yourself! Click here to view a full screen version of the iPad bingo card. Classroom Connection: Use the iPad Bingo card concept (and/or the actual example itself) to encourage teachers and students to learn how to use various apps for educational and productivity purposes. If you don’t have access to iPads or other mobile devices—don’t sweat it. The best part about this idea is that it can be adapted to any web tool or desktop application that is available in your learning environment. If multiple apps seems overwhelming, another option would be to create a Bingo card focusing on one app or tool. You could even suggest digital projects related to a particular topic or theme and challenge your students to select the tool(s) necessary to demonstrate their knowledge and creativity.

New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink is no stranger to the education community. Knowingly...

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The Future of Publishing This is an oldie but a goodie. About 5 years old. Looking back today, can we agree with what they said? Are publishers going in this direction, specifically, textbook publishers? More about the video: This video was prepared by the UK branch of Dorling Kindersley Books and produced by Khaki Films (http://www.thekhakigroup.com/). Originally meant solely for a DK sales conference, the video was such a hit internally that it is now being shared externally. We hope you enjoy it (and make sure you watch it up to at least the halfway point, there’s a surprise!). The clip was inspired by a video created by an Argentinean agency, Savaglio/TBWA entitled, "Truth": http://bit.ly/truthvideo Read an interview with the creator of the video on the Penguin Blog: http://bit.ly/futureofpublishing If you are interested in downloading this video for personal use, please visit our Bookseller site video page: http://bit.ly/penguinbooksellervideos http://us.penguingroup.com

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"I never failed, it just didn’t work 10,000 times" —Thomas Edison on the development lightbulb. Honda had a series of films on their website back in 2009 under a larger marketing campaign called "Dreams." The films, for the most part, are of course, people telling how good Honda products are. One in particular however, peaked my interest: Failure. This film, looks at how failure can lead to success. I was watching this and began to think about how we, in general,  don’t allow for failure in education. Students are not allowed to explore and fail, teachers are not allowed to experiment and fail, and administrators are not allowed to try innovative things that might fail. I think it is important for students to see that adults fail, but that the failures are used as learning experiences. There is a lot of talk these days about using failing as a learning tool, and business has several books on failure. Most of the things that we as educators call "innovative" are actually copies of something someone else is doing, so in reality, we may say we will allow people to fail, but we provide such a controlling environment, that failure is not an option. So here is the video from the Honda site on "Failure: The Key to Success." It is directed by documentary filmmaker Derek Cianfrance.

Recently, I was in a conversation with some fellow administrators on a webinar and the question...

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Will: Yo Clark, I really liked your new book, Revolutionize Learning and Development, but there’s one thing I’m not sure I’m fully behind—your recommendation that we as learning professionals kowtow to the organization—that we build our learning interventions aimed solely to meet organizational needs. I grew up near Philadelphia, so I’m partial to Rocky Balboa, using the interjection "Yo," and rooting for the little guy. What are you thinking? Isn’t revolution usually aimed against the powerful? Clark: Will, what is powerful are the forces against needed change.  L&D appears to be as tied to an older age as Rocky is!  I’m not saying a complete abdication to the organization, but we certainly can’t be oblivious to it either.  The organization doesn’t know learning, to be sure, and should be able to trust us on performance support and informal learning too.  But do you really think that most of what is happening under the guise of L&D is a good job on the formal learning side? Will: Clark, Of course not. Much of L&D is like Rocky’s brother-in-law Paulie, having an inner heart of gold, but not living up to full effectiveness. I’ve written about the Five Failures of Workplace Learning Professionals three years ago, so I’m on the record that we could do better. And yes, there are lots of forces allied against us, so I’m glad you’re calling for revolution. But back to the question Apollo! To whom do we have more responsibility, the organizations we work for or our profession? To whom should we give our Creed? Clark: Will, your proposed bout is a non-starter!  It’s not either/or; we need to honor both our organization and our profession (and, I’ll argue, we’re currently doing neither).   When we’re building our interventions, they should be to serve the organizations needs, not just their wants. We can’t be order takers, we need to go to the mat (merrily mixing my metaphors) to find out the real problem, and use all solutions (not just courses).   Mickey’d tell you; you got to have heart, but also do the hard yards.  Isn’t the real tension between what we know we should be doing and what we’re actually doing? Will: I am so much in agreement! Why are we always order takers? You want fries with that? Here’s where I think some in our profession go overboard on the organization-first approach. First, like you say, many don’t have a training-request process that pushes their organizations to look beyond training as the singular leverage point to performance improvement. Second, some measurement "gurus" claim that what’s most important is to measure organizational results—while reneging on our professional responsibility to measure what we have the most control over—like whether people can make good work-related decisions after we train them or even remember what we taught them. Honestly, if the workplace learning field was a human being, it would be a person you wouldn’t want to have as a friend—someone who didn’t have a core set of values, someone who would be prone to following any fad or phony demigod, someone who would shift allegiances with the wind. Clark: Now you’re talking; I love the idea of a training-request process! I recall an organization where the training head had a cost/benefit form for every idea that was brought to him.  It’s not how much it costs per bum per seat per hour, but is that bum per seat per hour making a difference!  And we can start with the ability to make those decisions, but ultimately we ought to also care that making those decisions is impacting the organization too.  I certainly agree we have to be strong and fight for what’s right, not what’s easy or expedient.  Serious elearning for the win! Will: We seem to be coming to consensus, however, you inspired another question. We agree that we have two responsibilities, one to our professional values and one to our organization’s needs. But should we add another stakeholder to this mix? I have my own answer, inherent in one of my many below-the-radar models, but I’d like your wisdom. Here’s the question, do we have a responsibility to our learners/performers? If we do have responsibilities to them, what are those responsibilities? And here is perhaps the hardest question--in comparison to the responsibility we have to our organizations, is our level of responsibility to our learners/performers higher, lower, or about the same? Remember, the smaller the ring, the harder it is to run…the more likely we get hit by a haymaker. Good luck with these questions... Clark: Bringing in a ringer, eh?  I suppose you could see it as either of two ways: it’s our obligation to our profession and our organization to consider our learners, or they’re another stakeholder. I kinda like the former, as there’re lots of stakeholders: society, learners, ‘clients', SMEs, colleagues, profession, and more.  In fact, I’m inclined to go back to my proposition that’s it’s not either/or. Our obligation as professionals is to do the job that needs to be done in ways that responsibly address our learners, our organizations, and all stakeholders.  To put it in other words, designing interventions in ways that optimally equip learners to meet the needs of the organization is an integration of responsibilities, not a tradeoff.  We need to unify our approach  like boxing needs to unify the different titles! Will: From what I hear, boxing is dying as a spectator sport precisely because of all the discord and multiple sanctifying bodies. We in the learning-and-performance field might take this as a warning—we need to get our house in order, follow research-based best practices, and build a common body of knowledge and values. It starts with knowing who our stakeholders are and knowing that we have a responsibility to the values and goals of our profession. I like to give our learners a privileged place—at the same level of priority as the organization. It’s not that I think this is an easy argument in an economic sense, because the organization is paying the bills after all. But too often we forget our learners, so I like to keep them front and center in our learning-to-performance models. Thanks Clark for the great discussion. And thanks for agreeing to host the next one on your blog…