{"id":181,"date":"2010-04-28T14:39:47","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T21:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=181"},"modified":"2010-04-28T14:50:52","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T21:50:52","slug":"a-feel-good-look-at-learnings-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=181","title":{"rendered":"A Feel Good Look at Learning’s Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have written warmly about Scotland’s national education intranet service, Glow, and at the end of the piece asked, “why can’t this be done here?” \u00a0In part, I am finding that it can…and is. \u00a0The Los Angeles Unified School District has an ambitious technology plan, has spend a bundle on infrastructure, and green shoots of applications are beginning to appear at the schools.<\/p>\n

Last Saturday I visited the District’s annual Infotech conference to look at what students and teachers were doing with learning and technology. \u00a0At the Los Angeles Convention Center, I was struck by the extent that almost everything I saw was the result of teacher initiative. \u00a0The District, and grant funds, made access to technology possible, but it was teacher and student sweat equity that created the new forms of teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have a chance to visit each of the exhibits–students were packing up for lunch and blood sugar levels, including mine were lagging–but as I sampled the student’s work I was struck by three aspects of what was going on:<\/p>\n

First, I saw very interesting examples of moving instruction up the cognitive food chain. \u00a0Antonio Hernandez from Local District 4 was basking in the recognition of primary student’s work for robotics. \u00a0They started with straightforward constructions in the first grade, but by the time they had reached the upper elementary grades they were creating projects for which their was so single answer. \u00a0Their work had started to resemble that of adult technologists or scientists.<\/p>\n

Second, schools were building on learning platforms that were created elsewhere. \u00a0At least two schools had built animation programs using ACME the on-line instruction platform created by Claremont Graduate University board of visitors member Dave Master. \u00a0Robert Moreau’s students at Roosevelt High School showed off some sophisticated graphics of which they were justifiably proud. \u00a0In terms of curriculum development, these novel and non-bureaucratic arrangements are good examples of how the education world is starting to look more like a network and less like a hierarchy.<\/p>\n

Third, schools were using inventive combinations of existing software. \u00a0Students at the Los Angeles High School for the Arts were using the freely available Google docs as a means of collaborating on projects, getting feedback from their teachers, and working through revisions. \u00a0At the same time they were using computer aided design software for set design and construction. \u00a0Tara Pearson, the development coordinator at LAHSA, helped show me how pedagogy and technology meshed. \u00a0But, as was\u00a0the case in the other exhibits I visited, she held back creating situations where students could explain their work to visiting adults.<\/p>\n

Thanks and kudos to all for sharing your work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have written warmly about Scotland’s national education intranet service, Glow, and at the end of the piece asked, “why can’t this be done here?” \u00a0In part, I am finding that it can…and is. \u00a0The Los Angeles Unified School District has an ambitious technology plan, has spend a bundle on infrastructure, and green shoots of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":186,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}