Posted in Teaching Tools, tagged digital, learning, technology on December 3, 2012 |
As schools across the nation move from printed textbooks to digital materials and digital learning environments, school libraries are adapting to keep pace—and new advancements are changing the very definition of school libraries and library media specialists.
Many of today’s students do not know what a card catalog is, and challenges lie not in locating information about various topics, but in narrowing it down and determining whether resources are trustworthy or not.
Posted in Education Policy, Teaching Tools, tagged digital, learning, technology, textbooks on October 31, 2012 |
By staff and wire service reports, eSchool News, October 3, 2012 — Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Oct. 2 called for the nation to move as fast as possible away from printed textbooks and toward digital ones. “Over the next few years, textbooks should be obsolete,” he declared.
It’s not just a matter of keeping up with the times, Duncan said in remarks to the National Press Club. It’s about keeping up with other countries whose students are leaving their American counterparts in the dust.
The transition from print to digital instruction involves much more than scanning books and uploading them to computers, tablet devices, or eReaders. Proponents describe a comprehensive shift to immersive, online learning experiences that engage students in a way a textbook never could.
Experienced educators are calling for caution against moving too rapidly, however.
Read the entire story by clicking here.
Posted in Teaching Tools, tagged digital, learning, technology on February 15, 2012 |
(From e-School News, February 6, 2012) — Thirty-nine states, 15,000 teachers, and 1.7 million students participated in the first-ever Digital Learning Day on Feb. 1, which aimed to demonstrate how technology is improving teaching and learning across the nation.
Headed by the Alliance for Excellent Education, Digital Learning Day kicked off with web sessions focusing on leadership and innovation, instruction, and professional learning and teacher effectiveness before attendees viewed a national town hall webcast featuring Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, and video conferences with teachers and students from exemplary schools across the nation.
Read the entire article by clicking here.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged digital, library, overload, technology on November 17, 2011 |
Photo Credit: Scientific American
Are we being inundated with too much information? Is the ease at which the Internet connects us to a myriad source of information stunting our thought process? Are our brains reverting to stone-age thinking when what we need is 21st century thinking?
These disturbing notions comes from Pulitzer Prize nominee and New York Times bestseller Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain. And at the 15th annual American Association of School Librarians (AASL) conference in Minneapolis, Minn., Carr emphasized that it’s not just adults who should be worried. “Schools and libraries are good places to see a snapshot of the cultural mindset on digital issues and change, and what they’re showing us is that instant access to information is everywhere,” said Carr.
Carr began his opening keynote by relating his own experiences with technology and the internet, saying he one day realized he had a harder time concentrating on one task. “My mind wanted to jump around and not go word-to-word in a linear way. I thought: My mind wants to behave like the internet, like my smart devices,” he explained.
Read the whole article in eSchool News by clicking here.
