My Thoughts: Rethinking Educational Technology: Some Early Steps

(sorry it took me so long to post my thoughts on this...been very busy!)
Rethinking Educational Technology: Some Early Steps
Michael Eisenberg
Dept. of Computer Science
(thoughts from conference 1.30.08)

Prof Eisenberg seems to have a very specific type of technology and a specific way that he wants to introduce this technology in the classroom. It was interesting to see the other ideas and projects that are out there as well as the thoughts of the other people that attended the conference.

Interesting shareware: Hypergami Program

They have 3-D printers at CU! No way! So rad :)

Overall themes:

• focus on designing content-rich activities as opposed to skill-building
• focus on children's culture/interests that go beyond the classroom
• blend physical & computational media, making use of these tools

Books I want to check out that he mentioned:

• How People Learn (about metacognition)
  
• The Sociology of Childhood
• The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren

Eisenberg focused more on integrating technology physically into the places that children go (ie. malls, and other hang out spots) but he didn't seem as focused as I am in integrating education with these technological devices but he just seemed to want them to be present in childrens' worlds.

Website to check out: instructables.com

One thing I really liked about the presentation was the thought that we should link interests (of the children) to important concepts to increase motivation in the students.

What I really did NOT like about Eisenberg's outlook is that he didn't take into consideration what we can do in the schools because of restrictions

• CSAP prep
• Time required to focus on Lit & Math thus limited time for science & tech
• What the schools have money for

When I brought up these restrictions (another conference attendee mentioned a bit on this and he dismissed her comment pretty quickly -- bothered me a lot!) Eisenberg dismissed them quickly and just went back to what he'd already said...a few people in the audience seemed to agree with me and came to talk to me afterwards but I don't understand why he wouldn't look at theings the way they are. Hell I'd LOVE to change a bunch of the things about the school system but it's not that easy to change things, so I'd like to focus on getting around the problems instead of pushing for change that I don't see happening any time soon.

So it was interesting and I learned a bit, but I really didn't agree with Eisenberg's outlook on things...