Evaluating technology for use in the classroom is tough. There is always something new coming along. At the same time, there are a lot of people trying things out and reporting on it. Sifting through everything is hard to do. It is difficult to know if the evaluation is because a company asked them to do it or not. Just because a company is involved doesn’t immediately negate the validity or value of the information. It just requires an open mind and careful consideration. I tend to try to find information about a topic or trend in as many places as possible. It seems that if everything I find says the same thing, then there is likely one source behind all of it. If I find a variety in the opinions and results, then I seem to have better luck with it.
That being said, I try not to jump on every new thing that comes along. I’ve found through bitter experience that “less is more”. Our district used to jump on every innovation and new idea. We were always trying out the latest and greatest. In the long run, we ended up never being good at anything. I’ve learned that it is far better to be great with a technology and technique that might not be the newest than to be mediocre with the newest innovation or concept. At the same time, it is easy to do the same thing with information in the classroom. More resources is not necessarily better. Shrivastav and Hiltz (2013) showed how information overload can hinder a student’s learning. Less is more. References: Shrivastav, H. & Hiltz, S. (2013, August 15). Information overload in technology-based education: A meta-analysis. Proceedings of the Nineteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ff94/d26c6b4711216b6e034072b0cbbc2fae10fd.pdf Part 2: Edshelf I had fun putting this shelf together. It goes very well with what I am doing for my project and helping with one of the main problems that teachers have when getting started with coding in a core class. There is just way too much information out there. I recently wrote that MIT is proud of the fact that they say, “getting an education from MIT is like taking a drink of water from a fire hose.” Well, when trying to get started with coding in the classroom, when you search, it seems like trying to drink from a tidal wave. Again, less is more. https://stemtoolkit.weebly.com/project-documents.html
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