Also posted at DML Central: http://dmlcentral.net/blog/monica-bulger/trouble-testing It’s obviously summer because my news alerts are no longer steadily reporting concerns about education, our children’s future, the problems with teachers, etc. Perhaps now, then, is the perfect time to address the issue of testing and its troubles, while a little distance might provide perspective. So, why do…
Yesterday, I attended Google’s Big Tent Event in Hertfordshire. As an academic, I’m used to attending conferences at universities or Hiltons, not countryside resorts with helicopter pads. The event was held in a grand tent that could easily hold 500 people. It was well-insulated from weather and noise, carpeted, with an extraordinary sound and projection…
To ban or not to ban laptops in classrooms? What about cell phones? And calculators? Before we hand students a list of technologies to leave at home, let’s consider the real problem: attention vs. distraction. If you’re going to ban everything distracting students, you should consider what you’re wearing, how you talk, the guy in…
When I was in high school in the late 80’s — early 90’s, it seemed that the U.S. education system was an abysmal failure — after all, weren’t the Soviets and the Chinese students scoring higher in math? Today, headlines still decry our education system as a failure. In a recent op-ed piece published in…
A colleague of mine recently asked for reading recommendations in the area of Educational Technology, and I started thinking about the trail I followed (a la, Vannevar Bush) to arrive at my current notions of the field. I taught college composition from 1998-2003. Some of my colleagues were teaching Dreamweaver or FrontPage in their composition…
I’ve been teaching graduate communications courses for the past year. Evolved from a standard writing course, I teach students to think of communication beyond the page. The texts for the course are Duarte’s (2008) slide:ology and Zander & Zander’s (2000) The Art of Possibility. But, where’s the writing textbook, you may ask? It’s a controversial…