Learning Analytics

Learning analytics, to provide a contemporary example we'll all be familiar with, is the equivalent of tailored ads on Facebook or Youtube. Once you're logged into Facebook, every site you visit while logged in is recorded and based on your browsing habits, the ads on the sidebar will change. If I visit the H&M website, I get little notifications about sales they are having, and if I visit Groupon every day, the sidebar inserts a daily Groupon deal. This theory is slowly being integrated into an educational environment, where its operative use will be gleaning data from the patterns of each student's online behavior (yes, privacy is a concern, and yes it is addressed even if it isn't fixed). The main problem now is that it's hard to gather this information when each student visits multiple websites. The solution there is to filter all activity through a dashboard, in hopes of identifying learning issues early enough to create a solution. For reading, the closest to my discipline, they suggest "Kno," an e-textbook company, launched the “Kno Me” tool, which provides students with insights into their study habits and behaviors while using e-textbooks. Students can also better pace themselves by looking at data that shows them how much time has been spent working through specific texts, and where they are in relation to their goals.

Data Driven Teachers

A data-centered approach to teaching is immediately offputting, especially in an English classroom, where I will theoretically be. However, the author of this article makes a lot of cogent arguments for the usefulness of compiling and extracting information from large sets of data. The immediate impulse for me, as potentially in charge of an English class, is to center it around extended discussion sessions, because that's what really works for me. However, it's extraordinarily difficult to draw any real receptive indicators from those sessions. If something isn't working, it's very difficult for me, as the teacher, to both effectively lead and foster discussion as well as ensure that I'm connecting and engaging with each of the students I am teaching. Just because I love to read does not even remotely mean that will transfer to my students, and so I need to set tangible goals to work towards using numbers and percentages. This is something that will be a challenge for me, I can tell, but I am looking forward to becoming more proficient.

Engage Me or Enrage Me

I like the sentiment behind this article a lot, but the term "engagement" is frustratingly nebulous in this context, and assuming that "gamifying" a curriculum will work for every (or even most) students seems naive. I like how he places emphasis on ideas rather than the elements used to dress up and present those ideas. There's a reason that games like chess or (much) more recently Tetris have remained popular and prevalent as games exponentially more complex come out around them: it's because the foundation on which those mechanics are built on are rock solid and timeless. So, by that logic, we as educators need to find simple, compelling mechanics to act as the foundation of our engagement strategy and build and iterate upon those tried and true basics.

Lesson: Oops! I Broadcast It on the Internet

As technology and perpetual connectivity becomes more and more prevalent earlier in students' lives, it becomes more and more important that students understand they are leaving a sometimes permanent footprint on the internet. The key word of this lesson is "consequence," and it's extremely important that all students know the gravity of the decisions they make online and how "real" it is even if it doesn't seem so. The lesson itself promotes critical thinking skills and problem solving through role-playing and scenario examination, but I really like it because the messages they should leave with aren't empty ones. If I had had a Twitter in 7th or 8th grade I know I would regret the things I posted on there. Thankfully, the online blogging/self-expression began burgeoning after I had slightly more common sense, but unfortunately kids today don't have that entirely arbitrary barrier. 

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/lesson/oops-i-broadcast-it-internet-6-8

Understanding the Digital Learner

I agree almost wholeheartedly with everything stated in the article, with one major, significant exception. We are the generation the author is talking about, as are the kids who we will eventually be teaching. I didn't have access to a computer with internet until about seventh grade, and didn't own a smart phone until months ago. I did't have a modern video game system until high school, and my TV watching was limited by my parents. I know I'm in the minority in this regard, and yet I still consider myself highly proficient in technological pursuits and constantly "plugged in." The way in which the author frames the argument in an "us v. them" context is off-putting because in our case there is really just the "us." We, the millenials, are the first generation to grow up with this technology simply around us at all times, and it's become second nature. I can get a new electronic device and master it in a week, and since we're growing as the technology is growing we will never experience the gap or learning curve that older educators grapple with. For better or worse, everyone has a computer, everyone has an iPad, and they are obtaining these devices earlier and earlier, and subsequently mastering them earlier, but the gap is nowhere near what the author of this article posits.