Mendi Benigni's Public Library

Again, most of the technology demonstrated at EdTech this year is still fairly new. I have to give credit to all who bravely stood in front of groups to do the sessions. At least they tried. I do have to say the group presenting the creation of videos from the College of Charleston did the best job. The one thing I was looking for was how were devices integrated into the classroom. This group did that by explaining what the assignment was, how it was evaluated, and how they let students use the tools they thought would be the best to use. Why force someone to use Windows Movie Maker if the student has a Mac with iMovie. Better yet, if a student has an iOS device such as an iPhone should they not use iMovie for iOS or Splice? It is the finished product that counts. That is what I wanted to see

Problem

Project vs Problem Based Learning

According to the study, today's young people are taking longer to graduate because they feel that, by combining school with work and internships, they stand a greater chance of finding a desirable job.

Members of Gen Y who recently entered (or have "attempted" to enter the workforce) have found that despite their best efforts to do everything right in preparing, it hasn't helped them get a job -

We know from studying young adults that multi-tasking is affecting our ability to do tasks efficiently because we are distracted.

critical thinking is important because of the volume of information

The mental habit of dividing one's attention into many small slices has significant implications for the way young people learn, reason, socialize, do creative work and understand the world.

the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks

Today 82% of kids are online by the seventh grade, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. And what they love about the computer, of course, is that it offers the radio/CD thing and so much more--games, movies, e-mail, IM, Google, MySpace.

seem to value speed over accuracy

Twitter was strictly for old people, that no teenager bothered reading newspapers when they could get news off the Internet or TV, they are reluctant to pay for music and they are big fans of viral marketing.

Rather than simply “telling children what to do,” they believed parents should talk with their children instead of “at” them.

baby boomers negotiated

baby boomers who were babies born between 1946 and 1964

almost all the families lived a happy and prosperous life