Digital Learning in High-Needs Schools


Book Description

Digital Learning in High-Needs Schools examines the challenges and affordances that arise when high-needs school communities integrate educational technologies into their unique settings. Although remote, blended, and networked learning are ubiquitous today, a number of cultural, economic, and political realities—from the digital divide and digital literacy to poverty and language barriers—affect our most vulnerable and underresourced teachers and students. This book uses critical theory to compassionately scrutinize and unpack the systemic issues that impact high-needs schools’ implementation of digital learning tools. Incisive sociocultural analyses across fifteen original chapters explore the intersection of society, technology, people, politics, and education in high-needs school contexts. Informed by real-world cases pertaining to technology infrastructure, formative feedback, Universal Design for Learning, and more, these chapters illuminate how best practices emerge from culturally responsive and context-specific foundations.




What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media


Book Description

Facebook, Twitter, Google...today's tech-savvy students are always plugged in. However, all too often their teachers and administrators aren't experienced in the use of these familiar digital tools. If schools are to prepare students for the future, administrators and educators must harness the power of digital technologies and social media. With contributions from authorities on the topic of educational technology, What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media is a compendium of the most useful tools for any education setting. Throughout the book, experts including Will Richardson, Vicki Davis, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Richard Byrne, Joyce Valenza, and many others explain how administrators and teachers can best integrate technology into schools, helping to make sense of the often-confusing world of social media and digital tools. They offer the most current information for the educational use of blogs, wikis and podcasts, online learning, open-source courseware, educational gaming, social networking, online mind mapping, mobile phones, and more, and include examples of these methods currently at work in schools. As the book clearly illustrates, when these tools are combined with thoughtful and deliberate pedagogical practice, it can create a transformative experience for students, educators, and administrators alike. What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media reveals the power of information technology and social networks in the classroom and throughout the education community.




Digital Schools


Book Description

Educator John Dewey said that "if we teach today's students as we taught yesterday's, we rob them of tomorrow." That wisdom resonates strongly today, and that maxim underlies this insightful look at the present and future of education in the digital age. Darrell West makes clear in Digital Schools, today's educational institutions must reinvent themselves to engage students successfully and provide them with skills needed to compete in an increasingly global, technological, and online world. Otherwise American education system will continue to fall woefully short in its mission to prepare the population to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world. West examines new models of education made possible by enhanced information technology, new approaches that will make public education in the post-industrial age more relevant, efficient, and ultimately more productive. Digital Schools surveys this new landscape, examining personalized learning; real time student assessment; ways to enhance teacher evaluation; the untapped potential of distance learning; and ways in which technology can improve effectiveness of special education and foreign language instruction. West illustrates potential contributions of blogs, wikis, social media, and video games and augmented reality in K-2 and higher education. If today's schools combine increased digitization with needed improvements in organization, operations, and culture, we can overcome current barriers, produce better results, and improve manner in which schools function.




Teaching the Digital Generation


Book Description

"This might well be THE contemporary manual for effective education reform. In a world where the future is now, schools are falling behind. It is a lag we can no longer afford." —Sean M. Nosek, Principal Westview Secondary School, Maple Ridge, BC, Canada "This is the most important book about high schools since Breaking Ranks for school facilities planners." —David E. Anstrand, Principal, Education Environment Planning Consultants Board Member, Council of Educational Facility Planners International Discover options for instruction and school design that reflect the needs of 21st-century students! Preparing students to meet the demands of a constantly changing, technology-driven environment presents today′s educators with unique challenges. This innovative resource demonstrates how traditional, industrial-type high schools have become outdated and helps school leaders plan facilities and curriculum in ways that benefit students′ academic development and performance. Teaching the Digital Generation examines how educators can address the learning needs of secondary students immersed in a digital world by designing and implementing new instructional models and technology infrastructure. The authors explore ten alternative high school models that address 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, and digital literacy, and pose five critical considerations: What should instruction and learning look like in a 21st-century school? How can technology foster this kind of learning? What noninstructional components are required? How can time be used differently to support our vision? How can new facility design turn this vision into reality? Incorporating issues of facility design with curriculum and instructional planning, the authors offer educational leaders a new vision for schools.




Getting Smart


Book Description

A comprehensive look at the promise and potential of online learning In our digital age, students have dramatically new learning needs and must be prepared for the idea economy of the future. In Getting Smart, well-known global education expert Tom Vander Ark examines the facets of educational innovation in the United States and abroad. Vander Ark makes a convincing case for a blend of online and onsite learning, shares inspiring stories of schools and programs that effectively offer "personal digital learning" opportunities, and discusses what we need to do to remake our schools into "smart schools." Examines the innovation-driven world, discusses how to combine online and onsite learning, and reviews "smart tools" for learning Investigates the lives of learning professionals, outlines the new employment bargain, examines online universities and "smart schools" Makes the case for smart capital, advocates for policies that create better learning, studies smart cultures




What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media Wiley E-Text Card


Book Description

Facebook, Twitter, Google . . . today's tech-savvy students are always plugged in. However, all too often their teachers and administrators aren't experienced in the use of these familiar digital tools. If schools are to prepare students for the future, administrators and educators must harness the power of digital technologies and social media. With contributions from authorities on the topic of educational technology, What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media is a compendium of the most useful tools for any education setting. Throughout the book, experts including Will Richardson, Vicki Davis, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Richard Byrne, Joyce Valenza, and many others explain how administrators and teachers can best integrate technology into schools, helping to make sense of the often-confusing world of social media and digital tools. They offer the most current information for the educational use of blogs, wikis and podcasts, online learning, open-source courseware, educational gaming, social networking, online mind mapping, mobile phones, and more, and include examples of these methods currently at work in schools. As the book clearly illustrates, when these tools are combined with thoughtful and deliberate pedagogical practice, it can create a transformative experience for students, educators, and administrators alike. What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media reveals the power of information technology and social networks in the classroom and throughout the education community.




Online Learning


Book Description

This book has strategies and tips that every online professor wants students to know before they sign up for an online class. Bowman has provided a reference tool for students to develop self-directed learning skills that will help them become secure and knowledgeable about technology, studying, communicating online, and getting work done on time.




Diversifying Digital Learning


Book Description

Many Schools and programs in low-income neighborhoods lack access to the technological resources that those in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods have at their fingertips. This inequity creates a persistent divide in both formal and informal digital literacy that further marginalizes youths from minority and first-generation communities. Diversifying Digital Learning outlines the pervasive problems that exist with ensuring digital equity and identifies successful strategies to tackle the issue. Bringing together top scholars to discuss how digital equity in education might become a key goal in American education, this book is structured to provide a framework for understanding how historically underrepresented students most effectively engage with technology-and how institutions may help or hinder students' ability to develop and capitalize on digital literacies. Addressing the intersection of digital media, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic class in a frank manner, the lessons within this compelling work will help educators enable students in grades K-12, as well as in postsecondary institutions, to participate in a rapidly changing world framed by shifting new media technologies.




Individualized Learning with Technology


Book Description

Today we are moving into an information revolution that is every bit as life altering as the previous industrial revolution. Students must now achieve at a higher level academically, while also gaining important technology proficiencies required in work and life. However, by utilizing proven general and adult learning theories in association with educational technology, many of these new learning requirements can be met. This book can be a starting point for educators to begin considering how individualized learning could be done in high school to encourage life-long learning.




Measurement Demystified


Book Description

Your Groundbreaking Framework for Measurement and Reporting Most people find measurement, analytics, and reporting daunting—and L&D professionals are no different. As these practices have become critically important for organizations’ efforts to improve performance, talent development professionals have often been slow to embrace them for many reasons, including the seeming complexity and challenge of the practices. Few organizations have a well-thought-out measurement and reporting strategy, and there are often scant resources, limited time, and imperfect data to work with when organizations do attempt to create one. Measurement Demystified: Creating Your L&D Measurement, Analytics, and Reporting Strategy is a much-needed and welcomed resource that breaks new ground with a framework to simplify the discussion of measurement, analytics, and reporting as it relates to L&D and talent development practitioners. This book helps practitioners select and use the right measures for the right reasons; select, create, and use the right types of reports; and create a comprehensive measurement and reporting strategy. Recognizing the angst and reluctance people often show in these areas, authors and experts David Vance and Peggy Parskey break down the practices and processes by providing a common language and an easy-to-use structure. They describe five types of reports, four broad reasons to measure, and three categories of measures. Their method works for large and small organizations, even if yours is an L&D staff of one or two. The guidance remains the same: Start small and grow. Measurement Demystified is a great first book for talent development professionals with no prior knowledge of or experience with measurement and a valuable resource for measurement experts. Those adept at lower levels of training evaluation will grow their knowledge base and capabilities, while measurement experts will discover shortcuts and nuggets of information to enhance their practices. A more comprehensive treatment of these important topics will not be found elsewhere.