Wednesday, January 25, 2012

First Day Review ala Speed Dating

Creative Commons Licensed Work by MikeCrane83
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
My friend Roy just shared an opening day exercise with learners in the second course of a two-course sequence, based on the speed dating model. He said most of the students already knew each other from the other class and he wanted them to review some material as they entered the second term.

So he had them pair off, then gave them a question to discuss for three minutes. After the first three minutes, one of the pair would move on to discuss the next question with another person. He used 8 questions this time out, and said students asked to do that activity again.

The move and talk model not only keeps the interest going. His take was students were not only teaching each other and uncoving misconceptions, but "switching-up voices" provided another way of explaining the concept, possibly making it more clear than an earlier explanation.

Thanks, Roy! I love that you keep sharing these energizing practices.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Jan. Apple Announcements: The "Digitization of Education"

Between 8 and 9 am yesterday, a colleague wrote to me w/ the link to the live announcements Apple was making in NYC about their new interactive book and authoring products, asking if I was tuned in to the event. The channels have been on fire with remarks, including my email response to her:

I spent some time looking at the IBookstore and IBookAuthor and the Twitter counter from the creator (earlier Apple Engineer) of Push Pop Press, http://pushpoppress.com/ourchoice/, which Facebook bought earlier
this year, saying Apple's product looks likes his re-branded.
I loved the products and still can't help but think about the competition between good inventions and intentions with market share (vendor bondage). This continues to raise the question of technology and privilege.

On the positive side, I've been watching custom publishing since the around nineteen ninety and also think about how we tried to get publishers working with CCCOnline to consider books as only one of their digital assets. And now the devices have added a twist once again. 

Last, I intend to carefully read Apple rights to the books created with IAuthor. I'm not clear on that yet.