What Makes an App Great for Kids Might Surprise You
Anya Kamenetz, Ad Age, 2018/03/13
It has a clickbait title and stock horror ("my son gave up a birthday party for an iphone! No!") as a lead-in but the observation inside this article is more interesting: "A better model for learning apps... may be less slot machine and more sandbox: a digital toy, not a digital game. More...
La nature en ville : comment accélérer la dynamique ?
Un nouvel âge pour l’école maternelle ?
Que nous apprennent les comparaisons internationales de la spécificité de l’école maternelle française ? D’abord, constatent les auteurs, qu’elle tend à perdre son avance historique en termes d’« universalité » : certes 100 % des enfants de 4 ans sont « couverts » par l’enseignement préscolaire en France depuis plusieurs décennies, mais ses voisins européens l’ont maintenant « rattrapée » ou sont en passe de le faire, notamment depuis que l’Union européenne a fixé un objectif de taux de couverture de 90 % pour les 3-6 ans au sommet de Barcelone en 2002. Avec 7 800 dollars par élève en 2014, la France dépense, par ailleurs, moins que la moyenne de l’UE-22 pour le préélémentaire. À titre de comparaison, au Danemark c’est 14 000 dollars par élève !
Surtout, l’école maternelle française se singularise par sa focalisation sur la préparation du devenir scolaire des enfants et tend à calquer son fonctionnement sur celui de l’école élémentaire. Un mouvement de « primarisation » qui débute dans les années 1980 et fait de la France, notent les auteurs, « le pays le plus tourné vers les buts académiques » (avec la Belgique). Un modèle isolé donc. Plus...
JSE / Liberty Schools Challenge
JSE / Liberty Schools Challenge
A number of things to note about this newly launched online version of a ghost trading competition in South Africa: first, the use of a simulation competition to promote learning; second, the sponsorship, for the first time, of the competition by an external agency; and third, the use of the simulation to promote sales (of "resources" - i.e., newspapers) online. More...
Education and Embodiment
Education and Embodiment
We hear over and over again the idea that our online experiences are impersonal, disembodied experiences, and that therefore a full education, which necessarily involves bodily experiences, is impossible online. More...
The Art of Intellectual Property
The Art of Intellectual Property
The case against strong protection of intellectual property expressed by means of yet another analogy: wedding pictures. "We have a choice. We can treat the professional photographer's artistic work as proprietary intellectual property not to be meddled with. More...
Debate? Dissent? Discussion? Oh, Don't Go There!
Debate? Dissent? Discussion? Oh, Don't Go There!
The research is at the point mostly anecdotal rather than empirical, but the proposal is provokative: today's students are less willing to engage in debate and dispute, less individualistic, and more likely to focus on similarities rather than differences. More...
Connections and Emergence: Developing a Playshop Model Through Connectionist Ideas
Connections and Emergence: Developing a Playshop Model Through Connectionist Ideas
This item is interesting on two levels. On the one hand, it proposes the use of connectionist principles to create an experimental space for learning called Playshop. The idea here is that the learning of rules and principles an emergent result of participating in a network of story-telling and playful activities. More...
The Convergence Culture Clash
The Convergence Culture Clash
Another one of these items from thw world of online news, this time looking at the (eventual) convergence of television, radio and online sources. Contains useful advice for educators: note especially the old/new comparisons. More...
What Web Services Are Not
A good antidote to the hype surrounding web services. They are not stand-alone applications. There will not be one universal XML standard. More...