In his 1996 book The Rise of the Network Society, Manuel Castells, a sociology professor at the University of California Berkeley who has held positions around the world, observed the late 20th century was marked by drastic changes in patterns of commerce and government that challenged long-established social norms around the world. Because of these Read More
I wrote this piece for another audience a couple of years back… it still seems quite relevant given the observation I made this year in middle schools. It was with horror that I walked up and down the boardwalk of the mid-Atlantic beach I visited for the first time with my family this summer. Every Read More
Early in human history, an individual’s identity was created by and for the people with whom the individual lived, and this number was small. Anthologist Robin Dunbar (1992) concluded that the size of the human neocortex limits the size of humans groups that can be maintained to about 150 individuals. Creating a new identity was Read More
Human brains are “wired” to learn in social situations. While the word “wired” may seem inappropriate when describing human physiology, it is illustrative. Human brains comprise long and thin neurons; electrical and chemical activity in those cells cretes cognition. The survival of the human species has been attributed to the cooperation among members of a Read More
The idea of using new technology for cognitive tasks has been well-received by some and ill-received by others, and that has been true throughout human history, especially at transitions when one dominant technology was being replaced by another. Using computers to support human cognition was a central theme of information theorist Vannevar Bush’s seminal article Read More
When computer technology (hardware and software) advanced to the point where graphic user interfaces and network connectivity became standard components of personal computers (about the mid-1990’s), they also advanced to the point where they could display multimedia content (high-resolution graphics, and audio, video and animations) as well. From the second decade of the 21st century, Read More
If we hope to make technology an easy-to-use and useful educational technology that is also secure and reliable, school and technology leaders must gather data to understand the information and instructional technology (I&IT) in schools: Users’ perspectives—There is a rich body of research that supports the conclusion that perceived ease of use and usefulness is Read More
Educational researchers Scott Garbiner, Cary Aplin, and Gitanjali Ponnappa-Brenner (2007) contrast engineering instruction for well-defined and measurable outcomes with designing instruction for sociocultural environments. Those who engineer instruction seek plans that lead students to meet goals (alternatively they select prescribed instruction plans that are intended to produce the desired outcome), and if the goal is Read More
Alvin Toffler (1980) is credited with introducing the term prosumer to describe the pattern of media use that he accurately predicted would dominate in the digital age. The term combines producer and consumer, and a prosumer is described as one who both produces and consumes, sometimes simultaneously. Wikipedia, the open source encyclopedia, is an example Read More
In the last year, leaders from several schools reached out to me to provide some advice as they and their technology leaders were managing serious disruptions in service. Some were the result of failed devices, some were the result of misconfigurations, some the result of malware; all were solved and all led me to some Read More