Pew Internet looks at differences in internet access and usage; high school provides cell phones for texting; flattening school walls in Oregon; massive online classes move from teaching code to inspiring poetry—and more in this week’s Playback.
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Filed by Christine Cupaiuolo
Pew Internet looks at differences in internet access and usage; high school provides cell phones for texting; flattening school walls in Oregon; massive online classes move from teaching code to inspiring poetry—and more in this week’s Playback.
Digital Differences: Pew Internet released a new report on differences in internet access among demographic groups, especially when it comes to access to high-speed broadband at home.
The report also looks at the varied ways in which people connect to the internet; about six in 10 adults go online wirelessly using a cell phone, laptop, e-book reader, or tablet computer. The “rise of mobile” is also changing the story:
Groups that have traditionally been on the other side of the digital divide in basic internet access are using wireless connections to go online. Among smartphone owners, young adults, minorities, those with no college experience, and those with lower household income levels are more likely than other groups to say that their phone is their main source of internet access.
Access does not equal opportunity, however, as scholars such as S. Craig Watkins remind us.
Plus: Pew Internet senior researcher Amanda Lenhart joined Joseph Viola, an educational psychologist at St. Albans School, and parenting columnist Sharon Cindrich, author of “E-Parenting: Keeping Up With Your Tech-Savvy Kids,” on WAMU’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show to discuss how teens are using social media. The full transcript is available online.
“More than 90 percent of teens who use social media say they have a Facebook profile. But Twitter is starting to catch a bit,” said Lenhart. “We see about 15 percent of teens using that. And they’re doing all sorts of things on the site. So, it’s not just posting my status update, but I’m sharing photos, I’m sharing videos, I’m connecting with friends and family.”
Lenhart gave a presentation on “Digital Divides and Bridges: Technology Use Among Youth” at the Media and the Well-Being of Children and Adolescents conference at UPenn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center. Her talk highlights the demographic differences among groups of youth in their adoption, use, and experiences with technology and social media:
SRY, BRT: To improve communications between teachers and students, Nutana Collegiate, a transitional public school in central Saskatchewan, Canada, has embraced text messaging—outside the classroom.
The initiative, writes Stephen Noonoo in The Journal, “provides school-owned cell phones to students from remote areas and low-income backgrounds who were previously forced off-grid when school ended.” The program emerged from discussions about how to engage at-risk students and improve low retention rates.
Tenth-grade English teacher Tyler Campbell, whose students piloted the program, told The Journal that the thousands of texts back and forth “got to be overwhelming at first, but you kind of get the hang of it.” So what did all those texts cover?
While much of the deluge was back-and-forth banter on tardiness, homework, or grade anxiety, Campbell also began using the constant communiqués as a means to engage students in learning. He began texting a daily journal topic every morning and encouraged students to think about it before they came to class. So far, it’s been largely effective, perhaps as a result of the psychology that makes cell phones so addictive for teens in the first place.
Flattening the School Walls: This Education Week story on the turn-around of Al Kennedy Alternative School (now the Kennedy School of Sustainability) in Cottage Grove, Ore., doesn’t get into the role of digital media, other than mentioning that some students participate in online math lessons through Khan Academy. But it is relatable to discussions of connected learning—particularly the importance of interest-driven learning and community support and involvement.
Read it for another look at how project-based learning can change the playing field.
Can One Teacher Teach a Class of 100,000 to Write?: NPR reports on the launch of Coursera, a company founded by Stanford University professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Kollef to provide free online classes to students around the world. Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Michigan are joining the effort, which already has attracted $15 million in funding from two venture capitalists.
“By providing what is a truly high-quality educational experience to so many students for free, I think we can really change many, many people’s lives,” Koller told Morning Edition.
We previously discussed the history and growth of Massive Open Online Courses — otherwise known as MOOCs. But what’s new in this story in the promise of teaching classes that one might consider more difficult to bring to the masses—classes like poetry, which Al Filreis, a UPenn poetry professor, will lead.
Plus: eCampus News reports on the development of an online college for union members, tentatively named the College for Working Families. “The National Labor College will make about 20 online courses available for the AFL-CIO’s 11.5 million members next fall in an effort to help workers adapt to a job market that increasingly requires higher education,” writes Dennis Carter.
Building Badge Systems: MentorMob CEO Kris Chinosorn talks with Chicago Crains Business about building the back end for an open badge system to assess and validate the progress of online learners—starting with the Girls Scouts.
Mentor Mob and the Girl Scouts joined forces with the Motorola Mobility Foundation to enter the 2012 Digital Media & Learning Competition. Their winning initiative, My Girl Scout Sash is an App, encourages girls, volunteers, educators, and community leaders to learn how to build a mobile app based on “The Girl’s Guide to Girl Scouting.”
“MentorMob was already set up to do the learning content side of it, but we hadn’t worked at all on a certification process, or on assessing performance by putting in quizzes along with other things to actually prove someone is learning the content,” said Chinosorn. “So that’s what we’re injecting now with the grant money, building that framework, and also building it so it hooks into Mozilla’s API so that MentorMob can become a trusted source in learning.”
“What MentorMob is set up to do is to crowd-source learning,” he continued. “We would eventually like to be able to release this into the world, so that any organization or individual who wants will be able to come in and create amazing learning content, then let anyone access it and receive badges along the way that are trusted by the public.”
Wage Gap? Got an App for That: Equal Pay Day—the day that reflects how far into the current year women must work to match men’s earnings in the previous year—fell on April 17. In response, the U.S. Department of Labor released a number of fact sheets, tools and resources, along with the winners of the Equal Pay App Challenge.
Submissions took the form of interactive games, social or professional networks, and data visualization tools. One of the winning teams, representing Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, created Close the Wage Gap website “to educate users about the gender wage gap and arm them with information and negotiation tools to eliminate it.”
Click the “Show me the money” tab to get customized salary comparison information, and learn about the gender wage gap in your profession and geographic area. The “Ask for it” tab leads to negotiation tips and practice videos.
Note to teachers and students: There’s a smaller than average gap for women working in STEM fields, such as computer programming.
from Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/macfound/iQaL/~3/RQvC2vIRxGE/
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