Learning in the 21st Century

Book Review of Digital Minimalism by Peter Schutte I just finished reading Cal Newport's, ‘Digital Minimalism’ and I wanted to record my thoughts while they are still fresh in my head. So here it goes ... The book is a succinct and well researched piece of writing that takes a critical look at the way in which modern society uses digital communication tools. Its central point is that in the age of the attention economy, where smartphones act as modern day billboards and multinational IT firms have massive incentives for us to continue to increase our usage. We need to think more critically about how we use these new communication tools and the roles we allow them to play in our lives.  A particularly illuminating thought that comes across, is the conceptualisation of a point at which more digital communication means less high quality and productive human life. A useful analogue with the economic principle of diminishing marginal returns is also drawn. As well as the related questi...

Introduction As we have all moved online for schooling , the need to locate high quality resources for maths teaching has become even more relevant. Here is my current top 20 collection of resource sites / channels. They are not ranked in any particular order.  Maths is Fun - fantastically simple but broad reference website with few ads Khan Academy  - treasure trove of useful videos and practice  Nrich  - storehouse of conceptually rich questions  Desmos  - graphical calculator and fun well thought out dynamic activities  YouCubed  - tasks designed with deep mathematical rigour Dy/Dan Blog  - great original ideas for maths classes Siyavula Textbooks - open source & free to repurpose 3 Blue Brown Youtube Channel  - inspiring visual mathematical concept videos  The Organic Chemistry Tutor   - simple effective help videos for maths  Crash Course Statistics   - really well thought out explainer videos  Dr...

Introduction This is a collection of my latest useful resources from my Research.  It is an interesting mixture of screenshots and documents I came across through searching the web or my supervisor.                 Becoming A Literature Search Ninja   Kickstart your Research   Successful Educational Research  Literature Review Templates  Really Good Dissertation Guide   Thematic Lit Review Video Lit Reviews Writing Center How to write a Literature review   How to Conduct a Literature Review: Organizing/Writing Research And Dissertation Resources DOCUMENT TEMPLATES Writing Tools  Hemingway Editor  Thesis Writer  Open Source Writing Aide   Grammarly  

Introduction Most teachers begin their introduction to Pedagogy and Learning Design with Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide. So it's a useful place to start, as you begin to come through the initial phase of constructing some sort of functioning Learning Ecosystem online and move to wanting to deepen the quality of your Online Class. Something really important to remember as you move into this deeper level of ICT integration, is to explain the rationale for each step to your students. This is also really new to them and so guiding them through it carefully, deliberately and as slowly as needed is important if you want to get proper engagement and establish a fully functioning system. My experience is that normally teachers, including myself, underestimate how much time this setup stage actually takes. Bloom's Taxonomy and Extending it to the Digital Realm Make a Copy of this Doc >

  Introduction I decided to do this post, as I am busying completing my minor dissertation and one of the key skills I am needing to upgrade is my ability to find useful, credible and relevant academic literature for my research area. As I have dug deeper into the problem, it was interesting to see how many different approaches there were and how the skill is a strange mix of being systematic and creative at the same time. I also had a friend who is an experienced academic who made some very helpful videos on the topic and so I have included them in this post too. Charting a Path The world's knowledge, whilst mostly converted into digital form these days, is still really spread out amongst a varied collection of sources. These sources comprise things like open source repositories, university libraries, private databases, journal articles, ...  etc. Access to these sources or repositories is not always free and even when you do manage to get access through a university l...

This is a fantastically useful study that tries to pinpoint the factors that contribute to student achievement , through conducting a Meta Analysis of current research in the field. For all teachers it is worth bearing in mind those factors that make the biggest difference when designing learning engagements or running departments. Original Article 

Introduction As most of the world has gone into a sudden phase of online learning. I thought it would be helpful to put together a starter pack of simple resources. I used these to get my classes up and running fully online, over the last week. The main things I focused on were: A place to put learning resources that students could easily get too. A way to to create a sense of community alongside the work we were doing.  A way to keep track what was going on with my students and give feedback in an efficient manner.  Having a Place to Put Things & Sequence Learning  So my go to tool for getting setup was just a simple Google Doc with 3 columns and a contents page. To add to the visual appeal I used different fonts, colours and clear headings. I have included a basic template below for anyone to use if they would like. You could also use things like: Google Classroom, Edmodo, Managebac, a Google Site, the list goes on ...  In the end you just choos...

I just finished a course in Learning Design and  I am keen to keep experimenting with the new skills I developed, so that I consolidate them for the longer term. The first small task I have decided to undertake, is to use the MYP Unit planning framework to design a learning experience based around the subject area of Euclidean Geometry. Below is a Google Form I made, to make engaging with the framework a little easier. There is also a Word Doc Template I found. Over the longer term I am not quite sure which will be more useful? My hope is to be able to create an amazing unit on the topic. In order to do this I have  collected some of my best resources on the topic below. Once I am satisfied I have all the resources I need, I will then put summarise it all into my final unit plan. Unit Planning using the IB MYP Planning Framework Planning tool for MYP Maths using a Google Form  Instead of Using a Google Form - A Word Doc Template could also be used Te...

Introduction:  I recently completed a project, building a Bot for the Learning Design Module in my Masters in ICT at UJ. It was quite an eye opening experience to see how far the technology has come and how accessible it really is. Below are all the resources that I used to make the Bot, so if you want to build one, this post should at least save you some research time. The Bot that I made with the help of my group members was a Bot for a student Help service.  Initial Research Stage: I started by just reading as much as I could about Bots to get a general understanding. Building a Bot basically boils down to trying to build either a rule based Bot, which is a lot like a decision tree being used as a conversational model. Or trying to build an AI bot which uses existing libraries and tries to match input from the user against these libraries to figure out meaning. I chose the rule based Bot as it better matched the context of my project and because I think an AI Bot w...

I just finished reading Andrew Yang's, ‘War on Normal People’ and I wanted to record my thoughts while they are still fresh in my head. So here it goes ... This book looks at the way in which the the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the 21st century  will affect the economy and the jobs of the people in it. A key theme is that if we leave our current capitalist system unchecked during this change, it is likely to end up with many people being left without jobs and massive disruption to the fabric of our society. The book serves as both a warning to society as well as an outline of the changes that need to be made, in order to adapt effectively. It’s written from the perspective of Andrew Yang, a once corporate lawyer and entrepreneur who started the Venture for America Initiative and is now running for the office of the president of the United States of America. Yang writes with a refreshing honesty and grit, from the perspective of someone who has been in the tr...