I'm baffled by WhosHere. And I'm no newbie. I built my first Web page in 1994, wrote my first blog entry in 1999, and sent my first tweet in October 2006. My user number on Yahoo's event site, Upcoming.org: 14. I love tinkering with new gadgets and diving into new applications. But WhosHere had me stumped. It's an iPhone app that knows where you are, shows you other users nearby, and lets you chat with them. Once it was installed and running, I drew a blank. What was I going to do with this thing?
How learning in the classroom is changing and why Professor Chris Dede and his team are on a non-crusade to figure out how all of the pieces fit together.
While appropriate as an initial focus, it is time that the educational community move beyond an emphasis on 1:1 computing (each child having his/her own personal computer) to a vision of a handheld-centric classroom, where each child not only has his/her own personal, handheld computer, but also has access to networked PCs, probeware, digital cameras, etc. Such a classroom digital infrastructure, we argue, uniquely supports project-based learning, where children can engage in multi-week, multi-media, multi-subject, collaborative efforts. With the rapid emergence of low-cost handheld devices, the realization of this vision--and its associated educational affordances-- is literally possible tomorrow in our children's classrooms. Thus, it is imperative that the educational community engages in extended conversations, now, about the range of teaching and learning opportunities that the handheld-centric classroom makes possible. Our article is a contribution to that discussion.
Harvard, MIT, and U. of Wisconsin partner under the US Department of Education's Star Schools grant to test the effects of handheld computer augmented reality simulations in the k-12 classroom.
NRC Executive Summary is from a new report noting the importance of research in emerging educational technologies.
This chart displays Rems and mRems and their effect on the human body