The Adobe Flash Player has become as common place as HTML in the web world. Many educational games are built on Flash. Flash makes boring web pages come to life. The interactive web world has been divided into the Flash player type add-on technologies and the dynamic HTML crowd. Microsoft is attempting to bridge the gap with their Silverlight framework.
Microsoft has recently released their latest version of their Silverlight framework which allows programmers to create "Flash-like" applications in a Microsoft way. These programs run on an add-on to your browser that comes from Microsoft directly called Silverlight. With Silverlight, web designers and programmers who are used to creating applications for Windows can now move their interactive programs to the web.
We're starting to use Silverlight at melwin.net. Our first attempt is our online Learning Library, which focuses on teaching basic library skills. With Silverlight, you can play music, videos, create animations and much more. It's an upcoming technology and has a strong backing from one of the largest players in the industry. Writing Silverlight programs isn't trivial and requires either programming skills or really good scripting abilities. Microsoft has released a set of free tools to get most people started creating Silverlight-enabled websites.
It's still a bit of a brain exercise to get things to work just the way you want them to, but the potential is there to transform the "flat" web to a more interactive world. At melwin.net, we intend on creating some easy to learn Silverlight tools for children, which should open a world of creative possibilities.
A good book to get to start learning about Microsoft Silverlight is the Silverlight 3 Jumpstart by David Yack.
The Georgia Standard
Recently, Georgia has adopted a new grading system based on individual proficiencies and moving away from the traditional A,B,C,D,F and 0-100 system. I was at a dinner with a group of parents and universally, they all hated the system. In fact, they said many teachers of their children hated the system. Personally, I completely support the new system. I've seen its use in helping us identify strengths and weaknesses in our own children. The system is quite simple. A list of proficiencies are listed in various topics. Students are rated on a 4 point scale in each topic.
1 - Emerging
2 - Progressing
3 - Meets Requirements
4 - Exceeds Requirements
Topics are broken down into finite, measurable categories, such as "Identifies Shapes." A rubric is provided which defines the criteria for receiving a 1, 2, 3, or 4. In the end, students receive a report card with a matrix containing topics and scores. There's no overall score... you can't simply average the scores to get a overall "how well is my child doing?" And therein, I believe lies the issue. Our generation is so used to being defined by a grade rather than proficiency in a topic. To better focus learning, we need to properly identify areas for improvement. If we take grading as an indicator of proficiency and an identifier for areas of improvement, the new Georgia Standard is an ideal system. If we continue to think of grades as a way to rate one child in relative comparison to another, then we will forever be stuck thinking in terms of a numeric score that we can derive a GPA from. I'm a supporter of the new Georgia Standard. We should move in the competitive aspect of education into standardized tests and use grading as a tool for both teachers and parents.
1 - Emerging
2 - Progressing
3 - Meets Requirements
4 - Exceeds Requirements
Topics are broken down into finite, measurable categories, such as "Identifies Shapes." A rubric is provided which defines the criteria for receiving a 1, 2, 3, or 4. In the end, students receive a report card with a matrix containing topics and scores. There's no overall score... you can't simply average the scores to get a overall "how well is my child doing?" And therein, I believe lies the issue. Our generation is so used to being defined by a grade rather than proficiency in a topic. To better focus learning, we need to properly identify areas for improvement. If we take grading as an indicator of proficiency and an identifier for areas of improvement, the new Georgia Standard is an ideal system. If we continue to think of grades as a way to rate one child in relative comparison to another, then we will forever be stuck thinking in terms of a numeric score that we can derive a GPA from. I'm a supporter of the new Georgia Standard. We should move in the competitive aspect of education into standardized tests and use grading as a tool for both teachers and parents.
Educational Technology
Parents and educators are being forced into a new world where technology will saturate every aspect of education shortly. New techniques and tools will need to be developed to keep up with the every changing information world.
It used to be that educational technology merely stood for a class of games centered around learning activities. With the advent of the Internet and every growing demands on the work force of tomorrow to tech savy, both teachers and parents will need to dive completely into the rapidly changing information age.
With this blog, I hope to help demystify many of the upcoming technology changes, concepts, and explorer how technology can be used to help educate the generations to come.
I invite you to comment and share you thoughts on this blog.
It used to be that educational technology merely stood for a class of games centered around learning activities. With the advent of the Internet and every growing demands on the work force of tomorrow to tech savy, both teachers and parents will need to dive completely into the rapidly changing information age.
With this blog, I hope to help demystify many of the upcoming technology changes, concepts, and explorer how technology can be used to help educate the generations to come.
I invite you to comment and share you thoughts on this blog.
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