eCROP Blog

As the embedded map above shows, 36% of the 115 public school districts in NC have major digital 1:1 programs extending across all students at some range of grade levels. (Please note any corrections needed in the Comments box below.) Some districts have gone K-12 (though most of those are intermediate grades and up); many have gone 6th grade and up; and more are just high school in implementation. As there is no choice but to look ahead, where should we focus in this turbulence between the paper-textbook past and the digital future? North Carolina faces a double-whammy. On the one hand it struggles with the long standing issues of the last century stirred by the industrial age and factory manufacturing, improving student achievement against a range of challenges. More recently these challenges have included sinking teacher morale, sinking numbers of support staff, sinking recruitment and sinking budgets while facing accelerating teacher attrition ( Bonner & Stancill , 20...

Teaming and presentations are important functions of the digital palette in cyberspace. This is a draft version essay on the potential instructional uses for screen mirroring. This makes it easy to use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to create mobile device screen demos, collaborate, and to use a projector to engage audiences in team/group activities up to an entire class from which a presenter could pick one or more mobile devices to display. It is worth considering how much this capacity can be used to replace the functionality of interactive whiteboards and large digital TV displays such as Apple TV. It clearly replaces the need for for a VGA connector and keeping the iDevice tethered a short distance from the projector's computer.  This screen mirroring feature is built-in to more recent Macs as AirPlay and on for Nexus 10 and 7 devices is supported by Miracast. The features of  AirPlay can be extended with Reflector or AirServer software in the $15 rang...

"Each paradigm will be shown to satisfy more or less the criteria that it dictates for itself and to fall short of a few of those dictated by its opponent." Thomas S. Kuhn Updated October 1, 2014 Society finds ways to make certain models rather self-perpetuating because of the advantages they provide. A common approach to the idea of literacy is one of those models. Our schools teach a particular kind of literacy, text literacy, as one of the fundamental life skills because of its general importance to informed citizenship in a democracy, economic productivity and its value for every career path. Consequently the formula emerged for text literacy education to begin early and last long because of the perception about how long it takes to teach its use to a high level. But like all models, paradigms, recipes and formulas of our culture, it is important to periodically ask some pointed questions about their use. In fact there are 3 other areas critical for human dev...

The exponential curve ( a math idea ) and its implications are important ideas to teach across all content areas. Small amounts of accumulation over long enough periods of time can have radical impact, as the evolution of digital thinking and digital tools ( Trends ) of the digital palette constantly remind us. I had recently shared a quote from a book I had just finished reading about the race between our depletion of natural resources and our rate of innovation, a book published this year, 2013, and just last month in April. Naturally the data supporting the author’s points will be based on data from some earlier point in time. Here’s an example,  “Before the industrial revolution, CO2 made up 280 parts per million in the atmosphere. In November 2011 it stood at around 390 parts per million (or ppm).”   [Naam, Ramez (2013-04-09). The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (Kindle Locations 1118-1119). UPNE. Kindle Edition.”] In checki...

     NCTIES 2013 is North Carolina Technology in Education Society's 's state conference, THE annual state conference, March 6-8, for those focused on making NC's schools digitally and 21st century relevant, which included my humble offering on Composing Digital Games . How long before state and national educational "technology" organizations recognize that the issue is not about technology but about what we do with it? Can we replace the noun technology with better goal focused titles than this seeming focus on mere equipment? How about Literacy, Discovery or Learning? What about verbs, e.g., Solving, Thinking?  What did fill the halls and rooms of the conference though was an intense and motivated interest in the presentations at hand, with many filled to overflowing.      David Warlick did a fine pre-conference analysis of the last two years of NCTIES presentation topics that also showed changing trends. Post-conference, after seeing many of ...