23 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2021
    1. If students don’t have these opportunities to “choose, do, review” their way to expert learning, they will become what Zaretta Hammond has coined as “dependent learners.” Dependent learners are overly reliant on the teacher to carry the load of cognitive tasks and are unsure of how to tackle new tasks because they aren’t given opportunities to learn how to be expert learners.

      In my opinion, "dependent learner" lacks self-help learning. They will only complete the tasks assigned by others, rather than see what they want to learn, which is very detrimental to students' creativity and learning ability. This reminds me of when I took the TOFEL exam, my teacher said why Chinese students do well in listening and reading, but sometimes there is a big gap between the oral part and the writing part. I think innovation and self-learning ability are the most critical for students.

    1. Teachers at this affluent school tended to see pupils as “future innovators.”

      I can also see such examples around me. Schools at different levels focus on different things. For example, teachers in public schools only pay attention to children's academic performance, while teachers in international schools pay more attention to children's innovation ability and all-round development. The family conditions of these children are also different, so the things that these children usually come into contact with are also different. There is such inequality in life.

    1. shifted the student-teacher relationship (e.g., students and teachers were both novices, working together to figure out how to use this new technology), changed how learning happened in social studies classrooms (e.g., students designed history rather than passively consumed it), and offered an opportunity for students who felt they were not strong in writing or taking tests to demonstrate their true understanding of a topic

      Such projects can improve the relationship between teachers and students, and also provide students with more opportunities to show their talents, not only for exams and papers. Many children have situations where they have poor grades but are very prominent in some ways. Such projects do give them more opportunities. I think it's fair, and everyone's chances have increased. And we can see the flash points on the students.

    1. Similarly, in higher education, eliminating course and institutional barriers for marginalized students helps to create paths for additional students with a wider range of "fit" issues. Accommodations alone are not enough to achieve inclusion; when we go beyond accommodations, we create paths that help and support many learners, not just those who need or want accommodations.

      Creating more ways is really very effective, and both active learning and passive learning should be satisfied.

    1. This creates a distrustful, adversarial stance between educators and learners.

      It's a paradox. On one side of the scale is the preservation of the work, on the other is the need to break down stereotypes about students. However, objectively speaking, I think such a tool is still necessary, as works and data are impossible to be protected. When you upload it, you're "contributing."

    1. To really make a difference, the new tool needs to go beyond, offering improved efficiencies, enhanced communication, increased engagement, and/or the opportunity to do something that would not even be possible without the new tool

      To be honest, I think China's investment and update in this area is still very limited. I remember when I was in primary school, there were only blackboards in the classroom, and not every classroom had a TV. Now, many smart whiteboards are making their way into classrooms. I even saw the demonstration of chemical experiments with the software on the intelligent whiteboard (probably because of the risk factors, but I don't think this is reasonable, chemical experiments should be based on the real results). But aside from whiteboards and big TVs, I think a lot of apps and tools are unused. This is where I feel a little bit behind.

    1. Constructivist learning experiences are well-suited for advanced knowledge building, such as analyzing and interpreting ideas, rather than foundational knowledge acquisition (e.g., memorizing facts and terms)

      Reciting is actually a very basic learning ability, most Chinese students learning English is still in the stage of constantly recite, we often call this phenomenon "dumb English", it means the students only the content of the learned in the books, but once met a foreigner in real life, they don't know how to communicate, but in the face of the exam, they have a very amazing vocabulary. So creativity is very important, and it's a skill that students need to strengthen as they get older. Application development should also take this into account.

    2. In educational settings, behaviorism is most closely connected to positive and negative reinforcement, like when a student gets immediate feedback (“you are correct! Great job!”) on their behavior (solving a math equation).

      Giving positive and timely feedback is critical. I am currently working for a Chinese original children's book company. One of our product is the reading pen with the corresponding app, which has a lot of questions that children can answer. Every time the children finished answering the questions, they would give them feedback and recognition, which I think is very practical and effective, which is what the children need.

  2. Feb 2021
    1. The Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), passed in 2000, protects children from obscene or harmful content on the Internet.

      This is very necessary. For example, in China, many children do not learn sex education in the right direction. Parents think that sex is a very difficult topic to talk about. Sex education in schools is only superficial, and some even skip this part of teaching directly. With the growth of age, children will be curious, and pornographic websites and bad advertisements will appear in all kinds of websites. This is absolutely harmful to children.

    2. Ultimately, companies use the information and data they collect from you to make money, whether through advertisements, developing or improving services, or creating a profile with your data to sell to other companies.

      In fact, in China, as I mentioned in my last comment, data is bought and sold. And the age of big data is scary because these mobile devices eavesdrop on our everyday conversations. Sometimes what is mentioned on the phone shows up in the shopping APP a moment later. Anything I've searched for has been recommended by a variety of tweets.

    3. When you register for an account, you are usually asked to share personally identifiable information, like your name, email address, age, and/or gender. You will also be asked to review and accept the end-user license agreement or terms of service, which may involve giving away even more data, such as your IP address, device information, browser information, geolocation, and Internet browsing data.

      Now almost all websites or tools need to register, and will require us to provide a lot of privacy information when registering, and these information will often be packaged and sold.In China, we almost receive a lot of harassing phone calls every day, some of them are advertising, and the most hateful is fraud.Often victims only trust the scammers because they can provide some accurate and private information.

    4. When color is used to differentiate text or signal key information, individuals who are colorblind may struggle to know where to focus their attention or find information.

      At present, in some video tools in China, the interface color can be selected according to the condition of color blindness. This is necessary and is why these tools can attract a wider audience. China's population base is very large, and this subgroup that often needs special care will be ignored. More and more apps and tools begin to pay attention to these special groups. Providing them with an intimate experience is also one of the ways to expand the number of users.

    5. Only the students closest to the computer speakers and those with exceptional hearing capabilities are able to benefit from the video, leaving most of the class feeling more lost than they were before.

      In fact, we also encounter such situations in Chinese classrooms, but we did not pay attention to this problem before.In fact, the occurrence of this situation shows that it is indeed impossible to achieve all students have equal opportunities to learn.I remember when I was in primary school, at that time, the listening part of many English tests had to be played through the loudspeakers of each class. However, the loudspeakers of each classroom were different, some were very clear, some could not hear clearly at all, which also caused unfair situation.

    6. Robust tools are compatible with all technologies. Robust tools can be accessed and used on any device and browser, new or old.

      In today's era of rapid electronics iteration, tool compatibility is extremely important.Take the iOS system of iPhone as an example, many new apps cannot be updated because the mobile phone system is too old, and finally the apps that need to be updated cannot be used, which is very unreasonable.

    7. In addition, English language learners (ELL) and multilingual students can benefit from tools that feature translation support (Knutson, 2018).

      Because English is not my first language, I have more difficulty using some of the tools. It takes me more time to find the buttons and options I need, which is often very time-consuming. I think a good tool really needs to take into account the diversity of languages, and I believe this will be the trend in the future.

    8. What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)

      I think this is very important!This is especially true for those who are using the tool or application for the first time.Sometimes we hate using a new tool because we don't get a good impression of it from the start.It could be a complicated registration process, a confusing interface, or unclear step-by-step instructions.So all of this leads us to less and less want to use this tool, and less and less want to know more about it.

    9. Generally speaking, user experience is the interaction between the user and the tool, including the user’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the product or outcomes

      It makes me think of a lot of tools or apps that are updated at a high rate. The user experience is also a catalyst for the creation of "perfect" tools. As many people use them, the tools will get more suggestions. This is also a process of mutual improvement.

    1. Hypermediality is achieved by providing multiple forms of media (audio, video, and textual communication channels), as well as the ability to organize lessons in a non-sequential way.

      Knowledge can sometimes have multiple dimensions of understanding. Different tools make it easier to achieve these dimensions. For example, when I was learning 3D graphics in math class, we didn't have the tools of 3D graphics view at that time. We could only understand the back of 3D graphics by the teacher's dotted lines on the blackboard. So we have to rely on our imagination to understand the concept of 3D graphics. But now almost all schools have smart blackboards, and teachers can make it easier for students to see complete 3D graphics with simple operations. This is the power of tools.

    2. Ease of Use. When a tool is inflexible, is cumbersome in design, is difficult to navigate, or behaves in unexpected ways, it is likely to be negatively perceived by instructors and students.

      Simple and practical. I think these are two key points that need to come together. The absence of any of these will reduce the "life" of these tools, and people will naturally choose more suitable tools to replace them.

    3. Cost of Use.

      This is a very realistic point that has to be considered. At present, almost all the tools that Chinese schools need for students to use are free, and I believe most of the costs are covered by the state and government. In the current outbreak, these tools are available to more people and are used by a lot more people, but at no additional cost to parents.

    1. Digital tools and apps can inspire creativity, support critical thinking and problem solving, transport students to virtual worlds, and offer students new learning experiences never before possible.

      In the current global epidemic, digital tools and applications have become even more important. As the epidemic changes, we may be able to move from face-to-face courses to online courses at any time, which requires powerful tools to support this change.

    2. Twitter is a popular social media space among educators. You can connect and engage in conversations with others located across spatial and temporal boundaries (e.g., around the world!). 

      In China, we can't use Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc., without using a VPN. Before the class, I still thought they were just social media tools and never thought they could be learning tools.

    3. you can use an Internet search engine, such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing, or DuckDuckGo, to see if you can find a tool or app to meet your teaching needs.

      This sentence reminds me that nowadays, when we look for apps or tools, we will download them directly from the app store or listen to the introduction of colleagues or friends. We have neglected the function that search engines can bring.