Hi Jeremy, 

Great to hear about all of these different aspects of the report!

I'm very interested in to know more examples of how innovative technologies have helped youth in high poverty neighborhoods. You gave the example of community mapping which is similar to a program in Chicago called MapsCorps. What are some other examples that aren't related to mapping?

Thanks!

Jeanne

Welcome all, to the our video highlighting the Cyberlearning Community Report.

Cyberlearning researchers envision and investigate the future of learning with technology. As of summer 2017, the Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies (CFTL) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) had made 279 research grant awards. In addition, several hundred other NSF research projects have cyberlearning themes. 

Although specific research questions vary, in general the cyberlearning community is united around several fundamental questions:

How can students use their bodies and minds to learn what will be important in the 21st century, such as collaboration, scientific argumentation, mathematical reasoning, computational thinking, creative expression, design thinking, and civic engagement?

What advances in computation and technology are needed to design, develop, and analyze innovative learning experiences?

How can learning with technology expand access, equity, and depth of learning across diverse people, institutions, and settings?

The Community Report, which you can download from the link on this page, is a great way into the conversation. Please join us.

jeremy

 

I really enjoyed participating in planning and writing of the report, Jeremy and all. Thanks again for the opportunity to help! Would you be willing to share the number of downloads so far?  Let's hope the video bumps it up even higher!

Thank you, Chad, for your contributions! Since the report was released in October, there have been 4,828 visits to the main report web page, 562 views of the executive summary web page, and 1,724 downloads of the PDF. The biggest spike was late October-- and hopefully we'll have another in May :)

Patti

I look forward to reading the report and applaud you for taking on the critical work of synthesizing research into a manner that enables it to be leveraged and extended upon more readily.

I tend to wonder how or if particular learning theories or pedagogies may be more or less receptive or aligned to cyberlearning. Often, for example, the applications of cyberlearning (in my limited view) in the mathematics classroom stand in contrast to the best practices for instruction identified for so long through the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and more recently by the Mathematical Association of America in their Common Vision report and the Instructional Practices Guide. I'm thinking particularly of the "flipped classroom" model, which adds important features of problem-centered learning to the classroom, but still often frontloads procedural knowledge via video format. 

Beyond my example, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the universality and limitations of cyberlearning across the STEM disciplines.  

Thanks!

Hi Levi,

Thanks for a great question. Although I lead CIRCL, with my other hat on I'm a math guy so I definitely appreciate your question about whether Cyberlearning really fits where we want math to go.

Overall, Cyberlearning isn't much about "flipped classrooms" -- which i think of as more of a Silicon Valley (e.g. EdTech) sort of approach than a Cyberlearning approach. You can get a better sense of Cyberlearning & math through the "math" tag on the list of projects on our site. Click this link to see math cyberlearning projects.

Cyberlearning is definitely about how technologies can support students to engage in mathematical argumentation, for example. And about what new representational possibilities (touch, voice, sensors) might mean. How agents might help students. And if the work isn't being done with an eye to our values in mathematics learning and also to equity, well, it just isn't good Cyberlearning research.

If you want to drill into learning theories for math and technology, I'd recommend the Compendium chapter I worked on for NCTM. It's an expensive purchase from NCTM (but worth it). If you want only this chapter, email me  Jroschelle@digitalpromise.org and I'll send you a pre-print draft of the chapter.

thanks again for the question,

jeremy

 

 

Thank you for sharing about the contents of the Cyberlearning Community Report.

Of special interest to me, was mention of the Learning Analytics for Assessment. With respect to this method, the report states that "in the same way that Facebook or Amazon uses consumer clickstream behavior to predict future purchases, education data mining identifies patterns of gameplay that predict future student learning. By integrating this information into instruction, teachers and designers can leverage gameplay to improve explicit learning and teaching afterwards". I think this a great example of forward thinking especially given its potential for tacit test-administration. It was mentioned during your video that data from this method could be pulled in new ways to learn about how students interact with one another. Could you tell me a little bit more about how this process could guide future research?

 

Sincerely,

Pablo

Hi Pablo,

Thanks for the question. One of our Advisors for CIRCL is Peter Brusilovsky -- and he's led some of the best work on how students can learn from data about how other students are learning -- including deciding who they want to collaborative with. See https://www.researchgate.net/project/Open-Social-Learner-Models

I keep up with technology in mathematics learning, and there are also great examples there. In one very simple example, a teacher might ask students "type in a linear function that is the same as y=2x-1" and as students type in their functions, each is plotted to a shared display. Some students might be comfortable with the constant term, and come up with y = 2x + 2 - 3 and others with y = x + x. The mistakes can be interesting too.... Walter Stroup was one of innovators in this work and here is a publication to get started with.

In these examples, the social sharing of mathematical thinking is both useful as formative assessment ("making thinking visible") but also collaborative learning ("building towards shared understandings").

best,

 

jeremy

Sarah, thanks for sharing your insights about how NCTM and the Community Report align! best, Jeremy