TEL.A.VISION | It's Your Story

Teachers Driving Web 2.0 Use in Schools Says National Research Survey

Posted on 30. May, 2009 by Ringmaster in All Posts, How to Help!, Web 2.0

While many stakeholders are involved in developing policies on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in K-12 education, new research suggests that teachers are the most important group driving adoption. This is a finding of a recent commissioned by Lightspeed Systems and Thinkronize Inc.

There is a persistent gap between how today’s “digital” kids learn in school and how they work and interact outside of school, a trend that underscores the critical need for districts to keep pace with technological advances and adapt to students’ learning needs.

“The research indicates that the movement toward Web 2.0 use to engage students and address individual learning needs is largely being driven in districts from the bottom up – starting with teachers and students,” said Dr. Jay Sivin-Kachala, vice president and lead researcher for IESD. “Furthermore, the results show that many districts are using or planning to use Web 2.0 tools in teacher professional development, which suggests that teachers will become increasingly comfortable with these technologies and better able to teach students how to use them safely and productively.”

Other key results of the survey include:

* The three most frequently cited reasons for adopting Web 2.0 technologies are: addressing students’ individual learning needs, engaging student interest, and increasing students’ options for access to teaching and learning.

* Online communications with parents and students (e.g., teacher blogs) and digital multimedia resources are the Internet technologies most widely used by teachers, and a majority of districts have plans for adopting these technologies or promoting their use.

These results reinforce what we have found with TEL.A.VISION. Teachers find that TEL.A.VISION is a technology that addresses student’s individual learning needs, engages student interest and teaches them about digital multimedia resources.

The full survey is available here.

Survey: Too many children fear end of Earth

Posted on 24. Apr, 2009 by Ringmaster in All Posts, Power of Vision

One out of three children, ages 6-11 years old, fear that the planet won’t exist when they grow up and more than half believe that the Earth will not be as good a place to live.

That’s according to a new telephone survey of 500 pre-teens commissioned by Habitat Heroes, the first global, social networking web site for young people, and conducted by CARAVAN Opinion Research Corporation.

The survey, conducted April 3-7, comprised 250 males and 250 females 6 to 11 years of age, living in private households in the continental United States.

Minority children worried the most with 75 percent of black children and 65 percent of Hispanic children fearing the planet was going to deteriorate before they grew up.

This is more evidence that TEL.A.VISION is needed to turn our children’s attention to hope vs. fear.

Time Spent Online Important for Teens

Posted on 05. Mar, 2009 by Steve Borsch in All Posts, Social Media and Vision

Since its release in November, the discussions within the blogosphere about this new study—and people on Twitter referencing it—has been a major driver of online conversation due to it being a key validation of the social media space, especially where it relates to the generation we’re raising, those who are poised to run our world.

Every intuition and knowing many of us have had—that one, huge benefit to TEL.A.VISION is empowering kids to become more new media literate and better able to communicate their individual visions—means that the release of this study and its findings will play a role as an informational milestone and one we thought you’d find intriguing as we did.

Kids’ Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures is a three-year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the digital youth project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives.

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