The internet has proved to be one of the biggest
things to ever happen to human beings. Within the last thirty years alone, it
has gone from the hands of few to the hands of many (almost all). It an amazing source of endless information.
Endless amounts of information, we are finding, is
not always a good thing as I came to find out from writer Michele Molnar. One
of the biggest challenges facing us today is figuring out a way to sift through
endless amounts of information, separating the relevant from the irrelevant,
the appropriate from the inappropriate, and the credible from the non credible.
Luckily, it seems as though our education system is
well on its way to addressing this issue. One district in particular, the
Houstin Unified School District, made large forward strides in trying to figure
out how to phase out expensive textbooks and utilize the internet in the
classroom and at home. With the use of Cincinnati- based company netTrekkers’s Knovation
programming, they were able to start ensuring that the information reaching
their students was appropriate at in line with Texas standards. This system of
weeding through information is high tech, which means algorithms are used to
select desired resources and data.
Other districts are playing with a combination of
high tech and high touch (meaning educator evaluated) to direct the flow of
desired content to students. An example is OpenEd, a program which subject-matter
confirm the findings of the program. Ratings on the data allow the machine to “learn”
what data is desirable to educators and becomes more efficient at finding
desirable data.
Today, it is hand held, portable, and at our beck
and call whenever and wherever we want it. There is enough information at our finger
tips to replace the heavy and expensive textbooks of today in schools and homes
as we begin to effectively utilize it in the education system.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/13/flood-of-open-education-resources-challenges-educators.html
the desire to make the internet a better place for learners, is a great cause to put funding behind. I think it is good that there are people looking into finding solutions for the bloat and junk wasteland much of the internet has become when looking for scholarly and dependable learning sources. half of what you find is trying to well you something and most of the other half is spoof, or unrelated, or also trying to sell you something. what is left is the fraction of 1% of what you found that is actually relevant. to enable students, classrooms, and schools to reach information faster, is an important endeavor.
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