305 Tech Talks

I have to say, I loved having Neil deGrasse Tyson narrate this. I was not surprised to hear this was at a private charter school in Washington D.C. as a school would need the funds to create learning environments that "meets students where they are" in terms of technology. It is concerning to hear speak of middle school level being a last chance to learn necessary cumulative math skills before falling too far behind to catch up. It is also a bit of a concern to expect students to have a computer at home and access to email in assignments. It would be great to have the expectation that students could use websites and email at home, but it may not be a fair expectations of all households. It is very impressive to see the number of lap tops available to the students. The student's responses shows how they appreciate the resources and interactive learning. It's great to see the teacher has access to view each student's screen collectively. The teacher explains...

In reading about G Suite for Education, I am realizing that the Google Chromebooks may be the most common in-class technology resource nationally. I have heard classmates say they have had Chromebooks in some of the classes they taught, but I have never used Chromebooks or Google Classroom previously.  I have had a free Edmodo account for the last decade, without ever having utilized it for teaching unfortunately: https://www.edmodo.com/ .  At the community colleges I taught at, we always had access to Blackboard. Hearing how expensive Blackboard can be, although relatively inexpensive, I am surprised Google Classroom or Edmodo are not more commonly used at the college level in place of Blackboard. There must be setbacks or limitations to the free resources that make Blackboard worth it still.  I think Edmodo gets teachers using it and then may require fees for advanced features, though, again, I have not used the website enough to know for sure. I went to ac...