[featured image courtesy of Tijakool Yiyuan ] If I did this right, I will have hit publish on this blog post when I’m at 99,999 tweets and IFTTT will have automatically pushed out a tweet announcing that I’ve written this post. My 100,000th tweet shouldn’t be a particularly big deal, but I have a thing about […]
Forgive me if I’ve grown disillusioned with ‘new features.’ It seems that every technology that rises to prominence based on a simple yet effective solution feels the need to expand services until it looks like every other bloated tool on the market. This doesn’t mean that tools should stand alone. Applications that can pass data to […]
“I like you but I’m not ready for a commitment.” I find myself saying this often; not to people but to applications. Yes, I sometimes talk to technology. I find myself having this conversation not because the tool doesn’t accomplish something interesting or include a unique feature but because it wants me to shift all […]
[image courtesy of Joe Chavez] I feel pretty confident that this is the first time I’ve used APA formatting in a blog post title. But, Dan Meyer, the inspiration for the title of this post, recently completed his doctorate, so he knows the deal around academic attribution practices. Thus, the format of the […]
I’m going on a cruise next week and I’m not going “off the grid.” In fact, I’m going to live tweet the whole damn thing. — Jon Becker (@jonbecker) June 15, 2016 Confession: I find the “disconnecting” or “going off the grid” genre really unappealing. I just find that most people who write about their […]
Let me just get this out of the way: there may be some who read this post and say, “Well, Jon, of course that’s what you think about this study. The conclusion doesn’t jive with your beliefs in and advocacy for educational technology.” Confirmation bias, yada, yada, yada… Study? Yeah, this one. Featured today in […]
Here’s a dilemma that I’m certain is not unique to my institution, but that raises complex questions for me: VCU ALTLab’s very own Lisa Phipps is teaching a (open, online) course this summer about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). She’s uniquely qualified to teach this course as a pharmacist with about 17 doctoral degrees. She’s […]
In my (simple) mind, one overarching theme of VCU ALTLab‘s online learning faculty development initiative, the Online Learning Experience (OLE), is exploring the affordances of the modern Web for teaching and learning. In recent days, I have said on multiple occasions that I think this is an amazing time to be a learner and an […]
(Speaking with pre-service teachers in the Ukraine 2011.) My journey teaching with technology is new. I’ll own that. In fact, I remain in a fairly steep learning curve, although I am intentionally taking baby steps. My approach to any innovative teaching and learning practice is to understand the type of thinking it targets or […]
Americans are terrible at using technology. Yes, that’s a sweeping generalization that needs unpacking but it got some empirical evidence this week when the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)–which is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)–released its latest findings. Among the things the nationally representative study in […]
