{"id":27,"date":"2014-10-20T20:27:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T20:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/?p=27"},"modified":"2014-10-20T20:27:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T20:27:23","slug":"the-invisible-refrigerator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/2014\/10\/20\/the-invisible-refrigerator\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible Refrigerator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During this morning&#8217;s discussion of technology in education at the first face to face session of Cohort 21 (what Garth refers to as season 3, episode 1) we discussed the idea that technology should be transparent, invisible, in the background <em>supporting<\/em> learning, rather than being the focus. Like a refrigerator &#8211; it does an important job, but we don&#8217;t focus on refrigerators when preparing dinner, we focus on the <em>food<\/em>. Since we don&#8217;t focus on the refrigerator, it is effectively invisible when cooking.<\/p>\n<p>Digital technology, however, is not. While we really want it to be, we have to spend a fair bit of and energy getting the applications to do what we want, making sure the students know how to use them properly (and actually <em>use<\/em> them&#8230;), and adjusting our methods to fit the paradigm of the software. All of this prevents the software (educational and otherwise) from becoming <em>invisible<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I spend a good deal of time checking out educational apps and software, hoping for new tools that can support my classroom without getting in the way. Most often I find parts of of each of them to be quite desirable, and then other parts that make it almost useless (think smartphone apps for marking MC quizzes, but don&#8217;t give any feedback to the students).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/evernote.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Evernote <\/a>is one application that does an awful lot, and is very flexible for recording observations, note-taking, tracking progress, and really anything else you want to make note of. And it&#8217;s shareable. Google Apps is on it&#8217;s way, but not there yet (but if Evernote could save to Google Drive, now <em>that<\/em> would be something!). But I&#8217;m having trouble thinking of other software that might fit into this category.<\/p>\n<p>Most Educational software requires us to deliver in a certain way, or assess in a certain way.\u00a0What we really need in EdTech is more invisible refrigerators.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During this morning&#8217;s discussion of technology in education at the first face to face session of Cohort 21 (what Garth refers to as season 3, episode 1) we discussed the idea that technology should be transparent, invisible, in the background supporting learning, rather than being the focus. Like a refrigerator &#8211; it does an important &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/2014\/10\/20\/the-invisible-refrigerator\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Invisible Refrigerator&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,7],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-face-2-face-sessions","tag-edtech","tag-pedagogy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/edhitchcock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}