Hello everyone and welcome to my Multimedios video talk, which will be about the educator David Perkins. Let me introduce this man a little bit: he´s

Ph. D in mathematics and artificial intelligence from Massachusetts Inst. of Tech.

Senior professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Founding member of the research & development group Harvard Project Zero

Assistant in instructional programs & approaches for teaching for thinking & understanding.

Apart from this, he´s author of many books & articles.

Let´s go to his main ideas about education:

According to Perkins there are questions which are crucial to understanding education: HOW we teach and WHAT we teach. In his opinion, educators are focusing on the first question, therefore there´s a whole paraphernalia in teaching strategies and methodology but we are leaving aside the WHAT of education. 90% of what we teach is crap. Our focus should be in reframing the study of particular subjects. In his own words: “We need to teach content, looking for what you might call understandings of wide scope. Not the narrow deep pieces of knowledge that make up a large part of any discipline, but the ways in which the discipline looks outside itself.” There should be in-class "discovery" (via group work) of the big ideas of the subject. We need to teach how to apply knowledge to everyday life. In other words, we need to teach our students to think. Therefore, education should be reshaped into significant learning. All this while keeping a positive mindset in our students, because a frustrated student is a student that does not learn.

But how are digital technologies applied in education?

For Perkins, digital technologies can provide a deeper style of learning. Virtual words may be offering other ways of interacting and opportunities to create and express. DT might also be helpful for our students to visualize and explore ideas in a much clearer and sharper way.

So, we need to:

Choose & use technology in the classroom critically. Take society into account. Use technology to teach whenever possible. The use of technology should be significant for students

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