Educational Technology and Change Journal

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Nearly a year ago, in “On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan” (NY Times, 2.7.11), Nicholas Bakalar quoted Randy Moore, professor of biology at the University of Minnesota: “With 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teaching creationism, this is the biggest failure in science education. There’s no other field where teachers reject the foundations of their science like they do in biology.”

A week ago, Sam Favate, in “A ‘Critique’ of Evolution Proposed in Oklahoma” (Wall Street Journal, 1.23.12), reported that Oklahoma has just introduced the sixth anti-evolution bill this year.

It’s not surprising that some people still deny evolution, but the size of the effort does not bode well for our future in science. Evolution is not only established scientific fact, but is the central unifying concept for all of biology. It allows scientists to understand life better and to decide where to look to find new drugs, cures for diseases, and prevent new infections from becoming pandemics.

Not only do 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teach creationism, but 60% take no stand on evolution versus creationism. Generations of students are being handicapped in their desire to understand and succeed in life.

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, long after he had formulated his theory. He was attacked immediately and, at the same time, lauded by a minority who understood science. At that time, as today, too many people misunderstood the role of science, what it’s really about.

Read more »

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[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. This article by Anthony Cody was emailed to me by ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton on Jan. 27. To share your catch of the day, email it to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]

Anthony Cody, in “How the War on Teachers Is Changing the Profession” (Valerie Strauss, The Answer Sheet, Washington Post, 1.27.12), calls it like it is. The national reaction against teachers (and their unions) is gaining momentum, and the blame for failure is being dumped on their shoulders. In Cody’s article, we find the following statements:

• “The teaching profession is being redefined. Teachers will now pay the price: They will be declared successes or failures, depending on the rise or fall of their students’ test scores.”
• “Under NCLB, it was schools that were declared failures. In states being granted waivers from the most onerous requirements of NCLB, it is teachers who will be subjected to this ignominy.”
• “The individual teacher’s accountability for student performance is absolute.”

To hold teachers 100% responsible when they can account for only “10 percent of the variability in student test scores” is insane, especially in light of the fact that other factors such as “family income and education levels” account for 90% of the variability.

Why is this happening? Or more importantly, why are we, educators, allowing this to happen? -js

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By Michael Biocchi

[See Educational Games Part I: A Way to Make Even Math Fun and Educational Games Part II: Using New Technologies in the Classroom.]

A game is not “educational” just because it involves a few puzzles or steers away from violence. An educational game has to have certain characteristics beyond the obvious one of helping students learn. It can be argued that, in some way, all games help people learn. Even a violent fighting game can help with hand-eye coordination (Roach). Does this mean that all games are educational? Of course not, but it does help us develop characteristics that will make a game educational.

The best educational games in my opinion are those that are based on textbooks. The material and research is already developed. Should a grade two math game involve long division? Check a grade two textbook and see what is covered! The game does not have to be word for word of what is in the textbook (this would involve partnering with the publisher and going through many legal procedures), but it should be relevant to what the children are learning at that grade level.

So now that we know what material is going to be covered in the game, we still need to know what makes the game educational. Obviously content is a big part of it, but the look, feel and gameplay is also important. First, the game should offer some sort of social interaction. This does not mean that the game needs to be multiplayer, but it should somehow involve players talking to and interacting with each other. For example, together, they could be  creating avatars, going through levels, or experiencing compelling stories. The students should care about what they are doing. Read more »

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By Ilene Frank

[Note: This article is based on an email message sent to me by Ilene on 1.24.12. It's in response to "Sloan-C’s Definition of ‘Online Course’ May Be Out of Sync with Reality," published on 1.22.12. -Editor]

I’m wondering if some of those definitions of “distance/online courses” are just legalese.  Here in Florida, we have definitions like these two below:

Each community college may assess a student who enrolls in a course listed in the Florida Higher Education Distance Learning Catalog established pursuant to s. 1004.09 a  per-credit-hour distance learning course user fee. For purposes  of assessing this fee, a distance learning course is defined to  mean a course where a least eighty percent of the direct instruction of the course is delivered using some form of technology when the student and instructor are separated by time, space, or both. (From CS/SB 844 – Postsecondary Distance Learning [SPSC])

Then there is this:

Distance Learning Delivery Indicator denotes that the student and the instructor are separated in time and/or place during 50% or more of the instruction. (From Florida DOE)

The definition above is used for “Automated Student Information System — Automated Student Data Elements” (Florida DOE) and includes codes like these:

A  Web-based or Internet-based courses.
B  Video conferencing.
C  Other distance learning delivery.
X  Those combinations of Technology which do not meet the 50% requirement.
Z  Not a Distance Learning class.

I’m pretty sure there are even more definitions floating around in the state laws. Not sure any of it is rational or has anything to do with pedagogy! It seems like it is just a way to do accounting! <grin>

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By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Politically motivated program, “Race to the Top” (RTT), hits state politics head on. What did Arne Duncan expect? By putting political goals into an education program, the Department of Education has ensured problems would arise.

(Valerie Strauss, “Hawaii Teachers Reject Contract in ‘Blow’ to Race to the Top,” Washington Post, 1.21.12.)

The Hawaii state teachers have rejected the RTT contract that required performance-dependent teacher evaluation and compensation for the simple reason that no teacher evaluation system shows an accuracy that would guarantee rewarding better teachers.

We can have national curriculum guidelines without harming education. RTT put some of Secretary Duncan’s personal preferences ahead of good education practice. Eliminating tenure would have much more benefit than these uncertain teacher evaluation programs. However, dropping tenure opens up the potential for schools firing the most experienced teachers to save money in times of stress. Instead, we might have a system where the teacher firing process has standards that increased over time so that teachers who have proven themselves for fifteen years would be more difficult to fire than those with only a five-year record.

It’s unclear exactly how best to fix things in the existing system, and I’d like to see comments from others. Moving forward, I would like to see higher pay for teachers tied to better qualifications and a way to eliminate tenure as it now stands. Getting a lifetime job after just three years makes no sense to me. Universities require seven years. Our K-12 schools are more important to our country.

[Updated 1.23.12, 3:30pm.]

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Hailed by U.S. News & World Report as the “industry standard definition of what constitutes an online course” (Brooks 1.9.12), The Sloan Consortium’s nearly decade old “at least 80 percent” rubric was the basis for selecting education programs for its 2012 rankings. Here’s the rule, which has remained unchanged since the inaugural Allen and Seaman report in 2003:

Online courses are those in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online. Face-to-face instruction includes courses in which zero to 29 percent of the content is delivered online; this category includes both traditional and web facilitated courses. The remaining alternative, blended (sometimes called hybrid) instruction has between 30 and 80 percent of the course content delivered online. (2011 report)

I’m not sure if the results of the U.S. News rankings would have been any different if it had not been based on this rule. Regardless, though, it may be time to re-examine the 80-percent rule, which, from its inception, seemed arbitrary, irrelevant, and practically impossible to apply.

For example, how would anyone possibly determine, with any kind of accuracy, that a course was 79.4% online and 20.6% F2F (face to face)? Six-tenths of a percent shy of 80% and the course is blended rather than online? This distinction is ultimately irrelevant and serves no practical purpose. And when you come right down to it, who cares? Or more importantly, why should anyone care?

The simple fact is that colleges need a workable “online course” definition for program planning, development, and evaluation. Those responsible for these types of operational decisions are practical. They have to be. Otherwise, they can’t function. Thus, to be useful, the rule has to be simple, clear, and applicable. As seems to be the case for the ones that work, the best standards can be found in the programs themselves. And the one that appears to fit most naturally is the fully online versus partially online division.

Read more »

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By Lynn Zimmerman
Editor, Teacher Education

As any resource that talks about it will tell you, plagiarism is a serious infringement whether intentional or not. As the saying goes, ignorance of the law is no excuse. However, despite the numerous books, articles, brochures, blogs, and websites dedicated to educating and warning about plagiarism and how to avoid it, it still happens and happens frequently. The Plagiarism Prevention Blog, for instance, highlights a case of an individual being stripped of his PhD in education at the University of Virginia when plagiarism was discovered in his dissertation. Unfortunately this is not the only case.

As an instructor I make it clear to my students that plagiarism is a violation of academic integrity and encourage them to use sites such as Indiana University’s How to Recognize Plagiarism tutorial and Purdue OWL’s Research and Citation Resources. If they are still not sure, they should ask me.

We also have at my university, Purdue University Calumet, a couple of proprietary resources that can check for plagiarism. I am reluctant to use these because they store the student’s work for future comparisons and I am not comfortable with that. However, I do often use the simple expedient of searching for the suspicious word or phrase in Google. By capturing the phrase in quotes, I can learn if this exact wording is used in any of the millions of documents linked through Google. Sometimes, a phrase may fall under “common knowledge.” However, that is usually a fairly easy call to make. There are two red flags that identify a phrase or sentence as suspicious. One is when it is referring to something that is not really common knowledge, such as specialized knowledge about a topic. The other is when the tone or voice of the paragraph changes. For instance, a student’s style in a paragraph is rather informal and, suddenly, a very formal phrase or sentence, very different in character from the surrounding text, appears.

Read more »

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By Jessica Knott
Associate Editor
Editor, Twitter

If you’re a gamer like me, you fire up your Xbox 360 and await that glorious in-game moment when the flashing icon on your screen notifies you of an unlocked achievement, earning you a fancy graphical badge and additional points on your geek cred card. Even for non-gamers, small tokens of recognition can make the mundane feel special: that final punch on your coffee frequency card, the “good point” from a fellow book club member, the envelope notifying you that you, too, may already be a millionaire. Well, maybe not that last one. Students in today’s increasingly wired, competitive and rubricated classrooms frequently seek the same spark of achievement and, from what I’ve seen, ClassDojo can provide it.

According to Kalen Gallagher, “Grand Hustle” at ClassDojo, this award-winning application puts real-time classroom management in the hands of instructors. In-class behavior, learning habits and skills can be immediately assessed via Internet or smartphone.

Here’s How It Works

Instructors sign up for an account and are taken through an intuitive walkthrough tutorial showcasing the different functionalities available on the site including setting up a class.

While primarily aimed at K-12 classrooms, flexibility is provided for university and other settings.

Read more »

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From: ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Link: http://cyberlearning.sri.com/w/index.php/Main_Page
January 18, 2012
National Geographic Society
Grosvenor Auditorium
1145 17th Street Northwest
Washington D.C.

NSF has the potential to lead a new wave of STEM initiatives through its CyberLearning: Transforming Education program and its cross-cutting initiatives in cyberinfrastructure. To continue to lead in an increasingly crowded space of contributors from other agencies, corporations, and interest groups, however, the community NSF funding fosters will need to realize the “transformative potential” called for. Realizing this transformative potential requires vision, strategy, engagement, talent, and commitment to moving forward.

The Cyberlearning Research Summit is a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. In the style of the TED conferences, speakers will:

• Discuss big ideas on at the intersection of emerging technology and research on learning;
• Articulate the “transformative potential” of a direction or approach;
• Communicate a sense of the broad research on this topic;
• Engage, inspire, and stimulate thinking in this new program area.

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

This is the year 2020, and Bobby is a freshman at UC San Diego worming at the New York Einstein, a three-star hybrid. His holemate, Chiu Wai, is a sophomore at Beijing University. Bobby is from Hawaii, and Chiu Wai is from Singapore. They’re up early this morning to complete their online classwork. Their plan is to spend the rest of the day hanging out at Union Square with friends from other worms.

Today, “going away to college” means selecting a college and a worm, a shortened version of worldwide dorm. All worms serve students from anywhere on the planet. Three-star worms offer shared holes, or rooms. Hybrid worms serve students from different colleges around the world; pure worms are reserved for students from specific colleges. The vast majority of worms are hybrid. Students are accustomed to and prefer international social networking, both online and onground.

In the context of worms, wormhole also refers to the spacetime curvature that theoretically shortens the distance between two points. Similarly, via the internet, students are able to instantly interact with classmates and professors from anywhere in the world.

Worms developed naturally as a result of two seemingly opposed forces colliding during the first decade of the 21st century. One was the value students, parents, and educators placed on “going away to college,” a rite of passage that boiled down to living in a dorm and experiencing a rich and full social life away from parents. The other was the virtual learning environment, or VLE, which theoretically negated the need for college campuses. College students grew up in and were comfortable in the VLE. They expected to take most if not all of their classes online, and this held true even when they lived in dorms.

As the VLE grew exponentially in response to a generation that actually lived in it outside of school, colleges began to not only upgrade but rethink the idea of dorms (see Cliff Peale’s “These Aren’t Your Parents’ Dorms: Residence Halls Provide More Amenities,” Cincinnati.com, 8.15.11). They realized that campus life was shifting from classrooms to dorms, where students were beginning to spend more of their formal learning time. In fact, most of the students who lived in dorms were taking classes online, and this trend was growing, fueled by an influx of younger professors who were equally at home in the VLE. In many large universities, students were registering in courses on different campuses throughout the system, and because the courses were online, students could do it all from the comfort of their dorms.

Read more »

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By Thomas Ho

… Why not get them to tell us the story of their learning?

Since Facebook announced its Timeline feature last fall, some of us have been waiting anxiously for them to deploy it to its users. Now that the process has begun, we ought to be considering the implications of this development for teaching and learning!

Three years ago, I was already experimenting in a college information technology course with the concept of a course “lifestream,” which I subsequently renamed to LearnStream. I aggregated the social media identity of that course at a Netvibes site.

I have continued to develop those original ideas into a framework for encouraging their adoption in the school district in which my daughter is currently enrolled. For that reason, I was especially excited when Facebook announced its Timeline feature because I recognized the opportunity for these ideas to enter the mainstream of social media.

I published my own Timeline shortly after the Facebook announcement. Subsequently, I began publishing my own lifestream to my Timeline using techniques which I’ll describe later. I had been hopeful of using my Timeline to suggest how students might craft their digital identity by publishing their LearnStreams to their Facebook Timeline, but it’s been pointed out to me that students would be likely to resent doing that on Facebook because of the “creepy treehouse” effect!

Therefore, I am merely suggesting that the acceptance of socially sharing one’s musical tastes via Spotify or one’s reading habits via the Washington Post Social Reader may motivate students to socially share their learning. If they’d be willing to do that on their Facebook Timeline, imagine the possibilities if a service such as Diigo social bookmarking would use Facebook’s Open Graph to enable us to publish our bookmarks to our Timeline? Or imagine the possibilities if we used Friendfeed to publish our lifestreams to Timeline? That’s how I did it, by publishing my Friendfeed RSS feed with RSS Graffiti. Remember, Facebook owns Friendfeed!

Is it time for social media to be taken seriously by those who don’t “get” its implications for learning?

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By Chris Dede
Harvard Graduate School of Education

[Note: ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton invited Chris Dede to submit this article. -Editor]

Educational transformation is coming not because of the increasing ineffectiveness of schools in meeting society’s needs – though that is certainly a good reason – but due to their growing unaffordability. We now see student-teacher ratios in some urban settings climbing to unworkable levels of 40 plus, even 60 pupils per class (Dolan, 2011; Dillon, 2011). This is not a temporary financial dislocation due to an economic downturn, but a permanent sea-change that has already happened in every other service sector of our economy.

Further, in K-12 schooling, our stellar illustrations of success are based on personal heroism, educators who make sacrifices in every other part of their lives in order to help their students. These are wonderful stories of saint-like dedication, but such a model for educational improvement is unscalable to typical teachers. We have not found a way to be effective and affordable at scale, and our resources are now dwindling rather than growing.

Events of the last few years and projections of our nation’s economic future paint a bleak picture of the financial viability of schools as we know them; we can no longer support an educational system based on inefficient use of expensive human labor. These inefficiencies are not simply within the walls of the school but reflect our lost opportunities to help students learn in all the hours and all the places they spend time outside of classrooms.

Read more »

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right” (NY Times, 1.4.12), Vinton G. Cerf argues that internet access is neither a human nor a civil right. It is, simply put, a means to and end, “a tool for obtaining something else more important.” For Cerf, civil laws should focus on the rights themselves and not the means to achieve them. He views technology as a tool, “an enabler of rights, not a right itself.”

Cerf makes a lot of sense, but I’m not sure it’s a good fit for the internet. In most cases, the means and ends are clearly separate, e.g., the means to work (a horse, using Cerf’s example) and the right to earn a living. Everyone would agree that a right to own a horse is ridiculous. In other cases, however, such as schools and compulsory education, the means and ends aren’t so clearcut. In this case, the end would be unattainable without the means. Thus, the law specifies schooling. In the case of health and health care, too, the means and ends are, literally, one and the same.

The Internet (Opte Project 2007)

I believe the same logic holds true for the internet and the means to access it. That is, without access service, the internet would be out of reach. Thus, legislation that guarantees a right to access information without provisions to act on that right would be meaningless. Read more »

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[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. This op-ed by Vinton G. Cerf was emailed to me by ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton. Please send your catch of the day to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]

In her email to me this morning, Bonnie says, “Here is a good discussion starter. It is from Vint Cerf.” I agree.

Vinton G. Cerf, in “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right” (NY Times, 1.4.12), explains that “Civil rights … are different from human rights because they are conferred upon us by law, not intrinsic to us as human beings.” He doesn’t see internet access as a right. It “is always just a tool for obtaining something else more important.” As such, “technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself.”

What do you think?

Please share your thoughts with us as a comment to this article or as a separate article submission. If you encounter problems posting your comment, email it to me and I’ll post it for you. -Jim (jamess@hawaii.edu)

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[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. I learned about Michael Staton's article from Thomas Ho's Diigo group notification this morning. Please send your catch of the day to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]

Michael Staton, in “Eleven Tech Factors That Changed Education in 2011” (Mashable Tech, 12.21.11), provides a wealth of links to explore. They are listed under 11 categories — see the list below. I clicked on some that were free, open, and geared for instructors: Flat World Knowledge, Piazza, CourseKit, and ClassDojo. Flat World Knowledge is like wiki books but retains the look and feel of more traditional publications. I was interested in college composition textbooks and found only one entry. It’s very good, but it didn’t fit my needs. Still, I can imagine referring students to certain chapters. (See update below.)

Piazza and CourseKit are simple CMSs (course management systems). With Piazza, I had difficulty setting up my college. It tried to force me into a different campus in our university system. (See update below.) Getting started in CourseKit was easier, but the calendar templates are limited and didn’t fit my needs. I really like the concept of ClassDojo. I immediately got the feeling that this is a tool developed by an imaginative teacher in the trenches. It’s a quick way to comment on student behavior in class, providing a means to shape positive actions via analytics. All the students are listed on a single page. Click on one. Select from the preconfigured list of behaviors, and click. The information is automatically processed and distributed. Fast. Simple. Effective.

Read more »

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[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. This article by Sam Dillon was emailed to me by ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton. Please send your catch of the day to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]

In his article, “In Washington, Large Rewards in Teacher Pay“* (NY Times, 12.31.11), Sam Dillon quotes Eric A. Hanushek, a Stanford University professor of economics: “‘The most important role for incentives is in shaping who enters the teaching profession and who stays. Washington’s incentive system will attract talented teachers, and it’ll help keep the best ones.’”

It’s tough to argue against attracting and retaining the crème de la crème, but is there a downside to this apparent solution to teacher quality? Dillon quotes Nathan Saunders, president of the Washington Teachers Union: “‘This boutique program discourages teachers from working together.’”

Bonnie says, “I am not sure what to do with this. In my mind there are lots of teachers who have worked under trying conditions, but in sharing this article I got a lot of push back from teachers. Here’s the thing: most people pointed out to me that the large rewards are not normal and, of course, that there are outstanding teachers who are run out of the school by the others.”

Bonnie asks, “What do you think?”

Please share your thoughts with us as a comment to this article. If you encounter problems posting, email your comment to me and I’ll post it for you. -Jim (jamess@hawaii.edu)
__________
* Click here for the Webcite alternative.

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[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. This article by Larry Ferlazzo was emailed to me by ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton. Please send your catch of the day to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]

Valerie Strauss, in The Answer Sheet (Washington Post, 12.30.11), features Larry Ferlazzo’s “Ten Education Predictions for 2012.” The ninth concerns technology in K-12:

9. Strategies to use technology as a transformative tool in education will take a backseat as for-profit online learning charlatans and the Khan Academy take up the tech money and the media space.

What are your thoughts on this prediction? Are K-12 educators going to increasingly rely on outside sources for leadership in technology? Or are they going to take more personal responsibility for the technology that enters their classroom? Or is there a third or even fourth scenario?

Bonnie’s comment on number 8 is “See, I was right on Rhee.” She’s referring to her January 5, 2009, article, Michelle Rhee Has a Broom: Should She Use It to Sweep Out Experienced Teachers?“

8. Former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee will continue her decline in public credibility and relevance. Her work with some of the most conservative, and anti-teacher, Republicans has made her highly unpopular among many Democrats. And, as her Republican allies falter in their own success and popularity across the country, she is, incredibly and unsuccessfully, trying to build a base here in California.

Can Rheeism rise from the ashes in 2012? Is it morphing into other isms?

Please share your thoughts with us as a comment to this article. If you encounter problems posting, email your comment to me and I’ll post it for you. -Jim (jamess@hawaii.edu)

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

As we teeter on the brink of the new year, we’re left with more questions than answers. In a way, that’s a good thing, considering the makeshift nature of technology in higher education. As we sidle into 2012, the same old questions will greet us. They’re about a world that’s rapidly changing and about our ability or inability to change with it. Let’s face it. The cat’s out of the bag, but some of us are still trying to lure it back in.

Issue #1: Can current leaders take higher education into the 21st century?

Most indications are no. They’re good at preserving the 20th century model and eager to add some technology glitz to make their brick and mortar campuses look modern. But it will be business as usual, with technology applied to brighten up the old way of doing things. Cost effectiveness will be the public mantra, but savings will be offset by the huge piles of money thrown at the makeover. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of today’s leaders have been formed and rewarded by the brick and mortar learning environment. They define themselves and what they do in terms of campuses, buildings, and offices. For them, technology is something to be brought into and added to their domain even if it means severely restricting and crippling its full potential.

Make no mistake. Change will come, but it will come from new leaders who realize that the paradigm for learning environments has shifted from the ground to the virtual. They realize that educational technology is no longer a single innovation or a group of innovations but a sea change based on the awareness that face-to-face (F2F) pedagogy is a subset of the virtual learning environment — and not the other way around. For these leaders, online is the world’s largest learning environment, and brick and mortar facilities are a shrinking part that’s becoming increasingly irrelevant. Read more »

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By Frank B. Withrow

In the United States of America, we are committed to the education of ALL children in appropriate educational settings. If possible this education should be in the least restrictive settings. At times this may mean individual tutoring to prepare them for broader educational experiences. The following is a case study of what might be for Orion, a child that is both deaf and blind. In the 1960s, due to a rubella epidemic and medical science learning how to bring pregnant women with rubella to full term, we created thousands of deaf-blind babies. Consequently, we have learned a great deal about the education of deaf-blind children. Some of those 1960 babies are now productive adults living interesting lives.

A Case Study

Perhaps a bit of genetics combined with environmental factors left Orion to be born both deaf and blind. Orion has a deaf older brother and a hearing sister. Both his parents have hearing losses. Orion’s family lives in a Maryland suburb of Washington, DC, not far from Gallaudet University and near excellent medical facilities. Perhaps there is no other place in the world that has a richer environment for Orion to grow in. In his first year, Orion received a cochlear implant.

Orion likes the Braille books, for blind children, with tactile pages. Heather, Orion’s mother, uses touch signs with him to begin his communication skills. He did develop stimulus response activities with the touch signs. Read more »

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By Frank B. Withrow

As we end the year 2011, we find our schools at best not reaching all students. In some instances we have excellent programs that are producing leading students, but far too often we have programs where students are dropping out and ending in a nonproductive stalemate of failure. At one end we have college graduates who are marrying one another and merging two reasonably well paying salaries and, at the other end, some poor kids just barely graduating from high school, failing to marry and often becoming struggling single moms with a dismal future that may include the increasing problems of single parenthood.

These trends are developing a bigger bridge between the haves and havenots. The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. This chasm is neither good for the individual nor society. Our current educational system is neither engaging, inspiring nor empowering many of our young people.

Alternate learning patterns are developing from home schooling to charter schools to virtual schools. Sometimes significant engagement comes in clubs and extracurricular activities. On Internet sites many learners are engaged in complicated games that even allow for team activities with distant partners. Many learners are engaged in blended learning activities, that is, traditional classes and alternative learning environments.

To understand the challenges in today’s school system, we will follow five students that are on a TLRI (Total Learning Research Institute) Mars City blended learning team creating a Mars challenge weather balloon. Josh’s parents are both scientists working on environmental changes. Josh is an only child and has done well in traditional schools. He often reads his parents’ professional journals and enters into their professional discussions at the dinner table. Sue Ellen is a child of a single mother and, while she is a reasonably good student, does not have a rich scientific environment at home. Read more »

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[Note: Snagged is a new feature in ETCJ to spotlight some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. The idea came about in an informal email exchange within the last 24 hours with Bert Kimura, who's been sending me some of his best web snags for the last fifteen plus years. His latest, this article by Donald Clark, has moved us to develop Snagged, a platform for recognizing articles that hook our attention and, hopefully, encourage us to jump into a discussion. Please send your catch of the day to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]

Donald Clark, in “More Pedagogic Change in 10 Years Than Last 1000 Years – All Driven by 10 Technology Innovations,” asks, “What’s the real source of pedagogic change?” His answer: “The primary driver for pedagogic change is something that has changed the behaviours of learners, independently of teachers, teaching and education – the internet” (Donald Clark Plan B, 12.7.11).

Here are the ten technology innovations with excerpted explanations:

1. Asynchronous – the new default: Only after you’ve exhausted the asynchronous online options should you consider synchronous face-to-face events.
2. Links – free from tyranny of linear learning: It has allowed us to escape from the linear straightjacket of the lecture or paper bound text
3. Search and rescue: This pedagogic shift means more independence for learners, less dependence on memorised facts and answers to most questions, 24/7, for free.
4. Wikipedia and death of the expert: The radical pedagogic shift is not only in the way knowledge is produced but the fact that it’s free, seen as open to discussion and debate, and so damn useful.
5. Facebook and friends: Being networked means living within a new pedagogic ecosystem.
6. Twitter, texting and posting: Far from drifting towards high end media, text is alive and kicking.
7. Youtube – less is more and ‘knowing how’: YouTube has shown us how to do video, keep it short and that we don’t need big budgets to do good stuff.
8. Games: Gameplay is just another word for sophisticated, experiential pedagogy.
9. Tools: Tools [word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tools], pedagogically, allow us to teach and learn at a much higher level.
10. Open source: In this age of digital abundance, open and free content is the democratisation of knowledge…. Pedagogy, in this sense, has been freed from institutional teaching.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Clark? Disagree? Partially agree? Do you see it differently? If yes, how so? Please share your thoughts with us as a comment to this article. If you encounter problems posting, email your comment to me and I’ll post it for you. -Jim (jamess@hawaii.edu)

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Two recent studies on the educational use of Web 2.0 tools shed light on cultural differences between students in Japan and South Korea, on the one hand, and the U.S., on the other. The first, “Cross-Cultural Collaboration Through a Virtual Community of Practice Using Video and Social Networking,” by Bert Kimura and Curtis P. Ho, from the University of Hawaii, and Mary Kimura and Kenichi Kubota, from Kansai University, Japan, was presented at Ed-Media 2011, June 27 to July 1, in Lisbon, Portugal. The second, “Comparison of Web 2.0 Technology Acceptance Level Based on Cultural Differences,” by Sun Joo Yoo and Wen-hao David Huang, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, appears in Educational Technology & Society, 14.4 (2011).

The Japan-U.S. study by Kimura et al. reports the following differences: Japanese students are nonconfrontational, consensus oriented, shy and modest. U.S. students are the opposite: direct, task oriented, and outgoing and assertive. In communication style, the Japanese students were “indirect,” e.g., they “suggested what they wanted to do” and “would not object if their ideas weren’t considered.” U.S. students were “more direct,” e.g., they “stated what they thought would be a good direction” and “would explain why and how to use their ideas” (italics added).

The Korea-U.S. study by Yoo and Huang looked at specific criteria to explain the differences: communication styles, level of power distance, and level of uncertainty avoidance. The authors found that Korean students’ communication style score was “very high” in collectivism while their U.S. counterparts’ was “very high” in individualism. This difference was further described in terms of high context vs. low context (249). This finding is similar to the consensus orientation of Japanese students reported in the Kimura et al. study.

Read more »

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

This is the sort of article that you read and reread with a shake of the head in between. In “Onsite and Online Learning: A Meaningful Distinction Any Longer?” (WCET, 12.7.11), Gary Brown and Trent Batson claim that “the debate between online and traditional courses is over.” After repeated readings, I still find myself nodding in agreement with the conclusion that “almost all” classes include online components but shaking my head at the logical leap that, therefore, the debate is over.

In fact, in the statement that “almost all educational experiences, no matter where they occur, are now online to some degree,” Brown and Batson make a case for omitting the qualifier “almost” since, for all practical purposes, the web is an unavoidable, ubiquitous presence in all our lives. Thus, even when courses appear to be completely traditional with required physical attendance and no onsite web technology, they are still directly or indirectly associated with online learning resources and personal communications such as email. In other words, all courses are blended to some degree even when the online dimensions may not be obvious.

The authors also reiterate some of the main arguments that defend the quality of online practices.

Considering my agreement with their premises, why do I end up questioning their conclusion that the debate is dead? The problem may be in our perceptions of space in the learning environment. Brown and Batson say that “all learning now has become untethered from a single locus” and that “the locus of learning is not bounded by brick or LMS.” They add that, “unlike the traditional versus online debate,” the distinction between tethered and untethered matters. Read more »

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By Tom Preskett

Connecting formal education to social media/web 2.0 tools is a relatively new area. Educational institutions hope that by purchasing a virtual learning environment (VLE) all of their learning technology needs will be met. However, the world moves fast, and some educators find that our suite of communication and collaboration tools doesn’t cater to our teaching and learning needs as well as they might. Interestingly, VLEs are usually more suited to managing rather than learning (but that’s for another day). So there is an argument for looking outside of the VLE to expand and enhance our options for engaging students in learning activities using technology.

When it comes to thinking about social media or web 2.0 tools, we are looking at tapping into the affordances such tools have towards communication and collaboration. There’s a creative process involved in this, and it takes time, space and a certain amount of risk. However, it’s worth exploring if you want to keep developing as an educator and are always looking to improve the learner experience.

Usually the stimulus for such a process comes from seeing or hearing about a particular tools used in a particular context. In these instances, the process is focused and relatively easy. However, what if you want to explore for yourself what’s out there and make informed decisions on what tool to use?

Firstly, it’s useful to have in mind a set of criteria like the Sloan Consortium’s:

• Access
• Usability
• Privacy & Intellectual Property
• Workload & Time Management
• Fun Factor

Visit the weblink above for details on this. Read more »

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By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In Zhang Yimou’s 1999 film, Not One Less, Wei is a 13-year-old girl who is called upon to serve as a substitute teacher in a one-room primary school. The setting is a small rural village in Hebei province, in present day China. Her qualification is that she’s a primary school graduate, which places her a step ahead of the 27 students.

Technology is reduced to the bare minimum: the shabby schoolhouse, tables and chairs, chalkboard, chalk, teacher, a single textbook for the teacher, and a tablet and pencil for each student. Teaching is the copying of passages from the textbook to the chalkboard. Learning is the copying of passages from the chalkboard to the tablets.

By today’s standards in developed countries, this scene appears primitive. In contrast, the vast majority of students have access to many textbooks, and an increasing number have access to web-based learning resources. Teachers have access to a wide range of instructional resources, including the web. Read more »

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