TCC Worldwide Online Conference 2018: Call for Proposals

Posted on October 18, 2017 by JimS

By Bert Kimura

The theme for the 23rd Annual TCC Worldwide Online Conference, April 17-19, 2018, is “Navigating the Digital Landscape.” Participation in this event is entirely online. All sessions are delivered online in real-time. Sessions are recorded for later viewing.

Please consider submitting a proposal for a paper or general session related to all aspects of learning, design, and technology, including but not limited to e-learning, online learning communities, collaborative learning, social media, mobile learning, emerging technologies, international education, and professional development.

The proposal submission deadline is December 15, 2017. The submission form is available at http://bit.ly/2018proposal.

For a list of suggested topics and more information, see Call for Proposals.

TCC Hawaii, LearningTimes, & the Learning Design and Technology Department, College of Education, UH-Manoa collaborate to produce this event. Numerous volunteer faculty and staff worldwide provide additional support.

Contact: Bert Kimura (bert@hawaii.edu) or Curtis Ho (curtis@hawaii.edu).

Homepage: tcchawaii.org
Hashtag: #tcc23rd

To subscribe to the TCCOHANA-L mailing list, see: http://tcchawaii.org/tccohana-l/

 

Filed under: Announcement, Conference, Ed Tech, Higher Education, Innovation, Instructional Design, Instructional Media, Instructional Resource, Instructional Technology, International, Online Conference, Online Learning, Professional Development, Social Networking, Teacher Training, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

Bring the World to Your Classroom: Videoconferencing

Posted on August 28, 2017 by JimS
By Bryan A. Upshaw

My worst grade in high school was in Spanish I. Our teacher was tough, and the pace was blistering. I struggled to learn the vocab, grammar, and odd verb conjugation charts. I found the culture interesting, but the rest of the class was just frustrating and seemingly pointless to my future. Guess what subject I mainly teach now? That’s right – Spanish. What turned my worst grade and most frustrating class into my career?

Getting to see the world outside my little East Tennessee community and building relationships with people who at first seemed so different from me changed the way I saw the world. I was inspired to travel abroad, learn a language, join a local Hispanic church, and live with an undocumented family my last semester of college. Those relationships and experiences made language learning fun and transformed pointless grammar exercises into real-world challenges that unlocked boundaries that separated people.

How can I show them the world when we can’t leave our classroom?

I share my stories with my students and perhaps it inspires some to consider traveling one day, but how can I motivate students right now? How can I show them the world when we can’t leave our classroom? In my opinion, one of the most underused tools in education is videoconferencing. While expensive systems with fancy cameras and monitors can make it seamless, most teachers already have the resources to videoconference. If they have a smartphone, tablet,  or computer, then they probably have everything they need!

As a foreign language teacher, I use videoconferencing in my classroom in many different ways. For example, my friend in Nicaragua, Emanuel, converses with my students. My sister shares stories about her semesters abroad in Nicaragua and Honduras. Another friend, Garret, has talked from Germany about his year abroad in Argentina and how it helped him to learn German and get a job with BMW. My students love hearing stories from guest speakers projected in the front of the classroom. They have fun asking questions and always learn something new. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Education, Hardware, High School, Innovation, Instruction, Instructional Design, Instructional Media, Instructional Resource, Instructional Technology, International, K-12 Schools, Language, Language Learning, Mobile Technology, Multimedia, Online Learning, Technology, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

OLC Innovate 2017 – April 5-7 New Orleans, Louisiana

Posted on February 24, 2017 by JimS

jess-pd-header4

In April 2017, the Online Learning Consortium will host its second OLC Innovate conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. This conference was designed with attendees in mind, working to address the diverse professional development needs of the higher education community. As professional development needs vary from individual to individual, a variety of components were designed to take place within and beside the general conference and are intended to enhance and expand the traditional conference learning experience in meaningful, intentional, and networked ways. A few to explore:

  • The HBCU Affordable Learning Summit provides a forum for discussion and collaboration around making higher education more affordable for students. Attendees will work collaboratively to develop plans that they can take back and implement at their home institutions.
  • The Community College Summit is a half-day program facilitating discussion and sharing among faculty and practitioners in the community college space. A shared, iterative document will be created, allowing participants to reflect and create new knowledge.
  • The Solution Design Summit brings together teams from a variety of institutions to work together with conference attendees on creating interdisciplinary solutions to institutional challenges.
  • The Innovation Lab offers a hands-on, open space for pedagogical experimentation, design thinking, and experimentation. Demos, reflection exercises, and the inaugural “Whose Design Is It Anyway” competition all offer a fun break for the engaged and often overwhelmed conference mind.
  • Defining Innovation – An Interactive Installation is an experimental innovation space, aiming to re-think how we share and leverage information in higher educational contexts.

As engagement chair of the OLC Innovate conference, I invite you to reach out to me and share what your favorite conference experience has been. Are you planning to attend OLC Innovate, and are you looking to get involved, volunteer? Or do you need assistance and recommendations? Email me at jlknott@gmail.com

For more information about OLC Innovate 2017, visit https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/innovate/.

Filed under: Announcement, Conference, Ed Tech, Higher Education, Innovation, Instructional Design, Instructional Media, Instructional Resource, Instructional Technology, Professional Development, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Respondus and Sakai: The Answer to Online Quizzes

Posted on November 24, 2015 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

You’ve been using a course management system (CMS) for your courses, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re completely online, completely onground, or somewhere in between. The CMS has some advantages, and you’re making use of them. If you’re like me, then you’ve also toyed with the idea of putting quizzes online.

It makes sense. It frees you from the drudgery and loss of class time associated with paper ‘n’ pencil tests. Students can take the quizzes on their own time, 24/7, as long as they complete them by a specified date. You can set it up for mastery learning so they can take it as many times as they need to before the deadline, with only the highest score being recorded.

Scoring is done automatically, instantly, and the scores are recorded in the gradebook automatically, too. Students can log in to check their scores. You can log in, too, to look at their scores. Sounds great – until you actually tried to set up a simple quiz and found the klutziest interface in the world. So you remained with paper ‘n’ pencil or did away with quizzes altogether and replaced them with discussion forums geared to readings.

But the problem of students refusing to complete required readings unless there’s a quiz attached to them persists. The top third of the class will do the readings, but the rest will wing it. It hurts their performance, but they can’t or won’t make the connection. For these students, reading is a means to avoid the pain of flunked tests, not a means to learn, to improve performance.

So I returned to the testing function built into our Sakai CMS. It’d been a few years since I last tried it. Maybe it’d gotten better. But after a few minutes of poking around in it, I found it was just as klunky as ever. After rooting around for a bit in our university’s IT help files looking for a miracle, I found something called Respondus.

Respondus is an app. Our university system provides it free to all faculty. Yours probably does, too. The IT help page provides a click-here trail that leads to the site, followed by a download and set up on your computer’s desktop. Click the new icon, and, voilà, your test and quiz creation woes are over.

Respondus is a relatively simple to use test development app. It allowed me to create a ten-question multiple-choice quiz quickly and, dare I say it, naturally. This is done outside the CMS — which at once explains the ease of use and highlights the shortcomings of CMS environments.

After you’re done, the next step is to get the test into the CMS so your students can take it. The process is logical. You need to convert the quiz into a format (QTI) that Sakai can understand. Respondus does this for you when you click on the button to “Preview & Publish.” It walks you through a few steps and creates a folder where you want it. I chose the desktop. In the folder is the quiz file in the required QTI format.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Application, Apps, Blended Learning, CMS, Instructional Resource, Instructional Technology, Online Learning, Professional Development, Reading, Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

CFE 2015 Faculty Showcase at UNC: ‘Teaching Less in More Depth’

Posted on November 22, 2015 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the 5th annual Center for Faculty Excellence (CFE) Faculty Showcase at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This event is indispensible for those who want to gain a concise overview of emerging trends, proven approaches, best practices and innovative experiments in Carolina. CFE organizes the gathering to offer faculty an opportunity to learn more about specific instructional techniques or technology from their peers. For many attendees, showcase talks are the spark that ignites interest in considering changes for courses they teach. It also serves as a reminder for faculty to make use of the many instructional design and pedagogical consulting services the campus has to offer.

The day provided a chance to hear firsthand about the capabilities of the University’s Makerspaces, how teachers use Google Earth’s Liquid Galaxy display and Lightboard, which is currently being built on campus. What makes the showcase an exceptional learning opportunity for instructional designers is the mix of cutting edge technological innovation and low- or no-tech tips and tricks – be it gender neutral language, better writing assignments, role-play or reflective teaching practices and course evaluation. The showcase event closed with a presentation format I particularly enjoyed: Five-minute-long introductions to a variety of topics and projects with the explicit invitation, “Steal my idea!”

mary-huber 2The keynote speaker, Mary Taylor Huber, consultant at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, characterized the CFE event as the “greatest illustration possible” for the theme of her talk, “Building an Academic Commons Through SoTL.” Huber stated that the relationship between teaching and the institutional environment has changed noticeably over the past decade. Teaching is increasingly recognized as a valued academic activity in both general public debates and in the scientific communities. “Teaching is on a fast train,” explained Huber, and pointed out several catalysts for change: diversity, technology, new pedagogies (i.e., undergraduate research, service learning), authentic participation and educational research. Throughout the day, many examples of exceptional teaching brought these concepts to life.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Conference, Course Design, Ed Tech, Education, Games, Hardware, Higher Education, Innovation, Instruction, Instructional Design, Instructional Media, Instructional Resource, Instructional Technology, Open Source, Professional Development, Reading, Technology, Trends & Issues, Writing | Leave a comment »

MOOC Sightings 005: Wharton School and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia

Posted on March 11, 2015 by JimS

MOOC Sightings2

Rapid change is the norm, and for professional development in business, MOOCs are the answer. “Wharton School recently teamed up with Coursera . . . and tech start-ups Snapdeal and Shazam to launch $595 online courses with certificates.” This unbundled or certificate model underscores the MOOC’s disruptive force. “‘For adults who have limited resources – whether that’s time or money,'” says Rick Levin, Coursera chief executive, “‘the Specialization [industry project] model works well.'”1

As change approaches warp speed, the shelf life of knowledge decreases and the need for constantly accessible modules of new knowledge increases. The watchword here is accessible, and this is the MOOC’s domain.

This fact is becoming increasingly obvious in the world of business where you’re either on the leading edge or out of the picture, and the critical factor is time. You can’t pause or stop to learn. Learning has to be on the go, and this means anytime-anywhere.

Will this disruption creep into our college campuses? Will traditional students take to learning in MOOC modules to keep pace with the latest developments in their field? How will this impact courses in the more traditional semester mold?

Most expect professors to gradually blend modules into their curricula, but this is an institutional perspective. My guess is that students will self-modularize and independently flow toward MOOCs that give them the edge, regardless of what professors and colleges decide to do.

In fact, this is already happening, but this disruption doesn’t show up on the campus-richter scale because, from all appearances, the students are on campus and sitting in lecture halls.

On college campuses in other parts of the world, the disruptive power of MOOCs is being embraced. Shahrin Sahib, vice-chancellor of Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), sees MOOCs as a window for “‘students to work collaboratively and closely with colleagues around the world and to have access not only to course instructors, but to textbook authors and experts from other institutions.'”2

For Sahib, the playing field is no longer just the university campus or Malaysia but the globe. He says, “‘If students are to fully assume positions of leadership and responsibility in specific organizations and in society as a whole, then they must be prepared to deal with the global environment.'” For college students, regardless of location, MOOCs are an interactive and accessible portal to that environment.
__________
1 Seb Murray, “Technology Expands Business Education As Students Opt for Digital Route,” BusinessBecause, 10 Mar. 2015.
2 Kelly Koh, “MOOC Can Help Create Global-ready Graduates,” New Straits Times, 10 Mar. 2015.

Filed under: Education, Future, Higher Education, Innovation, Instructional Resource, International, MOOC, Op-Ed, Professional Development, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Who Dat? It’s E-Learn 2014! Come, Learn, Share, Connect

Posted on November 14, 2014 by JimS

By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education

The 19th annual international conference AACE E-Learn took place from October 27-30 in the sunny, warm and welcoming climate of the city of New Orleans. The conference attracted 670 participants from 60 different countries who enjoyed four days of workshops, keynotes, presentations, symposia, SIG meetings, posters, and, last but not least, informal discussions and networking opportunities during the session breaks.

Conference infographic by Stefanie Panke.

Conference infographic by Stefanie Panke.

AACE E-Learn Conference

What sets AACE conferences apart from other events in the educational technology community is the rigorous peer review process in the selection of presentations. Instead of simply submitting an abstract, AACE requires a full manuscript of 6-10 pages. While writing skills do not always and certainly not necessarily translate into great presentations, the quality off contributions is generally high. This also makes the conference proceedings (available in the AACE digital library EditLib) a really great resource for an up-to-date overview of the current state-of-the-art in educational technology. While access to the proceedings is generally restricted to conference participants and subscribers, several papers that were honored with an outstanding paper award are openly accessible:

The best paper awards mirror the diverse spectrum of the conference. E-Learn is a place where educational technology researchers, developers, and practitioners from higher education, K-12, nonprofit and industry sectors meet – brought together by a joint focus on leveraging technology for achieving instructional goals.

My Conference Experience

This conference report is my personal eclectic account of E-Learn 2014. My schedule was packed this year: Not only did I, in a hyperactive mood, choose to deliver three talks, but I also had a symposium and a special interest group meeting to moderate and an executive committee meeting to attend. Luckily, the overall conference atmosphere, the great discussions during the special interest group meeting, and the thoughtful feedback, ideas, encouragement and contributions by numerous conference participants made all of this fun.  Continue reading →

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‘Big Hero 6’ Delights and Challenges

Posted on November 8, 2014 by JimS

picture of Harry KellerBy Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Only a few true nerds, such as myself, will be at all challenged with Big Hero 6. Let me explain.

Big Hero 6 is about four students at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology (SFIT), the younger brother of a fifth, and a robot. These are the “6” in Big Hero 6. The catch here is that these “super heroes” don’t have mystical powers. Their performance boosts come from technologies that they create.

The lead character is Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) who is a wild genius youth who enjoys bot fights instead of the serious business of school. His older brother, Tadashi, tries to dissuade him from wasting all of his talent on underground bot fighting and finally breaks through. He gets Hiro hooked on being a student at SFIT. There’s a catch. SFIT is a robotics-oriented school, and you must show your ability to get in. Hiro must demonstrate his capability to the faculty of the school by showing actual robotics.

How he does so and what happens next set the course for the film. There’s just enough scariness and just sufficient levity associated with it to please school-age children. I’ll be taking my grandsons (aged five and seven) to see this movie two days after it opens and will share their reactions with you then.

The robot member of the six is the most unlikely hero you’ll ever meet. Baymax is voiced perfectly by Scott Adsit. He is a healthcare robot, a nurse, who looks like, as the script puts it, a marshmallow. He is white and squishy — inflated actually. He has a large pot belly and walks like a penguin. This robot is the legacy of Tadashi, his ultimate creation.

Besides Hiro and Baymax, the six include Go Go Tomago (Jamie Chung) who is a speed freak, Wasabi (Damon Wayons Jr.) who has terminal OCD and looks like he spends too much time in the gym, Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez) who seems out of place in a robotics school because her expertise is in chemistry, and Fred (T. J. Miller) who just likes to hang out with the smart kids at SFIT.  Continue reading →

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Geography? T3G…ESRI in Education

Posted on June 30, 2014 by JimS

VicSutton80By Vic Sutton

While at a recent workshop at the Redlands, CA, headquarters of the Environmental Science Research Institute (ESRI), I heard the most concise definition of geography yet: “What where? Why there? Why care?”

vic063014 1

My wife, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, had been accepted for a week-long workshop in ESRI’s T3G Institute. I traveled with her, thinking I was heading for a holiday in Southern California – maybe visit the beach and chill out in wine country.

No such luck. As soon as he saw me, Charlie Fitzpatrick said, “I’ll get you a badge.”

Charlie Fitzpatrick is the K-12 education manager at ESRI. Before joining ESRI in 1992, Charlie taught social studies in grades 7-12 for 15 years.

vic063014 2

“T3G” is ESRI’s acronym for “teachers teaching teachers GIS.” So the goal of the workshop was to give a group of some 90 educators the knowledge and hands-on skills to be able to teach other colleagues how to use geographic information system information in their work.  Continue reading →

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Cyberlearning Summit 2014: A Quick Recap

Posted on June 18, 2014 by JimS

VicSutton80By Vic Sutton

[Note: See Bonnie Bracey Sutton’s report. -Editor]

There is reportedly a wealth of research being conducted unto cyberlearning, but there are no clear views about how to translate research results into action in the community context, in particular for schools or informal education.

This emerged from the recent Cyberlearning Summit held in Madison, Wisconsin, on 9-10 June 2014, which brought together some 200 participants — mostly academics, plus some educators, industry representatives and grant makers — to highlight “advances in the design of technology-mediated learning environments, how people learn with technology, and how to use cyberlearning technologies to effectively shed light on learning.”

Bonnie's photos

There was no discussion about quite what cyberlearning is, but it appears to be a fancy name for on-line learning.

The meeting was organized by the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and featured a number of eminently qualified speakers.

Yasmin Kafai, from the University of Pennsylvania, reminded participants of the remark by the late Steve Jobs that “everybody in this country should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.”  Continue reading →

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Social Media Tips for Virtual Conference Attendance

Posted on May 4, 2014 by JimS

By Melissa A. Venable

[Note: Jessica Knott, ETCJ’s Twitter/Facebook editor, has coordinated the publication of this article. -Editor]

Last month The Sloan Consortium’s 7th Emerging Technologies for Online Learning took place in Dallas, Texas. According to the latest Sloan-C View newsletter, there were “more than 700 onsite and 1,000 virtual attendees representing 47 states including DC and 23 countries.”

Saint Leo University provided virtual access to a limited number of instructors, including adjuncts like myself. In my formal request to attend, I made a commitment to “be active on multiple social media platforms and use the symposium hashtag – #et4online – to further engage in live sessions and network with other attendees.” I was fortunate to be selected to attend, and it was this social media commitment that made all the difference in my experience.

Recorded sessions are helpful but don’t provide the energy and interaction of real-time attendance. And there is a lot to be gained from following the social media backchannel of a conference, but formal registration allows for a different level of access to the sessions and other attendees. This article includes a few of my lessons learned as a virtual conference participant.

Prepare to Participate

Are your social media accounts up-to-date? This may be the best place to start. Take a look at the platforms that are being encouraged by the conference organizers and review your profiles before the event starts. If it has been a while since you logged in to an account, it could take some time to review and refresh the information you are providing about yourself. Keep in mind that these profiles serve as your business card in an online networking sense.

Follow the conference itself and the sponsoring organization. In addition to the conference hashtag, this Sloan Consortium event was also active with social media accounts focused specifically on this conference, including Twitter and Facebook. These accounts provided a constant stream of reminders, letting participants know about upcoming sessions, highlighting participants and presenters, and announcing schedule changes.

Set Realistic Expectations

The Sloan symposium offered fewer streamed sessions than onsite sessions, but there were multiple presentation options for each time slot. The streamed sessions took place in Dallas with a live audience and allowed virtual attendees to watch both the presenter and his or her slide presentation simultaneously. Members of the online group were able to interact with each other via text chat and ask questions of the presenter through an online session chairperson who relayed them in real-time. We also connected and exchanged thoughts and resources through our social media accounts.

Take a look at your schedule for the week and identify, in advance, the sessions you would like to attend. Add these sessions to your calendar. I was tripped up when logging into my first session (an hour early), before I realized I needed to calculate time zone differences. The website mentioned this, of course, but sometimes you have to learn on your own, and I instantly connected with other virtual attendees on Twitter who made the same mistake.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Instructional Resource, Multimedia, Professional Development, Social Media, Social Networking, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

GIS Helps School District Extend Facilities Management Beyond the Physical Plant

Posted on April 23, 2014 by JimS

By Jim Baumann
Esri Writer

The Garland Independent School District (GISD) is located in north-central Texas, adjacent to Dallas. The district encompasses approximately 100 square miles and serves the Dallas suburb cities of Garland, Rowlett, and Sachse. With an enrollment of about 58,000 students, it is the thirteenth-largest school district in the state of Texas.

The GISD has a “district of choice” policy. This policy allows parents to choose where their children will attend school, based on established criteria for ethnic balance. Annually, the district has a one-month selection period for both secondary and elementary schools. Once the selection period ends, the district’s Student Services department begins the process of assigning students to campuses based on building capacity, grade-level capacity, and seat availability. Other criteria, including campus demographic data, are considered before making the final decision on school placement.

To help with student travel and support the district of choice policy, the district’s GIS (geographic information system) department developed a Flex application for distance routing. With this application, officials can determine the location of a student’s home and local schools within the immediate vicinity.

Converting AutoCAD Files to Geospatial Data

Garland maintains 7 high schools, 12 middle schools, 47 elementary schools, and 2 pre-K schools, as well as a number of administrative offices and special use facilities. Managing these facilities for compliance with governing standards, current use, past maintenance data, and potential renovation or remodeling projects became increasingly difficult, and it was decided that an automated system was needed to prepare plans and data for quick and easy access.

For several years, the district used Autodesk’s AutoCAD for facilities management. The district’s AutoCAD facilitator, Kelli Daughtry, was responsible for converting all paper drawings into AutoCAD and maintaining facility floor plans during the district’s $385 million bond program. Approximately four years ago, the facilities department began implementing a GIS to be used in conjunction with AutoCAD. The district retains all facility floor plans in AutoCAD while using GIS to provide easy access to site plans, floor plans, room numbers, and data referenced to them.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Administration, Education, Hardware, Instructional Resource, K-12 Schools, Science | Leave a comment »

Can America’s Wasted Talent Be Harnessed Through the Power of Internet Based Learning?

Posted on November 14, 2013 by JimS

Jim_Riggs80By Jim Riggs
Professor, Advanced Studies in Education
College of Education
CSU Stanislaus
President Emeritus, Columbia College (1997-2007)

For nearly 150 years, the American dream of a better life of economic success and advancement has been found largely through the narrow path of higher education. However, access to traditional higher education has always been limited to the top one-third of the adult population and by all indications will continue to be rationed at this level or less into the foreseeable future. Peter Smith, in his 2010 book, Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning, points out that while traditional higher education will continue to serve this segment of the population, educational leaders must find alternative ways that will effectively meet the postsecondary education needs of a much larger segment of the adult population.

Smith is not alone in this thinking. There have been numerous reports in recent years that have also called for greater access, flexibility, credit portability and increasing degree completion for a much larger percentage of the adult population. In addition, many of these reports place a special emphasis on closing the growing achievement gap, which is increasingly leaving Latinos and African-Americans behind other groups when it comes to earning college degrees. Why is this important? There is a strong and growing consensus among policy makers, educators, economists and scholars that, if this country is to remain an economic superpower, a much larger and more diverse segment of the adult population must be better educated.

America’s current workforce is aging and retiring, and 85% of all new jobs now require some college education. A real crisis is rapidly developing  — America is finding itself with an escalating gap between the increasingly sophisticated workforce skill demands of the new economy and what the average American worker has to offer. In a 2011 report, The Undereducated American, Georgetown University professors Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose provide a strong argument that America will need a dramatic increase in the number of individuals with college degrees within the next decade. This increase in college graduates, according to Carnevale and Rose, is not only needed to help sustain the nation’s economic growth but will also help reverse the 30 year trend of growth in income inequity.

However, with the downturn in the economy over the past six years, we are once again reminded that a college degree alone is not a complete guarantee against economic challenges or underemployment. Economic growth and viability cannot solely depend on education. Nonetheless, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the greatest predictor of personal income and employability for Americans still is, and will continue to be, their level of educational attainment.  Continue reading →

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Textbooks Are Zombies

Posted on July 22, 2013 by JimS

picture of Harry KellerBy Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Despite plenty of nay-sayers, the textbook is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet and continues on walking about as though alive. Textbooks have evolved considerably over the last fifty years and even somewhat in the previous fifty years. I even have one, A Text-Book of Physics, on my bookshelf beside me that was printed in 1891. It has some line drawings and no color. Its size is about 5”x8”. Today, textbooks have lots of colorful images, plenty of side bars, and lots of engaging questions sprinkled about on their heavy-weight glossy paper stock. They also have tons of advice to teachers on how to use them effectively. They’ve gone about as far as they can go with paper as the medium.

books_zomb

The word “textbook” originated in the 1720s, almost 300 years ago. It’s had a good run and is ready to retire. Those who argue that you cannot learn well without a textbook ignore the centuries prior to 1720 when lots of people, not everyone of course, learned and learned well with no textbooks anywhere.

Some will say that books were around even if they weren’t textbooks. The movable-type printing press was invented around 1439, only 180 years before the word “textbook” was coined. Before that all writing was done by hand or by engraving an entire plate for each page making books very expensive. Yet, people were learning long before 1439 or 1720. Even stone-age tribes passed on learning from generation to generation. Some argue that having a repository of knowledge is one reason that our species evolved longer life spans than chimpanzees and Neanderthals.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and independently developed a movable type system ca. 1450.

Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and independently developed a movable type system ca. 1439.

You can learn without textbooks. That’s certain. And you can learn well. But why should we bother to change something that’s worked for 300 years? Many deliver the verdict in a single word: technology. That’s way too simplistic.

Continue reading →

Filed under: Instructional Resource | 29 Comments »

What Happens to Schools and Teachers in the Digital Age?

Posted on February 4, 2013 by JimS

Frank B. WithrowBy Frank B. Withrow

The purpose of schools is to transfer the skills, knowledge and history of one generation to the next. In the past this was most often done through apprenticeships. About five thousand years ago writing of the spoken word was developed. This allowed mankind to transfer knowledge over both time and space. The printed records in books and libraries transferred information across generations and across geographic boundaries.

Learners had to develop moral, literacy, scientific and most importantly self-government qualities and skills if they were to serve as citizens in a modern scientific participatory democratic society.

106256main_cream_ballon_high

For many years knowledge was transferred via apprenticeships. With the printing press and libraries modern schools could be developed where learners came together with teachers to learn in a classroom in a school. Knowledge and history were stored and retrieved via books and libraries. Teachers guided learners through the books. The apprenticeship model of learning gave way to classrooms and teachers. Learners were brought together in classrooms within schools to be guided by teachers through the stored knowledge of the society. In the 20th century learners could be gathered together and guided through the knowledge and experience retrieved from books and libraries.

In recent history, films, videos and computers have supplemented books as the storehouse of human experiences and knowledge. In the last few years the digital age has transformed the way we store and retrieve all information. As print on paper has been transferred to the digital format we now have vast libraries of full motion color videos, printed materials and even interactive simulations accessible to the learner. A student studying World War II can not only read about the speeches of Churchill and Roosevelt, but they can see and hear them. They can see videos of the battles and in addition they have access to fictional movies about the war. In addition, there are German and Japanese primary resources available.  Continue reading →

Filed under: Instructional Resource, K-12 Schools | 4 Comments »

Education in the 21st Century: The World Is Our Classroom

Posted on October 22, 2012 by JimS

Frank B. WithrowBy Frank B. Withrow

Several factors are acting on traditional education programs. Stringent budgets are limiting school options. Content is increasingly available in digital formats such as accessible video, computer lessons and even educational games. Core academic standards are available in content areas. Most important is that better digital management and assessment systems are becoming available. Home schooling has provided a model that can be expanded into a blended education environment.

When Don Bitzer developed the PLATO system, he dreamed that the learner could be assessed and then assigned appropriate learning materials to move his or her learning forward. Assessment materials would be available to measure the learner’s progress towards a desired level of achievement. This process could be repeated until the learner reached even a 100 percent proficiency. Today this dream is possible with core state standards and digital technologies that allow learning in the home, classroom or even workplace. Handheld media allows learning of content 24/7 year round.

In such a system the role of the teacher becomes more a tutor, a counselor, a mentor and a coach that guides the learner through the desired resources and provides the assessment needed to determine accomplishments by the learners.

Each learner will have an educational plan that they are working towards. Assessment systems will include tests, projects and products that are a part of the learner’s portfolio.

We are a mobile society, therefore each learner will have an education card that holds his or her records, accomplishments and portfolio of work. Much learning will take place in classrooms, but a large amount of content will be learned at home through libraries of lessons available anytime-anywhere in video formats, computer lessons and educational games. Team learning will be emphasized both in classrooms and through social media.

The school and community will become integrated. Education will become learner centric. School facilities will be laboratories where teams of learners work together to reach high levels of scientific achievements.

Children and families will be encouraged to contribute digital resources of their learning experiences on such things as family vacations or other significant family events.

Education in the 21st Century will be learner centric and more digital in nature with students bringing their own digital devices to the learning environment. The world is at our fingertips. We must be wise enough to use it.

Filed under: Instructional Resource, Trends & Issues | 10 Comments »

Update on UNC’s Remote Proctoring Services

Posted on October 9, 2012 by JimS

By Franklin Hayes
Media Coordinator
ProctorU

[Note: This article was originally received as an email response to ETCJ’s “Remote Proctoring: UNC’s Low-Tech Network Model May Be the Best.” -Editor]

I was skimming through Educational Technology and Change and thoroughly enjoyed the lively discussion about online proctoring. More specifically, I honed in on the article titled “Remote Proctoring: UNC’s Low-Tech Network Model May Be the Best” and was intrigued by not only the subject matter but also for a couple of other reasons.

I agree that online proctoring is the most effective when it replicates the in-classroom experience and can appreciate UNC’s proctor Remote Testing Services for its simplicity.

Additionally, I work for a company called ProctorU that provides online proctoring for over 200 partner institutions, including a handful of those mentioned in the article. Most recently, we signed a major agreement with the University of North Carolina System that integrates ProctorU with their web infrastructure, enabling students to find an online proctor and test without ever having to leave the UNC site. This Application Programming Interface (API) was recently highlighted in a press release by UNC and covered by the publication Campus Technology.

The partnership with UNC represents the first statewide agreement with a single online proctoring company. We also proctor exams for Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), the University of Minnesota, and Northwestern University. For a listing of our partner institutions, please visit http://proctoru.com/partners.php. Continue reading →

Filed under: Instructional Resource, Support Services | 1 Comment »

Remote Proctoring: UNC’s Low-Tech Network Model May Be the Best

Posted on October 8, 2012 by JimS

Jim ShimabukuroBy Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

[Note: See Franklin Hayes’s “Update on UNC’s Remote Proctoring Services,” 10.9.12. -Editor]

A persistent concern about completely online courses is testing security. Without the physical presence of the professor or teaching assistant at the exam site, the fear is that students will cheat. For some (Adsit, Kimura), security is a non-issue, and the real issue is test design. For others, the issue is the ills of high-stakes testing (Keller). These issues notwithstanding, secure testing remains a critical step in the credentialing process for the vast majority of teachers and educational institutions. Its omission, alone, is enough to ensure that a course cannot be taken for credit, and credits are the universal currency for diplomas and certificates.

The mushrooming popularity of MOOCs has magnified the issue of secure testing for the purpose of certification. Minus the security, MOOCs are relegated to non-credit status. In other words, a terrific learning experience, but it won’t count toward graduation. Thus, as a business model, MOOCs are considered by most to be nonviable.

Consequently, there’s a need – a need for a workable remote proctoring procedure or service. One of the latest to enter this market is the Tegrity Remote Proctoring System. It relies primarily on the webcam built into today’s notebook computers. This type of service is not new. Kryterion‘s “online proctoring solutions accommodate on-board cameras commonly found on today’s laptops.” However, it also uses “more advanced USB cameras that offer wider view of the test taker and surrounding environment.”

Software Secure‘s Remote Proctor Pro is billed as “the gold-standard in remote test integrity.” It claims to address “every area of exam security by authenticating … identity and controlling a student’s computer while watching and listening to the exam environment.” See the video for a demo of its outboard camera setup.

Software Secure’s Remote Proctor Pro

Test proctoring per se, as an onground service, has a relatively long history. Colleges have offered exam proctoring services to students as well as the public for years. The National College Testing Association‘s Consortium of College Testing Centers (CCTC) is a free referral service designed “to facilitate distance learning.” Cal Poly is a member. Its “Testing Services office offers proctoring services for anyone needing to take tests in San Luis Obispo for another school or agency. Students participating in distance learning programs or correspondence degree programs, and professionals needing to be tested in order to receive certification in their field may be able to arrange to have their tests proctored at our facility.” Continue reading →

Filed under: Instructional Resource, Support Services | 6 Comments »