The problem is that we can’t expect to see this dialogue and exploration coming from technocrats or people who are hired to manage instructional technology. Their survival depends on centralization and a tight rein on all technology. The last thing they want is for teachers to become empowered and independent learners capable of creating their own learning environments from the best options that are available on the living and breathing web. –Jim Shimabukuro
I really agree with all until the final paragraph. It sounds good and would work if theory matched reality. For too many instructors and K-12 teachers, they just don’t know “the best options that are available on the living and breathing web.” Furthermore many don’t even know how to find out. Once they do, they have the problem of evaluation, of technological literacy, which means being able accurately to evaluate technology for a specific purpose and assess costs and benefits.
School technologists can help a great deal and should not be removed from the equation. They understand the technology; instructors understand the pedagogy. Together, they could make intelligent decisions. Continue reading →
Stefanie Panke, in the discussion (8.16.11) on her article, “Open Learning at P2PU: An Interview with Jessica Ledbetter” (8.11.11), asks critical questions re performance in open online classes: Why do people drop out or hang in? How does this affect class culture or the facilitators?
I’m not sure what the answers are for the first question, but I’m certain that most who have taught or learned online have an opinion. My guess is that “easy access” is a root cause. It takes little effort to register for an online class, it’s free, and anonymity is an option. Thus when a door is purposely left wide open, many will enter, and this will include those who are merely curious, marginally interested, or lack the necessary time, temperament, skills, or knowledge to succeed.
The paradox is that “easy access” is also the root cause for popularity, i.e., for the same reasons that many will drop out, many will register. Thus we have a case of you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Continue reading →
The road to technological change in education isn’t going to be paved by those who are committed to traditional face-to-face pedagogy. Yet, Ann Taylor, interim director of the Dutton e-Education Institute at Penn State, suggests that colleges “use traditional face-to-face faculty as … lead instructors, but hire part-time individuals to handle grading and daily course interactions” (Mary Bart, “Best Practices Help Dispel the Myths of Online Faculty Hiring Practices,” Faculty Focus, 15 Aug. 2011). This advice will more than likely lead to more of the same old ground-based practices. The instructional base is still the classroom, and from this perspective, change doesn’t stand a chance.
Taylor also suggests hiring a “course manager to oversee … online courses” (Bart). Unfortunately, for the vast majority of colleges, this is the model for online classes. This, too, is a perpetuation of practice that’s proven inimical to change. The problem is that the only person who can and should manage a class, online or F2F, is the instructor. Adding a layer of bureaucracy isn’t the answer. This is an extremely costly stopgap and simply postpones the need for teachers to manage their online courses. Continue reading →
[Note: This is the first in a series of articles in which Stefanie plans to explore open and informal learning. -Editor]
Introduction
The peer-to-peer learning community, P2PU, was founded in 2007. Since then, it has grown to approximately 1000 members. The credo “everyone has something to contribute and everyone has something to learn” guides the design of this informal university. Users can create their own courses or choose to subscribe to an existing course – either as active participants or as followers. Courses run for several weeks at a time and are open for enrollment during this period. Course organizers can set up a list of tasks, link to online material or work through a book.
Jessica Ledbetter
As an example, one class I am currently following reads Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. Participants are supposed to reciprocally review their takes on the learning tasks, giving mutual support and helping to improve each other’s work. Though no traditional accreditation is provided, P2PU is currently developing a badging system together with Mozilla Foundation to recognize informal learning, in particular, in the field of web development (Kamenetz, 2011, p.85). Continue reading →
South Central is a rural school district in South Dakota, and next year it will be offering science classes without science teachers (Josh Verges, “Four Rural S.D. Schools Let Students Run the Show,” Argus Leader 23 July 2011). “The teachers,” according to Verges, “are not expected to know the science curriculum; they just have to know students and how to connect them with resources and experts who can teach it.”
The emphasis will be on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), and the approach will be project-based: students work in small groups on a real world problem, and much of the learning is done online. The groups work independently, and teachers intervene only when needed.
The motivation for this change is economics – small, remote schools can’t afford to hire qualified science teachers. However, it puts a new twist into an old saw: Necessity is the mother of innovation. With this one decision, South Central steps out of the 19th century and into the 21st. Continue reading →
George Siemens, in an interview with Audrey Watters, says, “In terms of evaluation of learners, assessment should be in-process, not at the conclusion of a course in the form of an exam or a test” (“How Data and Analytics Can Improve Education,” O’Reilly Radar, 25 July 2011). In the context of online learning, he’s underscoring the data mining tools built into learning management systems to do just that – provide on demand information on student log-ins, participation, completion of activities, etc. that can be used to formatively monitor progress. He also mentions the capacity to mine more complex data such as the quality of a student’s performance, but this area is still relatively unexplored.
Still, teachers are discovering that online classes provide mountains of qualitative digital data for each student. In essence, everything that’s done by everyone in an online class is automatically recorded and archived. For example, I teach completely online writing courses and have access to a mind-boggling amount of performance information. For each student, I can access all email exchanges that we’ve had, all discussion forum and chat posts, all confirmations of tasks completed, all evaluations written for classmates’ drafts, and all drafts written and comments received from peers and from me. Because this data is in digital form, it’s also searchable, fluid, and portable. Continue reading →
With budget cuts eliminating teachers and other human resources in schools, ebooks, hand held devices and social media are stepping in to fill the void. Rip Van Winkle, if he returned today, would find the average school a strange place. For the most part educational reform has traditionally repackaged the old ways in only slightly different new formats, but the system has remained the same. The digital world, however, has the potential for radical changes.
Modern schools can be traced back to the 1700s because by then we were storing and retrieving skills and knowledge in relatively cheap printed books. Learning by the young was no longer limited to apprenticeships with master craftsmen or sitting at the feet of primary scholars. Libraries of information were no longer limited to scribes and scholars. Universal literacy was the doorway to learning and knowledge. Teachers replaced scholars as the guiding force for young learners. The United States of America led the world in providing schools for all children including disabled children. However, to our shame we created a dual system of segregated schools for Afro American learners. We have always had an elite element of schools that are not open to everyone. However, in general, our schools have been the open doorway to class mobility. Continue reading →
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator
In 2006, Copiepresse, the rights managing society of Belgian publishers of French- and German-language daily newspapers, sued Google about the snippets shown in Google News and about the cached versions displayed in Google Search. On May 5, 2011, a decision of the Brussels appeal court slightly reworded but basically confirmed the 2007 judgment of the first instance court :
La cour … Condamne Google à retirer des sites Google.be et Google.com, plus particulièrement des liens «en cache» visibles sur “Google Web” et du service “Google News”, tous les articles, photographies et représentations graphiques des éditeurs belges de presse quotidienne francophone et germanophone, représentés par Copiepresse …, sous peine d’une astreinte de 25.000,00 € par jour de retard ….
The syntax is contorted and the part between commas starting with “plus particulièrement” is ambiguous. Moreover, I’m not a lawyer. So here is a very informal attempt at translation:
The court … orders Google to withdraw from the Google.be and Google.com sites, more particularly from the “cached” links visible on “Google Web” and from the “Google News” service, all articles, photographs and graphical representations of the Belgian publishers of French- and German press represented by Copiepresse …, or pay € 25’000.00 for each day in noncompliance …. Continue reading →
By Frank B. Withrow
[Note: In this article, Frank shares profiles of some very amazing people who view disabilities as inspiration rather than obstacles: Desdie and Frank, Nanette Fabray, Mabel Hubbard Bell, Henry and Emmanuel, and Dennis. -Editor]
Desdie and Frank
They were both independent and working for an insurance company. Desdie was a PBX operator, and Frank was a rising claims manager. Both came from large farm families. Frank was the oldest of ten children born in what is now Withrow Springs State Park in Arkansas. Desdie was among the younger daughters of a father who had ten children. Her birth mother had died two children after Desdie was born in Oklahoma.
Frank Sr. and Desdie (click to zoom in)
His stepbrother, Fred, had dropped Frank as an infant on a farm implement. At the time the wound had been treated, but his knee healed in a frozen 90-degree bend position. Frank and Desdie had been seeing one another for some time when Desdie took Frank to meet her father, Jack Thomas. Jack seemed to like Frank, but later talked to Desdie. He questioned whether they were developing a serious relationship and warned her about marrying a disabled person. Desdie responded by saying he was one of the most interesting men she had ever met. She thanked her father for his advice and went on to marry Frank in 1923. Frank’s mother died in 1925, and Desdie and Frank brought the three youngest girls and two youngest boys to Dallas to live with them. His father was unhappy since he used the children to pick cotton, but Frank had promised his mother on her deathbed to care for the younger children. Continue reading →
This journal, Educational Technology and Change, is built in a WordPress web publishing environment. I hesitate to call it a “blog” because people tend to immediately close on it and can’t see that WordPress is no more a blog than the smartphone is a phone.
I’ve had my iPhone 4 for about two months, and it’s already changing my view of what it means to be connected. WordPress and iPhone, together, are redefining the publishing landscape for me. They’re not only placing publishing in the hands of the many, but they’re making it possible for them to do it from anywhere at anytime. It’s no longer a matter of waiting until I can get to a computer with web access. Instead, I have it with me at all times wherever I am, eliminating the waiting altogether.
I can now write an article using the built-in notes application and a Bluetooth wireless keyboard that I originally purchased for the iPad. In fact, I’m writing the first draft of this article on the iPhone. A couple months ago, I would’ve scoffed at the idea of composing on a screen the size of a credit card. Impossible, I would’ve sworn. But I’m doing it now, and I find it just as comfortable as my laptop or desktop. Continue reading →
[Note: I started writing about the project of Liceo Artistico De Fabris, then I asked for feedback from Frank B. Withrow, because he has written about his experience in enabling tactile learning in “Technology Can Help Deaf-Blind Infants” and from Roberta Ranzani, with whom I have collaborated in several subtitling and educational projects. Frank sent the text about tactile books and the American Printing House for the Blind. Roberta mentioned a tactile astronomy workshop for the blind that took place in Venice. A friend of hers, Tiziana Castorina, had attended, and Roberta asked her for a description. Thanks to Tizana and Frank for allowing me to post their texts here, and to Roberta for her suggestion and for the introduction to Tiziana – CA]
Claude Almansi: Tactile books — Liceo Artistico De Fabris
On June 29, 2011, Roberto Ellero sent me the URL of a video he made about a project by Prof. Adriana Sasso and her students at the Liceo Artistico “De Fabris” (Nove, Vicenza, Italy — liceo means secondary school): creating tactile books for blind and sight-impaired children.
From the video, it seemed that this project could be relevant to previous discussions here about project-based learning: for example, see “Project Based vs Problem Based Learning” by Jan Schwartz (June 26, 2011), in reply to Jim Shimabukuro’s “A Quick and Dirty Look at Project-Based Learning” (May 20, 2011). So I asked Roberto if it would be alright to subtitle it in English (well, in Italian and French too). He agreed, so here goes:
With a wide range of curriculum available on the Internet, home schooling has become a more viable option for some families. The schoolhouse offers more than just academic resources. It also offers a social environment where friendships are established and where students learn to work together in teams. Learning resources on the Internet offer high levels of content and highly qualified teachers. Such programs, especially if approved by the state, are viable opportunities for learners of all ages.
Consequently, some two million students (Dan Lips and Evan Feinberg, “Homeschooling: A Growing Option in American Education,” Heritage Foundation, 3 April 2008) in the USA are now engaged in home schooling. To partially make up for the social interactions of the regular public school, some areas have an extensive set of options for families with home scholars. These include field trips, debating contests, orchestras, community sports teams and even drama theaters.
The 23rd annual World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (ED-MEDIA) took place from June 27 to July 1 in Lisbon, Portugal. The event brought together approximately 800 participants from 60 countries. At the backdrop of the beautiful Faculty of Letters Campus at Lisbon University, teachers, researchers, software vendors, instructional designers, administrators and multimedia authors discussed future directions at the crossroad of education and technology – which happened to blend perfectly with experiencing Portuguese hospitality!
ED-MEDIA attracts participants from various fields such as pedagogy, educational psychology, computational science and information science. Organized by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), the annual conference takes place at various locations in the US, Canada, and, approximately every third year, Europe. The attendees of this year’s event experienced a packed conference program. In addition to various keynotes, invited lectures and an extensive graduate program track, approximately 600 presentations, posters, workshops and symposiums were competing for their attention. This report mirrors my own eclectic view based on four conference days that allowed participants to choose from up to twelve concurrent sessions. Continue reading →
In 1988, the Star Schools distant learning program was passed by Congress envisioning satellite delivered lessons to students in remote locations by well trained teachers that were not available locally. One rural superintendent estimated that with the Star Schools program he was able to offer twenty percent more advanced science, mathematics and language programs. More importantly these courses usually had more highly qualified teachers. Often teachers were university personnel. They had guests who were highly placed researchers from industry and research institutions, national figures and astronauts.
The design of these early programs followed the traditional classroom model. However, over time they developed styles of their own and moved from satellite distribution to Internet distribution. Satellite distributions meant that lessons were available at specific times even though they could be recorded and used as needed. Early classes were very much like traditional classes only delivered by the available technology.
The Internet offers a wider range of alternative learning options. Learners can work in either teams or individually in a learner centric blended environment. To understand a true blended learning program, we will follow two students. One is from a small rural school on the Texas-Mexican border, and the other is from an inner city school in Chicago. The small rural school has only eleven students in its senior class. Raymond is very good in STEM subjects and wants to go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and study computer science. Continue reading →
U.S. News & World Reportannounced last week that it was expanding its program of college ranking with a new category for online universities and programs. The announcement from editor Brian Kelly sounded upbeat, nonpartisan, and helpful. “Later this year, U.S.News & World Report will be publishing an expanded directory of online education programs with more detailed information including rankings and other searchable data.” The goal, says Kelly, is to help students make more “informed choices” about an online program. The survey questionnaires will be sent out next week (mid July) and will ask schools to provide information. The questions in the survey, Kelly promised, “are based on academic and industry literature reviews, as well as consultation with numerous heads of online degree programs in multiple disciplines.”
My own experience with the U.S.News rankings is limited and specific. As my first year of law school drew to a close, I realized that I wanted to transfer to another school — for a variety of reasons, both personal and academic. The school I was attending was ranked in the top 25 law schools in the country. The school that attracted me, because of its location and its focus on international law, ranked more than 50 places lower. And yet when I told the dean at the school I was currently attending that I was thinking about transferring and asked her about a reference, she was impressed that I had gotten into that school. Continue reading →
When I was four or five in the 1930s, my 20-year-old cousin came to Dallas and lived with us while he was looking for work. As a young man, he liked to play with me, tossing me in the air etc. I was fascinated since my father had a crippled leg and used a crutch and many of his friends used a wheelchair. When my cousin finally got a job, I cried bitter tears. I knew girls grew up and that I could see women still had two legs, but I got the idea that when men went to work their legs were broken or cut off. My mother assured me that my cousin would not lose his leg or legs because he had a job.
Paul Hubbard, a deaf player at Gallaudet University, invented the huddle in 1894.
When I became a teenager and learned some misconceptions about sex, teenaged bullies began to call me a bastard. My mother was an attractive woman, and they could not conceive of her having sex with my crippled father. They knew even less about sex than I did. I had read about the Monroe Doctrine of carrying a big stick and walking softly. I took a small baseball bat and threatened the biggest bully, which stopped me from being called a bastard and enhanced my reputation. Continue reading →
I worked with language-disabled children at one time. Many of them would probably be classified today as children with autism. Some identified more easily with computers than with humans. I developed a series of drills and lessons called PhonicPicks.com. The original work used HyperStudio, and it was hoped that teachers would develop additional lessons on their own.
The program developed vocabulary with nouns, included language activities with questions and answers, developed descriptive sentences, and included stories. I established a website to begin transferring a much larger DVD version of the program. The test website is still active with one story, “Eloise the Little Pink Elephant,” available in both English and Spanish.
I semiretired in 1992 and began working for the NASA Classroom of the Future. This turned my interest more to science and mathematics rather than language. I have a number of grandchildren and great grandchildren so I have kept the website active.
[Note: Judith is both a college professor (PhD) and a lawyer (JD). -Editor]
Under federal USDE rules that took effect on July 1, 2011, every online program, school, university is now required to apply for approval in every state in which it has (or recruits) students. Schools have three years to come into compliance with the new regulations, but as of July 1, they must show a “good faith effort” to meet this requirement. A number of educational journals have been following this implementation (“As Costs of New Rule Are Felt, Colleges Rethink Online Course Offerings in Other States“), but I’d like to look at the consequences down the road a bit further.
According to U.S. law, each state regulates its own education. In the past, this has meant that it could set the standards for the brick and mortar institutions that did business there — that have an actual physical presence in the state. Today’s new rules do not require that the institution have a brick and mortar presence in the state, but if a student is physically present in that state, the school in which the student is studying must meet state standards.
Disclosure: I teach in a fully online M.A. program. My students come from all over the United States. I have had students studying while they lived in Europe or South America. Today, one is attending a seminar in Dublin (physically present in Ireland) and receiving credit. Recently, a student living in Ohio lost her job and moved back to live with her parents in Texas. Another moved with her husband from Vermont to a new job in South Dakota. Life goes on, and adult students frequently choose online education because it allows them the flexibility they need as adults with professional and family lives. Continue reading →
In our Star Schools distance learning (DL) projects, the teachers had office hours where students could have phone conferences with them about any concern. Many students felt comfortable enough with the distant teachers that they called not only about academic issues but other personal needs. One girl from a rural area did well in physics and advanced placement calculus. She made all A’s in these courses, which was a surprise because in her regular courses she was at best a C student. Her online teacher encouraged her to think of college.
No one in her family had ever gone to college and her parents did not want her to go. However, thanks to her work in the Star School courses, she was offered a scholarship. The local school counselor was very skeptical when we recommended she accept the scholarship but eventually worked with us to have the girl enroll. The good new is she did well in college and graduated with honors. I talked with the girl and actually had her testify before Congress. Basically she said no one before the DL teacher had ever said she was smart or tried to help her when she didn’t understand an issue. It was as if she never understood you could ask a teacher a question. Continue reading →
American Education is controlled by a strong belief that local control is essential. The legislative authority is vested in state and not federal governments. The federal government does not mandate that state and local communities have a school system. It simply mandates that if there is a school system all children must be free to attend that system.
After the Civil War, the Supreme Court allowed segregated school systems in the South. They were supposed to be separate but equal, but they were not. There were some schools for Afro-American students that were excellent, but the majority were poor with poorly qualified teachers and often either no or outdated textbooks. In 1954, the Supreme Court in Brown vs. the Board of Edcuation ruled against segregated schools. They did not say that a community or state had to have schools; they did, however, say that if they did, all children must be eligible to attend.
There is a strong belief that local control is the most important aspect of American public schools. However, some communities have larger tax bases and therefore can afford better schools. To offset this inequality, states provide funds to equalize costs among local school districts. However, this does not completely equalize funding across states so the federal government provides compensatory funds. However, even this does not equalize costs. Some states have a significantly larger tax base and consequently a higher per pupil expenditure. Continue reading →
Until about five thousand years ago mankind was limited to communication skills in the form of the spoken word and cave drawings. With the invention of writing the word could be transported over time and space. Consequently, knowledge and events developed in one part of the world could be shared around the world and passed from one generation to the next.
The written word was a much more stable record than the spoken word. It could be stored in libraries and retrieved from one generation to the next. However, until the invention of the printing press about 500 years ago, the written word was available only to scholars and scribes. Most people had to rely upon the gatekeepers of knowledge to interpret the record for them. Priests, scholars and scribes were the interpreters of this storehouse of knowledge in the libraries of mankind. Continue reading →
Mildred A. McGinnis* was a pioneer in the rehabilitation of children and adults with aphasia. She was a teacher of deaf children at Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) a part of the Washington University in St. Louis Medical School. After World War One, she worked with veterans that had aphasia and observed that some children had many of the same characteristics as the adults with head injuries and strokes. She became the director of the speech department at CID that served both children and adults.
“Ginty” developed the association method to work with both children and adults. She also trained teachers in applying this method. The association method was a very prescriptive system that relied upon the Caroline Yale phonetic charts and associating sounds and language in very precise ways. She believed in cursive script as opposed to print. She felt the writing of cursive letters reinforced the association with the phonemic sounds. She associated sound, sight and kinesthetic movement with speech and language development. Continue reading →
When I first read Jim Shimabukuro’s article, “A Quick and Dirty Look at Project-Based Learning,” I read it as Problem-Based Learning. I think that’s because he referred to Project-Based Learning as PBL in the body of the article, and I am accustomed to those initials meaning Problem-Based Learning. So, like Jim, I went to Google and found that while there are lots of similarities, there are also differences between the two. I Googled, problem based learning + project based learning.
Aside from the fact that when I see PBL I need to read more carefully, here is what I found. As opposed to Jim’s search, Edutopia did not come up on the first 5 pages of almost 5 million results, which meant to me that this was not going to be simplified easily! Most of the results were .edu addresses so I prepared myself for a slog through the papers.
At one time I was the chief speech pathologist at Washington University in St. Louis Medical School. Back then, we believed that there were fixed parts of the brain that were devoted to specific actions. This is true to a certain degree, but today we believe that different parts of the brain can take over from damaged parts of the brain. Modern technology has enabled us to learn much more about the brain and how it functions and how it can recover after damage.
We know that people with aphasia can often recover to an amazing degree. President Eisenhower recovered enough from a stroke that he spoke well enough to win reelection. Patricia Neal recovered from her stroke sufficiently well enough to appear in television programs as an actress. Continue reading →
Joseph Polisi, president of The Juilliard School, in “Put the Arts Back into Schools,” says, “Today the arts are simply undervalued or completely ignored by many school systems around America. In New York City, teachers, principals, and entire schools are evaluated based on test scores in reading, mathematics, the sciences, but not in the arts” (Education Nation, NBC News, June 21, 2011.)
Joseph Polisi
Polisi says, “It is time that legislators, school administrators, parents and the general public collectively come together to reinstate the presence of the arts in our schools’ curricula. Some of the attributes that we value most in our country – discipline, creativity, imagination, empathy, unconventional thinking – are exactly the qualities that are nurtured and developed by the study of the arts.”
What Joseph Polisi experienced, both personally with his own 1950s education in Queens New York and continues to realize in students who move through the Juilliard MAP program and no doubt what occurs in quality Arts programs around the country, is indeed not highly complex or esoteric. Daniel Pink does a job of explaining that the future belongs to the balanced brained student in his highly acclaimed book A Whole New Mind.
By Harry Keller
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
