By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator
On April 18, 2011, Lawrence Lessig gave a lecture entitled “The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge: Just How Badly We Have Messed This Up” at CERN in Geneva, CH (see announcement). He has now uploaded the video of this lecture at youtube.com/watch?v=2me7hptVGzI, with the following description:
Lecture at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 18 April 2011: A new talk about open access to academic or scientific information, with a bit of commentary about YouTube Copyright School.
In view of the interest of this lecture for researchers and educators, I have started a subtitling page for it at Universal Subtitles: universalsubtitles.org/videos/jD5TB2eebD5d. If you are interested in collaborating in this subtitling, here are a few practical indications:
This special issue is not meant as a definitive sum on connectivism but rather, as Terry Anderson, editor of IRRODL, put it in his announcement on the Instructional Technology Forum mailing list:
… a challenge and request that we spend more effort into trying to understand if connectivism has approaches and delivers important insights and practical designs into the increasing networked learning context in which we function.
At some point in the process of change, the talk becomes the walk and the medium is the message. In education, we’re finally getting there.
For the longest time, the vast majority of conferences on the latest Internet technologies have been held in face-to-face or onground venues in large cities. Teachers have only one way to participate, and that is to travel to the conference site. There, as they have for the past twenty years or more, they gather in auditoriums and listen to experts on leading edge technologies and strategies for using them in blended or online classrooms. Ironically, the experts, who gush about the latest social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, use notebooks, PowerPoint, and handouts in their lectures, and the participants, by and large, take notes as they have for the last century and a half.
No one thinks it strange that information about the latest online media is presented in a medium that Socrates would have found familiar. The disconnect between medium and message makes sense when the gap between innovation and practice is wide and the majority in the audience are on one side and presenters, on the other. Continue reading →
Last week I taught a session (with a couple of colleagues) called “Structuring an Online Course: Guidance and Example.” My contribution to this session was a Prezi presentation.
What I’ve attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I gain more experience. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a higher education (HE) institution in 2011. (I work at the excellent Institute of Education.) The point is that many academics need help with the basics – basics that aren’t well defined or universally agreed upon. By “basics” I mean the key decisions that need to be made, the main structural decisions to take.
Click the image to go to the presentation, and click the arrow to view it.
Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure, but the point is to provide a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I’m interested in the academic staff who aren’t banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It’s something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can – an impact that covers the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them, then I don’t want to waste it focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have had a chance to see the whole and how the different slices fit into it. Continue reading →
After viewing Shigeru Miyagawa‘s “StarFestival: A Return to Japan,” Bonnie Bracey Sutton, said, “This work is so important to the understanding of people as people…. It is brilliant sharing of culture” [1]. (Click here for the ETCJ announcement of “StarFestival.”) I agree. Shigeru’s interactive multimedia presentation is brilliant because it speaks to us at many different levels in many different ways, and all of them are important.
When most people see minorities, they see “different” but often don’t fully understand or appreciate that difference. “StarFestival” addresses this issue as an offering in MIT’s Visualizing Cultures series, founded in 2002 by MIT professors John Dower and Shigeru, which “weds images and scholarly commentary in innovative ways to illuminate social and cultural history.” The series “represents a substantive offshoot of MIT’s OpenCourseWare,” and Shigeru “was a member of the committee that first developed this groundbreaking project, which has inspired counterpart initiatives on the Web worldwide.” Continue reading →
Bonnie Bracey Sutton, on March 26, 2011, emailed her friend, Shigeru Miyagawa, and asked about the possibility of sharing some of his curriculum work. Shigeru heads MIT’s Foreign Languages & Literatures; he is also Professor of Linguist ics and Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture; chair, MIT OpenCourseWare Faculty Advisory Committee; co-director with John Dower, Visualizing Cultures.
At your suggestion, we put up the online version of StarFestival — in a hurry. StarFestival, or Tanabata in Japanese, is celebrated all over Japan, but my hometown of Hiratsuka, where this story is based, and Sendai, the city hit by the recent earthquake and tsunami, are the two major cities for the festival. As you know, StarFestival is about reconstruction after a calamity, in our case, the U.S. bombing of Japan. George Takei is the voice of the show.
When you log in to “StarFestival: A Return to Japan,” the setup will remind you of an interactive game. In the opening screen (below), you would click on the PDA, on the ground, to get started. The caption reads: “Playback the Professor’s personal memos, conversations, and ‘you-are-there’ videos recorded onto his PDA (above) as he rediscovers his hometown, the coastal village of Hiratsuka. Follow the path of his four-day journey culminating in the celebration of ‘Tanabata,’ the Star Festival.”
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator
[Note: This announcement is from a post (6 Apr. 2011) by Elizabeth Stark in the A2k listserv.]
The Berkman Center at Harvard University and Stanford Law School are pleased to announce a new initiative in which we invite the world to submit their ‘Ideas for a Better Internet.’ We are seeking out brief proposals from anyone with ideas as to how to improve the Internet. Students at Harvard and Stanford will work through early next year to implement the ideas selected. Interested parties should submit their ideas at http://bit.ly/i4bicfp by Friday, April 15. Please spread the word far and wide, and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Ideas4BetterNet.
—————————————————————————————— Ideas For A Better Internet
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and Stanford Law School are pleased to announce ‘Ideas for a Better Internet,’ a joint initiative aimed at fostering innovation around the most pressing issues currently facing the Internet. We invite anyone — interested individuals, scholars, entrepreneurs, organizations, and others with great ideas — to submit a proposal. Continue reading →
[Note: This is an expanded version of an article that Allan first published in his Facebook page. Bonnie Bracey Sutton, ETCJ editor for policy issues, invited Allan to submit this article. -Editor]
The problems with America’s K-12 public education system are not caused or exacerbated by the presence of teachers’ unions and won’t be solved by allowing more charter schools. The best way to improve America’s K-12 public schools, despite some recent vitriolic blaming, is to transform the present schools. Recently the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) published the results of the 2009 PISA exams. For anyone who is not familiar with PISA, the OECD self-definition is:
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardised assessment that was jointly developed by participating economies and administered to15-year-olds in schools. [1]
We’ve all heard how poorly our 15-year-olds are doing in comparison with the rest of our competitor countries across the world on the PISA exams (17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 30th in math). Union detractors immediately jump on the poor test results to promote their agenda that includes the need to remove bad teachers and the stifling effect unions have in that process. It is a part of the larger effort to get rid of public sector unions altogether. The union detractors fail to look beyond the test scores and explore the detailed analysis that the OECD provides. Let’s look at all of the information and the conclusions that it leads to. Continue reading →
(Last updated 7/23/17 03:55PM) By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator
[Note added 4.5.11: My apologies to Claude and our readers. I accidentally released this article a few days ago before it was ready, and in doing so I caused quite a confusion. Claude’s erudition in a wide range of fields is legend in ETCJ, and her sense of irony and humor as well as wit, combined with her passion in standing up for her beliefs, make her one of the most entertaining, enlightening, and popular writers on our staff. In asking her to expand on this piece, my intent was to make her works even more accessible to readers who may not share her level of expertise. -Editor]
Note: The first version of this text was only a brief note about the odd disappearance after a few hours of an article describing the interest the German tax authorities are taking in the affairs of the Swiss branch of IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), more particularly in the relations between the Swiss IFPI and IPGate.
However, Jim Shimabukuro, our chief editor, rightly pointed out that this note was difficult to follow in its concision. So this is an expanded version, with more about the background of that disappeared article, and something about the educational relevance of this matter. My former title does not fit this revised version, so I have changed it; but as the draft has already been indexed by search engines, I kept its original URL.
Apologies to those of you who thought that this piece had been deleted, maybe due to pressure exerted by IFPI: I only set it on “private” while I was editing it. Thanks to Franklin Trankett who e-mailed me about possible misinterpretations of its temporary disappearance.
For several semesters my undergraduate students have participated in online discussions with students from other countries. My students are education majors, and most speak English as their first language. Those who are not native English speakers have sufficient proficiency in the language to be successful college students in the US.
I have collected data about the activities in the form of questionnaires and have saved the discussions themselves for analysis. Recently I attended a linguistics conference, and while it is not my field, I decided that I wanted to take advantage of the wealth of linguistic data that I had. I chose to analyze one very narrow slice of the discussions, phatic expressions in the form of greetings and closings. One of the research questions I was trying to answer was: Can phatic expressions give an indication of whether the participants regard an online discussion as writing or speaking? My conclusion was that the students seem to approach these activities as informal writing activities. At the end of my presentation, I asked for questions and comments.
One person’s comments and questions prompted me to write this piece: Why should I try to classify it as either? Why not just recognize it as a third type of writing which is specific to this medium? I am still trying to wrap my head around this concept. I am what Prensky refers to as a digital immigrant, and I think my perspective and mindset is coming into play here.
To me, there is a distinct difference between oral and written communication. However, in today’s digital world, perhaps these distinctions are becoming blurred or are changing. Perhaps people who are developing their communication skills through digital media see online discussions as another way of communicating that is a distinct form or genre of writing. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this notion.
Trust is a story about a young girl who gets involved with an online sexual predator. The movie is a fictionalized account of a true story. Like many “true story” movies, this situation is not typical. Research of actual arrests has documented that these kinds of incidents are very rare.
Unfortunately, the movie has the potential of spinning a significant amount of unwarranted fear about the risks young people face online, as well as ill-advised approaches to “protect” them. Research related to online risks consistently demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of teens make safe choices online and know how to avoid or respond to these kinds of situations.
There are two major concerns associated with the Techno-Panic this movie is likely to spawn:
This movie could stimulate the distribution of inaccurate fear-based messaging around the risks associated with online predation. Risk prevention professionals know that seeking to transmit fear-based messaging and simplistic rules are ineffective approaches to prevent risk behavior.
This movie could generate a significant amount of fear about online sexual predators, which could create barriers to the integration of web 2.0 technologies in schools, which is so important in the transition to 21st century learning.
The 2010 National Educational Technology Plan says “…technology is at the core of virtually every aspect of our daily lives and work…. Whether the domain is English language arts, mathematics, sciences, social studies, history, art, or music, 21st-century competencies and such expertise as critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia communication should be woven into all content areas.”
The US has, since the late 1990s, been trying to describe what a 21st Century education should look like. Futurists are trying to divine the skills that will be needed for jobs that do not yet exist, employing technologies that have not yet been invented. However, a careful look around can allow us to see many areas that have been virtually unnoticed by those who are focused on 21st Century Skills.
Supercomputing – sometimes called high performance computing – is not a new technology concept, but the supercomputers of 25 years ago were about as powerful as a cell phone is today, and likewise the supercomputers of today will be no better than a laptop of 10 to 15 years from now. As the world of the biggest and fastest computers has evolved and these computers have become increasingly available to industry, government, and academia, they are being used in ways that influence everyday life, from the cars we drive, to the food in our cupboards, to the movies we enjoy.
Introduction: “Dr. Henry Neeman is the Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research and an adjunct assistant professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma. . . . In addition to his own teaching and research, Dr. Neeman collaborates with dozens of research groups, applying High Performance Computing techniques in fields such as numerical weather prediction, bioinformatics and genomics, data mining, high energy physics, astronomy, nanotechnology, petroleum reservoir management, river basin modeling and engineering optimization. . . . Dr. Neeman’s research interests include high performance computing, scientific computing, parallel and distributed computing and computer science education” (Oklahoma Supercomputing Symposium 2011).
ETCJ: In plain English, what is Supercomputing (SC)?
Henry Neeman: Supercomputing is the biggest, fastest computing in the world right this minute, and likewise a supercomputer is one of the biggest, fastest computers right this minute. The reason we say “right this minute” is that computers are always getting bigger and faster, so if something is a supercomputer today, it won’t be a supercomputer a few years from now. In fact, the biggest fastest supercomputer of 15 years ago would be a laptop today, and the biggest fastest computer of 25 years ago would be a cell phone today. Here’s an example: In 2002, OU got our first big cluster supercomputer. It could do slightly over a trillion calculations per second, which made it one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. It took up 132 square feet of floor space, weighed 5 tons, and cost almost a million dollars. Today, that same computing speed can be had in two graphics cards — and next year, it’ll be less than one. Continue reading →
I’m not an administrator and can’t speak to the efficacy of those measurements, but I am an online instructor who is very concerned with the quality of online course design and with the quality content of the courses we design.
I quickly pulled up the scorecard to see whether or not it could be useful to me. I ignored the sections on Institutional and Technology Support. Important, yes, but my concerns are more with the logic of a course design, with the involvement of students in what they are learning, and with my ability to assess that learning.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but not this:
1. Guidelines regarding minimum standards are used for course development, design, and delivery of online education.
We can use guidelines or not, but if the standard is too low or incoherent, the course will not be very good. I had hoped to see those guidelines specified. Continue reading →
In a recent speech, President Barack Obama referred to our country as currently facing a “Sputnik moment.” He called for more innovation in education and more emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – a currently popular buzz word) education. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been creating competitions for better education between states and between school districts. One of the emphases he’s put into these is science education.
What does all of this whoopla really mean? What are the real stakes? Why should the average citizen care? Start with education in general and understand its import.
Education is the soul of a society.
I put that single sentence in a paragraph alone because it’s so important. Today’s citizens function as they do and contribute what they do to our society due to the education they’ve received. I don’t merely mean their formal education but all educational experiences including at home, in religious establishments, on television, in magazines, and, in modern times, from the Internet. Over millenia, education has been the responsibility of the elders toward the new generations. While other species may train their young, we have the unique ability to build upon the knowledge passed on to us. With the invention of writing, that ability multiplied manyfold. Continue reading →
At the Aligning the Ubiquitous Campus Conference 7.0 (Nov. 17-19, 2010, Wyndham Conference Center and Hotel, Plainsboro, New Jersey), three Brookdale Community College (Lincroft, New Jersey) staff members made a presentation that should have had a seismic impact of at least 9.0 on the higher ed community. I wish I had been there — or at least had the chance to review the transcript or the recordings, if there were any. Instead, all I have is the preview,* but that’s enough to rock my world.
[Update from Aimée Su, manager of NJEDge Conference 2010: Click here to see the Brookdale video, and here for other videos from the conference. (email 3.29.11)]
The three are Greg Liano, Associate Professor, Mathematics, Ben Broder, Director of Technical Services, and Patricia Kahn, Executive Director Information Technology Services, and the title of their presentation was “Cloud Computing at Brookdale Community College — The Solution to a Multitude of Challenges.” I’m not sure if their intent was to present their solution as a model for change, but it serves this purpose very well. In the following list, I added the text in bold to emphasize the phases of change:
I am a teacher, and information is what I usually share. In America we have beautiful people in the media with no content knowledge. I call them “minute models.” They read content without knowing what in the world they are talking about.
I have been to five conferences at ground level this month and then some — and I do not include workshops. Thus, I have relevant information, unlike a lot of what we read in the press. The reports from the press are clearly beautifully written, but the information is often WRONG or critical information is not reported. The press does not tackle the most important information, but perhaps people who live in a technology bubble do not understand this.
“Ensuring high-speed broadband access for all students is a critical national issue and foundational to realizing our education reform and improvement goals.”
The map shows that as many as two-thirds of schools surveyed provide Internet connection speeds of 25 Mbps or less to their students, faculty, and staff. . . . For educational broadband to offer optimal impact on technology use and comprehension, as well as on overall learning, schools need to offer connection speeds of between 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps.
“The National Broadband Map shows there are still too many people and community institutions lacking the level of broadband service needed to fully participate in the Internet economy.”
Significant improvements in broadband access are critical in rural and remote areas, “where opportunities for a wider variety of courses, especially in science, are fewer.”
“Students everywhere need access to rich educational tools and resources; teachers need access for professional development and to engage in professional learning communities; administrators need high-speed broadband access to conduct online assessments and to access data for effective decision-making.”
In “What Is Your Mental Model for 21st Century Education?,” William Zaggle asks, “What is your mental model of the way technology ought to fit into the teaching and learning process?” In my model, there are two competing models. In one, the emphasis is on the school. In the other, on the student. I think we can roughly divide most educators into one or the other.
Click the image to zoom in.
In the school-centered model, planning begins with the realities of the school. Technology is retrofitted into the school or the school is enlarged to accommodate technology. The student is then interfaced with the technology. In this model, “student-centered” simply means that students are factored into a school-based equation. Continue reading →
The concept of mental models has been around for a while now. It seems to have matured especially in the area of computer science and engineering where modeling is necessary for the design and construction of devices. Having a firm mental picture of how something works and relates to the external world is crucial in maximizing its performance. Yet mental models apply to more than just technology (Jonassen & Henning, 1999) and are crucial in understanding how we function and interact with the world around us. For example, they could be very useful to educators today who are struggling to find a way to adopt or adapt ICT into their schools and colleges.
Mental models provide an internal framework for managing knowledge and describe how we know what we know. Many of us, as educators, understand how important it is to connect to students’ analogical learning and reasoning through structure-mapping (Gentner & Gentner, 1983). But actually getting down to how someone visualizes the operation of a complex system is difficult. There are no brain viewers that instantly map the way someone is piecing together an idea. This is, of course, complicated by the fact that everyone’s system is always more or less different from others’. Continue reading →
“So we know that I’m not the most politically correct person so don’t take this offensively.”
So begins the infamous video. I don’t know the young lady personally and so cannot comment on her specifically, but I would like to take a moment to dissect that sentence because I think it reveals a lot about parts of our culture in general, and I believe it shows why incidents like this, within social media, can provide a positive value for our society.
By saying people know she is “not the most politically correct person,” she is essentially saying that she frequently makes comments like this. She then says that the fact she does means that people should not be offended by it. That last part makes no sense at first glance. For example, if I frequently burgle houses, does that mean you should not be upset if I burgle yours? However, I feel the true reasoning behind that statement can be understood by an analysis of the phrase “politically correct.”
As the term is used, it means more than merely conforming to socially accepted norms of speech in reference to certain sensitive topics. People who use the term do not do so neutrally. They deride those who use politically correct language, and they pride themselves for not being politically correct. The implication is important: politically correct people hide the truth — what they really believe — behind a mask of political correctness. People who are offended by straightforward talk are too sensitive and afraid to face that truth. The full implication of the term is that society in general feels a certain way about certain topics but is prevented from speaking freely about it because of a politically-based need to conform to an unreasonable code of conduct. Continue reading →
As educators interested in the impact of web media on students and learning, we had to be alarmed and, perhaps, a bit intrigued by all the attention surrounding the video (click here for the transcript), by UCLA junior Alexandra Wallace, which was posted in YouTube on 11 Mar. 2011. In her own words, this started as “an attempt to produce a humorous YouTube video.”* But moments after it was posted, she began receiving threatening messages and realized, too late, the serious consequences of her actions.
I saw the video and took it for what Ms. Wallace intended — an attempt at humor that’s slightly over the edge. I saw neither hate nor malice in it. In fact, like many observers, I thought the real hate flew in the opposite direction, toward Ms. Wallace. I’m concerned about her and her family’s welfare and safety and hope that cooler heads will prevail. Continue reading →
By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues
ETCJ Associate Administrator
The National Federation of the Blind is requesting the US Department of Justice to “investigate civil rights violations . . . against blind faculty and students” by New York University and Northwestern University and four school districts in Oregon.
Motive: their adoption of Google Apps for Education, a limited series of Google applications (mail, calendar, docs, spreadsheets and sites) that educational bodies can put under their domain name, and where they can control what their staff and students do, but which present serious accessibility issues for the blind. Continue reading →
Upon further consideration, I’ve decided to join the crowd and embrace the common wisdom about PISA, SAT, and other standardized test results. What changed my mind was when I realized how awesomely powerful the principles that drive the acceptance of these results really are. You see, simply by applying them, I can prove to you that I am a better basketball player than Michael Jordan.
Don’t laugh. I have the test results. Some time ago I saw something online somewhere which showed MJ participating in a friendly free throw shooting contest. He made 16 out of 20. Pretty good, but I figured I could do better. So I went out to my local gym and practiced and practiced and practiced until, finally, I achieved my aim: I made 18 out of 20! There was a witness who could vouch for me. I’ll send you the video if you like. (Or you could do what most people do with PISA scores and simply take my word for it.) Continue reading →
Didactic Strategies and Technologies for Education Incorporating Advancements
Paolo M. Pumilia-Gnarini, Elena Favaron and Luigi Guerra Editors
A project promoted by http://lascuolachefunziona.it, with the scientific support of the Educational Technologies Research Group, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Bologna.
To be published by http://www.igi-global.com
I’ve been reading the ETCJ discussion about the “Net Generation” and whether or not they’re really any different from other generations and wondering why Mark Bullen is spending so much energy trying to prove that they’re not different and claiming otherwise is “dangerous.”
The discussion began a few days ago when Jan Schwartz introduced readers to a webinar by Bullen, Separating Fact from Fiction in the Digital Generation (19 Jan. 2011), and in her article, she credits him for saving her from the “danger” of proliferating the myth about the “Net Generation.” With all this talk about “danger,” I decided I had to make time for the webinar.
If I had to place myself in a generation, I’d have to say I’m in the TV generation. I was in grade school when TV antennas began sprouting on roofs in the neighborhood. That was the ’50s, and that tiny glowing window to the world was magic. For the first time, I had visual access to the world that film and printed material could only hint at. Overnight, the world shrank to the size of a base pad in our living room. Continue reading →
By Claude Almansi
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
