Educational Technology and Change Journal

The Recession Is Affecting Online Higher Education – Duh…

Posted on May 27, 2009 by JimS

In an earlier article in March (How Is the Recession Affecting Online Higher Education?), I asked whether anyone had found any “concrete evidence on the recession’s effect on online education” and received little response. I noted that I had only been able to find speculation and perception about this topic.

Well, apparently I asked too soon or was not using the right search terms or something — this evening I’m finding all sorts of examples of how online education is on the rise thanks to the economy, especially at community colleges, for example:

Amy Rolph, “Colleges Nationwide See a Boost in Enrollment as the Economy Sours” (Seattle.pi.com, 10.9.08)

North Seattle Community College reports a 32 percent increase in online enrollments over 2007. Seattle Central Community College officials say their online-course registration is up 27 percent this year. Most online students take “hybrid” classes taught partly online and partly on campus, so they don’t have to drive to school every day and have more flexibility for work.

Jeffrey J. Selingo, “Community-College Leaders Confront a Challenge: Enrollments Are Up but Money Isn’t” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 4.5.09)

Thelma White, president of Elizabethtown Community and Technical College, a Kentucky institution that has seen its enrollment jump by 18 percent this year as automobile-parts suppliers cut jobs in the area, has developed a career-transition program. It offers a 50-percent discount on tuition up to six credit hours for workers laid off since last fall. “The important part is that this is not costing us anything more to provide,” Ms. White said. “We’re looking to fill spaces in courses. We’re not going out to create new sections and hire more faculty.”

Dana Forde, “Online Programs See Uptick in Enrollment, Despite Economy” (Diverse, 3.6.09)

Dr. Jennifer Lerner, director of the Extended Learning Institute at Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), says officials have added more course sections and additional instructors to help keep up with the increased demand for online learning. “We are currently 10 percent larger than we were last spring,” says Lerner, adding that about 7,500 students are enrolled per semester in distance-learning programs at NOVA. “I definitely think that either the economy is a significant part of the cause for that growth or it is the result of people losing jobs or wanting to retain or bulk up on their skills so that they are prepared for opportunities that may arise.”

Grace Chen, “Why Student Enrollment Rises as the Economy Falls” (Community College Review, 10.22.08)

Some experts theorize that a dwindling economy actually helps to stimulate student enrollment. As Inside Higher Education explores, “Whether it’s the economy, new academic programs or better recruiting, community colleges are seeing an enrollment boom. While enrollment has been growing steadily at many two-year institutions, this fall appears likely to set records for many of these colleges.”

Click the image for the graphic presentation. Click here to view the report.

“New Survey of Community College Leaders Finds Rising Enrollments, Declining Budgets” (Pearson Education, 3.18.09)
Scott Jaschik, “Community College Surge” (Inside Higher Ed, 3.18.09)
Kenneth C. Green, “Community Colleges Surge Amid Economic Downtown” (Converge, 3.18.09)

The last three are reporting on the same study by Kenneth C. Green, The Campus Computing Project (see the image above), in February-March of this year — a survey of 120 community college presidents who have actual figures to report. But online education is on the rise at four-year schools as well, for example:

Eric Ferreri, “Distance Education Enrollment Up 20%: Online Classes Help Jobless, Reduce Need for Buildings” (News & Observer, 1.8.09)

Enrollment in distance education courses through UNC system campuses shot up more than 20 percent in 2008. The jump points in part to the desperation of out-of-work people looking to shift careers and make themselves more marketable. More than 22,000 UNC system students stayed off campus entirely last year, taking courses either at satellite sites or over the Internet. They are a relatively small but rapidly growing piece of the UNC system’s overall student pool, which topped 215,000 in 2008.

Bridget Botelho, “Mass High Tech – Online Universities Grow Enrollment” (UMassOnline, 3.30.09)

According to the 2008 report about Online Education in the United States by the Needham-based Sloan Consortium, more than 20 percent — 3.9 million — of all college students were taking at least one course online in the fall of 2007, and the numbers continue to grow. The number of students enrolled in online learning increased 12 percent over the previous year, and online enrollment growth far exceeded the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population, according to Sloan, an organization dedicated to integrating online education into mainstream higher education.

etc. etc. . . .

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Amy Rolph, Bridget Botelho, Chronicle of Higher Education, Colleges Nationwide See a Boost in Enrollment As the Economy Sours, Community College Review, Community College Surge, Community Colleges Surge Amid Economic Downtown, Community-College Leaders Confront a Challenge: Enrollments Are Up but Money Isn't, Converge, Dana Forde, Distance Education Enrollment Up 20%: Online Classes Help Jobless, Diverse, Elizabethtown Community and Technical College, Eric Ferreri, Extended Learning Institute, Grace Chen, Inside Higher Ed, Jeffrey J. Selingo, Jennifer Lerner, Kenneth C. Green, Mass High Tech - Online Universities Grow Enrollment, News & Observer, North Seattle Community College, Northern Virginia Community College, NOVA, Online Programs See Uptick in Enrollment Despite Economy, Pearson Education, Reduce Need for Buildings, Scott Jaschik, Seattle Central Community College, Seattle.pi.com, Sloan Consortium, The Campus Computing Project, Thelma White, UMassOnline, UNC system, Why Student Enrollment Rises as the Economy Falls | 5 Comments »

Creating the Need to Know

Posted on May 20, 2009 by JimS

By Judith McDaniel
Editor, Web-based Course Design

What motivates someone to learn?

On another website, I wrote about how online learning can function to break down some serious fear-based barriers to learning. So let me say up front, I believe there are at least two steps to creating motivation to learn. The first is to address these fear barriers; and online learning, if done well, has the ability to help with this. Some of the most common fears and a happy response from an online student:

Fear 1. I’m not quick off the mark when a teacher asks a question.
Online student: No one can watch me try to think!

Fear 2. I don’t always manage to say what I mean.
Online student: I can try my words out in private before I post them.

Fear 3. My ideas are complicated and I’m afraid of being misunderstood.
Online student: I can try out new ideas in a safe place.

Fear 4. When I respond in class I sometimes end up feeling like I needed a dress rehearsal!
Online student: I can practice alone in front of my mirror.

Fear 5. I hate how people seem to expect me to respond in a certain way because of how I look or how they see “people like me.”
Online student: I get to choose how much I let people know about me, so I don’t feel “prejudged.”

The second factor, given that learners have overcome the first hurdle, is whether the learner feels a strong need to know something. Educators have argued for years about student “motivation” and I would broaden that to actually talk about the human motivation to learn. We are all students, all the time. We put young people and adults who want professional skills in the category of students and we send them to something called a school. Whether they are studying the alphabet or electrical wiring or legal procedure, they are in school. Progressive educators would argue that older students who have chosen to acquire professional skills have an edge over younger students because they are motivated to learn information and they have sought an appropriate environment in which to learn it.

Paolo Freiere, the Brazilian educator, said that there exist two primary forms of education: the banking model and the problem-posing model. The banking model is the traditional school process. Students are “given” information by an instructor, which they then memorize or “bank” in their brains for future use. Maybe. John Dewey’s addition to this model was that students then also needed an “experience” that would allow them to use what they had banked, incorporate it into their experiential worlds. Dewey knew (in the words of a professor of mine during the sixties as he observedwe-students-who-would-try-anything) “There are some experiences that are not worth having.” Dewey said it differently: in order for an experience to be educational, it had to be carefully planned with that goal in mind.

The problem-posing model relies on the student’s motivation. I must (or I want to) do something and I don’t know how, so I will find resources and learn how to solve this problem. In this model the student is the initiator, the instructor, the learner, and the evaluator. Is there room for a guide or instructor in this model of education? Surely, but it is not the role of a traditional teacher. In this model, students are the creators of knowledge as well as the consumers of knowledge and their satisfaction with what they have learned is the outcome measurement. The teacher can help frame the problem, suggest areas for research, suggest resources, and ask questions.

My suggestion that online learning has an edge in creating problem-posing models of education for learners is not new or original. On the issue of technology as a tool learners can use themselves, there is an impressive literature that has already developed and a number of websites. One blog this week (May 19) asked, “Are your e-learning courses pushed or pulled?” In other words, are the courses you design pushing information out to “learners” or are you offering an interactive design that will encourage learners to pull the content they need out of the resources you have provided. Another e-learning site offers the image of technology as a toolbox, a set of tools with which people can build and manage their own learning.

But how does this help create motivation? How can technology create a “need to know” in learners?

At the most basic level, we have technologies that engage learners, that draw them into a dialogue, a relationship, a community (or a tribe, as Seth Godin would put it). But those technologies don’t function by themselves. They are part of a package. Course design is the key. What questions will matter to the people who are coming into your course?

One of my students in an online college program was trying to create a literature study for herself. She lives in Texas and has two small children. At some point in our early interaction, she mentioned how fascinated she had been by the story of the Texas woman who had killed her five children. And how appalled she was at her own fascination. That was her question—why would a woman kill her children? Couldn’t she study that issue in a traditional classroom? Sure, and I would assign Euripides’ Medea and Toni Morrison’s Beloved and George Eliot’s Adam Bede, all great literature in which a woman kills at least one of her own children. What does the web offer that the classroom does not?

Look back at my first paragraph in this article. Not sure how to say it? Not sure how it will be received? Maybe a classroom in a small town in Texas would not be the place to explore this topic in front of friends and neighbors?

So there is the protection of a certain amount of anonymity in looking for answers to this difficult kind of question. But there is more. I have not searched this topic, but I am sure there are websites, chat rooms, historical archives, legal briefs from the cases themselves. Do we want to know more about Margaret Garner who was the historical figure Toni Morrison drew on? The Ohio historical society has an entry that will be useful. The Kentucky Archaeological Society has devoted part of a website to the farm in Kentucky that Garner escaped from with her children as a slave seeking freedom. Photographs of her slave hut, interior and exterior, are available. For the student, there is the allure of the search for accurate details, for motivation. The question belongs to my student. I am not her teacher. I am her guide, pointing her in the right direction occasionally, suggesting ways in which she can determine whether a website is credible and sound or biased and not useful.

And then she returns to her study cohort, all of whom have been asking their own questions, and she needs to describe her journey. She does, creating timelines and a history that starts with the Greeks of Euripides’ time and comes forward to a Texas murder trial in the twenty-first century. She has worked with these other students for several months now, and they are important community to her—she is motivated by the relationship that has grown among them.

What I am struck by over and over as I teach students online is the level of possibility. Would Paolo Freire have found the internet a companion or a burden? I can only wonder. But for many, it has opened worlds beyond the ones they were born into.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Adam Bede, Beloved, Course design, e-learning, Euripides, George Eliot, John Dewey, Kentucky Archaeological Society, learning, Margaret Garner, Medea, Online, Paolo Freiere, Seth Godin, Toni Morrison | 13 Comments »

Is There a Place for CAI in the 21st Century?

Posted on May 12, 2009 by JimS

By Steve Eskow
Editor, Hybrid vs. Virtual Issues

In the period 1960-1990 there was much hope invested in the power of this wonderful new machine, the computer, to transform education. B.F. Skinner, Patrick Suppes, Alfred Bork were among the intellectual luminaries exploring variations of the computer mystique: “CAI,” Computer-Assisted-Instruction,”CBI,” Computer-Based Instruction, “Intelligent Tutoring Systems” were widely explored and debated. Skinner’s “teaching machines” and “programmed learning” seemed destined to transform educational practice, or so his followers claimed. Thousands of students were engaged in conversation with machines calling themselves, modestly, “Plato.”

It seems safe to say that the computer tutoring movement, if it exists at all, is not now what it was then.

Now we talk of “21st Century” skills and 21st Century instruction.

One aspect of “21st Century instruction” that strikes the unwary observer is that it seems to be falling apart– or, at the very least, traditional instructional methods are subject to enormous strain.

To pick one segment of postsecondary education in one nation, the US: 3000 community colleges are struggling to find funds and live tutors for hordes of secondary school graduates who come to higher education without acceptable levels of literacy and numeracy. And there is some evidence that this phenomenon is everywhere, and growing.

The question then becomes: can these 20th century experiments in using the computer as a patient drillmaster, presenting to such students manageable units of instruction, noting their answers, responding to those answers with encouragement and advice, be usefully revived?

Might a new kind of partnership assign these crucial but lower-level teaching functions to machines reduce our need for the poorly paid educational peons who now do this kind of work. (What happens to the poorly paid peons when they are no longer needed is a standard part of Western economic drama.)

Are there examples of currently successful CAI and CBT experiments that we should know about?

Is there a future for such ventures, or should they be consigned to the dustbin of history?

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Alfred Bork, B.F. Skinner, CAI, CBI, Computer-Assisted-Instruction, Computer-Based Instruction, Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Patrick Suppes, Plato, programmed learning, teaching machines | 9 Comments »

How to Turn Your Online Program into a Net Revenue Generator

Posted on April 27, 2009 by JimS

By John Sener

A recent listserv discussion elsewhere prompted me to ask participants to share their opinions/knowledge on what factors enable online programs to become net revenue generators (while avoiding becoming “cash cows”). I’ve been asking this question in various venues (Facebook, Twitter, et. al), and now I’ll ask it here. Responses I’ve received to date on this question focus on several areas.

Since they are net revenue producers by definition, a relatively easier path is to do what the for-profits do: cherry-pick program offerings (no physics or Greek literature here); reduce costs by outsourcing services, utilizing physical space efficiently, etc.; cut out additional functions (e.g., research) and amenities (e.g., sports and entertainment complexes); use adjuncts extensively, etc.

However, administrators of successful, revenue-producing online programs cite several other factors as well, such as using online learning to extend established programs; reach out to find new audiences; offer programs that are different from other available ones; use economies of scale, and plan for the long term (see this posting for a more complete list ).

Although no doubt there are some “secrets” for generating net revenue from online learning which are being held proprietarily, I believe that there are many people who would be interested in a more public description of this information. So, care to share your ideas? If you were to write a document that describes strategies for turning online programs into net revenue generators, what else would you include?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 59 Comments »

India Steps Forward in Science Education

Posted on April 21, 2009 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

A recent press release in The Hindu newspaper, titled “Virtual lab for exploring science in top 10 institutes,” explained a new initiative by the government of India.

The release states, “Students pursuing higher studies at the country’s top technical institutes will now be able to do any experiment without going to a laboratory but through virtual labs.” It goes on to note that the government will be spending $40 million (Rs 2 billion) to complete this project within a year.

Coming on the heels of new virtual science lab commercial products from Romania, Turkey, and Scotland, this announcement should have our attention for two reasons.

It shows that India has made a huge commitment to gaining ground in science and engineering. They have decided to increase their ability to graduate qualified students in these fields from their premier education organization, the India Institutes of Technology.

The announcement also highlights our own problems. Rather than engaging in our own initiatives, we are spending our education tax dollars to import simulation software from foreign countries. We’re sending our stimulus dollars to the Middle East! As I have noted previously, the end of this process could be outsourcing not just of software services, but of entire courses including the teachers to foreign countries.

For a relatively paltry fraction of the money that India is spending, we could be promoting great science education technology initiatives right here at home. A few million dollars to make us more competitive in science education seems like nothing compared with trillions in spending and even with $40 million being spent on a single project by India.

I contacted our Department of Education about this topic and received a polite letter informing me that the Department does not do this sort of thing. I should contact the states, all 50 of them, one at a time! I have contacted many of the states too. They say that I should contact the individual districts, most of which say to contact the schools. Talk about buck passing!

I have a vested interest in all of this. My modest company produces a solution for online science labs that uses prerecorded real experiments. I do my best to avoid bias and like to think that my involvement just allows me to focus better on what’s going on. I see little support for innovation and entrepreneurship in education. As a scientist, I have great concern about this entire issue, which is why I entered the virtual lab business in the first place.

This journal is the perfect place to discuss these matters. It’s all about technology and change, after all. While these two can be discussed separately, I prefer to discuss the use of technology to effect change in education. In fact, I see technology as our only hope for bringing about real and useful change, at least in science education.

The well-known challenges in science education today include:

increasing class sizes, sometimes over forty students
decreasing budgets made even worse by the recession
loss of lab time to high-stakes testing
complete removal of some labs due to new safety regulations
increasing costs for hazardous waste disposal
greater insurance costs for science labs where overcrowding causes more accidents
reluctance of overworked and underpaid teachers to change their methods
high teacher turnover due to the stresses of some current school environments
lack of new teachers trained in science, especially physical sciences

Great efforts have been made over the last quarter century to improve science education. The National Science Education Standards (NSES) were published to great fanfare, and have not fixed the problems. New professional development efforts also leave the science classrooms unimproved. Billions of dollars have been spent.

The Obama administration has proposed new curriculum standards, new science labs, and more professional development. These solutions require an abundance of two things we have little of: time and money. The sort of technology that involves physical materials, for example, smart boards, also requires lots of money and professional development to utilize them well.

Internet technology, on the other hand, requires only Internet access, which now is available nearly everywhere, and Internet-literate teachers. This evolving technology, if applied well, can overcome all of the above list of challenges except for the reluctance of many teachers to change methods to employ the new ideas. Given the potential benefits, we should certainly be investigating this approach in as many way as possible.

Why should our government talk about bold steps and yet be so timid compared with India?

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Department of Education, Education, India, India Institutes of Technology, Internet, Lab, laboratory, Middle East, National Science Education Standards, NSES, Obama, Romania, Science, Scotland, Technology, Turkey, virtual | 1 Comment »

Science Education Retrospective

Posted on April 13, 2009 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

In 1929, Science Teaching was published. This book, by Frederick W. Westaway, went through a number of printings and was the book on teaching science of that era. Westaway wrote many books, including one on scientific method. His knowledge was encyclopedic, and he understood what the goals and objectives of science teaching should be. Reading his thoughts remains valuable to this day.

In science education, you can truly see that those who do not read about history are doomed to repeat it. So much of what you read today was known 80 or 100 or even 140 years ago. Science teachers still repeat the same old mistakes that Westaway wrote about. To be fair, he makes quite clear that beginning science teachers have a very difficult task and takes great pains to explain how they can learning their trade more rapidly.

I believe that to understand change in education, we should know about the past, especially the best of past method and process. In that spirit, I’m going to provide some of the wisdom of Westaway to those among you who have a serious interest in teaching science and in improving it. He did not perform extensive studies of science teaching, but he was an inspector of secondary schools and understood what separated good teaching from bad from long experience.

I’ll begin with his separation of the old science teaching from the new. He points out that prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, science education was anything but a core subject. He writes, “Science teachers were few, and those few were engaged in fighting down opposition all round.” He credits Canon Wilson with planting the seeds of change, writing that in 1867 he “rang up the curtain on modern science teaching.”

Here is one of the quotes from Wilson’s book as reported by Westaway:

Science is the best teacher of accurate, acute, and exhaustive observation of what is; it encourages the habit of mind which will rest on nothing but what is true; truth is the ultimate and only object, and there is the ever-recurring appeal to facts as the test of truth.

Here, he is presaging Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, in which Prof. Sagan speaks of scientists obtaining a “baloney detection kit” as a matter of course just by the nature of their studies and work. Wilson is making a strong case for the value of science education as a part of any liberal education.

Westaway’s quotes of Wilson continue:

It is important to distinguish between scientific information and training in science. Both of these are valuable, but the scientific habit of mind, which is the principal benefit resulting from scientific training, can better be attained by a thorough knowledge of the facts and principles of one science than by a general acquaintance with many.

We have been seeing an increasing call for more depth of science education and less breadth lately. Here, in a few words and 142 years ago, is this very point made and explained. Wilson distinguishes between the stuff of science and science itself. Science teachers generally place too much emphasis on words, laws, equations, and procedures and too little on what science truly is. Of course, it’s much easier to test for the former than the latter. The difference is crucial and insufficient comprehension of it has created many problems today in science education.

The next quote from Wilson is longer and brings science education forward to the modern era:

The lecture may be very clear and good; and this will be an attractive and not difficult method of teaching, and will meet most of the requirements. It fails, however, in one. The boy is helped over all the difficulties; he is never brought face to face with nature and her problems; what cost the world centuries of thought is told him in a minute; his attention, understanding, and memory are all exercised; but the one power which the study of physical science ought preeminently to exercise, the power of bringing the mind into contact with facts, of seizing their relations, of eliminating the irrelevant by experiment and comparison, of groping after ideas and testing them by their adequacy in a word, of exercising all the active faculties which are required for an investigation in any matter these may lie dormant in the class while the most learned lecturer experiments with facility and with clearness.

You can argue very accurately that the last 140 years in science education have been a continuing search for the means to fulfill this vision. (You’ll have to forgive the sexist nature of the references from 1867.) The purpose of a science class is not the exercise of attention, understanding, and memory. The purpose must be to develop a mind that does not take evidence on face value, that can experiment and compare, that, in a phrase, can use scientific reasoning and will do so in daily life.

Westaway’s final quote from Wilson speaks directly to the science teacher:

A master who is teaching a class quite unfamiliar with scientific method, ought to make his class teach themselves, by thinking out the subject of the lecture with them, taking up their suggestions and illustrations and criticizing them, hunting them down, and proving a suggestion barren or an illustration inept.

We should all ask what sort of teacher would be able readily to perform this service. What training would be required? How many of our science teachers today are ready for teaching in this manner?

Given this perspective, what does change in science education mean? Perhaps, it means going backward 140 years. Even Westaway writes, “All this reads as if written in 1928 instead of more than sixty years ago.” So it might have been written today, except for some of the language details. Change must take place, but not from the old to the new. Rather it must take place from the ordinary to the extraordinary. The gauntlet was thrown down nearly a century and a half ago. We must not fear to pick it up.

How about technology in science education? How can someone in 1867 or 1929 even begin to imagine cell phones and smart boards? What should the purpose of technology be? One thing is clear. Technology must be the servant of good education rather than the reverse. Too often, we see educators attempting to fit a new technology with which they are enamored into their teaching methods without considering its real value.

Westaway understood very well that the teacher and not the method produces the best results. In using technology to produce positive change, we must seek to support the average teacher, the beginning teacher, the out-of-discipline teacher, and all who can improve their teaching results. We must provide the means to raise up the teachers and students and aspire to the best possible learning. Wilson set a standard that Westaway elaborates at length.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 1929, baloney detection kit, Canon Wilson, Carl Sagan, Frederick W. Westaway, Science, Science Teaching, teachers, The Demon-Haunted World, Westaway | Leave a comment »

Interview with Bert Kimura: TCC 2009 April 14-16

Posted on April 8, 2009 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

The following ETC interview with Bert Kimura, coordinator of the annual TCC (Technology, Colleges and Community) Worldwide Online Conference, the longest running virtual conference, was conducted via email on April 7-8, 2009. Dr. Kimura, a professor at Osaka Gakuin University, orchestrates the completely online event from Japan. The theme of the 14th annual conference is “The New Internet: Collaborative Learning, Social Networking, Technology Tools, and Best Practices.” It will be held on April 14-16, 2009. TCC is a conference designed for university and college practitioners including faculty, academic support staff, counselors, student services personnel, students, and administrators.

Question: What’s the theme of this year’s conference and, more specifically, why did you choose it?

The Internet world is abuzz with social networking and Web 2.0 technologies and, recently, its impact on teaching and learning. We thought that this focus would be appropriate for faculty along with what their colleagues have been doing with these technologies in their (i.e., the early adopters’) classrooms.

TCC coordinators pay attention to the Horizon Report published annually by the New Media Consortium and EduCause. Two years ago, the report cited social media as a technology to have short term impact on teaching and learning.

Question: What are the primary advantages of online vs. F2F conferences?

1. Ability to “attend” all conference sessions, including the ability to review sessions and content material.
2. No travel expenses or time lost from the workplace.
3. No need to obtain travel approval and submit complex documents to meet administration and/or business office requirements.

Question: What are some innovative or new features that you’ve added to TCC?

1. Live sessions have made the conference alive, i.e., people seem to like knowing that others are doing the same thing at the same time. Through these sessions they can interact with each other through the “back door,” a background chat that is going on simultaneously; this is the same as speaking to your neighbor when sitting in a large plenary session at a conference. Additionally all sessions are recorded and made exclusively available for review to registered participants for six months.
2. Collaboration with LearningTimes. The LearningTimes CEO and president are very savvy technically and hands-on, and they understand how educators work, how tech support should be provided, and they provide an excellent online help desk to conference participants, especially presenters. Their staff support responds quickly and accurately to participant queries. They also respond graciously and encouragingly to those with much less technical savvy.
3. Paper proceedings (peer reviewed papers). We believe that this is one way to raise the credibility of this event and make it accessible to a broader higher education audience. Research institutions still require traditional (and peer reviewed) publications for tenure and promotion. However, by publishing entirely online, we also promote a newer genre. Proceedings can be found at: http://etec.hawaii.edu/proceedings/
4. Inclusion of graduate student presentations. We feel that we need to invest in the future and that TCC can also become a learning laboratory for graduate students. Grad students, especially if they are at the University of Hawai`i, may have much greater difficulty in getting to F2F conferences than faculty.

Question: What’s the secret to TCC’s success?

1. Great collaboration among faculty, worldwide, to bring this event together. We have over 50 individuals that assist in one way or another — advisory panel, proposal reviews (general presentations, e.g., poster sessions), paper proceedings editorial board, editors (writing faculty that review and edit descriptions), session facilitators, and a few others.
2. Quality of presentations — they are interesting, timely, and presented by peers, for and about peers.
3. Continuity and satisfaction among participants. Our surveys (see Additional Sources below) consistently show very high rates of satisfaction. We have managed to persist, and TCC is recognized as the longest running online (virtual) conference.
4. Group rates for participation — i.e., a single charge for an entire campus or system.
5. TCC provides a viable professional development venue for those that encounter difficulty with travel funding.

Question: What are the highlight keynotes, presentations, workshops, etc. for this year’s conference?

See tcc2009.wikispaces.com for the current conference program, presentation descriptions, etc. For keynote sessions, see http://tcc2009.wikispaces.com/Keynote+sessions

“Sakura in early morning. Taking out the trash was pleasant this morning.”

iPhone2 photo (8 April 2009) and caption by Bert Kimura. A view of cherry

blossoms from his apartment in Tsurukabuto, Nada-ku, Kobe, Japan.

See his Kimubert photo gallery.

Question: What’s the outlook for online conferences in general? Are they growing in popularity? Will they eventually surpass F2F conferences? If they’re not growing or are developing slowly, what are some of the obstacles?

At the moment, I’m not sure about the outlook — there are more virtual individual events or hybrid conferences, but not many more, if any, that are entirely online. One thing that is clear is many established F2F conferences are adding or considering streaming live sessions. Some openly indicate that a virtual presentation is an option.

The biggest challenge is the view that online events should be “free,” i.e., they should use funding models that do not charge participants directly. For an event that is associated with a public institution such as the University of Hawai`i (Kapi`olani Community College), it is impossible to use “micro revenue” funding models because institutional business procedures do not accommodate them easily.

Likewise, there is no rush among potential vendors to sponsor single online events. I have been talking with LearningTimes, our partners, to see if a sponsor “package” might be possible, where, for a single fee, a vendor might be able to sponsor multiple online conferences.

Even with 50+ volunteers, a revenue stream is vital to assure continuity. We operate on a budget that is one-twentieth or less of that for a traditional three-day F2F conference. Without volunteers, we could not do this.

Question: What are the prospects for presentations in different languages in future TCC conferences? If this is already a feature, has it been successful? Do you see it growing?

At the moment and with our current audience, there has not been an expressed need for this. However, if we were to target an event for a particular audience (e.g., Japan or China), then we would need to provide a support infrastructure, i.e., captioning and/or simultaneous interpretation.

On the other hand, the Elluminate Live interface that we use for live sessions does allow the user to view the interface and menus in his native language. Elluminate is gradually widening its support of other languages. Having experienced the use of another language interface, Japanese, I find that it makes a big difference to see menu items and dialogue boxes in your native language.

Question: Tell us about your international participants. Has language been a barrier for their participation?

– So far language has not been a challenge. It might be that those who suspect that it will be don’t register. Some, I think, see this as an opportunity to practice their English skills.
– International participants are much fewer in number (less than 10 percent). We’ve had presenters from Saudi Arabia, UK, Scandinavia, Brasil (this year’s keynoter), Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka, Canada, Israel, Abu Dabi, Greece, India, as well as other countries.
– In some regions such as Asia (Japan is the example that I’m most knowledgeable about) personal relationships make the difference in terms of participation. On the other hand, it is difficulty for a foreigner, even if s/he lives in the target country, to establish personal networks. I have been able to do this gradually over the past seven years — but it is still, by far, not enough to draw a significant number (even with complimentary passes) to the event. In Japan, it also coincides with the start of the first semester (second week of classes) and, consequently, faculty are busy with regular duties. If we were to hold this event in the first week of September, the effect would be the same for the US. We would have difficulty attracting good quality presentations and papers that, in turn, will draw audiences to the event.

Question: What’s in the works in terms of new features for future conferences?

– Greater involvement with graduate students as presenters and conference staff. It provides TCC with manpower and, at the same time, TCC serves as a valuable learning laboratory for students.
– Events, either regional or global, on occasion, to keep the community interacting with one another throughout the year.
– Some sort of ongoing social communications medium to keep the community informed or to share expertise among members on a regular basis (e.g., a blog, twitter, etc.)

[End of interview.]
_________________________
The official registration period for TCC 2009 is closed, but you can still register online at https://skellig.kcc.hawaii.edu/tccreg
The homepage for the event can be found at http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu

Additional Sources: For additional information about the annual TCC conference, see the following papers presented at the 2006 and 2008 Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Distance Learning and the Internet (DLI) conferences at Toudai and Waseda: Online Conferences and Workshops: Affordable & Ubiquitous Learning Opportunities for Faculty Development, by Bert Y. Kimura and Curtis P. Ho; Evolution of a Virtual Worldwide Conference on Online Teaching, by Curtis P. Ho, Bert Kimura, and Shigeru Narita.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 14th Annual, Abu Dabi, Affordable & Ubiquitous Learning Opportunities for Faculty Development, APRU, Asia, Association of Pacific Rim Universities, Australia, back door, Bert Kimura, Bert Y. Kimura, Best Practices, blog, Brasil, Canada, China, Collaborative Learning, Colleges and Community Worldwide Online Conference, Conference, Curtis P. Ho, Distance Learning and the Internet, DLI, EduCause, Elluminate, Elluminate Live, English, Evolution of a Virtual Worldwide Conference on Online Teaching, graduate students, Greece, Horizon Report, India, International, iPhone2 photo, Israel, Japan, Kapi`olani Community College, Kimubert, Kobe, LearningTimes, micro revenue, Nada-ku, New Media Consortium, Online, Online Conferences and Workshops, Osaka Gakuin University, Paper proceedings, Sakura, Saudi Arabia, Scandinavia, Shigeru Narita, social networking, Sri Lanka, TCC, TCC 2009, Technology, Technology Tools, The New Internet, Toudai, Tsurukabuto, Twitter, UK, University of Hawai`i, virtual, volunteers, Waseda, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments »

Collaborative Text Translation with DotSUB

Posted on April 5, 2009 by Claude Almansi

By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues

In a discussion about Uwe Müller’s dissertation regarding open access journals (see abstract with download link) on the A2k (access to knowledge) mailing-list, Arif Jinha wrote that it would be great to translate it collaboratively into English. Great idea, especially for a 269-page long dissertation.

The way Arif Jinha intends to collaboratively translate scholarly texts is based on the hypothesis that if two specialists thoroughly know each other’s subject, specialist B, even if he does not know specialist A’s language, is able to better understand – and render in own his language – specialist A’s work on the basis of even a dubious computer translation than would a generic translator who masters both languages. However, generic bilingual translators could be of use for checking possible mistakes in details.

This is very true. For instance, the best translation of a poem by Seferis into French was done by the French poet Yves Bonnefoy – who didn’t know Greek – on the basis of several English translations, in collaboration with Seferis who told him what he liked and disliked in these translations. And the same possibly extends to other fields of specialisation.

Collaborative Text Translation Tools

However, being just a generic translator, I have to translate the other way round, from the small end as it were. So Arif Jinha’s suggestion got me thinking about collaborative translation tools. There are such tools for software, like Pootle, for instance, which split the interface into short strings presented in a table: a volunteer starts translating some, then another volunteer goes on. You can navigate by untranslated and “fuzzy” strings.

Problem 1: the strings are presented by alphabetical order, with only some coded indications of where the strings come from, and it takes some time to start understanding them. And one-word strings can be tricky: is “post” a noun or a verb, and if a verb, should we use the infinitive or the imperative, and if the imperative, the polite or the familiar form (in languages where both exist)?
Problem 2, you need a server on which to install this kind of tool.

Collaborative Text Translation with DotSUB

And then I remembered DotSUB. It is normally used for collaboratively captioning videos, but its interface is very similar to one of the software translation tools that I covered in Three Video Captioning Tools. And you can have longer strings, in the order you decide – in the order of a text too…

But I needed a video pre-text first. So I made one, inserting a 4k black JPEG file in a video editor:

I timed it for 10 minutes and exported the video in the lowest possible resolution. Then I uploaded it into DotSUB and inserted some text from my blog post Making Web Multimedia Accessible Needn’t Be Boring, sentence by sentence:

Dotsub Transcription Tool:

I left the default 3-second timing for each string in the “Add a transcription line” box and paid no attention to the pre-text black video. Each transcribed string moves to the top-right table when you hit return and is automatically saved. When that was done, I clicked on “Mark this transcription complete” (bottom left) and moved to the DotSUB Translation Tool.

DotSUB Translation Tool

I clicked on the links to translate each string (actually, I only translated the text into French, but I forgot to make a screenshot, first, so I made one of the interface for translating into Italian instead).

When you choose a language for the captions in the video player of the resulting Collaborative translation DotSUB page, you get the translation in the corresponding language as a drop-down list under Video Transcription. To get rid of the list markings, just copy-paste it into the “source” or “html view” of a web editor. Here is the almost unedited result (I just redid a separate paragraph for the subtitle and bolded it, and I put the rest in italics) :

Certains pensent que l’obligation légale de se conformer aux règles d’accessibilité des contenus Web – celles du W3C ou, aux USA, la “section 508” mène forcément à des pages ennuyeuses, rien qu’en texte En fait, ces règles n’excluent pas l’utilisation du multimédia sur le web, mais imposent de le rendre accessible en “offrant des alternatives équivalentes pour des contenus auditifs ou visuels et en particulier: “Pour toute présentation multimédia à base temporelle (p. ex. film ou animation), il faut offrir des alternatives équivalentes (p.ex. sous-titres ou descriptions audios de la piste visuelle) avec la présentation [Priorité 1]” [1] Ce n’est pas une corvée aussi terrible qu’il ne semble, et elle peut être partagée entre plusieurs personnes, même si elles ne sont pas expertes en technologie et n’ont pas d’instruments perfectionnés.

Sous-titrage avec DotSUB.com

Exemple: Phishing Scams in Plain English de Lee LeFever, en http://dotsub.com/view/41ffcc22-6609-4780-bf9d-5bcf88d3197d [2] Ici, la vidéo a été téléchargée dans DotSUB.com, et plusieurs volontaires l’ont sous-titrée en diverses langues. Le résultat peut être insérer dans un blog, un wiki ou une page web. Les sous-titres apparaissent aussi comme texte copiable sous “Video Transcription”: commode si des gens veulent citer des passages dans une discussion de la vidéo. En outre, une transcription d’une vidéo tend aussi à améliorer sa position dans les moteurs de recherche, qui indexent principalement les textes. Le seul problème est que les sous-titres couvrent une partie substantielle de la vidéo

Summing up so far:

Of course, I attempted this alone. But it would also work with several people collaborating in the translation. In theory, even the transcription, sentence by sentence, of the original text could be shared, but I haven’t checked yet if a collaborator could decree that a transcription is finished when it isn’t, thus blocking the transcription.

In case of a longish text that must be translated into several languages (hopefully in collaboration with many people), this way of using DotSUB might prove useful due to the ease of toggling between the different versions from the main page.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: "collaborative translation", "translation", DotSUB, DotSub.com, Jinah | 3 Comments »

A Digital Educator in Poland

Posted on April 2, 2009 by JimS

By Lynn Zimmerman
Editor, Teacher Education

During this Spring 2009 semester, I am teaching at a major university in a large city in Poland. My students are 3^rd, 4^th , and 5^th year students , most of whom plan to be English teachers. Technology is playing a role in this experience in some expected and unexpected ways.

First of all, I have easy access to the folks back home. I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland from 1992-1994 and, during that time, the communications infrastructure was rudimentary. Many people did not have telephones, myself included. The couple of times I called my mother in the U.S. I had to go to the post office and order the call. Then I had to wait until the overseas operator was able to connect to me. When I returned to Poland in 2000 the cell phone boom had occurred, and Internet service was on its heels. Now with Skype and IM and all the other communication devices at our fingertips, it is almost as though I never left home. This easy accessibility is actually a mixed blessing. The chair of my department has been able to give me tasks to do, even though I am several thousands of miles away.

Although I travel quite a bit and try to journal, I am rarely successful keeping up the journaling process. This time, I decided to set up a “private” social network on Ning (www.ning.com) for my friends. I recorded a video about my impending trip. I put up links to my Polish university and other interesting places. I have been posting pictures of my adventures and have written blogs to keep my friends informed. I think that having an audience other than myself is helping me keep up the process.

On the downside has been the lack of technology available to my students here. The building where I teach has one lecture room, reserved only for large lecture classes, that has a computer and projector, but no Internet access. The technology guy here did show me how to download some clips that I was planning to use from YouTube (using mediaconverter.org), so I was able to work around the no Internet access issue. I have one class of about 40 students and that is the only one allowed to use that room. Unfortunately this week when I was planning to show a DVD and a YouTube clip, the system was not functioning. For my other classes, I have had to re-think how I teach them, taking into account that I would not be able to use the videos and PowerPoints that I usually use with my classes.

Another issue that arose is that none of my students have ever done an online discussion. I use online discussions once or twice a semester when I have to go to a conference. The university here does not have a built-in classroom management system like WebCT or Blackboard, so I set up a discussion on Ning. Because I did not have Internet access in the classroom, I had to take “snapshots” of the screens to show the students what to do. (The computer system was functioning that day.) Then I had to deal with the students’ anxiety about doing this activity. Most of the students participated, and I must say that the ones who did participate did a really good job, better than many of my students in the US. However, another professor has referred several times to the week I “missed” class. She obviously has no idea of how time-intensive setting up and conducting an online discussion is for the teacher or the students.

On the other hand, I was recently at a symposium in another part of Poland and technology, including Internet access, was available in many classrooms. This particular university also specializes in providing services for students with vision and hearing disabilities. They have special adaptive equipment in several classrooms to aid these students’ learning.

So far I have experienced the advantages of technology for staying in touch as well as the challenges it poses when there is little or no access in the classroom. I feel a little bit like I have fallen into Dean McLaughlin’s short novel, Hawk Among the Sparrows (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/dean-mclaughlin/hawk-among-sparrows.htm), which is about a pilot in a modern fighter jet with nuclear missiles and technological guidance systems who goes through a time warp to World War I. None of his highly sophisticated weaponry will work in this low-tech time period so that, in the end, the only way he can be effective is to use his jet as a projectile and crash into the enemy’s installation. I certainly hope that is not my fate!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: A Digital, Blackboard, Communications, Dean McLaughlin, DVD, Educator, Hawk Among the Sparrows, IM, infrastructure, Internet, mediaconverter.org, Ning, Peace Corps, Poland, short novel, Skype, WebCT, YouTube | 3 Comments »

All Learning Is Hybrid Learning: The Idea of ‘The Organizing Technology’

Posted on April 2, 2009 by JimS

By Steve Eskow
Editor, Hybrid vs. Virtual Issues

Our vocabularies conceal as well as reveal, our conceptual tools often build walls where we need windows.

Consider the instruction on college campuses prior to the arrival of the Internet: a hybrid made up of various forms of reading, writing, listening, making — learning technologies all. And the forms of those learning technologies were, and are, varied and blended: “listening” and “speaking” include forms as diverse as the mass lecture, the small group discussion, the individual tutorial. “Reading”: in the library, that old great technology, or on the lawn, or in one’s dorm room. And the hands-on lab. And bulletin boards. And of course, more recently, the media technologies that could bring in distant lecturers or music or drama via radio, television, film, 35mm slides . . .

The campus has always been the scene of blended learning.

However, the master technology — what I’ll call “the organizing technology” — is the one that is usually unremarked and unnoticed, yet it sets the terms and conditions for all the others. And that technology is, of course, the “campus” itself: a piece of real estate in a particular geography; and a set of buildings whose shape and environment allowed or disallowed what sorts of instructional activities could go on within them.

And, of course, the master limitation of the campus was its setting in a particular space: only those who were invited to that space, and whose life conditions allowed them to accept the offer, could study at the college, could benefit from all the other technologies of instruction and learning that it housed.

International education and service-learning support the case, not refute it. If you wanted to learn in a workplace, or a community agency, or another country, you had to leave the campus for that kind of “blended” learning. Such forms of experiential learning do not “blend” with the campus, but require leaving it. And, of course, such episodes away from “campus” had to “blend” with the rhythms and routines set by the master technology, the campus: fitted into a “semester,” or a spring or summer break.

The search for ways to avoid the restraints and limitations of the “campus” are almost as old as the campus itself: the search for a university without walls includes university extension and its various forms: circuit-riding teachers; correspondence study; instruction by radio and television.

Distance learning is the negation of place-bound learning.

So what is being called “hybrid” or “blended” learning is the addition of Internet-based learning to the other learning technologies available to the campus-based student. The organizing technology, the master technology, of such hybrids is the campus, and students must live with the limitations as well as the benefits imposed by a particular piece of geography and the buildings erected upon it.

The discussion, then — the argument — is not between the champions of “blended” learning and those who propose all-online learning.

The struggle is between learning defined and organized by one technology — the “campus” — and another — call it “cyberspace” or “Internet” for now — that wants to exploit the possibilities of a technology that frees instruction and learning from the traditional constraints of space, place, and time.

And “blended” learning continues the hegemony of the campus: it does not end it.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: blended, Distance, Education, Hybrid, International, learning, master, Organizing Technology, service-learning, Technology | 1 Comment »

Three Online Libraries: Hawai`i, Taiwan, China

Posted on April 1, 2009 by JimS

By Vincent K. Pollard

I have been teaching politics, Asian studies, and research design on three campuses of the University of Hawai’i System since the 1990s. My first book is Globalization, Democratization and Asian Leadership (Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2004). In revised form, two chapters of that book have been reprinted as journal articles. And one is being translated into Chinese for publication by East China Normal University’s Center for Cold War International History Studies.

My teaching and research have also generated three annotation-intensive online libraries, each of which is part of a larger Internet library. In chronological order, these ongoing online projects and their respective superordinate online libraries are as follows:

“Taiwan Cross-Strait Directory”
http://apdl.kcc.hawaii.edu/~taiwan/
Asia Pacific Digital Library
2001- present

“Chinese Cultures Abroad WWW Virtual Library”
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/chculture.html
China WWW Virtual Library & Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library
2003 – present

“Hawai’i Politics WWW Virtual Library”
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/Hawaii.html
Polynesia WWW Virtual Library & Pacific Studies WWW Virtual Library
2005 – present

The number of hits that the “Chinese Cultures WWW Virtual Library” and the “Hawai’i Politics WWW Virtual Library” get is substantial since of those two each is part of a larger unit in the WWW Virtual Library.

__________

Email comment by Claude Almansi on 31 March 2009:

Your online libraries are really awesome, Vincent – both in their rich
content and in the userfriendliness of their organization.

I had suggested something far more primitive and in “perpetual beta”
to collect resources mentioned by people in the Innovate-Ideagora
network to Denise Easton, off the
<http://innovate-ideagora.ning.com/forum/topics/really-cool-tools-sites>
discussion: a social bookmarking group at Diigo: like
<http://groups.diigo.com/groups/images4education> whose feed is
integrated on the right – under the “about” rubric – of
<http://images4education.ning.com/> . Denise was interested but she
thought asking people to sign up for one more social tool would be a
bit too much.

She has a point there, of course. Yet the “images4education” Diigo
group grew without any formal announcement: members of the Ning
network saw the feed on the right, thought it was a good idea, and
joined to add their bookmarks to it.

Do you think we could consider something similarly informal for ETC?
Then if it doesn’t work, we could just scrap the diigo group.

Best
Claude

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: annotation-intensive, Ashgate Publishing, Asia Pacific Digital Library, Asian studies, Center for Cold War International History Studies, China WWW Virtual Library, Chinese, Chinese Cultures Abroad WWW Virtual Library, Democratization and Asian Leadership, East China Normal University, Globalization, Hawai'i Politics WWW Virtual Library, Internet library, online libraries, Pacific Studies, Polynesia WWW Virtual Library, Taiwan Cross-Strait Directory, Univerisity of Hawai'i | 2 Comments »

The President’s Town Hall Meeting Could Have Been Entitled ‘No Teacher Left Behind’

Posted on April 1, 2009 by JimS

By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Editor, Policy Issues

[Note: The following article was originally posted by Bonnie Bracey Sutton in a WWWEDU (The Web and Education Discussion Group) discussion thread on “The State of Education in the Nation. Uneven But the President is on task,” on 26 March 2009. It has been revised for ETC. -js]

One of the advantages or disadvantages that I have is that I live in Washington, DC. That means I get to go to the hill and hear what President Obama actually says as well as reports from the different groups and sources on the latest in education.

I just attended an online Town Hall Meeting at White House.gov. You may want to review this presentation and or listen to the President, in his own words, share his perspective on education in the nation. I have heard the pleas from Compete.org, The Convocation on the Gathering Storm, the Innovation Proclamation, and the MIT PiTAC groups. It was like going to the hill with the cheerleaders for change in education. But today, the President talked directly about teachers, early childhood education, charter schools and evaluation, and innovation.

What was so interesting to me was that he talked about the support that is needed for teachers. Unlike Michelle Rhee, he did not play the blame game. He acknowledged that he had the best of education but that education is delivered unevenly in the US. He said that teachers need professional development, first, and then we can talk about measurement and merit pay. He must have been reading the local DC papers. How refreshing to see that he gets it..

Here in Washington there is a school where students are throwing books at teachers when they turn their backs. It’s not about technology. It’s about classroom management and attitudes. The President said that not only do teachers need to know curriculum, but they also need to know how to manage the classroom.

STEM

I attended a STEM initiative yesterday that was presented by the National Center for Technological Literacy, NSTA, and NCTM. It was a briefing of the House STEM Education Caucus. I also attended two STEM workshops yesterday. One was excellent. The various groups talked about science, math, technology, and engineering, and gave references, links to websites, and resources. The participants at the STEM advocacy meeting were encouraged to network. There were plentiful materials for all, and even a handout of all of the powerpoints. This was organized by Sharon Robinson and the STEM Alliance, The House STEM Education Caucus, and Innovative STEM Teacher Preparation Programs. It was worth getting up to go to.

At the Education of Science Teachers in Pre-Service for college teachers, in a powerpoint on Science Teacher Education, the focus was on content knowledge and content courses in programs. There was mention of the pressures from NCLB and other mandates. They actually said that in many states science in elementary schools had become a nonentity because it has not been tested and relegated to 20 minutes a week, if taught at all. There was discussion of the disconnect between “Digital Natives” and “Digital Immigrants,” but the group acknowledged that there were some who were digitally disconnected and therefore not in either category. Discussion revolved around a holistic approach to educating pre-service teachers. This was the point made by Jon Pederson from the Association for Science Teacher Education.

Often people teach teachers how to use technology without explaining how that technology changes the classroom and the ways in which we must work.

In Mathematics Teacher Preparation, Dr. Francis Fennell discussed teacher education programs, emphasizing mathematical and pedagogical content knowledge needed for teaching math. Based on evidence from the 2009 National Mathematics Advisory Panel, he said that a substantial part of the variability in student achievement gains is due to the teacher’s ability and knowledge of math.

He discussed the critical shortage in most states of high school and middle school teachers. He talked about the various pathways into teaching and said that we must improve teacher mentoring, professional development, and retention. He was clear that the National Math Panel supported the idea of elementary math specialists. He predicted that there might be mathematics specialists at every level.

The only disconcerting thing for me was that he did not seem to know what computational math is and why it should be included in his road map to math excellence. See http://www.shodor.org

There was handout from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. It stated that every student has the right to be taught mathematics by a highly qualified teacher — a teacher who knows mathematics well and who can guide students toward understanding and learning. A highly qualified teacher understands how students learn mathematics, employs a wide range of teaching strategies, and is committed to lifelong professional development.

An interesting variation and new discussion centered on the Atlas Program, Advancing the Technological Literacy and Skills of Elementary Educators, sponsored by the Museum of Science, Boston (http://www.mos.org/eie/atlas). They shared a rationale for engineering technology in elementary grades and discussed the needs, goals and outcomes, and a plan for distribution of this program to community colleges and four years institutions. This program and its highlights are available on the web.

Then I went to the NEA building to the 21st Century STEM initiatives presentation. Chris Dede began the talk in maybe ’92, and we discussed the 21st Century Initiatives. I actually worked for the first initiative, doing outreach to teachers after I finished my work on the NIIAC, and shared resources, ideas, and philosophy on the use of technology in the US. There were many players who had ideas at that time who were collaborating with the 21st Century Initiative. Sadly, I learned yesterday that the group is stll wedded to Margaret Spellings and the original NCLB talk.

There was no mention at all of science, geography, and the innovative part of STEM that we have come to know about from Compete.org. The innovation seemed to come from INTEL, and there was little mention of UDL, but Ken Kay never mentioned science, engineering, and/or technology as a complete subject. Maybe they need to retool and re-educate themselves on the new direction in which the President is going. Instead they wanted states to sign up for more standards. Maybe Ken Kay has not heard the Secretary of Education’s speech at the NSTA conference.

Arnie Duncan and the President mentioned SCIENCE and Technology. The difference between what the President actually says and what others SAY he says is huge. It is significant that the President and the Secretary of Education pay particular attention to the STEM work. Governors are also on board. There are special STEM academies and Project Lead the Way. Robotics First and other initiatives are being shared, as well as the results of ITEST NSF grants as ways of working. The vocational science issues that are addressing workforce readiness and the Perkins initiative were also important additions to the discussion by the President and Duncan.

The 21st Century Initiative seems to be more a membership initiative that is looking for state buy in. If they are not really going to include real science, real math, computational math, and science and engineering, they should not call their work STEM initiatives.

Geography (http://mywonderfulworld.org)? No one mentioned it.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 21st Century STEM, Advancing the Technological Literacy and Skills of Elementary Educators, Arnie Duncan, Atlas Program, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, Boston, Chris Dede, Compete.org, D.C., Dr. Francis Fennell, Education of Science Teachers in Pre-Service, elementary math specialists, House STEM Education Caucus, Innovation Proclamation, Innovative STEM Teacher Preparation, INTEL, ITEST, Ken Kay, Mathematics Teacher Preparation, Michelle Rhee, MIT PiTAC, Museum of Science, National Center for Technological Literacy, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, National Mathematics Advisory, NCLB, NCTM, NIIAC, NSF grants, NSTA, Obama, powerpoints, President, Science Teacher Education, Secretary of Education, Sharon Robinson, STEM, STEM Alliance, The Convocation on the Gathering Storm, The State of Education in the Nation, The Web and Education Discussion Group, Town Hall Meeting, UDL, Uneven But the President is on task, Washington, White House.gov, WWWEDU | 1 Comment »

Don’t Boycott Amazon’s Over-$9.99 Kindle E-Books!

Posted on March 29, 2009 by JimS

By Claude Almansi
Staff Writer

Don’t boycott Amazon’s over-$9.99 Kindle e-books.

Boycott Amazon‘s Kindle e-book reader.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Guy Kellogg

Posted on March 26, 2009 by JimS

[Published 26 March 2020]

Guy Kellogg is a Professor at the University of Hawaii – Kapiolani CC. He teaches ESOL courses in the Languages, Linguistics and Literature department.

List of ETCJ publications:

box My First Week Teaching Online During the COVID-19 Shutdown

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

How Is the Recession Affecting Online Higher Education?

Posted on March 23, 2009 by JimS

By John Sener

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched the 11 o’clock news on television. My recollection is that it consists of an endless series of deaths, accidents, and other disasters, relieved only by the commercials and an occasional human interest story. Ray Schroeder’s blog “New Realities in Higher Education” is the 11 o’clock news for higher education — except without the heartwarming human interest stories or commercials. The stories are pretty much one hair-raising signal of impending doom after another — make sure you’re in a reasonably good mood before tackling this one.

Once the train wreck/auto crash voyeuristic feeling wears off, inevitably when reading New Realities I find myself wondering: Is the recession helping speed the adoption of online higher education, or slowing it down, or some of both? On the one hand, many community colleges are reporting the increases in enrollment demand that economic downturns typically bring, North Carolina being one example. On the other hand, many (often the same) community colleges are also reporting budget cuts which force them to cancel classes and otherwise reduce offerings, North Carolina also being one example.

One school of thought is that the recession will drive adoption of online learning as a cost-saving measure or as a way to provide access to education for cost-conscious students. A counter-argument is that initial implementation of online education requires investment in infrastructure, faculty development, culture change, etc. and that such funds are not available, hence online education adoption is being slowed down.

So far, I haven’t been able to find anything other than speculation about this topic. By contrast, one of Ray Schroeder’s previous blog efforts, Fueling Online Learning, showed pretty clearly that last year’s astronomical gasoline prices had a strong correlation with increased enrollments in online higher education. (The causal connection is less clear, but a case can be made that there was one.)

Anyone have any concrete evidence on the recession’s effect on online education?

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: community colleges, enrollment, Fueling Online Learning, higher education, infrastructure, John Sener, learning, New Realities, New Realities in Higher Education, North Carolina, Online, Ray Schroeder, recession, students | 3 Comments »

Ilene Frank

Posted on March 16, 2009 by JimS

Published 3/16/20
Ilene Frank remembers participating in the very first TCC online conference! She taught her first online course in 1996. Since retiring from University of South Florida’s Tampa Library, she has taken a reference librarian position at Hillsborough Community College (Florida). She is also volunteer Director of Library Services for University of the People, an accredited, global, tuition-free, online university. She teaches online courses for University of Maryland Global College.

List of ETCJ Publications:

box Resources for Moving to Online Teaching: A COVID-19 Response

box Some Definitions of ‘Online Course’ May Be Legalese

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Tech Tools Are Just Tools

Posted on March 9, 2009 by JimS

By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues

Has technology “reduced our social capital — the relationships that bind people together and create a sense of community,” as Dider Grossamy wrote in a comment to David G. Lebow’s Ten Dollar Computers and the Future of Learning in the Web Era [1]? Didier Grossamy himself adds: “Even though technological advances have contributed significantly to the problem of isolation, the emphasis on individualism in today’s society has compounded it.”

It might be the other way round: technology tools — the internet, computers, cell phones — are very powerful tools, but just tools. They can emphasize social trends, but they cannot create them. Read/Write tools like blogs, wikis, even Twitter — which might seem at first glance the epitome of self-absorption — can also be used very effectively for the defense of human and civic rights. See Don’t Block the Blog [2], Global Voices Online [3] and the Herdict [4] tool recently launched by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, which allows users to report inaccessible sites and to see what site has been reported inaccessible in what countries, thus avoiding false censorship alarms.

Civic and Human Rights

“November 8 [2007]: Karachi Rally – No military rule, imperialism war” by > ange <. Some rights reserved.

These are great tools under dictatorships: when then President General Musharraf proclaimed the state of emergency in Pakistan in November 2007, the first sign was the blacking out of all independent televisions. Within a few hours, their political broadcasts were accessible again on the internet (with audio-only versions for people with low connectivity). Activists used twitter from their cell phones to let others know when they got arrested. And now that President Zardari is more and more emulating his predecessor’s autocratic behavior (look up Zardari in Google News), civil society is ready to use these tools again.

Of course, governments — and not only tyrannies — attempt to control these tools. In October 2004, at the request of the Swiss government, the FBI seized a server that hosted a page of Indymedia giving personal data of two plainclothes policemen who were inquiring about unrest episodes in Geneva during the Evian G8 Summit, with a not-too-veiled threat. The page was still retrievable through Google cache, and it was mirrored in a student’s page at the site of a US university. Indymedia responsibly deleted all attempts to link to that mirror, but it was very easy to find with a search engine (see, in Italian, L’FBI oscura vari siti Indymedia su richiesta della Svizzera e dell’Italia, ma…. [5]) – Oct. 10, 2004).

More dangerously, last fall, a Sicilian judge condemned historian Carlo Ruta for “stampa clandestina” (clandestine press) because he had published his research about the Mafia in his blog, using a 1948 Italian law that makes the official registration of press organs compulsory (see John Ozimek’s How an Italian judge made the internet illegal [6] – The Register, Sep. 26, 2008). As a result, many Italian bloggers now avoid this risk by adding a disclaimer saying that their blog is not a press organ.

Technology Education and Technology Scares

Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Salvor. Wikimedia Commons. In the Public Domain.

The point is, if these tools are to be used positively, people must learn how to use them, as with any other tool. Unfortunately, traditional media — from Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid? [7] (The Atlantic, July/August 2008) to David Derbyshire’s Social websites harm children’s brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist [8] (Daily Mail, Feb. 24, 2009) — feeling threatened by these tools, are all too ready to demonize them. And as a result, education authorities tend to block access to these tools rather than face the responsibilities involved in using them at school, where students could learn how to do so responsibly and efficiently.

Most such scare-mongerers’ arguments can be easily refuted, of course. Either they lack scientific evidence, or they quote it only partially, or they use fallacies: Derbyshire, for instance, suggests that the fact that autistic people can express themselves more easily with computers might imply that computers induce autism.

Constructive Criticism

However, we must also beware of the negative effect that an over-enthusiastic advocacy of these tools can have. In 1995, I attended a conference announcing the opening of the Università della Svizzera Italiana and its School of Communication Studies in Lugano (CH), pretentiously entitled “Oxford on the Lake.” I left midways: the zealot enthusiasm and sociological jargon of the “cybernaut” speakers put me off the internet for two solid years.

So it is important to pay necessary attention to serious criticism of these tools voiced by people really involved in using them for social and educational purposes. Two recent telling examples:

In From Red Guards to Cyber-vigilantism to where next? [9] (Feb. 24. 2009): Rebecca MacKinnon reflects on the limitations of only exposing socially harmful behaviors and human right violations rather than acting to prevent them: “Just because people have an expanded ability to speak truth to power thanks to new technology, that doesn’t automatically lead to a more just society in the long run unless you have institutional change. I wonder whether people will be so distracted and excited about the ability to use the Internet to speak truth to power that they’ll have less interest in such institutional change.” As she is co-founder of the above-mentioned Global Voices Online [3], which aims at giving voice to people directly concerned by events that traditional media do not normally cover, her invitation to go beyond simple information is particularly interesting.
In The use and misuse of computers in education: evidence from a randomized experiment in Colombia [10] (Feb. 1, 2009 — with links to the full report as downloadable 3.01Mb PDF [11] or plain text [12] files): Felipe Barrera-Osorio and Leigh L. Linden analyze the results of scientifically conducted statistical surveys of a Colombian project in which more computers were offered to schools and teachers were provided training. In spite of this training, teachers made little use of the increased learning possibilities of computers, and as a result, the impact on students was minimal. Providing computers and training teachers in their use in education — even if this training follows a constructivist pedagogical approach, as in this Colombian case — is necessary, but it is not enough to make teachers effectively use the available computers with their students.

Motivation and Follow-Up

Citizens who struggle to defend their rights under a dictatorship are more likely to be motivated to master the use of information and collaboration tech tools than teachers who have to help their students pass national tests that bear only on memorized notions. Motivation is essential.

But training offered to motivated people cannot be limited to a single initial course because technology evolves and, more importantly, needs to evolve. Therefore people must have the opportunity to further explore these tools “in action.” This can be done online, provided they are initially trained to use online networks where they can find or ask others for reliable additional information and help.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: > ange, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, blogs, censorship, Claude Almansi, cybernaut, Daily Mail, David Derbyshire, David G. Lebow, Dider Grossamy, Don't Block the Blog, Evian G8 summit, evidence from a randomized experiment in Colombia, FBI, Felipe Barrera-Osorio, From Red Guards to Cyber-vigilantism to where next?, Geneva, Global Voices Online, Harvard, Herdict, How an Italian judge made the internet illegal, Indymedia, Is Google Making Us Stupid?, Italian, John Ozimek, L'FBI oscura vari siti Indymedia su richiesta della Svizzera e dell'Italia, Leigh L. Linden, Lugano, Oxford on the Lake, Pakistan, President General Musharraf, President Zardari, Public Domain, Read/Write tools, Rebecca MacKinnon, Salvor, School of Communication Studies, Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist, Swiss, Tech Tools Are Just Tools, Ten Dollar Computers and the Future of Learning in the Web Era, The Atlantic, The Register, The use and misuse of computers in education, Twitter, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Wikimedia Commons, wikis | 1 Comment »

Why Is Transformational Leadership So Elusive?

Posted on February 28, 2009 by JimS

By John Adsit
Editor, Curriculum & Instruction

Dale Lick’s very fine article talks about the importance of culture, transformational leadership, and staff development in creating effective educational change. Of the three, it can be argued that transformational leadership is the most important, for such leadership is critical to bringing about the kind of staff development that can change the culture of a school. Unfortunately, finding such leadership seems to be the most elusive aspect of educational change. When we look to see why, we realize that it is actually the current culture that is most important, for it makes transformational leadership impossible.

In Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, Howard Gardner describes the skills and qualities of effective leadership, and he provides a series of biographical sketches to illustrate his points. As I read them, I drew an ironic conclusion about leadership that was different from (although not contradictory to) his thesis: people who display the potential for transformational leadership are generally disqualified from being transformational leaders.

Let’s look at one of Gardner’s examples. He chronicles the life of an obscure Italian priest named Angelo Giuseppi Roncalli, whose lifetime journals showed that at an early age he resolved to live his life so that no one would ever doubt his allegiance to the existing order of the Catholic Church. By doing absolutely nothing of note throughout his life, he found himself in his old age among the College of Cardinals, helping to elect a Pope. The Cardinals debated and voted for days and could not agree, because all of the nominated candidates were too controversial, too likely to rock the boat in one direction or another. Roncalli’s journals show that he well understood that when his peers finally elected him Pope, they were in effect tabling the motion by electing an aged and nondescript man who would do nothing in the few years of his reign, after which the debate could be renewed.

After his election, Roncalli took the name John XXIII, convened the second Vatican Council, and provided the transformative leadership that brought the greatest change to the church in centuries. If the Cardinals had had any inkling he would have done that, they never would have elected him, and he would have died in obscurity.

This election process is almost exactly what happens in the world of education. When a K-12 school needs a new principal or a college needs a new president, some kind of a search committee is formed to oversee the process and select the new leader. Who sits on this committee? Although the process is different in different schools, the one constant is that the members of the committee are generally people who have been thriving under the outgoing leadership. They are at the heart of the current culture.

In their search and their interviews, they are not likely to be persuaded to favor a candidate who says, “If you choose me, I am really going to shake things up. You won’t recognize this place when I am done.” Such a leader can only come into a leadership by either disguising true potential (like Roncalli) or by being thrust upon the culture from outside. Lick accurately says that “without serious intervention, the culture always wins. This is cultural paralysis: the very culture that gives education its great stability also stands in the way, potentially inhibiting major progress in new directions.” It is hard enough for a transformational leader to change the culture within the system; it is impossible when a potential leader is never even given the role.

Years ago, the Annenberg Institute’s Re:Learning program had the opposite point of view, that such leadership was actually counterproductive to educational change, and they required a system that had school leadership hiding in the wings while change took place. Their own research showed that this approach was dead wrong, and that all their failed reforms (and they were many) were primarily due to this absence of leadership.

Today we know that reform efforts without transformational leaders are doomed. The only problem we have to solve is getting these leaders through the door. In one case I know of, a large school district violated its own policies when it learned to its horror that the principal search committee of a dysfunctional school was preparing to replace the principal with an assistant principal who promised to carry on the policies of the past. By forcing an unwanted reformer on that school, the district put that new leader in a challenging position, but she had the skills to pull it off eventually.

If we want transformational leadership, we must do something along those lines. We must deal effectively with that current culture before the new leader is even selected. We need policies that will force the leadship selection process to truly understand what is needed in transformational leadership and set its sights on such a person.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Angelo Giuseppi Roncalli, Annenberg Institute, cardnials, Catholic Church, David Lick, Howard Gardner, John XXIII, K-12, Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, pope, Re:Learning, reform, school, transformational leadership | 1 Comment »

Rare Ancient Manuscripts Online at E-codices

Posted on February 25, 2009 by JimS

By Claude Almansi
Staff Writer

Thanks to Rafael Schwemmer, Project Manager/Web Developer of e-codices, and to Sylviane Messerli, scientific collaborator in charge of the library of the Bodmer Foundation, for their help and explanations.

Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 78, p. 49r (www.e-codices.unifr.ch).

Historia Destructionis Troiae

This manuscript page is from Guido de Columnis’ Historia Destructionis Troiae (or History of the Destruction of Troy). This text is an interesting knot in the rich tapestry of the Troy stories told and retold from Homer to our days. (This tapestry can be explored from Category:Trojan War literature – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [1], for instance.)

In fact, Historia Destructionis Troiae is an early 14^th century Latin translation of the late 13^th century French Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, itself based on several classical sources. This Latin version led in turn to further translations – among these, John Lydgate’s Troy Book (downloadable in several formats from the Internet Archive: see the pages for volume 1 and volume 2), which was one of the sources of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cryseide (see Troilus and Cryseide – Wikisource [2]) and of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (see Troilus and Cressida – Wikisource [3]), among other works.

“Chaucer reading from Troilus and Cryseide.” From Jane Zatta’s Chaucer The Canterbury Tales.

Thus Historia Destructionis Troiae raises interesting questions: What was a “translation” back then? Is our “post-modern” mash up and remix culture as post-modern as is sometimes claimed? What are these Troy stories and these manuscripts to us?

E-codices Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland

Before July 2007, when this manuscript of Historia Destructionis Troiae was digitized and put online within the e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland [5], non-scholars were only able to see it open at a given page by going to the Fondation Martin Bodmer’s Museum and Library [6] in Cologny (Geneva, CH). True, the Bodmer Foundation is one of the most interesting cultural venues of Geneva, with exciting temporary exhibitions alongside its ancient manuscript collections: presently, you can read there letters sent by some of the most important 20^th century French authors to Gaston Gallimard, the editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, which crucially shaped French literature for a century.

Nevertheless, a story in a glass case is a dead story. But now, the manuscript of Historia Destructionis Troiae – together with 362 other manuscripts from 16 Swiss libraries gathered by e-codices – can be viewed in full facsimile. And from any page of the facsimile, with one single click, you can access a scholarly yet highly readable description of the manuscript, provided in turn with links to specific pages of the facsimile.

The description of the Historia Destructionis Troiae manuscript draws our attention, for instance, to f. 88, where a note in Hebrew tells us that it got pawned in 1646.

Screenshot of the pawnbroker’s note on f. 88 of Historia Destructionis Troiae.

And further down the page, someone, in the 17^th c., wrote a love declaration and a poem in Venitian dialect.

The description also points to the instructions for the illuminator scribbled by the editor on some pages, like the ones at the bottom of the page 49r at the beginning of this post:

Cologny, Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cod. Bodmer 78, p. 49r (www.e-codices.unifr.ch).
Author’s note: Screenshot of the editors’ notes; the one I circled in red says: “fa qua de sovra Troia como lo re Priamo xe (?) in lo so palazo in una gran sala . . . et fa li con le gran barbe” (above, do [paint] Troy, how King Priamus is in his palace in a big room . . . and to them with long beards).

Moreover, from any page of an e-codices digital manuscript, with just one click, you can browse and search all the e-codices collections, or e-mail that page to yourself or others. The correct bibliographical reference gets added automatically to the e-mail.

Innovation and tradition

The e-codices project also highlights eerie similarities in how people dealt with “text objects” back when manuscripts were created and in our electronic era. Just as the editor, scribe, illustrator, and owners of the Historia Destructionis Troiae collaborated in the creation of the manuscript and added their notes to it, you can now add notes – as relevant or irrelevant as the original ones – to any part of a digitized page with tools like Diigo. You can keep these notes to yourself or share and discuss them further with a group or with all readers (see “Links” below).

One thing has changed, though: as we saw, the manuscript of Historia Destructionis Troiae was pawned by one of its owners. This cannot be done with its digital version.

Usability and durability through openness

Of course, this does not mean that digital content cannot be monetized. It can, but not by putting proprietary electronic barriers around it: as I showed in Unhide this Hidden Text, Please about the ActivePaper software and the archives of the Journal de Genève, such barriers only hamper study – and access by people with disabilities. But they are a totally ineffective “intellectual property protection.”

Conversely, the useful features of e-codices are made possible by a judicious combination of several OpenSource software programs, as explained in the New Web Application [7] page of e-codices. Moreover, this choice of OpenSource also ensures the durability of the e-codices archives because, even if the programs evolve, they will always be able to reconstruct them from their source. Whereas archives powered by proprietary software only last as long as the applications are supported by the firms that produce them.

Like the archives of the Journal de Genève, e-codices does not have a commercial aim. However, the absence of proprietary electronic barriers does not mean that others are free to exploit its material commercially. Instead, in its Terms of Use [8], the e-codices team explains very clearly what can be done under what conditions for noncommercial use; it also explains that permission must be requested for commercial use. This approach is also more effective in that users who benefit from it are more likely to defend it (see Wikipedia: Wikipedia Signpost/2006-01-02/Reporter plagiarizes Wikipedia [9]) than if they are hampered by technological “protections” that are insultingly assuming their dishonesty.

Links

The links in this post and a few other pertinent ones have been gathered under http://www.diigo.com/user/calmansi/e-codices+innovate. Some of the links are to pages with annotations, as described in the “Innovation and tradition” section above. You can see the annotations either by clicking on “Expand” on the right of the link, or on “All Annotations” below – which also allows you to add your own comments.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: ActivePaper, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Bodmer Foundation, Chaucer, Chaucer Web Site, digital manuscript, Diigo, E-codices, Fondation Martin Bodmer's Museum and Library, Gaston Gallimard, Guido de Columnis, Historia Destructionis Troiae, History of the Destruction of Troy, Homer, intellectual property, Jane Zatta, John Lydgate, Journal de Genève, King Priamus, New Web Application, Nouvelle Revue Française, OpenSource, pawnbroker, protection, Rafael Schwemmer, Roman de Troie, Shakespeare, Sylviane Messerli, Terms of Use, text objects, Troilus and Cressida, Troilus and Cryseide, Troy Book, Unhide this Hidden Text, Venitian, Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland, Wikipedia | 2 Comments »

The $10 Indian Laptop: Implications?

Posted on February 13, 2009 by JimS

(Update Jan 25, 2011: this post was initially posted on I-blog, then imported here. As I-Blog since disappeared, the original internal links don’t work anymore. I’m adding the working links to the imported versions of the posts in that discussion between square brackets. – Claude Almansi,)

On February 3, after a tremendous amount of hype, India’s $10 laptop was finally unveiled. In anticipation of the event, Jim Morrison, Innovate editor-in-chief, distributed an eblast to Innovate board members, which was followed up by Jim Shimabukuro’s I-Blog post “India: $10 Notebooks for Students” [now at: etcjournal.com/2009/02/02/india-10-notebooks-for-students] on February 2. As we all know by now, the Sakshat “laptop” turned out to be a computing device, a far cry from a computer. In the aftermath, Shimabukuro put out a call for articles: What are the implications of the Sakshat or a similar cheap computer device for education?

Four I-Blog writers responded to the call :

David G. Lebow, Ten Dollar Computers and the Future of Learning in the Web Era [now at etcjournal.com/2009/02/13/ten-dollar-computers-and-the-future-of-learning-in-the-web-era]
Dale W. Lick, Effective Learning Requires More than Cheap Technology [now at etcjournal.com/2009/02/13/effective-learning-requires-more-than-cheap-technology]
Claude Almansi, Sakshat Is a Learning Program – Not a Laptop [now at etcjournal.com/2009/02/13/977].
Jim Shimabukuro, End of the Computer Era [now at etcjournal.com/2009/02/13/end-of-the-computer-era]

Also see:

Harry Keller‘s comment, “It’s not the hardware; it’s the software!”
Judith McDaniel‘s response to Lick’s “Effective Learning Requires More than Cheap Technology.”

The I-Blog community of writers hopes you’ll enjoy the articles and decide to post a comment or submit a brief article of your own (email it to jamess@hawaii.edu). To post a comment, click on the title of any article in the group and scroll down until you see the composing box.

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Ten Dollar Computers and the Future of Learning in the Web Era

Posted on February 13, 2009 by JimS

By David G. Lebow
Guest Author

I was in the eighth grade sitting in a first-year French class. As Mr. Woodward passed back our quizzes from the previous day, he announced that the results were uniformly abysmal. Although he was not recording any grades, he emphasized that he had made many corrections to our work. When Mr. Woodward handed me my quiz, which was covered in red marks and marginalia, I glanced at it briefly, crumbled it up, and tossed it from my second row seat into the waste basket. As I vividly recall, Mr. Woodward was outraged at my behavior and demanded that I fetch my crumbled quiz from the trash. The next time the class met, Mr. Woodward told me that he had discussed the incident at the faculty meeting the previous afternoon, and the story had created quite a stir. Looking back with the benefit of 50 years of research in the learning sciences, I see my behavior as an unconscious act of defiance. I was a product of the system, and according to the rules that “they” had set, school was about earning good grades (i.e., a performance rather than learning orientation). In my preconditioned mind, if the quiz didn’t count toward my grade, it was irrelevant.

What has this anecdote to do with a discussion about $10 computers for everyone? When someone proposes a solution to a problem, my colleague at FSU, Roger Kaufman (needs assessment and planning are his domains), likes to ask, “For what problem is this the solution?” If teaching and learning activities do not reflect knowledge and best practices from the learning sciences (e.g., establish a classroom culture that promotes a learning orientation), putting a computer into the hands of every child on the planet is not likely to have the desired effect of establishing universal opportunity for learning and self-actualization.

In an essay entitled “The Next Information Revolution” (1997), Peter Drucker suggested that the current information revolution will have a transformational effect on society only when new technology realizes its potential impact on the meaning of information. In the context of education, computer technology is one element in the formula for triggering a transformational impact on education. Ultimately, the future of learning in the web era will not only include computers and related technology but also access to the digital storehouse of human knowledge, social software for collaborative knowledge-building activities, cognitive tools powered by a combination of human and machine intelligence, and, perhaps most critically, teaching, learning, and assessment practices consistent with the learning sciences. For example, this includes applying what we know about the role of emotional and social context in learning, characteristics of proficient learners, differences between novices and superior performers, milestones along the trajectory from novice to expert, and authentic assessment for both measuring and supporting learning.

Internet “juggernauts” Google and Microsoft see the future of information technology in an ever-expanding digital storehouse of human artifacts linked together in one searchable information universe. In this vision, sprawling server farms will provide anytime, anyplace access to virtually everything ever written or recorded. As this vision moves toward becoming a reality, individuals and entities who learn to leverage this information storehouse will be the big winners. From this perspective, innovations in social software, cognitive tools, and teaching, learning, and assessment practices will change the cognitive architecture (i.e., how information is organized inside the mind) of people who engage in these practices and accelerate the journey along the trajectory from novice to expert. In sum, the future of learning in the web era must engage participants in computer-enhanced practices that harness the cognitive and social-interaction potential of knowledge-based social networks and accelerate learning, creativity, and improvements in performance of members. Stated more succinctly as a “general theory of learning in the web era,” to borrow a phrase from Jim Shimabukuro, computer technology (e.g., $10 computers) + access to the digital storehouse of human knowledge + social computing + cognitive tools + teaching and learning practices consistent with the learning sciences + leadership to catalyze change = transformation of education.

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Effective Learning Requires More than Cheap Technology

Posted on February 13, 2009 by JimS

By Dale W. Lick
Guest Author

As David Lebow and others explain, $10 computers could have a major influence on the advancement of learning, but it takes more than cheap computers to turn around learning systems that have been ingrained in our education systems, culture, and practitioners for many decades.

The national report, Education Counts 2007, gives us a snapshot of this situation: “. . . few states have put in place policies to ensure that teachers and students can make constructive use of that technology.” With so much powerful technology available and with such a comprehensive integration of it into education, why have we enjoyed so little success in using technology to substantially improve learning processes?

The effective use of technology to improve learning processes turns out to be a far greater “change problem” than most leaders and practitioners appreciate and one that is inconsistent with the rigid and powerful cultural aspects (i.e., assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors) of education. Among the key reasons for this limited success are (a) the all too common “cultural paralysis” in education, (b) the lack of adequate transformational leadership for providing the necessary “learning vision,” “change sponsorship,” and relevant “circumstances and rewards,” and (c) few proactive professional faculty development programs that meaningfully prepare faculty change methods, “change creation,” that provide approaches for long-term improvement.

Culture. The single most important factor for why there has been only limited success in effectively applying technology meaningfully in education is the culture, including professional, organizational, educational and people aspects of the culture! It truly is the “elephant in the room” relative to effectively transforming learning and educational practices. Daryl Conner in Managing at the Speed of Change (1993, p. 176) relates that whenever a discrepancy (inconsistency) exists between the current culture and the goals of a change project, without serious intervention, the culture always wins. This is cultural paralysis: the very culture that gives education its great stability also stands in the way, potentially inhibiting major progress in new directions. To effectively align an organization’s culture with a decision to change often requires developing assumptions, beliefs, and behaviors that are consistent with the new desired outcome, a culture shift.

Transformational Leadership. Traditional leadership and management are important elements in creating the future, but not adequate! What is required is transformational leadership. Transformational leaders are distinguished by their ability to bring about meaningful innovation, successful change and transformation, and broad-based effectiveness. Transformational leaders:

See the big picture, create shared values and vision, and empower and inspire others in the organization
Serve as an institutional model by respecting others’ ideas and skills and developing trust and integrity
Are committed to learning, sharing, and relearning by all
Understand the essentials of change, share them broadly, and execute them effectively
Develop sharing and relationships, team building and synergy, and learning communities across the institution
Create an environment that nurtures excellence, risk taking, and creativity
Provide fair and balanced reward and incentive systems

Faculty Development. The “rubber meets the road” with the faculty! Either they make it happen or it just doesn’t happen. To have successful outcomes from the application of new learning and technology systems in education, the faculty must be engaged, prepared, supported, rewarded, and committed beyond their normal roles. This has just not happened in most faculty development efforts in educational institutions and programs, and reflects a major reason as to why we have been so ineffective in the meaningful integration of technology into education.

Although technology has been helpful in numerous ways in education, our success in improving student learning and increasing productivity has been at best spotty and, in general, limited. The culture and other unique characteristics of education have been far more difficult to overcome than initially expected and will require much deeper understandings of learning research and a far greater appreciation of genuine change principles than present commitments have shown.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Sakshat Is a Learning Program – Not a Laptop

Posted on February 13, 2009 by JimS

By Claude Almansi
Staff Writer

Jim Shimabukuro’s India: $10 Notebooks for Students post (February 2, 2009, with several updates) well illustrates the misunderstandings caused by the misleading description of the Sakshat device as a “laptop.”

If a toddler expects savory rice and is served sweet rice pudding, chances are that s/he’ll spit the first spoonful. And that’s what most reviewers of the Sakshat device quoted by Jim Shimabukuro did when they found out it was not the laptop they expected, instead of discussing the actual potential of its several connection means (ethernet, wireless, USB) and its use in the context of the Sakshat program.

Something without a monitor and without a keyboard is not a laptop. However, a device that can work with a TV monitor and with a printer may well be a very interesting alternative to a laptop for distance education in places where internet connectivity and money are scarce. Moreover, as Harry Keller says in his comment to Jim Shimabukuro’s post, “It’s not the hardware; it’s the software” that counts, and Sakshat is first and foremost an education program, with a resource and interaction portal in http://www.sakshat.ac.in/ . The device is just one tool of this program but might be of crucial importance for students to be able to work at home, without an internet connection, on material either printed or saved in digital form.

The brouhaha about the Sakshat device reminds me of precedent misunderstandings due to misnomers, for instance:

In December 2006, a €50 package comprising a USB key with OpenOffice, Thunderbird and Firefox, plus a 5-year subscription to a storage site and web e-mail got touted as an “ecoPC,” with high-sounding arguments about ecology and free software ethics, though the USB key only worked with Windows computers and, of course, a USB key is not a PC by any stretch of imagination. Moreover anyone could install these software on a USB key, and there already were heaps of free and for-free online document storage and web e-mail options.

In fall 2007, the online “IT-Fitness” test, purporting to assess people’s competencies in the use of information technologies, was launched in great pomp: in Germany by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel and in Switzerland by Minister of Economy Doris Leuthard. The idea of the test was first aired by Bill Gates in Ingolstadt (DE) in 2006, and therefore the criticism first centered on its Microsoft bias – staunchly denied by Ms. Leuthard in the same interview where she said she had not taken the test yet. While most questions do indeed bear on MS products, the main problems were elsewhere: the test only assesses knowledge about some IT features, but not people’s capacity to use them. Above all, there is no verification of the testee’s identity: this is stated in very small font at the end of the “certificate” one can download and print or add to an e-portfolio, but not in the assessment report. As I write this, 1,152,247 people have taken the test in Germany and 20,996 in Switzerland, “qualifying themselves for the future” as the respective www.it-fitness.de and www.it-fitness.ch sites misleadingly state (further links gathered in http://www.diigo.com/user/calmansi/itfitness).

Now there is a big difference between these last two misnomers and calling the Sakshat device a laptop. The “ecoPC” was just expensively redundant, the “IT-Fitness test” is useless at best, and maybe dangerously misleading if employers take its certificate seriously. But the Sakshat device, integrated in the Sakshat education program, does open new possibilities, even though, or rather precisely because, it is not a laptop.

Before the misunderstanding was cleared, Jim Shimabukuro asked in his India: $10 Notebooks for Students post: “What impact will the $10 notebooks have on education?” The question still obtains, with a slight rewording: “What impact will the $10 computing devices have on education?” Let us hope that the disappointed reviewers and the educational community will address it, bearing in mind the whole context of the Sakshat program. For instance, suggestions might be made about the http://www.sakshat.edu.in/ portal: there are far more usable and accessible Content Management Systems than the 2003 Visual Studio .NET 7.1 presently used: an inner search engine and the tagging and description of external links, for instance, would facilitate the search for specific resources.

Such small details could more easily be fixed if there is a discussion based on the real thing, instead of focusing on the hype “laptop” word. When toddlers get reconciled to the existence of sweet rice pudding, they sometimes come to appreciate the stuff for what it is instead of spitting it out. Let’s hope tech reviewers show the same learning curve.

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End of the Computer Era

Posted on February 13, 2009 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In late January, we began to hear about the unveiling of India’s $10 laptop on February 3. The news got the media’s attention, and when the day finally arrived, the anticipation worldwide was palpable. Then, as the day wore on and the silence became underwhelming, news gradually leaked into the web that the Rs-500 or Sakshat was not a computer but a computing device. The excitement quickly turned to deprecation. The bang turned out to be a whimper, what the Times of India refers to as a “damp squib.” It seemed we’d been had.

But had we?

What exactly is a computer anyway? Right now, I’m writing this article at my neighborhood Starbucks on a $350 laptop the size of a large paperback novel. It came with everything you’d associate with a computer, including 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, Windows XP, wireless and ethernet connectivity. As a laptop, it does all the computing I need to do, including working online. For example, when I checked my email earlier, I found a message from my daughter, who uses her iPhone, which is a little smaller than a Hershey’s chocolate bar, to surf the web and read/write email.

When I envision my Aspire One and my daughter’s iPhone side by side, I can’t help but see a continuum, an evolutionary chain. In this chain, the computer gradually evolves into a web interface device, or WID (pronounced “wide”), which integrates web and standard phone capabilities. My laptop is at the juncture of that shift, and further up the line is the iPhone.

And in between the two, I see what some are calling netbooks or nettops that look and behave like computers but rely on the web for applications, storage, and information. These hollowed-out computers are really just WIDs, with a keyboard for input, an LCD for output, and a minmal CPU to access and process web information.

This in-between stage is where I imagine the brick-sized Sakshat residing. It’s a WID on what might be a dead-end tangent or short-lived link. It doesn’t have a keyboard or an LCD. Its limited CPU will probably allow the unit to function independently or in tandem with a computer for web and other applications. The onboard memory for storing information will more than likely give way to web-based sources. In short, in its current configuration, it’s more a prototype than a finished product.

But the Sakshat’s role doesn’t end here. It may be the precursor to WIDs of the future, that is, if we can imagine an iPhone without its soft keyboard or LCD. The major drawback of the iPod and similar devices is the keyboard and display. They’re too small. But there will come a time when other forms of input such as voice will replace keyboards and other types of display such as projections or paper-thin sheets that can be folded or rolled up will supplant LCDs. Freed from the design constraints of keyboards and displays, these future WIDs will be much smaller than the chunky Sakshat and the candy-bar-sized iPhone.

The important point is that, without a keyboard and display, the WID won’t look like a computer. With its built-in functions limited to simply interfacing with the web, we’d be able to carry them on keychains much as we do thumb drives. When we arrive at this stage, when WIDs are more like the Sakshat than a laptop, I don’t think we’ll call them computers anymore. The computer era will have run its course, and it will be replaced by the WID era.

And WIDs will usher in the possibility of a whole new approach to education and learning. I can imagine them being mass produced for anywhere from $15 to $50 dollars. Everyone in the world will have cheap and easy access to the networking and information available on the web. WIDs, in conjunction with widely available Wi-Fi access, will literally turn anywhere and anytime into a classroom for learning, obviating the need for prohibitively expensive schools and campuses, construction and maintenance.

When that time arrives, we probably won’t remember the Sakshat except as an odd bump in the evolution of web interface devices.

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Hybrid vs. Completely Online

Posted on February 7, 2009 by JimS

It isn’t a matter of online or F2F, but, rather, completely online or hybrid. On one side is Eskow, who argues for completely online instruction, and on the other are Zimmerman and Heeter, who argue for a hybrid approach that includes both online and F2F strategies. Heeter’s version of F2F, though, combines F2F and online participants in synchronous sessions so it’s technically a hybrid variation. Please join this discussion by posting your comments at the end of any of the articles listed below. If you’d like to publish a longer piece on this topic, email a copy to Jim Shimabukuro at jamess@hawaii.edu

The 375-Billion Dollar Question. And the New Agora by Steve Eskow
Access: The New Imperialism? by Lynn Zimmerman
The Campus: The Old Imperialism? by Steve Eskow
Steve Eskow: An Open E-University
Adventures in Hybrid Teaching: The First Day Is the Hardest by Carrie Heeter
Online Hybrid as Asynchronous, Co-present, and Remote by Carrie Heeter
Hybrid, Online, or F2F – It Depends by Lynn Zimmerman
It Depends – On the Economics of Education by Steve Eskow

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Completely, Eskow, F2F, Heeter, Hybrid, hybrid variation, Online, synchronous, Zimmerman | Leave a comment »

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