Another school year is about to start, and students are scrambling to keep their debt load low and their college experience as positive and marketable as possible. With plenty of textbooks costing $200, $300, and more, the extra $1,000 or so for books is a formidable burden to many.
Good news comes in many flavors, and textbooks for less is one example. A very quick search turned up four sources for textbooks that are either free or very inexpensive.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages. The future of each is uncertain, but now is the time to take advantage of great opportunities. Ideally, you should have a free online version of the textbook assigned by your professor. I am a former professor and know that professors often do not spend lots of time making textbook decisions and frequently don’t bother to check the cost to the students. Sometimes, your book was written by your professor and so adds to his or her bank account every time one is sold.
My field is chemistry. So, I naturally checked out the chemistry titles from the above providers. College Open Textbooks has 45 chemistry titles, all for free. The problem you’ll encounter is that none may match your instructor’s choice. Go see your instructor a year before the course if you’d like to influence the choices. Continue reading →
By Jessica Knott
Associate Editor
Editor, Twitter/Facebook
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Sloan Consortium’s Blended Learning Conference (July 8-9) in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I had attended earlier iterations of this event with mixed satisfaction. But when it comes to their face-to-face events, the planning committees and conference chairs seemingly step up their game every year. This conference, chaired by Tanya Joosten (@tjoosten), was one of the best I have ever attended, in person or virtually.
Tanya Joosten, conference chair.
While there, I had the opportunity to give a workshop entitled Visualizing Your Blended Course Design. Those who know me might be giggling a bit as it is common knowledge that my art skills are somewhat mediocre. One might say that my stick figures belong in the wood chipper. But the point of this workshop is to show people that the art isn’t the important part of the process. It doesn’t matter if you produce the most beautiful picture that ever was. What I want is for you to think a little differently about the design of the experience you provide your students.
Too often, we see the word “design” and zero right in on the elements of graphic design. Indeed, in my past, I’ve had people tell me that I’m not an instructional designer because I’m just not that good at the visual aspects. I vigorously disagree. A well-orchestrated teaching activity, executed in an environment spanning face-to-face environments and the virtual world where everything tangible is only tangible because we make it so, requires careful design and planning. We are all designers, even if our artistic skills more closely resemble third grade art class projects than they do the Mona Lisa. I’m proud of every third grade-level piece I produce because of the thought that goes into it.
Conan Heiselt
Drawing lets us think differently. It gets us away from what we know and allows us to use different parts of our brain. It makes us see our content in new ways. It lets us explore frameworks without the pressure of choosing “the right one.” A former colleague, Conan Heiselt, taught me that when you’re looking at a big, white, blank piece of paper, the first thing you should do is mess it up. This removes even more of the pressure to be perfect. I have incorporated this idea and found that he is absolutely right. Participants laugh and look at me like I’m crazy, but it’s often the point in the workshop where they begin to let go and have fun. This was no different at the blended conference. Workshop participant Brandi Leming (@BMPLearning) documented some of her thinking on Twitter. For me, the coolest part of the whole thing is looking around and seeing inside the brains of 20 – 60 different workshop participants; everyone visualizing differently, different pictures, motion, thoughts and structure.
Of course, for some, this workshop just simply doesn’t connect. Maybe the drawing is too stressful, or I am just unable to make the connections for them. Heck, I’ve been flat out told that drawing your ideas was “stupid and a waste of my time.” That’s okay too. I think this workshop went well, and several people told me so. I’m always curious about what the others thought. Wouldn’t it be awesome to know what the people you’re teaching are thinking as you’re teaching them? The best thing about working in the field of education is that right to explore, question, challenge, and finally settle on what’s best for you and your students. This is one of the things that the Sloan blended conference did really well this year. Continue reading →
The absolute best conference that I have attended this year is the Esri Educators Conference, San Diego, July 6–9, 2013. Note that the educators also participated in the main conference, Esri International User Conference, also in San Diego, July 8–12, 2013. The big conference is also online.
This photo captures the essence of the Esri Education GIS (geographic information system) Conference.
In the days before the main conference, the educators’ conference is one of many mini-sessions. These groups quietly gather in separate meeting places. They are long enough to be meaningful.
The educator’s conference is different from any other conference I have attended. It is small and intimate. The icing on the cake for this conference was that six educators were picked from their videos to tell their GIS stories. They shared them and freely interacted with the audience. The stories were moving, diverse and informative.
There was plenty of time after the sessions ended for meetings and networking. This conference allows one to meet professors, to network with other teachers, national and international, and to gain practice in GIS skills with hands-on sessions and guidance. We had an un-conference section. There were also educator blogs and skill workshop sessions. Continue reading →
Despite plenty of nay-sayers, the textbook is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet and continues on walking about as though alive. Textbooks have evolved considerably over the last fifty years and even somewhat in the previous fifty years. I even have one, A Text-Book of Physics, on my bookshelf beside me that was printed in 1891. It has some line drawings and no color. Its size is about 5”x8”. Today, textbooks have lots of colorful images, plenty of side bars, and lots of engaging questions sprinkled about on their heavy-weight glossy paper stock. They also have tons of advice to teachers on how to use them effectively. They’ve gone about as far as they can go with paper as the medium.
The word “textbook” originated in the 1720s, almost 300 years ago. It’s had a good run and is ready to retire. Those who argue that you cannot learn well without a textbook ignore the centuries prior to 1720 when lots of people, not everyone of course, learned and learned well with no textbooks anywhere.
Some will say that books were around even if they weren’t textbooks. The movable-type printing press was invented around 1439, only 180 years before the word “textbook” was coined. Before that all writing was done by hand or by engraving an entire plate for each page making books very expensive. Yet, people were learning long before 1439 or 1720. Even stone-age tribes passed on learning from generation to generation. Some argue that having a repository of knowledge is one reason that our species evolved longer life spans than chimpanzees and Neanderthals.
Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and independently developed a movable type system ca. 1439.
You can learn without textbooks. That’s certain. And you can learn well. But why should we bother to change something that’s worked for 300 years? Many deliver the verdict in a single word: technology. That’s way too simplistic.
Muvaffak Gozaydin, Istanbul, Turkey, Tuvalu; President, ONLINE Education Co Non-profit
Here are my forecastings for U.S. higher ed (HE) in the next 10 years:
1. Only 100 or so research universities will survive.
2. They will develop very good online courses for their digital divisions.
3. Digital divisions will provide credits and degrees as MITx, HarvardX, StanfordX, etc.
4. Fees will be $ 1-10 per course so everybody can go to any school they want.
5. More than 60% of the people, 25-65 years old, will have degrees as Obama asks.
6. Graduates will find jobs easily since they graduated from good schools.
7. States will sell the land and buildings of the state schools and will generate funds to retrain the 2 million jobless teachers.
8. There will be no subsidy for higher ed (HE), therefore citizens will pay less State taxes.
9. There will be no subsidy from the Federal Government, therefore there won’t be $1 trillion loans and Federal tax will be less, too.
10. Money will flow into the U.S. from foreign students.
11. The Pentagon will be happy since there will be sufficient students for STEM.
12. Eighty percent of the students in digital divisions will be foreigners.
13. Most nations will be thankful to the U.S. for solving their HE problem.
14. Yes, even good MOOCs will be disrupting the education world but, to me, in a good way. Sure, politicians should advance with very careful steps like edX is doing. I say Coursera is moving too fast.
I do not desire to rain on anyone’s parade. Every technology has potential usefulness. Tablets with gesture-based interfaces have captured the imagination of very many people, some of them educators. My grandchildren both have iPads and do so much with them that it staggers the imagination. They’re just four and six years of age. Yet, the iPad is not an educational panacea, and neither is any other technology.
By Jessica Knott
Associate Editor
Editor, Twitter/Facebook
With all the news and debate surrounding MOOCs, I have been looking for examples of people breaking the mold. In this, the first installment of Now That’s What I Call MOOC (bear with me, we probably won’t get to installment 73 like the CDs), we visit with Tom Evans of Ohio State University, discussing MOOCulus, platforms, student response, and more.
What is MOOCulus?
MOOCulus is an online platform, developed at Ohio State, to provide students a place to go to practice Calculus problems. The key to learning Calculus is to do problems, tons of problems. Over and over and over and over…
Our MOOC platform provider, Coursera, didn’t offer an engaging method for students to simply practice problems so we built MOOCulus to provide that opportunity for Calculus fun!
How was it developed and on what platform? Tell me a little bit about the tool itself and how students have responded to it.
Jim Fowler, Ohio State University
MOOCulus was developed by Jim Fowler, a Math lecturer in our Math department at Ohio State. He and his team used Ruby on Rails to build the platform, which we host locally on campus. He initially used the Khan Academy as underlying framework to build the practice problems in MOOCulus and is working on branching out from that to build truly randomized practice problems that progress in difficulty as students master content. As they answer questions correctly, the progress bar moves to the right and turns green; as they miss questions, the progress bar begins to move to the left and turns red.
Many of us remember the days when monochrome-screened Macintosh Classic computers were used in classrooms. We played the old school games like “Oregon Trail” and “Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego.” Times have changed and schools are responding. No longer are kids reprimanded for having gadgets in view. In fact, teachers and students are reaping the benefits of mobile technology. Here are some of the ways we are seeing a new face of technology in the learning environment.
Teachers’ Trusty Toolbox of Goods
Student using iPad in school. Image via Flickr by Flickingerbrad.
There are several platforms, apps, and websites that are designed with mobile technology in mind. Taking care of the teacher, these resources help build lesson plans, virtually tutor students, provide file organization, and much more. The following tools are easy and helpful with educational planning in today’s world.
Notability is an app specifically for note taking. Teachers are constant thinkers and planners. They’re always jotting ideas down on napkins and sticky notes when that light bulb goes off. Notability lets users take notes and annotate PDF files with Dropbox and Google Drive Sync. It’s a multi-functional app that keeps teachers organized and ready to seize the day.
I attended the June 17 LINC 20131 morning and afternoon sessions via webcasts: the afternoon session live and the morning session on demand on July 32. I was especially interested in the morning session, “Four Perspectives on MOOCs,” featuring keynote addresses by Sanjay Sarma, director of MITx and the MIT Office of Digital Learning; Sir John Daniel, former president of The Open University (UK) and of the Commonwealth of Learning; Anant Agarwal, president of edX; and Tony Bates, research associate with Contact North, Ontario’s Distance Education and Training Network.
I expected some courteous differences of opinion but hoped for some heat. For most of the 3-hour 50-minute (3:49:44) session, I got what I expected, gracious statements of differences but no direct confrontations. Then, as the end of the open panel discussion drew near, at the 3:22:54 mark in the video, Dan Hastings, MIT Dean for Undergraduate Education and panel chair, said, “I’m going to insert a question from the Twitter feed, which is, will MOOC certification soon become meaningful educational currency?”
This was the spark, and what followed was a brief clash that lit up the issue of academic legitimacy for MOOCs that all were very careful to dance around throughout the discussion. The question, in this case, was: If a student, who has not been admitted to MIT, successfully completes the MOOC version of an MIT course at a distance, shouldn’t s/he receive academic credit that could count toward an MIT degree?
The 3:42 video below captures the exchanges among the panelists.
Agarwal was the first to respond, followed by an exchange between Daniel and Sarma, pictured in the video. Daniel said, “I think there’s still a fundamental question of intellectual honesty. I like the idea of the two funnels [hard in, easy out vs. easy in, hard out] but there’s nevertheless a disconnect in that one funnel [F2F MIT course] leads you to a degree and the other [MOOC equivalent of the course] leads you to a certificate.” He then asked about the 15-year-old high school student in Mongolia who aced Agarwal’s MOOC and will be entering MIT in the fall: Will he receive credit for the course or will he have to take it all over again?
Sarma replied that the Mongolian student would not receive MIT credit for the MOOC course, and Daniel replied, “At least you’re consistent, even if it’s stupid.” Continue reading →
ISTE 2013 (San Antonio, June 23-26, 2013) defeated me. It was hot, too hot; it was big, too big — except that I am sure it generated a lot of money. The attendance was huge, national and international and local. The venue was so large that it made for sore feet.
There were busses to take you to the center, but the weather was so hot that you would rather walk to the site than wait 20 minutes for the next bus. Some meetings were so distant from each other that it was time impossible to get to the sessions.
Many people had just a few participants in their sessions. I felt like I do when in the airline lanes. These lanes would be: Vendors, Corporate Sponsors, Officers of ISTE, SIGS, Youth, SETDA. State Affiliates, Distinguished Apple Educators, and so on. Separation by funding, importance. And lost in the mix were new teachers who come to learn, make associations, and to benefit from ISTE membership.
A strand of kids were involved. There are people who think all kids are digital immigrants. I don’t fight them. I tolerate them because they have the microphone and most of the funding. Perhaps ISTE is growing a new audience. The kids were everywhere, too. They did poster sessions and workshops, too.
A number of SIGs were involved. (See photos below.) We are at this time volunteers. We had a SIG open house. That’s a good thing because the meetings all overlap. Significant interest groups work throughout the year and do professional development for ISTE. It was a good thing to see the people you talk to, if only briefly, in the course of the meetings. We networked at an Open House.
There were SETDA meetings, state affinity meetings. There were SIG-sponsored workshops and keynotes and bloggers’ cafes. There were international gatherings… Does it sound like all too much? It was!
There were tourist distractions, but they were crowded too. Very crowded. I walked less steps in Rome. People in San Antonio walk all over the place, not just left or right. I fully expected someone to fall into the San Antonio River.
I think this is the very first time I gave up on the exhibit hall. It was too big, too many exhibitors, and crowded. I tried.
I have a black belt in exhibit halls, but this time I lost.
A disappointment. The first keynote was “entertainment” on gamification
I did not go to Richard Culleta’s keynote. I saw him at SETDA (San Antonio, June 21-24, 2013) and got his message about data. Boring. He did reference that the groups he profiled were funded from Race to the Top.
Twenty thousand people were at ISTE. I guess it was a marketing success.
People in line for Surface tablets. Microsoft gave away 10,000 tablets. I wrote about that event here. There were tears of joy here in the room where they were giving them away.
[Note: ETCJ’s Twitter/Facebook editor, Jessica Knott, has been working with Melissa to develop this article. Also see Melissa’s four-part series on Twitter for Professional Use. -Editor]
A Twitter chat is a live, real-time discussion that takes place via Twitter messages, also known as tweets. Connected by use of a specific hashtag, those contributing to the discussion can add their comments in 140-character increments. While it may seem an odd way to participate in a conversation, you may be surprised at the benefits the platform provides, and at the growth of this format among educators at all levels.
As moderator of the Inside Online Learning chat (#IOLchat) since June 2011, I’ve experienced many of these benefits. It’s been a great opportunity to connect with a larger community of students, educators, and instructional designers, and to facilitate new connections among participants. It’s also an effective way to (virtually) meet leaders in the field of online education who have served as guest hosts.
If you’ve thought about joining a Twitter chat or are completely new to the concept, the intent of this guide is to provide you with the basic information necessary to successfully participate in your first live chat.
What to Expect
As in any group discussion, Twitter chats feature a general exchange of ideas, opinions, recommendations, and resources. Most are open to the public, and anyone interested in the topic is encouraged to attend. There are four common components of these live conversations you should look for:
Moderator: An individual or group that organizes the event and facilitates the conversation. Several chats, including @chat2lrn and @lrnchat, have their own Twitter accounts and homepages to help coordinate efforts.
Central topic: Most chats are organized around a central theme of interest, as well as a more detailed topic for each “meeting.” For example, one of the more popular events for educators is #edchat. This group always discusses issues related to education, but also picks a focus each week. A recent May session sought input on the question: “How important is it to teach critical thinking and how do we do it?”
Hashtag: The # symbol used with a series of letters and numbers is known as a “hashtag” and adding the chat-specific hashtag to each of your tweets allows you to participate. The hashtag is searchable and creates a way to filter the tweets that are part of the chat. Hashtags are also increasingly part of other social platforms, including Tumblr, Instagram, Google+, and Flickr.
As you review existing Twitter chats, you may notice that some provide discussion questions in advance, while others include them during the live event. But some chats will be more open-ended, taking direction cues from gathered participants. As a participant, you should assume that your contributions will be collected in some sort of transcript, ranging from a blog post summary to a compilation via a hashtag aggregation tool like Storify. Continue reading →
Lyndsey Layton’s article1 on the NCTQ Teacher Prep Review2 actually has a new message: How to use rankings to bash teacher training programs. And the larger message is: As a society, Americans still really don’t know how to value education.
Is there lots of room for improvement? Sure. But tellingly, the article mentions the stat about how few U.S. teachers graduated in the top third of their class (more rankings), compared to countries whose students lead the world on international exams (yet more rankings!). Yet not a word on the possible causes for this — you know, little things like teacher pay, prestige, professionalization, or other features that reflect a culture that knows how to value education.
View the report.
All you really need to know about the study is this sentence: “The organization did not visit the schools or interview students and faculty.” Of course, it doesn’t help that the WaPo article uncritically accepts the criteria used by the study, referring to “admissions standards and inspected syllabuses, textbooks and course requirements.” Imagine how long a restaurant critic would last if s/he bestowed rankings on eateries without actually visiting (“But I looked carefully at the menus! And I inspected their cookbooks and the reservation policies!”).
Actually, the more I delve into the study, the more dismayed I’m becoming. The full Standards and Indicators section is almost more of a political document than a teacher quality document. The “Selection Criteria” (Standard 1) is essentially a single criterion: “academic caliber” as indicated by a 3.0 GPA or proxy measure. Think about that a minute — recall fondly your favorite teacher(s), the one(s) who Changed Your Life or made some small difference. Now, quick quiz: what was that teacher’s GPA in college? You have no idea, of course — nor should you, because reducing teacher qualifications to a 3.0 GPA is a reductionist recipe for destructive devolution. Continue reading →
The Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission was created in March 2012 and is co-chaired by Lee Bollinger (President of Columbia University), Jim Coulter (Co-Founder of TPG Capital), Margaret Spellings (Former Secretary of Education) and Jim Steyer (CEO of Common Sense Media). – from “Paving a Path Forward.”
The LEAD Commission1 has published a five-point plan for a national technology initiative. The points are:
Solve the infrastructure challenge by upgrading the wiring of our schools.
Build a national effort to deploy devices
Accelerate the adoption of digital curriculum
Embrace and encourage model schools
Invest in human capital
These are great-sounding goals, especially given the state of today’s technology and the poor learning opportunities in too many of our schools. Due to a recession and extensive government budget cuts, our country’s entire infrastructure continues to deteriorate. There’s much to do here, but are these the right goals, and are they properly articulated? Let’s take them one at a time2.
THE INFRASTRUCTURE CHALLENGE
Having visited a great many schools across the country, I can sympathize with the wiring issues. In many classrooms, a complete class of 30 or so students cannot operate with the wireless access available and have reasonable response times. Frequently, this problem results because of a “computer cart” with an inexpensive router that cannot handle the traffic. Sometimes, it’s the building’s central routing hardware. Occasionally, it’s the school’s connection to the Internet.
I’ve seen cases and heard of more where the problem is that a school’s administrative load on the bandwidth swamps the educational access. Most schools have provided a priority to administrative access and left teachers and students in a second-class position with respect to Internet bandwidth. This seems to be a reversal of priorities in this writer’s opinion. Continue reading →
A recent article1 from the Center for American Progress analyzes data from NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The summary bullet points seem reasonable enough.
Students often use technology for basic skills.
States are not looking at what sort of outcomes they are getting for the technology spending.
Students from disadvantaged neighborhoods are less likely to have access to more rigorous STEM-learning opportunities.
The explanations may veer widely from rational thought. After explaining that the first point means that technology is used more for drill than for real learning, the report goes on to address science classes and STEM education.
Our analysis showed that 73 percent of students, for example, reported regularly watching a movie or video in science class. By contrast, far fewer students used computers in their science classes — just 66 percent of students reported regularly using a computer in science class.
What’s wrong with movies? Some are excellent explanations and visualizations of natural phenomena, far better than a lecture by the typical science teacher. On the other hand, is using a computer in science class synonymous with better learning? I’d say not. It’s entirely dependent on the software being used. These statistics say nothing about the quality of education. Continue reading →
Got up this morning and ipadded the local news. A Microsoft store is opening at 11AM today in the Ala Moana Center (Honolulu). This news is interesting, but not half as much as the buzz generators.
A crowd of mostly the young gathered the night before to be among the first to enter and win concert tickets. How did they hear about it? According to Jenn Branstetter, a Microsoft social media team member, via the corporation’s Facebook and Twitter pages.
Microsoft Store Facebook page.
Microsoft Store Twitter page.
And the concert tickets? They’re for Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Their song, “Thrift Shop,” is at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. How did it get there? YouTube, where it has had 340 million views and counting. Neon Trees will also perform.
So, what does this have to do with change in education? A lot, that is, if we’re really paying attention. First is that we may need to shift our eyes and ears to our children, our students. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — the media associated with this Microsoft event — are all social media. And all are easily accessible via their smartphones.
Ted Underwood, at the University of Illinois, has used digital mining software, data from Google books, and dictionary.com to track how the English language has shifted over the centuries.
The authors give an overview of technology related presentations at the recent convention. Topics range from using various kinds of mobile technology to webinars.
So much information, so little time, and not always appropriate for schoolchildren. This article looks at a search engine, netTrekker Search, a subscription service designed for schools.
Innovations in technology can help students with special needs develop more independence and improve their ability to integrate better into the mainstream classroom with their peers.
Dale looks at how foreign language teachers embrace technology for giving their students authentic experiences with language learning, everything from social networking to video conferencing.
Last February, Conrad Farnsworth achieved nuclear fusion in his father’s shed in Wyoming*. This would be a big deal were it not for fourteen other high school students who had done this previously. You can find a YouTube video of his accomplishment and will note that the poverty-stricken need not apply. The equipment I see there would cost a few thousand dollars new and over a thousand even if you scrounged quite a bit. You even have to have a cylinder of deuterium, the stable heavier isotope of hydrogen. It has an atomic mass of two instead of hydrogen’s one due to an added neutron in its nucleus.
“First Neutrons,” uploaded to YouTube by Conrad Farnsworth on 2 Dec. 2011.
He achieved fusion by confining the deuterium in an extremely hot plasma, hundreds of millions of degrees hot. That’s hot!
Plasma is the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid, and gas. A plasma is like a glowing hot gas. Its molecules have disintegrated into atoms, and those have lost electrons to become ionized. Ionized gases can conduct electricity just like your fluorescent lights (today’s energy-saving CFLs for example) do. The ionized gas in those lights causes the fluorescent material lining the inside of the glass to glow.
Gases like to expand when they’re heated up. This expansion cools them down. To achieve enormous temperatures and fusion, you must confine the gas to prevent expansion. The problem you’ll face is that no known substance can survive those high temperatures. You cannot make a bottle to hold your super-hot plasma out of any material in the universe. Continue reading →
If we can get past the magic of “massive” and “free,” we begin to see Coursera/edX-type MOOCs for what they really are — online courses, no different from the ones your college or university is offering right now. Open up registration to anyone anywhere, don’t charge a fee, and you’re MOOCing.
The MOOCs that we’re now associating with Stanford, Harvard, and MIT are actually based on video lectures, and this alone should give us a hint as to why they’re being embraced by so many higher ed institutions. In a very real sense, it’s like having your cake and eating it, too. You can serve a theoretically infinite number of students with a single course featuring lectures by a single instructor. And the best part is, you don’t need to provide prohibitively costly infrastructure for the course. Digitize the lectures in video, store them somewhere, post links, and you’re good to go — as far as content goes.
Besides content, the basic foundation of any course is learning strategy, or a process (“instruction”) that’s designed to help students achieve course objectives. For MOOCs, traditional classroom approaches become less effective as the teacher-to-student ratio (1:X) climbs in disproportion. Simply put, when X reaches a certain point, methodology must change.
The change of least resistance is peer facilitation. Nothing new, really. Teachers, especially in writing, have been using peer feeedback strategies for decades. Results are mixed, as can be expected, depending on any number of variations in instructional quality. Still, when done right, students can learn to provide effective feedback on their classmates’ performance. The key is in the rubrics.
In courses with enrollments so massive that a teacher is unable to monitor student mastery (understanding and application) of rubrics, relatively “simple” technical innovations are needed to ensure quality peer feedback. I say “simple” because we already have the technology to automatically gather, integrate, and report data from and across a wide range of different online activities. For example, students can be quizzed on their understanding of rubrics, and the result could be used in different contexts, e.g., to rate their comments on the quality of their classmates’ work1. With this rating, authors would be able to determine how much weight to assign reviews received from classmates. A low rating would mean the critic doesn’t have a clue about the requirements for a particular assignment. Continue reading →
Recently, my colleague and Assistant Vice Provost Dominique Kliger invited me to Temple University to give a talk about my book. After the presentation, Dominique offered to take me on a tour of Temple’s TECH center. I readily accepted, but to be honest, I was prepared to be underwhelmed in a “been there, seen that” sort of way — what could be so novel and compelling about a tech lab center?
Dominique Kliger, Ph.D., Assistant Vice Provost, Distance Learning and Summer Programs, Temple University
I couldn’t have been more wrong. The tech center was amazing — and not for the reasons you might think.
Temple’s TECH Center has a large, open room area filled with pods of computer workstations, so my first impression was how it resembled Virginia Tech’s Math Emporium, which I had visited three years ago — but we were just getting started. Dominique pointed out a box mounted on a pillar, which had a series of several neon light tubes whose contours collectively suggested the shape of an ear. As she explained to me, this “earbox’s” neon lights indicated the ambient noise in the room; if excessive room noise persisted, an announcement was made requesting students to quiet down.
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This was a neat enough device in its own right, but an even more striking feature of the TECH Center was its variety of study spaces, each clearly designed for its purpose and equipped with appropriate technology. There were areas with normal-size computer screens for independent study, and there were areas for videoconference meetings with screens large enough to accommodate a group of 10 participants. There were open areas for individual study and for small group work and for simply chilling a bit. There were breakout rooms for study groups or group projects, all equipped with a group workstation. There were rooms for graphic design and rooms filled with music keyboards and broadcasting equipment.
Much like the tone of ETC Journal, the collection of articles compiled in Hacking the Academy does not comprise the most rigorously edited academic prose. The writing is often conversational, rarely dense, and I found this to be one of its greatest strengths. I felt as though these academics were sharing private ruminations, not writing manifestos. From the moment on page seven I read Tad Suiter’s definition of a hacker as being “a person who looks at systemic knowledge structures and learns about them from making or doing,” I was hooked. So much of what we do in online education (indeed, education in general) is “hacked,” whether we acknowledge it or not. I believe the greatest value this collection provides is fodder for debate: in a time where “the academy” is equally immovable and in flux, are we doing enough to challenge ourselves and each other as we work within its virtual, tangible walls?
In a chapter on Unconferences, Watrall, Calder, and Boggs discuss the hidden costs and challenges of organizing a “for the people, by the people” type of conference. As a matter of full disclosure, I have attended Great Lakes THATCamp twice. It feels, by far, more like a true academic conference than an unconference. If you are considering attending or planning an Unconference, I encourage you to heed Watrall’s advice regarding planning. In this particular instance I can tell you that what he writes truly translates to an experience that surpasses expectation.
In this vein, separate from the overall conference planning, I encourage readers to pay close heed to Calder’s urging toward self-preparedness: “The best thing about an unconference is that professionals are able to come together and discuss real issues face to face… your input could be the difference between moving someone else’s project forward – perhaps in ways they never expected” (135). This, the perspective of the prepared other, planning to present or not, is a refreshing one. Follow Watrall on Twitter at @captain_primate, and Boggs at @clioweb. Continue reading →
I attended the press conference for the release of SETDA’s (State Educational Technology Directors Association) report Transforming Data to Information in Service of Learning. It was hosted by SETDA’s executive director, Douglas A. Levin, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, May 21, 2013.
The presenters had RTT (Race to the Top) funding* and spoke in an alphabet of words that few regular people, including school board members who make big decisions, understand. SETDA had the task of trying to make it understandable and explain fluent ways to help schools and communities understand the task, cost and rationale. There was an attempt to make us understand the terminology and to explain the importance of the topic.
[*Update 5.23.13, 2:10pm: See the correction from Douglas A. Levin.]
As I sat there I knew I was privileged to be a part of the audience. My concern is that we have a digital divide, and one part of it is big data information. The report spells out data standards and interoperability initiatives. I know these topics and descriptions from my work on the NIIAC, but the school boards, parent committees and people dealing with the transformational change in education, as well as regular citizens, have a lot to learn. This is actually a Race to the Top project, and SETDA is trying to facilitate learning and understanding across the states.
Douglas A. Levin, SETDA (State Educational Technology Directors Association) executive director.
The presenters … spoke in an alphabet of words …
Click image for PDF report.
__________
Posted on 5.23.13 at 10:23am.
Updated on 5.23.13 at 10:30am.
Updated on 5.23.13 at 2:10pm.
After receiving many comments from my article, “Mars One: Exciting Adventure or Hoax?“, and exploring many issues of any such undertaking as well as the specifics of Mars One, I have decided that the conversation has become increasingly technical and therefore less interesting to our readers. In order to make our conversation more interesting and to bring more people into the conversation, I am presenting a series of episodes in a fictional future in which the first permanent settlers will arrive on Mars. While Mars One and our discussion have generated many of the ideas, this series does not claim to have a relation to any specific Mars settlement program. It just explores the issues involved in such a venture.
For the purposes of making the exposition and discussion more real, I will name the first four humans to arrive on Mars: Aleka (Hawaiian female: aka Allie) is the flight-trained captain, Balasubramian (Indian male: Balu for short and Bob among the crew) has the crucial survival role of botanist, Chun (Chinese female: aka Chunnie) functions as the engineer, and Dawit (Ethiopian male: everyone just calls him Dave) is the mission communicator. For the purposes of having a broad gene pool, the early settlers have genetic roots that include a worldwide geographical scope of origins.
I’d like to encourage you all to participate. Each chapter will end with a problem that must be solved. I am interested in seeing ideas different from the ones I imagine and may rewrite future chapters if better answers are submitted. If you are a science teacher at any level, please consider discussing these issues in your classes. We’re nearing the end of the school year now, and this sort of discussion may work nicely with the end-of-year mentality that you encounter. A fun, open discussion can make science come alive for students. Use NASA images to liven things up. -Harry E. Keller
s the Google Mars shuttle continues its weeks-long deceleration toward its incredible destination, the crew of four busily checks the instruments on the attached Citigroup crew module where they have lived and worked for four months. They are so involved in monitoring not only their own module but also the Royal Dutch Shell supply module that they momentarily forget they’re about to become the first humans ever to set foot on another planet. The shuttle holds the two attached modules like a parent carrying twins in both arms. The configuration of shuttle and two landing modules may look awkward but creates no impediment to travel in the vacuum of space.
Four years of training guarantee that the anxious crew all know their roles in this landing precisely. The captain, Aleka (Allie), is the only flight-trained pilot on the mission, but all of them have spent countless hours in the landing simulator and can take over if necessary. Redundancy has been the watchword of the Mars mission from the very beginning.
For the landing at Amazon base, however, there could be only one crew module. Everything depends on its successful entry into the absurdly thin Mars air, about 1% of the density of that on Earth and containing 95% carbon dioxide, followed by the powered descent to the surface. Ordinary chemical rockets slow the landers as they approach the surface where the gravity is 38% of that of Earth. While the low gravity means that less fuel is required for descent, it still is strong enough to kill everyone if the landing module crashes. Every element from the heat shield and parachute to the landing engines must function perfectly for a safe landing. Continue reading →
On May 15, 2013, I had the opportunity to attend the Stone Soup Conference, a professional development event at Meredith College in Raleigh. The day featured three talks by Dr. Curt Bonk, Professor of Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University. The day was centered on major themes of Curt’s work: open learning, networking, creative instructional techniques and motivational strategies: “Quality, plagiarism, copyright and assessment are the four topics everyone wants to know about before considering online learning. I am not going to talk about any of these. I am going to talk about pedagogy,” he clarified in the beginning.
Fig.1: Curt Bonk at the Meredith Stone Soup Conference, May 15, 2013.
Curt explored the development of educational technologies over the past decades – which he depicted as a journey toward openness. Central to his credo, “Today, anyone can learn anything from anyone at any time,” is the vast amount of high-quality material available on the web. Ten years ago, the use of open learning, sharing and educational technologies was met with great resistance. Today, educators have access to sites like Merlot, Connexions, World Digital Library and Smithsonian education resources. This allows teachers to explore new roles as curators of learning: “It is our job to mine and mind high quality material – and ignore the rest.” Obviously, this does not mean that teachers merely point students toward online resources. On the contrary, Curt introduced an 80/20 rule of thumb: “Approximately 20% of students are self-directed learners; the others need our guidance.”
Throughout the day, Curt connected current technology trends with the history of education. As one of his role models, he named Charles Wedemeyer, founder of the Open University UK and author of the book “Learning at the Back Door” (1981) that predicts the impact of e-learning on education. Another example of trends prevalent today that were predicted in the 1980s is the video “Apple Knowledge Navigator” (1987).
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
As a teacher educator, I am concerned that I am training my students how to teach yesterday’s students rather than tomorrow’s. Therefore, I was interested in seeing what T. Mills Kelly had to say, in Teaching History in the Digital Age (2013), about best practice for today’s and tomorrow’s students. As it happens, I also recently read The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, which is going to be my university’s One Book next year. Carr focuses on how the Internet has shaped how we think and view the world. Carr points out that, according to recent brain research, how we access and store information alters the physical properties of the brain. He contends that the practice of getting small amounts of information from a variety of sources may help us be more efficient information gatherers but at the cost of the ability to concentrate and reflect on what we are gathering.
Carr’s argument seems to parallel and support Kelly’s ideas in several ways. Traditionally, history teaching has relied on imparting knowledge and analysis, usually in the form of lectures, which research has shown is not the most effective approach. Perhaps partly because of this method of teaching, history is often seen by students as the acquisition of facts and not as a process of gathering and analyzing data. Also, Kelly says that the notion of perspective is often ignored, e.g., what is included, what is left out, why it is included or left out.
Kelly contends that the digital age offers historians the opportunity to help their students become historians, analysts, not just fact collectors. Not only do more students go to online sources rather than print, but today’s students are used to creating on the Internet — not just consuming. Kelly asserts that educators need to take advantage of this tendency in order to create learning opportunities that promote active engagement and not just passive acquisition through lectures and reading. He does caution that instructors must teach students that their role is not to remix or remake history. They should not give in to their desire to change primary sources so that they are “better,” a tendency that Web 2.0 savvy students may have. However, this type of engagement with history gives the instructor and students opportunities to examine the ethics of a variety of issues that can come up in projects, from plagiarism to the manipulation of information to support one’s point. Continue reading →
The first thing you should know about Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities (Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, editors, University of Michigan Press, 2013) is that it was compiled in May 2010 — three years ago. I’m not sure what the full implications of this time gap are, but for starters, the iPad was released in April 2010, a month earlier, so it’s not mentioned in the book. The first MOOC was offered by the University of Manitoba in 2008, but they didn’t become wildly popular until 2012 so they, too, are left out.
Once past the hurdle of the three-year gap, I found the offerings interesting both as a retrospective and as a time-tested compass for change. Change is so rapid in ed tech that the concept of “past” is becoming more a blur than a time line. Thus, I found myself intrigued by this slice of time that preserves some of the more progressive thinking three years ago, including insights that are still relevant today.
I received the UM Press announcement for Hacking early yesterday morning and requested a digital review copy later that morning. After downloading it, I did a quick search for “iPad” and “MOOC” and, as expected, came up empty.
An “online and open-access version” of the book was released on 8 Sep. 2011 (Jason B. Jones, “Hacking the Academy: the Book,” Chronicle, 9.9.11), but I was unaware of it until today. Andrew Tully, in his University of Nebraska – Lincoln blog (4.18.12), provides a useful overview of the project so I won’t go into it.
I like the twist that the project has given to the word “hacking.” In “Why ‘Hacking’?”, Tad Suiter says, “Hackers are autodidacts,” and he defines hacking as “The clever gaming of complex systems to produce an unprecedented result.” But here’s the part that makes it very special even, and perhaps moreso, today: “The academy, ultimately, can only be invigorated and improved by an infusion of the hacker ethos that goes beyond the computer science departments and infects all the disciplines.” Suiter’s point is that the hacker is us, the teachers in the disciplines, in the classrooms. Adam Turner, in “Hacker Spaces as Scholarly Spaces,” amplifies Suiter’s point. He says, “Hacking is about doing: creating, thinking, questioning, observing, learning, and teaching. The core of academic work is, at its heart, hacking.” The implications of teacher as hacker are as fresh today as they were in 2010. Continue reading →
The discussion on “Mars One: Exciting Adventure or Hoax?” (4.8.13) has been wonderful, and I thank all of those who have participated. I’d like to take this entire issue to another level. Please stay tuned, watching ETC-J for a new beginning of the discussion about Mars.
“A crater near the Martian North Pole with a large lake of water ice. The lake is about 10 km across.” – Robert O’Connell, University of Virginia. NASA photo.
ETC-J is working on a serialized fictional account of the first Mars settlement so that those who are not so technically oriented can participate. We’ll have plenty of science and will address those issues we’ve talked about in the article and the discussion and many more in the context of the possible actuality of a Mars settlement. We’ll also have personalities and their reactions to crises. We’re making the assumption that it will happen within 20 years, maybe ten or so. We will use only technologies that we have or that could become available within this time frame. Exceptions will be made to this rule only if there absolutely is no other way, and we’ll still make every effort to make it scientifically sound. As a scientist, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
You’ll read about some real surprises in the episodes. We’ll be as creative as possible and will encourage all of you to write in with your ideas about how to solve the problems facing the settlers in the most recent episode. Some of your ideas will find their way into future episodes and will be acknowledged in the discussion.
If you know a science teacher, be sure to clue her/him into what’s going on. We’ll have special challenges for science classes to discuss. We invite science teachers to respond on behalf of their classes and to sign with their school name. I’m hoping that my own business, Smart Science Education Inc., will be able to fund some prizes, but I cannot make promises about that yet.
While prompted by the discussion of Mars One, any resemblance to the actual Mars One program is unintended. We will use the best ideas from anywhere, including Mars One, in our narrative, but this is NOT Mars One.
Watch for the first episode soon and be ready with your commentary on any science errors in each episode, solutions to the problems facing the settlers, and the science class challenges. I’m looking forward to a stimulating discussion. I hope you’ll join us on this adventure.
Like Jim and Stefanie, I attended TCC and SLOAN-C. Both conferences left me with big ideas and a lot to take with me into my professional practice (not to mention posts for ETC Journal, which will be rolling out in the coming weeks). But before I dive in, let me take a brief detour to direct your attention to my colleague Stefanie Panke’s write-up of her TCC experiences and state that I agree wholeheartedly with her assertion about badging. As of this year, I am sold on it. Additionally, I encourage you to read Jim’s words on session selection and his call for the flipped conference as a solution to virtual conference overload. Their reviews were amazingly well done, inspiring me to take a trip back to the drawing board for some deeper pondering on themes and my experiences.
Stefanie Panke
Last year, I found the badging experience to be somewhat superficial, but I believe now that I was approaching the whole thing somewhat incorrectly. Watching TCC 2013 unfold and seeing the interactions between attendees, I have a better understanding of the values badging provides. I saw people make personal connections based on the badges they had earned, and I saw their virtual experiences become personal ones. This is not a feeling I had at SLOAN Emerging Technologies, despite a more active Twitter back channel.
Now, as the true focus of this post, I’d like to discuss the pros and cons of the two conference experiences. I am a virtual conference veteran, but found that the close proximity of these two events provides an interesting comparative look at how little touches make attendees feel at home and connected.
Laura Pasquini
The biggest pro of both conferences was by far the people. While I felt lost most of the time in the Emerging Tech experience, with a large, hard to wield PDF of offerings and e-mails from vendors asking me to come visit their booths and thanking me for rich conversations that were never had, the Twitter back channel provided an excellent mechanism for grounding myself and allowing my brain to focus on what I was learning. Laura Pasquini (@laurapasquini) wrote an excellent blog post of her experiences at the conference. Though she attended in person, her perspectives are pertinent for those present and virtual.
ET4 Online — Sloan-C’s 6th Annual International Symposium for Emerging Technologies for Online Learning, April 9-11, 2013 — was everything you could ask for in a conference. The number of presentations was mind-boggling. I was able to take in just a few. One was by Robbie K. Melton, associate vice chancellor of eLearning and a full tenured professor at Tennessee State University. She talks about “Impact and Transformation of Mobilization in Education: Emerging Smart Phones & Tablets Innovations” (10 Apr. 2013), but I have no doubt that she could probably talk about anything and get her audience to buy in. She strides the floor, mingling with her audience.
Robbie K. Melton
Her voice is vibrant, her presence is compelling. She has you hanging on every word. You know that she probably has outstanding teacher awards covering all four walls of her office. In a debate, you’re sure her opponents would probably end up cheering for her. One of the innovations she mentions allows professors to override the mobile devices that students bring to classrooms. With this gadget, professors can maintain control in their classrooms even in this BYOD era. However, you know she doesn’t need it in her classrooms. She’s that good.
Kim Coon
Another standout speaker was Kim Coon, executive vice-president for strategic partnerships at Comcourse, Inc. While Melton was hot, Coon was, well, cool. His talk was on “Making the Next Big Thing Happen, When Nobody Believes You Can: Moving from Idea, to Consensus, to Implementation” (9 Apr. 2013). He, too, mingles with the audience, carrying an extra mike for audience members to use. He’s a master at engagement. He gets the audience involved. He remembers the names and comments of those who have picked up the mike, and he integrates them into his talk, almost seamlessly, like a magician. Continue reading →
Last week 1000 attendees enjoyed three days packed with information and discussion at the 18th Annual TCC Worldwide Online Conference, held from April 16-18, 2013. The acronym TCC stands for Technology, Colleges and Community. Organized by the University of Hawaii, TCC is the oldest running worldwide online conference designed for university and college practitioners. Addressees include faculty, academic support staff, counselors, student services personnel, students, and administrators.
As usual, my review is by no means an authoritative summary but comprises an eclectic collection of talks and topics I found particularly interesting as well as general observations of the conference’s atmosphere and features.
Day 1 (April 16): Technical Hiccups, Engaging Presenters
TCC 2013 started with the GAU* for an online event: The conference site was down. Surprisingly, the impact was not as devastating as one would think. The social media team quickly rose to the occasion and posted the link to an alternative entry page on Facebook and Twitter. Social Media saved the day!
The first session I attended dealt with the question of how to approach the challenge of training faculty in using instructional technologies. Sher Downing, Executive Director for Online Academic Services (OAS) in the School of Business at Arizona State University, presented her strategies in the well-received talk “Ways to Train Faculty.” To facilitate online learning, the OAS team developed a comprehensive faculty training package that comprises innovative formats such as “hit the road” one-on-one training in faculty offices, online and interactive training and certification, faculty blogs, faculty roundtables and informal chats “on the dean’s patio.” Especially the latter seem to be an ideal space for discussing ideas, visions and problems among faculty and instructional designers.
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Educause Midwest Regional Conference in Chicago, Illinois. While there, I attended a session by Brian Paige, IT Director of Calvin College, Bo Wandschneider, CIO (Chief Information Officer) of Queen’s University, and Melissa Woo, Vice Provost for Information Services and CIO at the University of Oregon entitled “Creating Peer Mentoring Networks for Leadership Development.” Calling themselves a “cohort,” these three, and others they have picked up since their initial meeting, have become a support group of sorts for each other as they navigate careers in leadership positions in the higher education field.
Bo Wandschneider, Melissa Woo, Pete Hoffswell, and Dan Ewart.
I asked them some questions about their experience, and, in true cohort fashion, they collaborated together in a Google document to answer. The following responses are the collaborative effort of Paige, Wandschneider, and Woo, as well as Pete Hoffswell of Davenport University and Dan Ewart of the University of Idaho.
What drew you to the people you ultimately grouped with?
What drew us to each other were our commonalities. We’re all in a more-or-less similar stage in our career progressions. As such, we face similar challenges and had a lot in common that we wanted to discuss. Currently four of the five of us are CIOs (and the rest of us are encouraging the fifth!). Interestingly only one of us was a CIO at the time of joining the group. Three of us became CIOs during the time we’ve been in the group. An additional motivating factor for one of the group’s members is that he’d seen presentations given by some of the members of the group and was excited about the chance to explore their ideas further. However, what’s probably most important and the one thing that really drew the people in the group to each other was the willingness to share and trust. Continue reading →
By Mike Curcio
Student at Kapi’olani Community College
University of Hawai’i
Google Voice (Voice) is a telephony management service offered by Google. Like their other services, Voice is free-of-charge, with the exception of international calls. If you already have a personal Google account, and, with 425 million active Gmail users worldwide, chances are that you do, getting started with Voice can be very easy.
One of the initial steps in the setup process is selecting a phone number. Voice can assign users a phone number from most U.S. area codes (Alaska and Hawaiʻi users cannot currently obtain local phone numbers through Voice). Alternatively, users can choose their own phone number in many area codes. Let’s say you own a pet grooming company. You could check the availability of the number “DOG-WASH” or “364-9274.”
Voice is officially available to users in the U.S. only, but I have successfully used it in Japan with no problems, making and receiving free calls and text messages to and from the U.S. via Voice’s web interface. With the help of a WiFi connection and another free Android App, GrooveIP, I was also able to use my phone to send and receive calls and text messages, just as I would at home, without being charged for data or minutes. U.S.-based international students may want to set up Voice accounts for their families back home. Continue reading →
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
As part of their programming on April 8, 2013, which was Holocaust Remembrance Day, WBUR Here & Now broadcast a story that illustrated a unique approach using technology to preserve the stories of Holocaust survivors. World War II and the Holocaust ended in 1945. Therefore, those who survived those years are aging and dying. Over the past 20 years there have been numerous attempts to preserve the stories of those who survived, from films to audio recordings, documentaries to webcasts.
Simulated Holographic Video of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter speaking to a class of students. Published on YouTube, 8 Feb. 2013.
The University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation and Institute for Creative Technologies have come up with the most unusual to date — they are creating holographic images of survivors that not only tell the person’s story but can also interact with the audience, answering their questions. When asked how they were able to do this, Paul Debevec, Associate Director of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, answered that they spent about 12 hours with each participating survivor, asking them every conceivable question one might ask a Holocaust survivor to generate a database of answers using artificial intelligence technology. Stephen Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation, remarked that the Foundation has 52,000 testimonies and they have a lot of experience in what survivors want to talk about and what questions students ask.
The idea is that this technology is a way to give children of the future a chance to see, hear and interact with a Holocaust survivor long after the last one has gone. The interviewer was concerned that the idea was rather ghoulish. However, Smith, assured her that this was not the case. He explained that is like watching very good quality 3-D TV.
It is expected that the technology will be available for museums within the next year or two. Debevec predicts that this technology will be economically feasible for everyone in the future.
The Mars One project has received quite a bit of press lately. This project plans to establish a human colony on Mars in 2023 with four people. The project is the brainchild of Bas Lansdorp, a Dutch businessman. You must give him credit for creativeness. Much of the financing will come from a 24-hour television reality show that will follow every step of the project, including watching the new “Martians” as they adapt to the harsh Mars environment.
According to the Mars One website, this project will use existing technology. The habitat consists of modules that will arrive on Mars over a period of years and will be moved into place by a Mars rover. The first colonists will do the final assembly. Every two years, four more colonists will arrive until the total population consists of twenty immigrants. At that point, the colony intends to be self-sustaining, requiring no additional supplies from Earth. No kidding! At $10,000 per pound, Earth will not continue sending oxygen, water, food, Mars suits, and more to Mars regularly.
If you haven’t guessed yet, the trips by the colonists will be one-way only. There’s absolutely no provision for bringing them home. Even with an estimated $6 billion budget, the money just isn’t there. So, who will these colonists be? Interestingly, Lansdorp proposes to charge for the privilege of taking a one-way trip to hell. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Bas Lansdorp
The technology does exist to ferry materials, habitats, and a few people to Mars. The technology exists to produce enough solar power to eke out a sort of living there, in principle. The concept of establishing human habitation on another world must create a sense of excitement in anyone who has the time to pay attention. The educational opportunities would be enormous. The new colonists would be “going boldly where no one has gone before” – unless NASA gets there first with their round-trip Mars program.
Sugata Mitra, winner of the 2013 TED Prize, reminds us that, as educators, we may be so consumed by teaching that we ignore learning, that there’s a fundamental difference between teaching-centered and learning-centered. Mitra is his own best model for his vision of education, or SOLE, for self-organized learning environment. SOLE is a more formal school-based version of Mitra’s earlier hole-in-the-wall (HIW) street learning environment. Both, however, are grounded in his theory of minimally invasive education (MIE).
Mitra is, by training, a physicist, but by temperament, a self-organized learner. The heart of his gift is curiosity, and his scientific training provides the rest. He didn’t begin by studying teaching. Instead, he studied learning. He placed a web-connected computer in a kiosk in a Delhi slum, left it on, invited children to play with it, stepped away, and watched. The question, simply stated, was: Can students learn without teachers?
He was amazed to learn that, yes, they can. They learn individually and in small groups, and they teach one another what they have learned. Out of his observations, he drew implications, and the most important is that both teachers and computers are technologies, or media for learning. That is, children can learn from either or both. With this awareness, he realized that in cases where schools and teachers are scarce or unavailable, computers could suffice. The question that remained, however, was: What does this mean, if anything, for traditional models of learning that rely on schools and teachers? Continue reading →
[Note: The following was first posted in the ETCJ listserv on 25 March 2013. It was prompted by a discussion in the WCET listserv on “a new online theater course” earlier that morning. -Editor]
It can actually be surprisingly easy to create effective online courses in the “trouble” areas. More than a decade ago the school I directed had an online physical education class. People would pooh-pooh it as ridiculous, and then after I described the content, they would usually say, “Wow! Can I take it?”
A lot of the course was academic, teaching concepts related to fitness. Students started the class with a fitness test. They set goals for improving their fitness, and they set a personal path toward those goals. It was possible that no two students would be doing the same activities. They had periodic tests along the way to check their progress, and they then adjusted their goals and their plans appropriately. There was a final test to see how they had met their goals, and they had to write a reaction and a self-evaluation. What they ultimately learned was how to apply principles of physical fitness to their lives for the rest of their lives. Continue reading →
[The following is a response to colleagues’ comments, in ETCJ’s staff listserv, re the need for change in the way science is traditionally taught. The discussion was spurred by the 2 Feb. 2013 report, “For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence,” by the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. -Editor]
You have to remember, I got thrown out of schools for doing all of the things that we talk about that are going to be the future. I worked with the White House. The principal called me in and said, “You can’t do this technology stuff in Arlington Schools if you want to stay.” That was not a choice to me. Teachers who did what they were told are still probably working. I was not what the schools wanted, an innovator using technology. You are preaching to the wrong person.
I can’t demonstrate my skills right now. I don’t have a place to do it. Tracy Learning Center in Tracy, CA, is where I worked to help establish advocacy. My benefactor died.
Nysmith School in Herndon, VA, and a few other schools and projects do what I love. NCLB took the steam out of STEM, the science out of the classroom, and the focus away from what was called SMET, now STEM. NCLB took me out of the classroom. I will always remember the discussion.
I was with people who are STEM evangelists in the Nysmith School, which I visited in the NIIAC times. We as a council visited the school back then. Both of the schools are not mainstream. Tracy School is a charter school, K-12, mostly minority kids, very minority. Because the school has a longer day, with another month in the school year, it has to be a charter school. We had a plan. Continue reading →
For some time we have been working around an obsolete model of education with the idea that, if we just somehow make the old model better, education will be better. I do not believe technology blindly applied is the answer, but look at three to five year olds and how they have learned to use iPads without a course in iPad usage.
Real reform will include the following:
Every child will have an Individual Learning Plan.
Every child will have a mentor teacher.
Schools and educational staff will be open at least ten hours each day and open year round.
High quality digital libraries will be accessible to learners at home and at schools.
Schools will offer laboratories and facilities where learners can work together in teams or individually.
Significant federal research and development funds will be available to create high quality digital learning materials.
Teachers will participate in continuous learning with respect to new curricula materials.
Learners will be scheduled for learning experiences as needed.
WE need to stop tinkering around the old school model that did us well yesterday but is inadequate for today’s digital world.
It is a sophomoric question, but I will ask it anyway. Is it better to be blind, deaf, or crippled? Of course, the answer is it is better not to have any of these disabilities.
Crippled means that you will have ambulatory limitations. However, if you have lost a leg there are prosthetic legs that can allow you to walk and even to run. Or wheelchairs can restore a degree of mobility. Blindness is also an ambulatory disability. You are to an extent limited in your mobility. You are not likely to own or drive a car, but even this is being made obsolete by modern technologies that are demonstrating self-driving cars. If you are blind you may not become an artist, but even that is marginal.
Oscar Pistorius.
In a sense deafness is the hidden disability. Unless a neighbor stops to talk with you, you appear as just another person in the neighborhood. You drive a car, you play catch baseball with friends, and you dance with your girl friend on the patio after eating the steak cooked on the outdoor barbecue set. For all practical purposes you do not appear any different than the average neighbor.
But you are! You did not learn the English language from your mother’s knee. Whether you use American Sign Language or speech read, your language is visual. It requires an ample light source. As a deaf person you cannot easily multitask, that is, carry on a conversation while washing your car because you must see and concentrate on the speaker. Visual-based communication has different parameters than auditory-based language. As a deaf communicator, there must be enough light and you must concentrate on the speaker.
Stephanie Ellison, “a percussionist who happens to be deaf.”
As a hearing person I can multitask. I can talk and listen to you while I paint your portrait. As a hearing person I can carry on a conversation with you while I brush my shoes or I can listen to the radio in the dark. Since sounds surround me globally I can carry on a conversation in many different environments. If I am deaf I must have light and I must look at the sender I am communicating with whatever system I use ASL, finger spelling or speech reading. Even captioned TV requires my full attention whereas a hearing person can multitask and still get the meaning of what is on TV. I can iron my shirt and follow the latest news on TV. Continue reading →
This week, I had the chance to talk with Dr. Daniel McGee (CV), former middle and high school teacher in Francistown, Botswana, Peace Corps volunteer, and researcher/biostatistician for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Dr. McGee’s work in creating a free, public access online learning system for primary and secondary students in Puerto Rico has gained traction in recent years, becoming the basis for online pre-calculus materials that will now be used in schools throughout Puerto Rico.
As his projects began generating larger and larger data sets, he became interested in exploring the insights they might provide on learning styles, learning types, and learning in general. This interview provides an overview of the motivations behind the study as well as a brief discussion of some of his key findings.
Daniel Lee McGee, Professor, Mathematics, University of Puerto Rico
JK:What did this study find, exactly? Why is this important?
DM: There were two important results of this study.
Result 1: In general, most efforts to define the categories for learning types have been a priori in nature. Researchers will start with a set of learning types and then will categorize students. This study takes an a posteriori approach to student learning types. We gather a great deal of data on a lot of students. The data comes from questionnaires and results on quizzes and exams from an online learning system. Rather than starting with predefined categories for students, we look for natural groups of students based on similar responses to questionnaires and similar results on quizzes and exams. These natural groupings lend insight into the natural learning styles of the students taking the course. The first result of the study was that students were not scattered randomly, they did form natural groupings. So the vast amount of information available with online learning systems does allow us, at least in Puerto Rico, to identify student learning types in an a posteriori manner.
The vast amount of information available with online learning systems does allow us, at least in Puerto Rico, to identify student learning types in an a posteriori manner.
Importance of result 1: Our results indicate that large groups of students seem to organize themselves into distinct clusters. The ability to identify these clusters and their associated strengths and weaknesses will allow professors with large groups of students using online systems to better address the particular needs of the distinct learning types that are in their class at a particular time. Continue reading →
A mind in a crippled body can explore the heights of science and move all mankind forward into new scientific knowledge. Stephen Hawking opens up new scientific vistas. Helen Keller, out of darkness and silence, through words opens new avenues of interpersonal relationships. Blind musicians like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder bring new melodies into our lives. In yesteryears a President who could not walk bonded us together and inspired us to weather our economic woes and then fight our way through World War II. A deaf man invented electric lights.
Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Stephen Hawking
Electric lights and wearable glasses moved mankind forward. Electric lights enable man to read 24 hours each day, and wearable glasses allow us to see well enough to read throughout our life times. Books and wearable glasses enable mankind to search the wisdom and knowledge of the past.
Franklin Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Thomas Edison
The mind can solve the most intricate problem or puzzle. To see, to hear, to feel, to smell and to taste enable the human to know his or her world. The mind organizes these sensory experiences into words and language. Speech and language are public expressions of our private sensory experiences. The voice in our minds organizes our world. If I am blind the world is auditory. If I am deaf my word is visual.
As every teacher knows, there is an overloading number of websites and tools available to educators, some free and others with registration costs. Most of these tools are geared toward specific content, and the trick can often be trying to sift through all of the different types to find the ones that suit your needs, skills, and even your personality. Triptico offers a wide variety of creative, interactive, and visually engaging apps. The best part is that you have access to numerous apps for free. Not to mention that the developer of this program is constantly creating new apps to use for free.
Figure 1 – Triptico App Launch Screen
About Triptico
Triptico.co.uk is a web tool that allows you to create and use various types of activities, tools, and quiz makers to help improve the classroom and engage students. Triptico is a free app available for download with an option to upgrade for a small fee. There are four different categories of programs: tools, timers, selectors, and quizzes. Each has interactive apps that you can use and adapt to your class. The different interactive modes allow you to bring creativity and uniqueness into the classroom, diversifying the ways in which students learn, review, and practice various skills. Triptico is simple to use yet sophisticated in content with apps color coded to denote type and categories.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” -Helen Keller
As a child I met Helen Keller. She was one of the most fascinating people I have ever met. I have met other deaf blind people who are amazing. Leonard could place his hand on your face and understand your speech. Leonard and his deaf blind wife lived independently and worked in an electrical product plant assembling electric insulators.
In 1963 we had learned how to ensure women who were pregnant and contacted rubella could bring their babies to full term. Thus we produced some 60,000 multiply disabled infants. Five thousand were deaf blind. Congress passed a law that created centers for deaf blind services. I was the Director of the Division of Education Services in the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped and administered the deaf blind services.
Helen Keller. Photo from Helen Keller International.
I have a deaf blind grand nephew that is now two years old. I have given considerable thought to the education of deaf blind children. They explore and know their world through the near senses of touch, smell, and taste. Of these three, touch is dominant because it is the sense that they will use to organize their world. My nephew has two cochlear implants and appears to enjoy music. As yet we do not know if in deaf blind children cochlear implants will lead to the development of speech and language.
(On 21 Feb. 2013, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, ETCJ associate editor, shared Valerie Strauss’s “U.S. Teachers’ Job Satisfaction Craters — Report” [Washington Post, 21 Feb. 2013] in our staff listserv. In response, I posted the following comment, which I’ve revised for this publication. -js)
Thanks, Bonnie, for sharing these stats. With teacher morale so low, the outlook for U.S. schools is bleak. For me, the elephant in the room is the impact of poverty. As a nation, we can’t continue to blame teachers for the consequences of poverty. We can’t expect them to resolve the causes of poverty. This is and always has been a social issue — not a pedagogical one.
What’s the answer?
For me, reading between the numbers, it means we ought to stop pushing highstakes testing and the common core. We need to allow teachers to do their job. They’re trained to determine where their students are and where they could be in terms of their classes, and for each student and each class, the profiles vary widely. This “diagnosis” is not only academic. In many if not most cases, it includes affective factors. Thus for variable portions of their classes, the teacher’s challenge may be motivation, attitude, rather than academics. For example, in writing instruction, the hurdle may be pull rather than push. How to attract students to writing may be the primary question — not how to push them toward earning higher scores on a standardized test that purports to measure writing competence.
To generate pull, teachers may decide to put their red pencils down and work with the language that students bring from their homes and neighborhoods. It may not be pretty in terms of common core standards, but it’s the reality. Preliminary goals may be to simply get students to enjoy writing and sharing their interests and concerns, in their most intimate and affective language. Giving them personally meaningful reasons for learning to write may be the fundamental pull that’s necessary to gradually incorporate the pushing of our beloved standards. We must find ways to recognize and reward teachers who are able to pull, to motivate, to change attitudes rather than simply move the needle in standardized tests. Continue reading →
The Total Learning Research Institute’s Space Explorers model of team learning emphasizes full participation of all of the members whatever their individual skills or knowledge may be. The five foundation principles of team learning are:
Treat others as you wish to be treated.
Walk the talk.
Respect and value other team members’ ideas and contributions.
Be part of the solution and not a part of the problem.
Hang together, not separately.
Team Learning can be applied to any educational level from preschool to graduate school and can be used to model principles that are used in many professions and businesses. It is famous for its use in NASA missions. Everyone on the team contributes to the overall objective. Teams often first define the objective or problem to be solved.
“Taking education to new heights…”
Team learning happens when a group of students work together to coordinate their efforts toward meeting a specific goal. The team uses the skills and talents of all its members to reach a specific goal. It not only meets the team goal, but it also meets the personal goals of its members. Continue reading →
The English language is the most used language in the world. Many of its 1,000,000 words are adapted from other languages. English has 44 sounds that are represented by the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet. The 26 letters are combined 196 ways to represent the 44 sounds of English. Therefore, English is only a semi-phonetic language in its written form. English adapts many words from other languages but often retains the spelling of the original language while anglicizing the pronunciation of the word. For example, “bouquet” from the French language is pronounced as “bokay” in English while retaining the French spelling. Spelling bees are thought to have originated in the USA, and the reason is probably because English spelling must often rely on memorization.
Vocal sounds and hearing are used as the warning system for humans and animals. A dog will bark to express its awareness of danger in its environment to alert other dogs. Many animals have vocalizations that are used to warn others of impending dangers. Vocalization superimposed on the eating and breathing systems is the expressive mechanisms used to warn and alert others. Hearing is the receptive sense that alerts individuals to danger. Continue reading →
While I am delighted that Congressman George Miller has introduced new technology legislation*, it has weaknesses as I read it. All of the items are worthwhile, but in my opinion they are not the central issues. We need leaders who have insight and a new vision of what the digital world is bringing us. Already five year olds are iPad literate. How will schools treat these new five year olds and how will we bridge the gap between the digital home and the non-digital home?
Congressman George Miller, senior Democrat of the House Education and Workforce Committee and chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee.
Just as fifty years ago broadcast television forced schools to acknowledge Sesame Street, Mister Rogers Neighborhood and other television influences, today we must adjust to iPad home users. To meet these challenges there must be:
An Assistant Secretary for Technology and Information sciences in U.S. DOE that provides national leadership.
A staff-training program for both teachers and administrators that rebuilds the staff to use the new digital resources.
A national digital library accessible via cloud technologies. The library should contain both commercial and government developed video, computer programs and ebook materials. Users must be able to access it 24/7 year round.
A research and development program that creates new materials modeled after comprehensive multiple media products such as The Voyage of the Mimi.
A digital assessment system for all materials used to reach the common core curriculum.
A public awareness program that provides the public with knowledge about the changes in schools and the importance of these new learning and teaching tools and how they are used both in the home and classroom. The little red school house with the all knowing teacher is obsolete.
A training program for administrators and school boards to understand a digital year round school model.
A wide range of very different experiences in schools, including laboratories, camp experiences (space camp, for example), team building projects, and community experiences. The digital world opens the world as a resource for learning.
Change will take place. It will be nice if our leadership has the wisdom to understand the digital world and how important it is to be a leader rather than a follower. We need radical rethinking, not tinkering with the obsolete current educational model.
These changes will take place regardless of whether or not we provide national leadership because the technology is here. The question is whether we will have wise enough leadership with a systematic vision that guides these Earth-shattering changes. If we are wise, we will guide the radical shifts from the old model to the new model of learning and teaching.
Every child deserves the best education we, the people, can give. It is up to us to make it happen.
__________
* Webcitation alternative.
The purpose of schools is to transfer the skills, knowledge and history of one generation to the next. In the past this was most often done through apprenticeships. About five thousand years ago writing of the spoken word was developed. This allowed mankind to transfer knowledge over both time and space. The printed records in books and libraries transferred information across generations and across geographic boundaries.
Learners had to develop moral, literacy, scientific and most importantly self-government qualities and skills if they were to serve as citizens in a modern scientific participatory democratic society.
For many years knowledge was transferred via apprenticeships. With the printing press and libraries modern schools could be developed where learners came together with teachers to learn in a classroom in a school. Knowledge and history were stored and retrieved via books and libraries. Teachers guided learners through the books. The apprenticeship model of learning gave way to classrooms and teachers. Learners were brought together in classrooms within schools to be guided by teachers through the stored knowledge of the society. In the 20th century learners could be gathered together and guided through the knowledge and experience retrieved from books and libraries.
In recent history, films, videos and computers have supplemented books as the storehouse of human experiences and knowledge. In the last few years the digital age has transformed the way we store and retrieve all information. As print on paper has been transferred to the digital format we now have vast libraries of full motion color videos, printed materials and even interactive simulations accessible to the learner. A student studying World War II can not only read about the speeches of Churchill and Roosevelt, but they can see and hear them. They can see videos of the battles and in addition they have access to fictional movies about the war. In addition, there are German and Japanese primary resources available. Continue reading →
Dr. Yager is a Professor of Science Education at the University of Iowa and the Iowa Academy of Education. He has a long career in this area, and we should pay attention when he writes.
He has just written a short article for Science Education Review (11.3 [2012], pp. 54-55), “Does ‘Hands-On’ Indicate Real Reforms of Science Teaching?”* It begins with the following sentence. “Too often the reform of science for K-12 students is described as being ‘hands-on.’“ Everyone seems to be calling for reform these days. So, this is a valid discussion. Many of the reformers are “hands-on” advocates and even extremists who insist that no science education should be anything but “hands-on.” The short piece, just 1.5 pages, is well worth reading for anyone involved in science education.
Robert E Yager
Dr. Yager makes the point that involving muscles does not necessarily involve the mind. Indeed, as I also have seen, just the opposite is often the case. Science is about exploring. According to Dr. Yager, “One uniqueness of humans is their interest in exploring the natural world.” This uniqueness can drive the excitement and engagement of students with science. Losing it tends to do exactly the reverse.
Further on, he says, “Hands-on may be needed to develop tools to investigate student ideas.” Then, he counters with, “Often collecting evidence involves technology, not science!” He’s saying that you might use hands-on to collect evidence for your scientific investigation, or you might use technology. The hunt for dark matter is all technology. The Mars rovers are distant technology. Neither is truly hands-on. However, I take the view that science and science education are not the same thing. Just because scientists are trending away from hands-on, does that mean that students should too?
The teacher was stunned. His online Advanced Placement English students, students from many different participating schools, had just turned in their first writing assignment. Many of them showed the high quality expected from AP students, but some were terrible. The students showed little understanding of the topic, and their writing skills were abysmal. He contacted their schools to see what he could learn about those students.
He learned that the students who had done so poorly had never done well in English classes in their lives — some had never passed a single one. Some were second language students who struggled to read and write English at all. What on Earth were they doing in AP English? In all the cases, the guidance counselors had decided that the students had no chance of passing a regular English class so they decided the new online AP English class was just the ticket. It was an online class so it had to be easy.
In successful educational experiences, all parties involved approach the experience with realistic expectations. Students assume that with reasonable effort they will pass the class. Teachers expect students will work within the rules, the curriculum will be appropriate, their administrative duties will make reasonable demands on their time, and they will be compensated for their work at an acceptable level. Administrators expect students and faculty will complete all required tasks on time.
In the traditional school system, this works pretty well since, after thousands of years of classroom evolution, everyone knows what to expect. In P-12 online education, however, even veterans are still trying to figure out how it works.
The model used in many P-12 online programs throughout the world is very different from what has gone before. In many of the most common models, a school district either sets up a small online program using some of its own staff teaching online courses or outsources some or all of the courses to an outside vendor. In the case when an outside vendor is used, the vendor’s teachers will have students simultaneously in a number of schools and even a number of states. This model brings the advantage of pooling students in low enrollment classes and allowing them to take classes that would otherwise not be available to them. In this early stage of its development, though, it also brings on problems that spring from the unrealistic expectations of its participants. When reality and expectations do not agree, problems are sure to follow.
The most common problem is the one cited above — just about everyone seems to think online courses are easy. When students, guidance counselors, and parents enter a challenging online program with the expectation that they are getting a free ride, the consequence is educational disaster. But that is not the only example of unrealistic expectations in online education. The mismatch between expectation and reality often occurs at every level of participation. Continue reading →
[Note to the reader: I am CEO of an online science lab provider and, while this article does not address online learning, it does have opinions related to the use of science labs. While I have made every effort to avoid bias based on my current position and believe that my opinion would be the same were I, for example, still a university professor, readers should be aware of my personal connection in this regard. -HK]
The long-awaited Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) second draft has been published for public review*. This is the final public review version. After diving into them, I found them lacking in some important respects.
I’ve taken the time to look at both versions (DCI and Topic arrangements). They’re both the same material arranged differently. I haven’t bothered with elementary school standards because I’m happy with doing any science at all in grades K-5.
I spent some time in the middle school area and was disappointed with the lack of academic rigor, the insufficient range of topics for three years of learning, and the paucity of quantitative investigations indicated. So, I went on to the high school topics hoping for something better.
As a chemist, the first thing I looked for was chemistry. There’s so no such topic. The NGSS document is arranged under three heading: PS, LS, and ESS. These stand for physical science, life science, and earth and space science. Earth and space science is certainly physical in nature but has its own separate section, while chemistry must lie hidden in physical science somewhere. The word chemistry does not appear.
Instead, most of what I’d term chemistry appears under two headings: Structure and Properties of Matter and Chemical Reactions. All right, a derivative word for chemistry does appear there but only in the topic-oriented version.
In order to see what’s afoot here, it’s necessary to list the topics under these headings. The good news and the bad news is that there are only ten topics (eleven if you count the bonus topic). It’s good because the list is short and easy to write here. The bad news is that this is all that there is for an entire year of high school chemistry. To give the NGSS their due, the introductory material does indicate that these are “core” ideas and that teachers are free to add on more material. You have to wonder how many teachers will bother to expand on the requirements that they’re given. Continue reading →
[Note: ETCJ editors and writers live full lives, and from time to time, we’ll be publishing some of their extracurricular pursuits. See John Adsit’s “The Great Technology Controversy Follows Me into the Caves,” the first in this series. -Editor]
A few weeks ago, Jim asked me why I never wrote about roller derby. My answer to him was that I’d honestly never thought about it. What’s to say? Every day, I wake up, roll over and groan. Sometimes instead of getting out of bed, I roll out of it and onto the floor, somehow miraculously proceeding to my feet from there. Something on my body always hurts. I am 35 years old, but my laugh lines are thankfully all in the right place. I weigh 180 pounds, but I’m happy with my body and what I can do with it.
Addie Mortem (Jess Knott), blocker for the Lansing Derby Vixens. Photo by Jena McShane of McShane Photography.
Last year, I ran a half marathon with very little training due to a bruised kidney. But I did it. (Wait, you bruised your what?) I spend two hours, three days a week smelling seriously terrible (excuse me?), and the rest of them studying hypermedia and online learning. I teach faculty development workshops and laugh so much I should have an abdominal six-pack (a what?). I am a smackademic (smackaHUH?).
I am Addie Mortem, a blocker for the Lansing Derby Vixens roller derby league of Lansing, Michigan. I am also Jessica Knott, instructional designer at Michigan State University and PhD student in MSU’s nationally-ranked PhD program in Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education. Hence, I am a “smackademic,” as coined in a Chronicle of Higher Educationarticle circa 2010 (http://chronicle.com/article/Smackademics-Join-the-Ranks/123670/). And I am not alone in my league as I am joined by criminal justice PhD student in criminal justice Ludacrush, PhD student in English Rue McSlamahan, PhD in music theory PhDemon, PhD in forestry House of Bruise, PhD student in educational administration Krizzy Azzbee, and Juris Doctor Little Hitaly. Continue reading →
U.S. Education Dept. Offers Tools for Evaluating Ed. Tech by Sean Cavanagh from Education Week (12.28.12)
The US Dept. of Education has released a draft (Expanding Evidence Approaches) of a proposed framework for administrators and teachers to use in evaluating educational technology. This research-based framework aims at helping educators make economically wise as well as educationally sound choices.
Language-teaching firms: Linguists online: Technology is starting to change language-learning from The Economist (1.5.13)
This article focuses on two language firms and how they are using technology to teach languages. Berlitz, one of the oldest language teaching companies, has sold off its publishing business. Bought out by a Japanese firm a few years ago, it has been a little slow getting into the language teaching technology market. Rosetta Stone, which recently went public, is moving away from the boxed sets of CDs to an online platform which is more expensive to operate but more flexible for learners.
How to Get Parent Support for Tech Use in Class by Jennifer Carey from MindShift (12.31.12) at KQED (original 12.14.12).
Sometimes parents do not understand the role that technology can play in learning. Carey suggests some practical tips on how to engage students and parents in technology-assisted education. Communication is key to this process.
Like gold, we horde what we’ve learned about education and expect to live off the interest for the rest of our professional lives. Tossing it out with the garbage is unthinkable. Crazy. Yet we also know that we can’t re-envision or change education as long as our slates are filled with the dusty remnants of prior learning.
Jim Finkelstein, in “Simple Minds Think Alike: The Art of Unlearning Complexity” (Huff Post, 4 Jan. 2013), says that “Unlearning how things have been done in the past, while seemingly unnatural is entirely possible….When it comes down to it, the stuff that gets us stuck in the first place is what we’re striving to unlearn…. All it takes to change and escape from a habitual rut is a single thought or idea that is swimming in the opposing direction of everything you’ve ever learned or been taught.”
The idea of unlearning, of wiping the slate clean, of “swimming in the opposing direction” to envision change is not new. It has a long tradition in Eastern philosophy, and educators such as Karen Windeknecht and Brian L. Delahaye, in “A Model of Individual and Organisational Unlearning” (Proceedings 18th annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management, 2004), say that “The major reason for encouraging or engaging in unlearning is to allow the inclusion of new information or behaviours, and as a means to assisting learning, innovation and change” (3).
Emily J. Klein, in “Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning: Lessons from One School’s Approach to Creating and Sustaining Learning Communities” (Teacher Education Quarterly, winter 2008), defines “unlearning” as “letting go of deeply held assumptions about what it means to be a teacher, what classrooms look like, what the essence of teaching and learning is” (80). However, unfortunately, she leaves us with a bit of wiggle room to keep some of the old stuff on the slate by saying that “a certain amount of unlearning or changing of beliefs is necessary for any school reform” (95).
I have recently completed Stanford University’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), ‘Designing a New Learning Environment’. As an educational technologist, I try to keep abreast of developments in the ever‑changing world of technology. I had been reading a lot about the transformative potential of MOOCs and was keen to try one out for myself. I am always sceptical about claims of ‘reinventing education’, ‘the end of universities as we know them’ or ‘the biggest innovation to happen in education for 200 years’. I chose ‘Designing a New Learning Environment’, as it seemed like an interesting topic – one of which I already had considerable experience but where there is always something new to learn. Stanford’s reputation was also a factor.
Stanford Online: Designing a New Learning Environment
A ten-week course where I should spend 1-3 hours per week on course activities seemed a manageable commitment. For the first five weeks, I completed individual assignments. The second half of the course was devoted to an ambitious team assignment where teams took up the challenge of designing a new learning environment.
Teams – the Good, the Bad & the Ugly
I took my time before joining a team, as I did not have a project of my own. I wanted a team with a broad mix of participants where I could contribute. I was also expecting my progress in the course to lead me towards a team or topic. This did not happen. Finally, while browsing through the list of teams, I chose the Engagineers, a team of eight interested, as their name suggests, in engagement. They had started a thoughtful discussion in their team journal. Fortunately, this proved to be a very good choice, as once the team got going, we worked well together. None of the team knew each other beforehand, but we still managed to form an effective working relationship. We used familiar tools such as Skype and email as effective and reliable means of communication.
[Note: This article was prompted by an email exchange initiated by Lynn Zimmerman on 1.13.13. -Editor]
This sort of question seems to be on my desk daily in many different guises. I began writing software in 1960 and never really stopped.
There’s no simple answer. Also, the “philosopher’s stone” of software, a way to create software without programming, has been sought after for decades without result. There are some teaching languages for elementary school that are like that but are too limited to be of much use in the real world. Do not expect to be able to drag-and-drop an “app” soon even though Eclipse for Java, and other GUIs (graphic user interfaces) for other languages, do something like that for the UI part of an application. It takes more to make the software really do useful work for you.
For the novice who’d like to have an application, you can use HTML5 and Javascript as long as your program is relatively short, maybe under 100 lines. For comparison, Smart Science® explorations uses a 20,000-line client-side Java program with around 20,000 lines of Java on the server and a substantial SQL database. Once you exceed 1,000 lines, Javascript begins to break down, and you must use something more robust. (Actually, I’d stay away from Javascript programs longer than two pages, about 150 lines.) The advantage of this approach is that your program will run essentially anywhere, including those tablets. Continue reading →
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr is one of the books we are considering for the One Book program at Purdue University Calumet. Our criteria for the selected book are loose. It has to have fairly broad appeal. It should spark discussion. It should lend itself to a variety of programming activities so that reading the book becomes a campus-wide event, not just a classroom activity. When the selection committee meets to decide, Carr’s book will be one of my top recommendations.
Nicholas Carr
Because The Shallows is about a timely topic, one that students and faculty alike are interested in, it will have broad appeal. The book is also relevant for a wide range of disciplines, psychology, philosophy, history, communication studies, and computer science to name a few. From Socrates to current learning theory, Carr looks at how the medium of transmitting information is as important as the message (McLuhan, 1964) and how the medium shapes and influences our cognitive processes and our worldview. Carr contends that the brain actually changes and adapts to these different media so that we not only cognitively process things differently but our brain physically makes space for and handles informational transmission differently. Continue reading →
I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, co-directors of The Babson Survey Research Group, Babson College, MA, announced this morning the release of their 2013 report, Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States.
The authors describe their tenth annual survey as an independent and “collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board” that is generously supported by Pearson and the Sloan Consortium.
In their announcement, they include some highlights:
Over 6.7 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2011 term, an increase of 570,000 students over the previous year.
Thirty-two percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.
Seventy-seven percent of academic leaders rate the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face.
Only 30.2 percent of chief academic officers believe that their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education — a rate that is lower than recorded in 2004.
After their 2011 report, I published a review, “Sloan-C’s Definition of ‘Online Course’ May Be Out of Sync with Reality” (22 Jan. 2012), in which I questioned the survey’s definition of “online course,” which, in my opinion, is impractical and ultimately self-defeating. The 2013 survey retains the same definition. The explanation also remains the same: “To ensure consistency the same definitions have been used for al[sic] ten years of these national reports.” Since the authors claim that their report is independent and that Sloan-C’s role is supportive, criticisms, if any, should be directed at Allen and Seaman. In their closing, they make this clear: “We welcome comments. Please let us know how we can improve the reports at bsrg@babson.edu.”
I don’t have any answers and I have not had time to read your draft. I have been consumed with family responsibilities and some of my emails have gotten lost while running two households. Sorry about that.
I was always punished for teaching thinking, until I was picked by President Clinton to be on the NIIAC. OK, and with the Lucas Foundation, which was also a boost. But my heart is sad. I see the same things going on in schools now, and worse practices. Not sure about Common Core and how it will be enacted.
The tests you hear about are the tip of the iceberg. There are internal, school-level, grade-level, county and practice tests.
I was a gifted and talented teacher. It was because I was determined to make school better, interesting and a compelling place to go. So I learned not to gate kids. I thought I knew math but found that I was very poorly prepared, that most people taught with their hand in the back of the book (for the answers), and that most schools allowed only one way to do math — the approach used in the book. A student, who was brilliant, took me to task when he understood number systems and then invented his own. It is really not that hard, but you have to get it. I took lots of courses that required thinking, creating, inventing — and understanding math. I understood cuisenaire rods and visual math. My 4th graders tested at the top in standardized math tests. All of them. Continue reading →
Learn English online: How the internet is changing language by Jane O’Brien BBC News Magazine, 12.13.12
O’Brien reports that English will continue to dominate Internet use but because many of the users are non-native speakers, the way English is used is quickly evolving. She cites examples of Spanglish (Spanish + Englihs), Hinglish (Hindi+English) , and Konglish (Korean + English) that are developing forms and vocabularies much in the way pidgins, such as Creole, developed over time.
Federal Effort Aims to Transform Learning Technologies by Sean Cavanagh in Education Week, 1.3.13
The National Science Foundation’s fairly new program, Cyberlearning: Transforming Education, is designed to support research on advanced learning technologies. The purpose is to link scientific theories of learning with technology to “spawn myriad new technologies and ideas, rather than any single product.” Promoting mobile access and integrating a student’s learning experiences through dashboards are just two of the ideas that are being explored.
I watched the first episode of Trace Effects. It is set up in chapters and looks like a graphic novel. The voices are clear and talk slowly, and there is captioning so learners can read along. Once you finish a chapter there are tasks to perform, which require moving Trace (the main character) and having him interact with other characters.
I’m visual when it comes to verbal. With topics that are complex and new, I automatically doodle before actually sitting down at my computer to write sentences and paragraphs. With paper and pencil, I map out the relationships between and among ideas or units of thought. I usually begin with a word that rises to the surface of my mind. I write it down on whatever’s handy. Backs of envelopes or scraps of paper are the usual. I add another word that I associate with the first and position it in a way that reveals their logical relationship.
I add small rectangles around the words and connect them with lines and arrows to suggest causal links, or I use circles that overlap or contain smaller circles to show various set relationships. I continue to construct the picture by dropping in idea words and sketching in their logical connection to the parts and the whole. Some words surface but don’t seem to fit anywhere at the moment so I plop them on the side. Later, I work them into the evolving picture or erase them if they don’t seem to fit in anywhere. As you can imagine, with paper and pencil this means a lot of erasing and redrawing.
My 32-inch desktop screen with Stickies.
In grad school, I found a huge blackboard at a thrift shop a couple blocks away from my apartment. I lugged it back to my small room and screwed it into one of the walls. It filled nearly the entire wall. I was in doodle heaven. This became my thinking pad. I could quickly sketch idea maps with chalk and revise with an eraser as I went along. I could step back at any time to see the whole picture, and step in to futz with the parts. When it was complete, I sat down with my typewriter (no personal computers back then) and wrote the paper. Continue reading →
Over the Christmas Season I have had the opportunity to spend some time with my great grand children. It makes me wonder if schools and teachers are ready for today’s digital kids. Alina, my almost five great granddaughter, is fluent in both English and Spanish. I might also say she manages my dog better than either Anne or I do. She commands and George follows. Therefore she must also speak dog.
However, what is more impressive is her command of her iPad. She told me my iPad was old fashion since it did not have a camera. So much for being the first to have a technology. She demonstrated for me her favorite programs on her iPad that can take pictures. She knew what she wanted to show me and how well she could use her favorite games and stories.
She likes my Eloise stories on my website because they are in both English and Spanish. She also likes an art program and she draws very good pictures with it.
Her three year old sister is comfortable with the iPad if not the Master user. She did not look down on my iPad but found some of my artwork of cartoon characters that she found delightful.
Both little girls were completely at home with the technology and by the time they reach preschool will be Masters of the iPad. Alina wants Anne and dog George to visit her at her home. I am assuming she would welcome the old man also. She was able to locate, using the GPS, the directions from our house to hers. So we have no reason not to visit them.
They got a set of engineering building blocks for Christmas, and they build several structures with Uncle Bill on the living room floor. There were illustrated plans, which Alina followed.
My kids and grandkids like to play Scrabble and have bitter challenges that they look up in the old faithful unabridged dictionary. Scrabble yes, dictionary no. It gathered dust on the side table. Challenges were immediately looked up in their iPhone dictionaries.
We have a German made vacuum cleaner that needed a new bag. The kids immediately found three stores in the area on their iPhones. The GPS system on their iPhone directed them to the store for replacements.
The little girls also played matching games on their iPad.
I must ask the question: Are preschool teachers and schools ready for iPad five year old experts? The digital world belongs to them. It is their second nature.
Online Education Programs Tackle Student Cheating by Ryan Lytle from US News & World Report
Lytle reports on various issues involved in online courses such as cheating on tests and plagiarism. Representatives from several universities point out that these are not just issues in the online classroom and offer their suggestions for reducing the problems. Sometimes the solution means making a choice between academic integrity and access. A university student commented that she thinks the most effective way to avoid cheating and plagiarism is for faculty to “to take a hard stand against students who violate class policies.”
Students learn better with star trek-style touchscreen desks from PopSci
A three-year study from the UK shows that students using interactive technology developed better math skills than their peers who were taught using traditional methods. The results suggest that using touchscreen desks improves students’ critical thinking abilities.
How tablets are invading the classroom by Simon Hill from Digital Trends
Hill gives an overview of the various tablets and the trends in integrating them into the classroom. Digital textbooks and tests are just two of the trends he focuses on, as well as the growing number of users who have their own tablets. At the end of the article he asks readers to respond to the question of whether they are the answer for integrating technology into education and which seems to be the best fit. Continue reading →
In 2013, after the hype has settled and the glitter has dulled, we’ll have a clearer understanding of MOOCs and what they mean for higher ed. As 2012 comes to a close, we’re beginning to see glimpses of a growing awareness that Coursera, edX and similar platforms are basically crude constructs that attempt to push traditional practices into the virtual learning environment. As aggregates of new and old technology, they are, at best, makeshift hybrids that don’t quite fit into the new world of online education.
Carole Cadwalladr, Observer (UK) feature writer, took a Coursera course and included her experience in “Do Online Courses Spell the End for the Traditional University?” (Observer, 11.10.12). Her initial impression is, “They’re just videos of lectures, really.” Later, she shares her amazement at the level of interaction and instructor participation in live forums. However, her initial comment, that they are basically videos of lectures, resonates.
Max Crema, a student at Edinburgh University, reaches the same conclusion. In his interview with Cadwalladr, he tells her that “he’s already used online lectures from MIT to supplement his course.” And “the problem with lectures,” he reminds us, “is that they are about 300 years out of date. They date back to the time when universities only had one book. That’s why you still have academic positions called readers.” Crema’s stark observation of the relationship between videos, books, and lectures underscores the fact that all three are more similar than different and share common ground as modes of presentation. Continue reading →
Through 12/21, Google is providing an exclusive opportunity through DonorsChoose.org for public school teachers to request the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook for the heavily discounted price of $99 each, including hardware, management and support. The Chromebook is a new type of web-based computer designed to make learning with technology easier, and will be available in Lakeshore’s eSchoolMall catalog.
Chromebooks for Education are fast, intuitive, and easy-to-manage computers that connect students and teachers with the power of the web. Chromebooks provide fast access to the web’s vast education and collaboration resources, while offering easy centralized management at a low cost. Click here to read more.
UPDATE: As of December 10th, 11pm eastern time, we’ve received a tremendous response to this offer. With a limited quantity of discounted Chromebooks available, we cannot accept additional submissions at this time. If you’d like to be notified if additional Chromebooks become available, read on for instructions. Click here* to read more.
Fields ensconced within the walls of academia grow more technical by the day. As Andrea Zellner of Michigan State University points out in a recent GradHacker post (“Learning to Code,” 14 Nov. 2012), programming skills have become increasingly important in disciplines outside of computer science, especially for those teaching online. If you’re like me, the idea of learning to program is daunting. I’ve taken programming class after programming class, to mixed results. Zellner’s article had me thinking about the struggle to gain technology skills and how faculty members and teachers, already strapped for time, must feel in their pursuit. I asked for insight, and my Twitter network delivered yet again.
Erin Antaya (@gypsymama75), with a 10-year background in education and counseling and experience working for her family’s business and Biggby Coffee, turned me onto a group called Girl Develop It (@girldevelopit). Girl? Develop It? How had I never heard of this before? With more research, I discovered they are everywhere, and Erin, along with the founders of the Detroit Chapter of Girl Develop It (@GDIdet), Michelle Srbinovich and Erika Carlson, were kind enough to speak to me about what it all means.
Erin took to meetup.com and found the class offered at WDET in Detroit. “It was awesome,” she says. “The class [was] a safe and comfortable environment to ask questions and network.” According to Srbinovich, the story behind the Detroit chapter is amazing. In March 2012, she wanted to learn to code before the year’s end and set about finding the means to learn. In the process, she found Girl Develop It, and, she says, “The prospect of having an in-person introduction to web development and a female support system was exciting, and I knew it would give me extra motivation to continue learning.” Knowing others would feel the same she started her own group. The Detroit chapter was born. Continue reading →
It’s that time of the year when we begin to wonder who or what will be the Time 2012 person of the year. Keep in mind that the criterion is “the person who most influenced the news this year for better or worse.”
I usually do not disagree with Harry. But I can tell him that he has no idea of the weaknesses of math and science in the grades where students begin to think about careers, hobbies and joining clubs. Education is a voyage of discovery. Some people never invest out of boredom or inadequate opportunity. They may be seduced by the media, but for things other than education and learning.
We also live in a world that supports entertainment and sports over academic performances for the most part. We glorify sports at all levels and also the entertainment industry most of which is very shallow. The news hardly reflects anything of importance of a thinking nature.
Education is like fashion. It depends on the whim of the politicians in Washington and the local school leaders. And there is no punishment for mistakes like those of the No Child Left Behind era when those of us who were teaching thinking-based learning were pushed into using test-based evaluation and modifying anything innovative, creative or science-based.
I went to Catholic schools where we were tested in the beginning of the year and the end of the year so the legacy of who was teaching well or not teaching well stopped at the source, the teachers from grades 1-to-8 who did the work and did the teaching.We did not have PE or science. I hate it that I missed the opportunity to grow into loving science until after my formal training. Thank god for museums and museum educators and courses for teachers. I had the Smithsonian as a learning playground.
We have in the US this testing that purports to measure a whole year and it starts in midyear, February in many instances, when in fact there are chapters and levels of knowledge still to be taught. I have been told that the statistics make up for the fact that we have not taught subject x, but I do not believe it. Continue reading →
We’ve seen much hue and cry about our schools being unable to meet the demand for “computer scientists.” What industry really misses is software engineers. The term “computer scientist” is misleading because the skill set of those who write computer programs is one of engineering. Science expands the boundaries of knowledge about the natural universe. That’s why just about every computer scientist worthy of the name is in academia.
Software engineers design computer software, and software coders are the technicians of computer software who implement those designs. Software architects work at a level above the engineers and consider much broader aspects of software creation. It turns out that really good software engineers can do architecture, design, and coding.
Should our high schools be preparing our young people for these careers specifically? Are our math classes geared to producing mathematicians? Are our English classes designed to produce novelists, playwrights, and journalists? Do our history classes create the next generation of historians? These rhetorical questions all have the same answer: no.
What is the most important skill that a software engineer can possess? It’s a strong analytical mind capable of advanced abstraction. No amount of practice with toy programming languages or simple subsets of industrial-strength programming languages will provide students with those thinking skills. However, good math, science, and even history classes just may do the trick if the talent is already there. Other courses can buttress this learning if they stop being memory courses. Continue reading →
In the earliest days of technology use in schools, particularly computing, it was understood that the school would provide and maintain the equipment. Today that is changing, and some schools are expecting students to come equipped with their own computing ability, maintaining equipment for only students with a proven financial need. Obtaining the equipment is less of a challenge than many might think; the real issue may turn out to be maintenance. With students having to provide their own tech support, reliability of service may become an important issue.
This problem was brought home to me with all too much clarity over the past few months. As I write a highly shortened version of what happened, imagine that I am a student trying to deal with assignments under my school’s technology requirements. I take a lot of trips in which total luggage weight and space is a real concern, and I decided my best option would be a tablet. I researched the reviews and settled on a top rated model, an ASUS Transformer, a tablet with the ability to be used like a laptop with a keyboard. Since I did not see it as a critical part of my life, I foolishly spurned the store’s additional full replacement warranty and stayed with the basic ASUS warranty.
When the tablet would not turn on one day, I used the ASUS email tech support. A couple of days later I got a reply telling me to go into the settings and make a number of changes. I replied that the solution they offered required me to turn on the tablet first, which I could not do. After a couple of days I got a new set of instructions for doing something completely different in the settings. I again tried to make them see that changing the settings was not possible unless the computer was turned on. Eventually I talked to a human being on the phone, and after a bit of an exchange he was able to see that point. Continue reading →
Zimmerman: “They found that teachers and pupils lack sufficient training in how to use technology as educational tools.”
What about technology being easier to use? All of the blame does not go to training.
When you realize that professional development (PD) classes for teachers provide them with required credits for retaining certification and give them time off from teaching while having no requirement for success in these classes, you can see that teachers will sit in them and bring nothing from them back to the classroom. That’s your training.
Teachers are people, too, just like students are. Without motivation and good pedagogy, PD is just a day of vacation. For these reasons, we cannot pin our hopes on training. Technology should be easy enough to use that teachers who are motivated can learn to use a given new technology in under an hour. However, applying it by inserting it into curricula may take longer, even much longer.
Moreover, educational technology should already be an “educational tool.” Technology that must be stretched, bent, and twisted to fit into classrooms does not properly belong there. And, just because a teacher becomes enamored of some technology does not mean that the students will benefit. IWBs (interactive whiteboards) are a case in point here.
The best educational technologies will fulfill two crucial goals: (1) easy insertion into a curriculum and (2) positive transformation of teaching/learning in classes, i.e., better learning outcomes. These are in addition to the obvious ones such as ease of use and low cost. BTW, the improvement in learning should be due to the technology, not the shiny new thing syndrome.
Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News
Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to communicate with students via texting. A school in Ohio sees the benefits of texting as a means of communication so is addressing the issue by sending home permission slips.
Technology is not used effectively in schools is a report from The Information Daily.com
The National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK has found that, despite schools spending millions of pounds on technology, it is not being used effectively. They found that teachers and pupils lack sufficient training in how to use technology as educational tools.
New frontier for scaling up online classes: credit by Justin Pope, AP Education Writer
MOOCs have opened up university courses to anyone who wants to take them. However, students do not receive university credit upon completion of these free courses. The sheer volume of students, grading, and concerns about cheating are some of the issues that Pope explores.
Formative Assessment Is Foundational to Blended Learning by Michael Horn and Heather Staker from THE Journal
After explaining what formative assessment is – ongoing assessment – Horn and Staker look at the importance of formative assessment in the blended environment. They assert that “formative assessment software appears to work best in blended learning environments if it helps students direct their own learning.”
As the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area continues to struggle in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, it’s important to remember the far-reaching implications of putting life on hold in the middle of November. In New York City alone, over 75,000 students missed school last week, as 48 schools were left devastated by the storm and dozens were left without heat or power. Although not as urgent as providing housing, food, or fuel, those students’ educations must also be restored.
That’s why Noodle Education Inc., a New York-based education search provider, is setting up the Emergency Education Directory. Noodle will help connect students in the affected areas with volunteer educators willing to donate their time to teaching, tutoring, and guidance, as well as facilities with heat, power and resources to house displaced students and teachers for these sessions.
Already, Sandy has caused an estimated $50 billion in damages in the Northeast. A concerted effort by education providers will aid the recovery effort by helping students in the region stay on track with their schooling.
The more educators and students made aware of the Emergency Education Directory, the more effective the program will be. We think this issue would be of great interest to your readers and hope you will aid us in getting the word out.
Please let me know if you have any questions, or if I can connect you with Richard Katzman (rkatzman@noodle.org), Noodle’s point of contact on this matter. [Nov. 14 press release.]
Best, Sylvie I. Calman
Account Executive
The Cutler Group
sylvie@cutlergrp.com
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
I am what Marc Prensky would call a “digital immigrant.” I did not grow up with computer technology but have learned to use it as it appears on my horizon. Some of this use has come from necessity, such as when the company I worked for bought Apple IIes to use for some data tracking. As more and more computer technology appeared on the scene, I embraced some of it while ignoring or rejecting others. I never played video/computer games, for instance, and wouldn’t know one end of a joystick from the other. On the other hand, I cannot imagine life without the Internet and Google.
However, I have started playing some computer games, such as solitaire and some other free card games on my computer and on the Internet. I am a user of Words for Friends through my FaceBook account. However, I have never really played what I consider to be video/computer games until this summer when I bought an Android tablet so I could have a small, light-weight device for checking my email when traveling and for downloading e-books. Around the same time, I heard a story on Dick Gordon’s The Story in which he interviewed the designers of Temple Run. It piqued my interest, I think in large part because one of the designers was a woman (gender differences in technology use and development is a story for another day). Continue reading →
Is the technology ‘ready’ for blended learning?By Michael Horn from Forbes
Horn asserts that blended learning and technology have not caught up with one another. Different needs and different models contribute to the challenges.
To Make Blended Learning Work, Teachers Try Different Tactics By Katrina Schwartz
from MindShift
In another article about blended learning, Schwartz talks about how blended learning is often an attempt to use traditional teaching methods with new technology. Some teachers easily integrate technology into their lessons and their classrooms, while others have less success. Some teachers are overwhelmed by the new technologies while others thrive on the challenges it presents for taking leaning in different directions.
Teachers: Technology changing how students learn by Matt Ritchel from The New York Times
Two independent studies with teacher participants, one by the Pew Research Center and the other by Common Sense Media, seem to show that while teachers think the Internet and other technology has had a positive impact on student research skills they are concerned that technology contributes to students’ short attention span and their ability to focus.
Teachers concerned about students’ online research skills from eSchool News
In a slight contradiction of the New York Times report, this article, also reporting on the Pew Research Center project, says that while teachers think that student access to research tools is improved, they are not necessarily good consumers of what they find. There is so much information available that they can become easily distracted and lose focus.
[Note: This article first appeared as a comment to Withrow’s ETCJ article on 11.8.12. -Editor]
I was not going to respond to Frank B. Withrow‘s “Education in the 21st Century: The World Is Our Classroom.” Then I went to this meeting, and, since the recent election, I have been thinking. I know Frank. I know that he is speaking to all of the educators, but in Washington, lots of people sit on stages and affirm that there are certain practices that will change the world. I believe in Frank’s ideas and leadership. The nation turns a blind eye to the plight of children in rural, distant, unconnected and urban schools while seeking a digitized curriculum.
I don’t find it amusing that lots of the “experts,” if they have children, quickly explain that their kids go to Arlington, Montgomery, or Fairfax Schools. Never mind that lots of DC schools are in terrible need of modernity, and a few STEM schools don’t change the equation. The learning landscape is not even in DC and other places.
They just took librarians or media specialists out of DC elementary schools. I left teaching in DC years ago because of the lack of resources (Anthony Bowen is now a police station thanks to Rhee, but it is clean and no longer reeks of urine when the heat is on).
In his new book, The Best Teachers in the World: Why We Don’t Have Them and How We Could [Hoover Institution, Nov. 2012], Education Sector’s John Chubb explores strategies for how the United States can cultivate and retain the best teachers in the world, all with an eye toward raising student achievement. Jeff Selingo, an Education Sector senior fellow, sat down with Chubb to discuss the book at a recent Education Sector author talk.
This final installment in this series offers guidance on using your Twitter account to join live conversations and monitor ongoing professional events. After setting up and learning to manage your account, a good next step is to join active groups and discussions that use hashtags to set their conversations apart from the rest.
What Is a Hashtag?
Adding the “#” symbol to series of letters and numbers creates what is known as a hashtag. These are searchable in the Twitter system and can function as filters to create a list of tweets that include the hashtag. By inserting a hashtag into a tweet, you add your message to the conversation, joining all the others who have chosen to add that same hashtag as well.
Anyone can create a hashtag and start a conversation. Like tags and keywords, they help you sort through the seemingly endless flow of information to identify related topics of interest. Use Twitter search to find recent tweets related to #edtech, #highered, or #election2012 as examples. Notice that searching by keyword (highered) or hashtag (#highered) allows you to see all of the messages with the hashtag, including those from accounts you don’t follow.
Join a Live Conversation
Twitter chats are real-time text chat conversations in which participants tweet their questions and responses. Chats go beyond just using the hashtag to participating at scheduled times. Anyone can join in by simply adding the chat’s specific hashtag to tweets during the session. There are several established chats focusing on education topics, such as #lrnchatand #edchat. Continue reading →
[Note: Article updated on 11.10.12 — graphics added. -Editor]
Give a little of your background so we know who you are. Describe your work and how you assist teachers.
I’ve been in education for about 27 years now. I started as a classroom teacher and was a middle school science teacher for over a decade. I then moved on to administrative positions in my school district: I have worked in gifted and talented education, I’ve been an evaluator in education research, and most recently and for the last eight years I’ve been the Director of Instructional Technology for the El Paso Independent School District. My job is to try to try get teachers to use technology in the classroom with their students. I have a really great team of people that go out and train teachers on how to integrate technology into their lessons. Along the way I’ve been the President of the Science Teachers Association of Texas as well as President of the Technology Education Coordinators SIG, which is a statewide group in Texas of Instructional Technology Directors. Most people that know me from outside of Texas know me from my blog, which is now residing on Tumblr and is called HOLTTHINK.
What made you write 180 Questions: Daily Reflections for Educators and Their Professional Learning Communities?
For the longest time I thought just having a blog would be a good enough place to share my ideas and share what I was doing, but after a while I started thinking that a book would be a good place to put ideas that had to do with a very specific topic. The blog I have is kind of self-reflective and bounces all over the place from instructional technology to politics to different kinds of education topics, whereas the book is centered specifically on thinking about Professional Learning Communities or PLCs. What I wanted to do in this book was to give educators the opportunity to start doing a lot of reflection, which is something I think is sorely missing from a lot of professional development these days. What I see happening in professional development is people going in, getting trained on something, which they may or may not use, and then there is no follow-up, there is never anything that happens afterwards so you never know whether that training was useful or not useful.
The purpose of the book was to look at how we look at ourselves as educators. When I was growing up, every evening my parents had this booklet called The Upper Room, which was a daily devotional that had a little message with a meaning, and a prayer. Every night at dinner my father would read the daily passage, which they picked up at church each Sunday. I don’t even know if they still make it anymore, but I liked that idea of having something that made you think or made you jump out of your comfort zone on a daily basis. So that was kind of the genesis for the idea of doing 180 Questions. The “180” comes from the length of a typical school year here in the United States.
With so many developmental programs in statewide community college systems (SWCCSs) reliant on high-stakes placement exams such as COMPASS and ACCUPLACER, the recent reports out of Columbia University’s Community College Research Center (CCRC) must have come as a shock. For decades, these tests have been impacting students’ academic careers, and now a set of studies has surfaced to question the validity of their use in predicting performance.
At issue is much more than the efficacy of placement tests. Because the scores are the thread that runs through, binds, and defines the entire developmental structure, there’s really no telling what will happen as Judith Scott-Clayton and her colleagues tug, bit by bit, at the loose end that they’ve discovered. Scott-Clayton, an assistant professor of economics and education and senior research associate with CCRC, which is part of Teachers College, is the prominent figure in this effort to take a long hard look at a system that seems to be broken because of a fundamental flaw — placement testing.
In one of the studies, “Development, Discouragement, or Diversion? New Evidence on the Effects of College Remediation” (National Bureau of Economic Research, Aug. 2012), Scott-Clayton and Olga Rodriguez (also Teachers College) cite a finding that “remediation does not develop students’ skills sufficiently to increase their rates of college success” (2). Furthermore, they say that many students “diverted” into developmental courses could have done well had they gone directly into the college-level courses:
First, we find that potentially one-quarter of students diverted from college-level courses in math, and up to 70 percent of those diverted in reading, would have earned a B or better in the relevant college course. Further, our analysis of impacts by prior predicted dropout risk suggests that diversionary effects are largest for the lowest-risk students, and we fail to find positive effects for any risk subgroup. (3)
In fact, these students who weren’t at risk in the first place may be at greater risk of dropping out as a result of this needless diversion. Continue reading →
Oakland, California, lies directly across the bay from San Francisco. During the California Gold Rush in the mid-eighteenth century, it served as the main staging point for miners and cargo traveling between the Bay Area and the Sierra foothills. Today, the city continues to serve as a major cargo terminus, and its seaport is the fourth busiest container port in the United States.
Due to the economic opportunities provided by the Gold Rush, the city was a destination for immigrants looking for greater prosperity. As a result of this and successive migrations, Oakland is now known for its ethnic diversity, with significant populations of African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Caucasian residents. While valuable from a cultural perspective, this poses certain challenges for local government, particularly the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), which must accommodate the diverse needs of its students, who speak more than 70 languages at home.
OUSD includes 61 elementary schools, 16 middle schools, 20 high schools, three K–8 schools, and one 6–12 school, as well as special education, independent studies, and early childhood education centers. It is the seventieth largest school district in the United States, and there are about 38,000 students in its K–12 programs. Chronic absenteeism is a major concern for the district, with nearly 40 percent of students in the East Oakland areas dropping out of high school before graduation. OUSD works with the Urban Strategies Council (USC), a nonprofit organization located in Oakland, to collect and analyze data related to school attendance and other social issues in the city.
Implementing a Community Data Portal with ArcGIS for Server
USC has used Esri‘s ArcGIS software for more than 20 years, applying it to a wide range of urban policy and reform initiatives affecting Alameda County, where Oakland is located, including health care services, affordable housing, violence prevention, education analysis, urban planning, disaster mitigation, and school absenteeism. It recently launched InfoAlamedaCounty Map Room, a free data portal that provides access to public datasets to the community for research, application development, civic engagement, and analysis.
By Dan Branan, Ph.D.
NANSLO Lab Director
Colorado Community College System
John Adsit wrote a recent article (“No Satisfaction in Finding on Online vs. Traditional Science Classes,” 22 Oct. 2012) commenting on a study by the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s study showing, among other things, no significant difference in long-term college grades and GPA when comparing community college students who had taken their introductory science courses online with those who had taken them in the traditional community college classroom (Epper, 18 Oct. 2012). I had initially posted a response to John’s article, and was asked by the editor of ETCJ to expand it into an article, which I greatly appreciate. In short, it seems to me that John has largely missed the mark with regard to the Colorado study and its implications.
For many years, as an online educator in the community college system in Colorado, I have listened to traditional colleagues claim as a fact that students taking online science courses are not as well-prepared and, in fact, are at a disadvantage, compared to traditional students. The traditional model was held up as the standard, without proof, even though, as John points out in his post, there have been studies indicating that the traditional educational model does not work as well as it should in the first two years of college.
John’s initial response to the Colorado study is to merely sneer at the demonstrated equivalence of online vs. traditional science classes at the community college level by stating that “students in general learned very little in the first two years of college,” relying on the excellent analysis in Academically Adrift. While I cannot dispute the findings in that report, I do have an important question about its true meaning: Do we have proof that college education has ever been different? While it may indeed be a cause for alarm, could it be that the first two years of college are a time when students undergo a wide range of mental and personal transformations in readiness for the culminating two or three years before they earn their degree? Isn’t it true that the first two years of college are often filled with fairly bland courses in preparation for study in one’s chosen field of interest?
After all, the U.S. still possesses an undergraduate educational system that many students from around the world envy. According to a report last year from the Institute of International Education, the number of international students enrolled at U.S. colleges is 32 percent higher than it was a decade ago, and this is largely due to undergraduate enrollment of Chinese students. Continue reading →
John Adsit has written very well (“No Satisfaction in Finding on Online vs. Traditional Science Classes,” 10.22.12) about some of the issues raised by the Colorado Department of Higher Education study (Epper) and has expressed some excellent insights into this field. In some ways, I wouldn’t go quite as far, and, in others, I’ll dig more deeply.
While it’s mostly true that a university cannot meet these standards in large classes, it does not have to be so. It’s because most professors are dedicated to research and not to teaching that such situations abound. I was such a professor with 350 students in a freshman chemistry course with labs. I met with my 22 teaching assistants weekly and visited lab sessions constantly during the course. It left me little research time but helped to build a good quality course. (Today, I’d make a much better one, but I was new to teaching then.)
In community colleges, there’s no excuse for not meeting the goals of America’s Lab Report (ALR). It’s not a publish-or-perish environment, and the class size is smaller.
John has listed the ALR goals in his remarks, and I’ll comment on them specifically. I see no excuse for not meeting the second set of four goals that addresses integration of science labs with the overall course. These are overarching goals for any lab course and would be easy to meet for anyone who cares to make the effort.
The first set of goals focuses more closely on the labs themselves. These are nice goals, but are not all equal when it comes to designing great lab experiences. I’ll take them out of order to put them into the proper context.
3. Understanding the complexity and ambiguity of empirical work.
This is so important that ALR singles it out as the one goal that can be achieved in no other way than through a science lab. In this context, it’s important to note the part of the report that John left out, the definition of a science lab:
Laboratory experiences provide opportunities for students to interact directly with the material world (or with data drawn from the material world), using the tools, data collection techniques, models, and theories of science.
Note well that the data must always come from the “material world.” That statement completely rules out simulations that use equations and algorithms to create the data.
One of the marvelous things about the Internet is that it allows people to take courses anywhere anytime. While the Internet may give us that capability, the reality is that there are other issues that come into play. No, I am not talking about lack of Internet access or lack of infrastructure or resistance from instructors. I am referring to state laws and requirements about what can be taught in their state and how it can be taught.
A recent story on Planet Money at NPR brought this issue to light. In Warning to Minnesota Residents: Don’t Take Stanford Profs’ Free, Online Courses, Jacob Goldstein wrote about Coursera’s caveat to Minnesota residents that they cannot take the company’s free online classes except under very specific conditions, one of which is to complete most of the course outside of Minnesota. A state department official said that part of the rationale for this 20-year-old law was to serve a consumer protection function for students. In a response the day after this story appeared, the director of Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education said that the law obviously needs to be updated so that Minnesotans can take advantage of such free opportunities for lifelong learning.
One reason this piece caught my eye was that we have recently run into some related situations. Our graduate programs are going more and more online, and in order to increase enrollment, we want to go outside the state boundaries. However, it turns out that we have agreements with certain states and not with others. Recently we have had to turn away potential students from states with whom we don’t have agreements. I was surprised to learn that some states even require hefty (up to $1,000) fees to register your online course/program in their state.
It seems that possibilities offered by ever-changing technology are often hampered by challenges that are two steps behind where the technology is. Maybe the pace will never be equal, and maybe that’s not a bad thing altogether. It keeps everyone on their toes.
[Note: This bio was first published on 10/22/13. -Editor]
Joe Chianakas
Professor of Communication
Illinois Central College
Joseph.Chianakas@ICC.edu
He previously taught high school English and communication for over a decade. Besides teaching, he loves fitness, martial arts, travel, and pop culture.
Several factors are acting on traditional education programs. Stringent budgets are limiting school options. Content is increasingly available in digital formats such as accessible video, computer lessons and even educational games. Core academic standards are available in content areas. Most important is that better digital management and assessment systems are becoming available. Home schooling has provided a model that can be expanded into a blended education environment.
When Don Bitzer developed the PLATO system, he dreamed that the learner could be assessed and then assigned appropriate learning materials to move his or her learning forward. Assessment materials would be available to measure the learner’s progress towards a desired level of achievement. This process could be repeated until the learner reached even a 100 percent proficiency. Today this dream is possible with core state standards and digital technologies that allow learning in the home, classroom or even workplace. Handheld media allows learning of content 24/7 year round.
In such a system the role of the teacher becomes more a tutor, a counselor, a mentor and a coach that guides the learner through the desired resources and provides the assessment needed to determine accomplishments by the learners.
Each learner will have an educational plan that they are working towards. Assessment systems will include tests, projects and products that are a part of the learner’s portfolio.
We are a mobile society, therefore each learner will have an education card that holds his or her records, accomplishments and portfolio of work. Much learning will take place in classrooms, but a large amount of content will be learned at home through libraries of lessons available anytime-anywhere in video formats, computer lessons and educational games. Team learning will be emphasized both in classrooms and through social media.
The school and community will become integrated. Education will become learner centric. School facilities will be laboratories where teams of learners work together to reach high levels of scientific achievements.
Children and families will be encouraged to contribute digital resources of their learning experiences on such things as family vacations or other significant family events.
Education in the 21st Century will be learner centric and more digital in nature with students bringing their own digital devices to the learning environment. The world is at our fingertips. We must be wise enough to use it.
A recent study by the Colorado Department of Higher Education (Epper)* finds no significant difference in the performance of community college students who took science classes online and in traditional classrooms. This is consistent with many studies that show online learning to be as effective as classroom learning, but the importance of this study in the area of science is, sadly, less significant than it appears.
The study had two parts. One compared the grades of students within the system. This has little value as an indicator since grading was left to the instructors and thus provide no standard basis for comparison. The other part of the study is more valuable, showing no significant difference in the performance of the students after they transferred to four year colleges and universities. The students who completed their first two years of science education online did just well as those who completed it in regular classrooms. The significance in terms of science is the challenge to the common perception that students need to spend time in a true laboratory to get a proper science education. This online program used specially designed kits to replace the formal lab experience, and other programs used other online approaches.
Unfortunately, the 2010 study Academically Adrift shows there is little reason for celebration. That study found that students in general learned very little in the first two years of college. The conclusion of this study, then, implies that the online science program didn’t do any better (or worse) than a traditional program that we know isn’t working. One would hope that the online program is an improvement, and, in fact, it should be able to achieve improvement without breathing hard.
In 2005, the National Research Council published America’s Lab Report, a devastating look at science education in America. It was particularly concerned with the very poor way in which laboratory work was incorporated into the instructional process. Although that report focused on high school courses, the nature of the identified problems is almost certainly just as likely to be found in college classrooms, if not more so. This study not only shows why lab courses are ineffective, it also points the way to how they can be improved, whether in the physical classroom or in the online environment.
This was a meta-analysis that looked at a huge number of studies in science education. Some of the studies actually indicated that students would perform better if labs were eliminated entirely. The reason is simply a matter of instructional alignment. Achievement in science is usually measured by the ability of students to memorize and repeat facts related to science. They are rarely assessed on their ability to think and perform as scientists, by investigating, forming hypotheses, and following the scientific method to solve a problem or reach a valid conclusion. Thus, instructional time spent on anything other than learning and memorizing facts is time wasted. Continue reading →
[Update 11.24.12: I just had my first hands-on trial with the iPad Mini a few minutes ago. I was wrong! It is narrow enough to grasp in one hand with thumb hooked over one edge and fingertips over the other. Also, despite its much smaller size, the screen is surprisingly readable and viewable. My apologies to Apple and congrats on a beautiful design! -Jim]
The release date is just a couple of days away, and the rumors seem to be converging on an iPad mini that will be 8.4x 5.7 inches in size, smaller than the iPad’s 9.5×7.3. But not by much. To get a feel for the mini’s size, I created a rough model out of a flyer that I received in the U.S. Mail. It was thick enough to hold the shape that I cut, roughly the height and width of the mini.
At 5.7 wide, I couldn’t wrap my fingers around it, as I do the iPhone, which is only 2.3 wide. I systematically reduced the width until I could comfortably get my fingers around it – the thumb at one end, the fingertips at the other. The grippable width that I arrived at was 4.0. At this width, the 8.4 height became awkward. I sliced away at it until the whole seemed right. The finished height was 6.0. It’s roughly the size of a postcard and slightly smaller than a paperback.
I then drew a rectangle on one side to get an idea of the screen size. Using the iPhone as a model, I decided to leave a bezel at the top and bottom, with the bottom slightly larger than the top. I left a slim margin for the sides. The diagonal screen size turned out to be 6.0, roughly midway between the iPhone’s 4.0 and the mini’s 7.9.
My aim wasn’t to build a large iPhone. I think the iPhone has maxed out in terms of size. Any larger than its 4.9×2.3 and it would be too big. My target was a new iPad that met two criteria:
It is grippable by the human hand when held in portrait or landscape.
It has a screen that’s at least twice that of the iPhone.
Today, we hear a lot on education blogs and in conference presentations about gamification and badging, especially in regard to how they challenge the current LMS structure and effectiveness. Purdue University has developed Passport, an app that blurs the line between LMSs, game environments, and e-portfolios.
Passport offers learning activities to students as a series of challenges rather than your typical pedagogical narrative.
“Digital badges create a new common currency for learning that enables us to identify smaller units of learning,” says Kyle Bowen, director of informatics for Information Technology. “Passport connects badges with an LMS-like interaction. In a ‘choose your own adventure’ style, students can self-select how to complete each challenge. Once complete, students are awarded digital badges that they can share as part of an online and mobile portfolio.”
Development on Passport began in May of 2012, and it was released in August of the same year. According to Bowen, developers are partnering with faculty members using the product to “assess the impact related to their use in an effort to find effective practices to teaching with digital badges.”
Purdue’s Studio projects have served as a mechanism for their initial immersion in the mobile market, and they are currently experimenting with the Passport Profile iPad app as a portfolio that can be used to demonstrate student work in interviews, meetings, and job fairs. Bowen notes that Passport is primarily a Web platform, and the Passport Profile portfolio app is currently the only component that is unique to mobile devices. The same functionality is also available online.
Passport is currently in a limited beta, and interested parties are invited to throw their hat into the ring. Bowen also invites those with passing interest to log in and try Passport for themselves. Two challenges have been provided to get you started in understanding how Passport works.
AT&T recently announced a $350 million initiative designed to increase high school graduation rates and place at-risk students more firmly on the career track. The Aspire Mentoring Academy plans to fund three different types of mentoring, in many cases provided by AT&T’s employees, and encompassing job mentoring, skills mentoring and e-mentoring.*
Job mentors are AT&T employees, sharing their experiences via project-based activities. According to Kat Bockli, PR representative for AT&T, employees sign up through the Aspire Mentoring Academy internal website. They are then provided with preparatory materials and training. Most of the training is online, but AT&T also plans partnerships with non-profits such as Junior Achievement, We Teach Science and The LEAD Program. “As our organizations work together to increase U.S. high school graduation rates, giving students real-world learning experiences is key to showing them the importance of staying in school,” said Jack E. Kosakowski, president and chief executive officer of Junior Achievement USA(r). “By working with AT&T employees at Aspire Mentoring Academy, students understand how what they learn in school applies to their lives after graduation.”
When it comes to project assessment, the program is interested in “data-driven outcomes that improve high school graduation rates,” according to Janiece Evans-Page, AVP for Community Engagement at AT&T. “Other on-track to graduate indicators, or ‘smaller metrics,’ include on-time promotion to the next grade and improved attendance rates. These shorter term metrics are key to achieving the high school graduation goal and will be included in how we measure our success.”
To be effective, the initiative requires significant support from AT&T employees. “I was mentored by a young professional when in high school. It made a big difference in the path my life took,” said Clara Garza, Aspire Academy mentor and Lead Chief of Staff for Executive Operations at AT&T, Dallas. “One of the best things about AMA is there are several mentoring opportunities the employee can choose from. You can participate in short-term mentoring events in the workplace or in classroom settings or choose a long-term mentoring option with a series of classroom settings or student mentoring. AMA is also fully customized – you can do it on your own time, when there is a particular need and they give you the tools to be successful.”
More information on Aspire Mentoring Academy can be found at http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship?pid=11547.
__________
* Update submitted by Kat Bockli, AT&T, on 10.24.12: “AT&T has launched AT&T Aspire, a $350 million initiative designed to increase high school graduation rates and place at-risk students more firmly on the career track. The Aspire Mentoring Academy is the key community engagement program of Aspire that plans to fund three different types of mentoring provided by AT&T’s employees, and encompassing job mentoring, skills mentoring and e-mentoring.”
The FETC conference in Florida, one of the largest conferences in the world, is fast approaching, and that spurred some memories of when I went last year. I thought then about how different the exhibits and presentations were from what such a conference would have featured a decade before, and I wondered what it will look like a decade in the future. I thought then that much of what I was seeing was already becoming obsolete (or should be), and it makes me wonder what direction educational technology will (or should) take in the future.
The huge exhibit hall was filled with flashy demonstrations of the latest miracle products, few of which drew my interest. The vast majority of the big ticket items were all designed to improve the quality of a lecture. There were new and improved ways to put information on a screen as the lecturer explained it, and there was especially better ways for the audience to indicate their understanding electronically. I am all for the use of such response mechanisms for lectures, but since I don’t do a lot of that it would not do me a whole lot of good.
I went to two presentations with almost identical titles and almost identical announced purposes — to show cool web sites that could be made a part of instruction. Despite those similarities, there was a stark difference in the content, a difference that illustrates the fundamental problem with anticipating the future of educational technology and change. If we all agree that the purpose of technology is to enhance good instructional technique, then the difference lies not so much in technology but upon the vision of the instructional technique it is supposed to enhance. Continue reading →
“The Future of Education Is Wireless” — according to the Wireless EdTech Conference 2012, which was held in Washington, D.C., October 10-12. Why? “Mobile is innovative, affordable and provides 24/7 access to a seemingly endless amount of resources. That’s why there are more mobile subscriptions than toothbrushes. From low-income urbanites, to the suburban upper-class, to the poorest of poor in rural areas of the world, mobile connectivity has the power to transform learning in a 21st century environment” (conference site).
Then they go about showing, sharing and introducing policy, educational performance and international examples. There are powerful examples, and you really get up close and personal to the people who present and share their ideas.
I attended the conference. It’s the one conference that makes me want to attend all of the sessions. I usually go for the education section and the policy sessions. The conference is star-studded with people who know education and who are in touch with the pulse of the nation — educators, pupils, school board leaders, and policy makers. It’s a great conference to do powerful networking with, to name a few, the new president of ISTE, influential people from the Smithsonian and the wireless industry, and tried and true leaders like Dr. Chris Dede.
If international is your interest, here are a couple of videos for you:
The Massive Open Online Course Edfuture 2012 (CFHE 2012, Current/Future State of Higher Education: An Open Online Course) started on October 8 and will be running for six consecutive weeks. Since I am currently working on an article about future trends in educational technology, I was very excited to learn about the course and plan to participate as intensively and regularly as my schedule allows.
Getting Started
Unsurprisingly, the last week has been busy at work, and after a brief review of the reading material on Monday, I “skipped class” for the remainder of the weekly MOOC format. Checking back in on Friday only to get ambushed by “505 Unread Discussion Messages” that had secretly been piling up in the course forums, left me disheartened for a second. As usual, it pays to take a deep breath and a closer look at the MOOC’s course activities.
The majority of messages were personal introductions (441); about 65 dealt with the reading material of week one. The discussion threads covered various topics from sustainability and diversity of open education to the costs of higher education and international trends. I did not engage in any particular topic. Instead, I drifted through the threads in a serendipitous fashion and enjoyed listening in to different conversations. Here are my favorite quotes of the week:
I’m not participating in this MOOC to compare apples and oranges (bricks and bytes); I’m here to imagine ways we can be present to each other across time and distance. (Joe Moses, Oct. 9)
I personally have taken courses in Udacity and [they] are among the best courses I ever had. (William Colmenares, Oct. 9)
I was skimming through Educational Technology and Change and thoroughly enjoyed the lively discussion about online proctoring. More specifically, I honed in on the article titled “Remote Proctoring: UNC’s Low-Tech Network Model May Be the Best” and was intrigued by not only the subject matter but also for a couple of other reasons.
I agree that online proctoring is the most effective when it replicates the in-classroom experience and can appreciate UNC’s proctor Remote Testing Services for its simplicity.
Additionally, I work for a company called ProctorU that provides online proctoring for over 200 partner institutions, including a handful of those mentioned in the article. Most recently, we signed a major agreement with the University of North Carolina System that integrates ProctorU with their web infrastructure, enabling students to find an online proctor and test without ever having to leave the UNC site. This Application Programming Interface (API) was recently highlighted in a press release by UNC and covered by the publication Campus Technology.
The partnership with UNC represents the first statewide agreement with a single online proctoring company. We also proctor exams for Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), the University of Minnesota, and Northwestern University. For a listing of our partner institutions, please visit http://proctoru.com/partners.php. Continue reading →
A persistent concern about completely online courses is testing security. Without the physical presence of the professor or teaching assistant at the exam site, the fear is that students will cheat. For some (Adsit, Kimura), security is a non-issue, and the real issue is test design. For others, the issue is the ills of high-stakes testing (Keller). These issues notwithstanding, secure testing remains a critical step in the credentialing process for the vast majority of teachers and educational institutions. Its omission, alone, is enough to ensure that a course cannot be taken for credit, and credits are the universal currency for diplomas and certificates.
The mushrooming popularity of MOOCs has magnified the issue of secure testing for the purpose of certification. Minus the security, MOOCs are relegated to non-credit status. In other words, a terrific learning experience, but it won’t count toward graduation. Thus, as a business model, MOOCs are considered by most to be nonviable.
Consequently, there’s a need – a need for a workable remote proctoring procedure or service. One of the latest to enter this market is the Tegrity Remote Proctoring System. It relies primarily on the webcam built into today’s notebook computers. This type of service is not new. Kryterion‘s “online proctoring solutions accommodate on-board cameras commonly found on today’s laptops.” However, it also uses “more advanced USB cameras that offer wider view of the test taker and surrounding environment.”
Software Secure‘s Remote Proctor Pro is billed as “the gold-standard in remote test integrity.” It claims to address “every area of exam security by authenticating … identity and controlling a student’s computer while watching and listening to the exam environment.” See the video for a demo of its outboard camera setup.
Software Secure’s Remote Proctor Pro
Test proctoring per se, as an onground service, has a relatively long history. Colleges have offered exam proctoring services to students as well as the public for years. The National College Testing Association‘s Consortium of College Testing Centers (CCTC) is a free referral service designed “to facilitate distance learning.” Cal Poly is a member. Its “Testing Services office offers proctoring services for anyone needing to take tests in San Luis Obispo for another school or agency. Students participating in distance learning programs or correspondence degree programs, and professionals needing to be tested in order to receive certification in their field may be able to arrange to have their tests proctored at our facility.” Continue reading →
[Note: Bert Kimura is a professor at Kansai University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He’s fully online at Manoa. As coordinator of an annual, completely online international conference, he’s also in the process of releasing a call for presentation proposals. See preliminary details for TCC 2013 in the right sidebar of this page. I emailed these questions to him earlier this week. -Editor]
ETCJ: Would a typical college or school district be able to set up a video capture system such as Tegrity?
BK: I would contract Tegrity if interested rather than setting up my own system. Support costs, especially personnel, need to be included to determine if it is worthwhile to do your own. I would assume that Tegrity hosts an application and database on their servers to perform this service. I think that this is one of the services that becomes economical with a large number of users.
It is not clear to me whether a person has to be monitoring the video in real-time as well; or if it is monitored in real-time, whether the monitor views several video streams at once. In the end, I would think that someone has to review each recording to make sure there wasn’t any suspicious behavior. Therein lies added costs.
ETCJ: How and what would it require to set up a video capture system such as this?
BK: A server, databases, applications and a web based application for starters. Probably some form of added security to prevent hacking or tampering with the system.
ETCJ: Can you think of ways students intent on cheating might still beat this system?
BK: Not offhand. However, if you ask your students, I’m sure that they can think of ways to beat the system. Oh, here’s one possibility — someone could sign the answers from off camera or hold up a card with answers based on body language signals given by the test taker.
ETCJ: Any further thoughts?
BK: I must say that the concept is novel and worth testing. It would be great if Tegrity would publish some basic research data on it. That will ease the minds of faculty who would be the people that, I think, need convincing the most.
On the other hand, the issue may need review by people involved with student privacy concerns. I presume Tegrity has looked at this, but, clearly, students would need to be fully informed of their rights and privileges, if any, in using this system. For example, what if a student swears or bangs on the camera? Would it affect the student’s reputation or credibility?
My last thought is this: If paper and pencil testing is absolutely required in a class, it probably shouldn’t be offered as a DE class. Not today anyway.
I believe that student learning can be assessed through writing assignments, presentations, projects, and other creative methods of expression in virtually any class. Faculty would need to make the adjustments to do so.
Tegrity has announced its Remote Proctoring System. The purpose of the system is to allow online programs to assess students with the same level of security as would be found in the physical classroom. Before giving my response, I would like to look at the issue of academic cheating in general.
On the first day of school one year, I happened to be in the high school hallway when our calculus teacher walked by, a grim look on his face as he led one of the school’s most well known students, a highly regarded member of the honor society, to the office. Something had aroused his suspicions, and he had tested her, learning that her mathematical abilities were at the early algebra stage, roughly 8th grade. Throughout high school she had copied every math homework assignment and every test from friends. She had never been caught until then.
That girl was by no means unusual. The Educational Testing Service’s campaign to stop cheating cites statistics indicating that academic cheating has risen dramatically over the last few decades at both the high school and college level. Recent studies indicate that 75-98% of college students admit to having cheated. Another study said that 95% of students who admitted cheating said they had never been caught. It used to be that cheaters were the people just trying to get by, but today’s cheaters are just as likely to be the top performers in the school.
Those statistics all come from traditional, physical classrooms. If the goal of the new Tegrity Remote Proctoring System is to provide the same level of security found in those classrooms, then it has set a pretty low bar for its standard. A better approach lies in changing the nature of assessment itself, thus making the concept of proctoring unnecessary. Continue reading →
By Sharaf Rehman, M.Ed., Ed.S., Ph.D.
Professor of Communication
The University of Texas-Brownsville
College faculty is powerless in deciding what happens in their area high schools or in setting the mission and goals of their college. Still, it has a dual obligation to students: to help students master discipline specific knowledge and acquire life-skills. To fulfill this responsibility, the aquthor developed and implemented an all-encompassing model for advising in an academic unit in a state-supported, regional university. This “Umbrella Model” involves some participation from the administration but is mainly carried out by faculty members.
The model evolved purely out of necessity, on a campus that had abandoned a model in which faculty advised students. In the previous model, all advising was carried out by a team of advisors that reported to a Director of Advising. Every semester, prior to registration, all students were required to visit one of the advisors for help in building their class schedules. This was mandatory. However, students were not required to consult with faculty from their respective areas of study in making selections. The dropout rate for this approach was close to 50 percent. Worth noting is a figure from the placement tests, which revealed that 48 percent of the entering freshmen in 2011 were not college ready.
To implement the Umbrella Model, the author, who was careful to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes, offered to advise a group of 20 students in his major area. The effort would focus on planning course schedules for the coming semester. This was done after a meeting with the Director of Advising, who agreed that the author, as a faculty program advisor, would help the students develop their schedules. The students would then take the schedules to the official university advisors who would, in turn, register them in the courses. Hence, both the program-level as well as mandatory advising conditions were met. Continue reading →
By Kae Novak*
Online Learning
Front Range Community College
[Note: On 28 Sep. 2012, Russell Poulin, Deputy Director, Research and Analysis, for WCET – WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, posted a question in WCET Discussions: “What is your experience in taking or teaching a MOOC? What are the ‘lessons learned’ that you have to share?” This article is based on Kae’s response to the forum a few hours later. -Editor]
I just finished facilitating a Games Based Learning MOOC. We may be considered more “modest” as our total student count was 301. This MOOC was specifically for educators to learn about games based learning and is part of a Colorado Community College System Immersive and Games Based Learning Initiative Grant. The MOOC ran for six weeks.
I have taught (facilitated) courses at P2PU so the concept of open online was not new to me. I have also taken two of Stephen Downes and George Siemens’ Connectivist MOOCs. I lurked in Stanford’s AI MOOC last year and am currently participating in a Coursera MOOC.
So what are the lessons learned?
Participants in your course will have more than one style of learning online.
We had learners for whom this was the first online class ever. We also had veteran online instructors who were involved in emerging technology. Because of the topic we also had educators who are gamers and very involved online in rich interactive gaming communities. The Games Based Learning MOOC was designed as a connectivist course. It was setup up to build a community of educators who are learning online about games. The participants in the course seemed to be evenly split when it came to their online learning styles. Continue reading →
Although this study was conducted by Dell, a purveyor of technology, this brief overview of the results is worth reading. The majority of teachers in the study said that “technology allows them to create a more personalized learning experience” (para. 3), but many still feel that they do not have the necessary expertise to implement it effectively.
Even elementary students seem to able to unlock the power of iPads intuitively. In a pilot study of students in a mixed 7th/8th grade class, students who were given iPads performed higher on standardized test than those who were taught in the traditional manner. One of the results of this experiment was that the teacher realized that they had to give students with iPads more freedom to choose the way in which they would use the iPads. For example, students were told which skills they needed to practice and they had the freedom to choose the app they preferred to work on that skill.
Even though this article/website is a bit dated (Feb. 24, 2010) it is still is a good resource for finding videos online. It is divided into categories such as Educational Videos, which contains resources such as Teacher Tube and Cosmo Learning and General Videos, which contains resources such as Hulu and TED. The other categories are Teacher Education, Lesson Planning, Science, Math and Technology, History, Arts and Social Sciences, Video Tools, Network and Program Videos, Free Movies and Clips, How-Tos, and Government and Organizations.
Tutoring has long been recognized as the most effective form of teaching. Neil Heffernan wanted to make the advantages of this one-on-one interaction between student and teacher available to all students through computer technology simulating the immediate feedback and “nudging” that a human tutor provides.
WRT laptops [going the way of the dinosaur], it’s not so clear. With many tablets costing more than laptops, the cost is not the issue. Tablets do not perform well as writing implements while laptops do. Tablets still do not support much of the more advanced (e.g., grades 10-12) learning software.
The ideal computer-based learning platform is still evolving. Tablets were not intended for this use. Phones certainly were not. It’s nice that they can be adapted somewhat to use for learning and will help to point the way to better devices for learning.
What should such a device have? Until really good speech recognition software comes along, it should have a tactile keyboard. It should also have a pointing device capable of pixel precision, not just a fingertip. Laptops have these. It should also be rugged, light, and inexpensive to acquire and to operate. It also should run the enormous libraries of educational software currently available. Why expect vendors to invest millions in converting software to today’s latest fad in hardware?
There is no real barrier to having tablets run Flash or Java. It’s just the prejudices of the manufacturers and their desire to force software vendors to make platform-specific applications. WORA will come back, and, when it does, developers of serious applications will be happy if they resisted the trend. Continue reading →
From Link Trainers in World War II to complex simulations for pilot and space shuttle training programs, we have seen technology used for more and more learning experiences. Don Bitzer, in designing PLATO, envisioned a defined set of skills and knowledge to be learned. Entry-level learners could be tested to determine their current abilities and then learning materials could be assigned to have them reach the desired level of achievement. Constant feedback monitoring the learners’ achievements until they reach the desired skill and knowledge level is a major element of his system.
For more than forty years “Sesame Street” has shown that television can teach millions of children around the world basic skills. “The Voyages of the Mimi” demonstrated the power of multiple media in teaching science. This program used television coordinated with computers and books to teach basic elementary science. Bioblast is an example of a compelling learning experience based technology program. The New Frontier program demonstrated the power of social media.
Bits and pieces of many programs have demonstrated, time and again, the effectiveness of technology-based learning programs. Some large programs have been demonstrated in various school systems. Critical today is a learning management system that tracks students as they progress through their individualized learning programs and gives both the students and the teacher feedback with respect to their progress.
Feedback, in these cases, must be almost immediate and relevant.
The teacher in such a system is less a “sage on a stage” and more of a tutor, mentor and coach that guides the learner through his or her learning experiences. School facilities provide laboratories where teams of students can produce relevant products in their learning experiences. Continue reading →
MOOCs Are Growing Up Quickly
A sign that MOOCs are evolving into viable credit courses is today’s edX announcement that students will soon be able to take “a course final exam at one of over 450 Pearson VUE test centers in more than 110 countries.” Students will be charged “a modest fee for the proctoring service.”[1] Perhaps a natural consequence of the need for onground proctoring for open online courses will be the emergence of public and school libraries as well as schools and colleges around the world as providers of walk-in proctoring services. Proctors and sites could be certified and monitored by a nonprofit international board for a small fee. For most everyone, a library, school, or college is within easy commute. For some, proctoring could provide a small profit. However, in-person proctoring services may be a transitional solution for an issue that will probably disappear as online testing technology advances.
Dropping Enrollment at Kapi’olani CC — Implications?
This may just be a fluke, but for the second consecutive term, enrollment has dropped at KCC while it has gone up on other campuses[2]. The numbers are small so this may not be indicative of a significant trend. Still, after years of recording among the highest enrollments in the University of Hawaii system, this drop is worrisome. The emphasis at KCC in the past few years has been on campus-based strategies to raise retention and program completion rates. Perhaps it’s time to focus on infrastructure, instruction, and service improvements that rely on the latest personal communication technologies such as smartphones and pads. Already in the hands of students and potential students, these devices downplay location and spotlight anytime-anywhere access to services and instruction. With online technology increasingly dominating the college experience, KCC may be seeing the beginnings of a beautiful campus with expensive concrete ‘n’ glass facilities evolving into a dead zone, i.e., classrooms, labs, library, and campus standing open but empty.
Hello?
In a comprehensive study, by a team from the University of Manchester (UK), of “more than 13,000 11- to 16-year-olds at 40 secondaries across the country,” researchers found that the traditional high transmission approach to teaching math, characterized by a “tendency towards a more conventional, teacher-centred mode of teaching, with knowledge meant to be transmitted from teacher to pupil,” is less effective than student-centered, interactive approaches. In short, lecturing “can turn pupils off maths.”[3] Midway through 2012, I have to wonder why money is being spent to reiterate the obvious.
Millions on New Buildings and Outdated Technology?
Lake Park-Audubon High School (Minnesota) is celebrating the spending of millions of dollars on the construction of a new campus and new technology defined, in part, as “four computer labs with 25 to 30 computers each,” a “media center,” and “laptop computers and carrying bags … issued to the 180 students in grades 10 through 12.”[4] With the trend toward personal pads and smartphones as well as online instruction and services, one has to wonder if the district has made the best decisions. The “campus-wide Wi-Fi” with double the bandwidth, flipped classrooms, and movement toward ebooks are wonderful. However, these as well as the physical education and athletics facilities notwithstanding, the question remains: Is this the wisest use of education dollars? Laptops are going the way of the dinosaur, but when placed in the hands of all students, the need for computer-equipped labs or even labs seems redundant. iPhones and iPads can easily turn any room or environment into a “lab.” Furthermore, the construction of classroom buildings at a time when the trend is toward anytime-anywhere access seems, at least to me, counter-intuitive.
__________
iPods in Classroom Can Boost Academic Time and Resources for English Language Learners from The University of Texas at Austin News:
A study from The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education by Min Liu, a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, has found that the iPod can serve as a social and academic equalizer for students whose first language is not English. The study with K-12 students in Texas showed that students did use the devices for school-related work and benefited from their use.
Text Speak Does Not Affect Children’s Use of Grammar: Study by Rebecca Smith from The Telegraph online:
According to a study conducted in the UK, “There was no evidence of any significant relationships between poor grammar in text messages and their understanding of written or spoken grammar.”
Best Practices for Deploying iPads in Schools by Matt Levinson from MindShift:
Levinson presents some ideas on how to effectively use iPads in the classroom. Be sure to read the comments, where he elaborates on some of his ideas when answering questions from readers.
Last week, I stumbled upon an article in Inside Higher Ed (Alexandra Tilsley, “Grading Clout?“, 30 Aug. 2012) highlighting Todd Bacile, a Florida State University instructor, who uses Klout to assess his digital communication students. On the surface, this technique seems to open doors to creative assessment. However, dig a little deeper and some big questions begin to emerge about what students are actually learning.
I am a Klout user. I have a high-ish score (68), and receive frequent inquiries based on my number. Here’s the secret: in a lot of ways, that score is completely bogus.
As you can see, my Klout score remains relatively steady, and my number is high. At a glance, it would appear that I am social media-savvy, with frequent re-tweets and conversations started.
This is not completely incorrect. I am relatively social media savvy, and I start a lot of conversations about education, social media, and the career cycle. These are my interests, and at the risk of sounding boastful, I am experienced and knowledgeable in them. So, given this data, I would probably do relatively well in a high-level assessment. Now, let’s dig a little deeper and I’ll reveal my true social media identity.
The Common Core’s Digital-Literacy Gap by Paul Barnwell from Education Week Teacher online:
Barnwell asserts that the Common Core is too vague in how it addresses digital literacy, and he is concerned that it will be overlooked. He contends instead that traditional skills should be combined and integrated with new-literacy skills.
In 22 States, GED Exam Now Computerized by Ian Quillen from Education Week online:
The GED (General Educational Development) exam will be offered in a computerized version only after 2014. The rationale offered is that it is one way for test takers to demonstrate their technology skills, which the author says is debatable. He says that the more valid reasons are that it offers more flexibility for scheduling, registration, and obtaining scores and feedback.
50 Apps for Lifelong Learners by Caity Doyle from Technapex: Edudemic and their content partner Online College Courses have published a list of what they consider the 50 best educational apps for lifelong learners. The list seem to contain something for everybody, from National Geographic Today to Goodreads to Star Walk.
The Tech-Driven Classroom Is Here, But Grades Are Mixed by James Crotty from Forbes:
Crotty asserts that while newer educational technology is more interactive and has possibilities for creating more personalized learning for students, studies do not completely support the anecdotal evidence of proponents of laptop programs and other such initiatives.
Jim, you wrote: “The traditional campus-based college won’t disappear….The second wave is building just beyond the horizon, and when it strikes it will further undermine land-locked institutions. The select few on high ground will survive, but the vast majority on lower ground will be forced to migrate to the virtual world.” Bill Sam’s video “EPIC 2020” and its prophesies of degrees replaced by credentials and badges is an interesting look into the future and will obviously incite some and provide some interesting dialogues among others.
David Moursund (Editor in Chief of ISTE publication Learning and Leading with Technology 1974-2001) predicted a number of years ago that students would be engaging with their professor and classmates from a distance, engaging in “flipped” classrooms (not called that, of course), and that students would be wearing their computer on their wrists using anytime/anyplace access to information as they learned as much out of the classroom as they did within. At the time, his predictions were seen as outlandish and very sci-fi like. Did he get it most righty? Hmm…Sam’s predictions of total replacement of traditional classrooms and campuses may cause a ripple across higher education, but my prediction is that it will take a different kind of leader in our nation’s IHE’s for this to become a tsunami.
Using Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive innovation” idea (Larissa MacFarquhar, “When Giants Fail: What Business Has Learned from Clayton Christensen,” New Yorker, 14 May 2012), change in current traditions of higher education for many institutions will most likely require disruptive innovations outside of the academy first and we can see the evidence of the first seeds of that through the open course movement. I’m in a mostly land-locked institution on lower ground, and I’m curious about how other traditional institutions, led by traditional leaders, will fare. And what is my place in this movement? Traditional methods for effecting change at my institution aren’t getting us even to a trickle yet, let alone to thinking about or planning for a wave!
By Stefanie Panke
Editor, Social Software in Education
Instructional Analyst, School of Government, University of North Carolina Rob Moore
Instructional Designer, SOG, UNC Greg Whisenhunt
Multimedia Developer, SOG, UNC
[updated 8.27.12]
The annual Teaching and Learning Conference at Elon is a regional event that attracts professors, instructional designers, postdocs and other academic personnel from North Carolina colleges and universities The 9th edition of this free, one-day conference took place on August 16. As instructional designers at UNC School of Government, we seized the opportunity to spend a day of professional development and took home new ideas, concepts and insights.
Morning Plenary
The keynote address by Ashley Finley, Director of Assessment and Research from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), set the pace for a stimulating day. Her talk, “How to Hit a Moving Target: Assessing Engaging Learning in Changing Environments,” emphasized the application of student-centered rubrics. She presented the “Integrative Learning Value Rubric,” a set of rubrics developed in the context of the VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) project.
In this project, expert teams developed rubrics for fifteen learning outcomes. Finley paired the use of carefully designed rubrics with examples of creative assessment using web 2.0 tools. “I am not at all tech savvy,” Ashley Finley admitted, “but I am thrilled by the possibilities for reflective practice.” She added, “Obviously, without creative assignments, the technology is just that, a technology.” Finley illustrated her point by showing several examples of e-portfolios and other student-centered activities. A particularly interesting example came from Georgetown University’s collaboration space.
Students in the course “Bioethics and the Moral Imagination” at Georgetown used Youtube Analytics to annotate Obama’s speech on the contraception mandate. After Rush Limbaugh’s derogatory comments about a Georgetown student, this topic was going to dominate the class anyway – the instructor used innovative tools to steer the debate towards an analytical approach.
Today we face dragons. Some were here when we arrived, others we ourselves unleashed, inattentively, perhaps even mindfully. But they are here, growing in strength, in spread, in number. Tomorrow, we must rely on our children to protect us. For that, they must understand the world, its countless patterns and fractal details, and be able to focus on the key elements of a given puzzle, yet grasp how it fits in the larger whole.
Geography is the study of the world and all that is in it, or was, or could be, at infinitely varied scale. These infinite details link together to make patterns in interlocking systems. If we can tease out the patterns – assemble the vast galaxies of data and classify, symbolize, query, analyze, and model – we can find the keys that help us answer questions, solve problems, design solutions.
Geographic information system (GIS) technology allows us to find, generate, integrate, analyze, manage, and display data, illuminating the patterns and relationships large and small. The tools come in all sizes, shapes, and powers. As children explore and analyze their world, they build the capacity and disposition to see patterns, integrate information, discover relationships, make decisions, solve problems. Like a fire, it grows, slowly at first, needing consumable tinder before sticks, logs, and trunks. But kids devour content like web-based maps, use the tools to leap from the near and familiar to farther afield, bringing along their skills and knowledge, testing those against new situations. They poke into interesting worlds, find crevices, explore ideas, inhale new details. Restlessly, they seek the next challenge, take the larger step, find the next hill to climb and peer over, discovering new concepts and perspectives with which to build capacity.
Around the world, GIS is used in countless jobs, in hundreds of careers, because people need to solve problems and have to understand the nature of things to do that. Esri makes GIS software, and every year we have a conference at which people from around the world meet to celebrate their victories and learn from each other how to do a little more. This year, 14,000 practitioners assembled, including over 800 educators. The International Conference grows every year, and the Education Conference this year grew like wildfire. People are finding hope in problem-based learning, in helping youth from elementary school to graduate school think critically, work collaboratively, dig for answers, extract patterns, and see how to make a difference in their lives, their community, and the planet. They build background in tackling unfamiliar problems, bulking up in STEM fields and social studies content, in communication skills, opening doors to more and more future jobs as they grow.
We will never run out of problems. But, through the power of maps – our common language – we can explore, analyze, and understand our world, and diminish those dragons around us.
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
After reading an article about it, I decided to sign up for a Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/) account. It is touted as a virtual bulletin board, and the article I read especially recommended it for teachers. I have been looking for a simple way to create a “swipe” file for online materials related to TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and it looks like Pinterest may be what I was looking for.
Setting up a free account on this social networking site is quick and easy. Then you can create boards to organize items you “pin.” These items are web pages that must have graphics on them. I created a board called “TESOL” on which I am pinning related links. I have pinned some websites that I found by searching the Pinterest site using the search terms “esl” and “tesol.”
Since you can also add a “Pin It” button to your favorites bar in Internet Explorer, you can pin sites that you run across yourself. In turn, these can also be re-pinned by others who see them on your board. Editing the board and editing your pins, deleting, renaming, etc. are simple and easy to do. Time will tell if this site continues to serve my needs, but for now, I am satisfied that it is easier to manage than my desktop folder where I stored articles and information from websites.
I intend to share Pinterest with my students so they can add it to their teaching toolbox along with some other free sites that I think teachers would find useful. For example, I have found electronic post-its that can be downloaded to your desktop. Another useful tool for teachers is Penzu (http://penzu.com/), a free online journal/diary application that is fairly easy to use.
Has anyone else found quick and easy sites that meet a specific need and/or that teachers and students could use?
Deep Conceptual Learning: Creating Connections That Last – Tim Ham says that DCL is critical to students’ success in and out of the classroom. He highlights how Common Core State Standards (CCSS) can connect students, teachers, and content, transform not just assessment but “requires a shift in the way teachers teach and students learn.” Technology has an important role to play as one of the tools for student success.
Affording the Classroom of the Future – Bridget McCrea looks at the logistics and costs of setting up and maintaining technology-intensive classrooms. “As the nation’s K-12 schools consider the equipment and space requirements of tomorrow’s classrooms, many of these institutions are also looking at how to pay for the new learning spaces.”
Blake Binkley may very well be the emerging face of learning. “He has taken classes through Truckee Meadows Community College, the University of Nevada, Reno, through the Washoe County School District’s online learning program, the Stanford University Online High School and even the high school he is zoned to attend, Galena [in Reno].”[1] Binkley is 18 and a home-school student, but, he says, “‘It isn’t the traditional view of … being taught at home by my mommy.'” He says, “‘It’s basically given me the opportunity to choose what I want to do.'”
Binkley should have educators, with an eye on the big e-picture, connecting the dots and realizing that the trend toward home schooling, on the one hand, and MOOCs, on the other, may be merging. Against the backdrop of MOOCs that are sprouting all over the virtual landscape, Binkley’s technologically enabled “opportunity to choose” courses to construct a learning program geared to his personal interests and needs may be an indication that land-based, lock-step, one-size-fits-all schools are becoming less relevant by the day.
Obviously, the gap between schools as they are and home schooling as the dominant model is enormous and the dots joining them are spaced far apart, but, a constructivist point of view notwithstanding, the trend seems both natural and inevitable. The major obstacle is the land-based district boundaries that are used to define and finance schools. As Michael Van Beek observes, “Even though the Internet is without boundaries, under current law a student’s ability to enroll in online programs is still limited by local and intermediate school district boundaries.” His conclusion is compelling: “These ‘schools-of-choice’ boundaries just don’t make sense when any school in the state can easily provide instruction to any student with the help of technology.”[2]
This problem of boundaries is not insurmountable. Creative decision makers will be able to come up with solutions, and one is to simply have the funds follow the students’ choices. For example, students are allocated a certain amount, and they are free to choose courses within that budget. If they exceed it, then the the remainder is paid out of pocket. In this scenario, there are no district or state boundaries. The courses can originate from anywhere on the planet. A method for approving courses and credits will also need to be factored in. Continue reading →
In the wake of the recent onslaught of MOOCs in higher ed, the word “tsunami”* is often used to describe their potential impact. It evokes images of the 2004 Indian Ocean and 2011 Tohoku disasters, and fear and panic are widespread among faculty and administrators who cannot begin to fathom the threat to their ivory towers. To fully appreciate the analogy, however, we need to consider the speed of a tsunami. At 500 miles per hour, it can travel thousands of miles over open ocean in a matter of hours. But what’s truly sinister about this movement is that we usually don’t notice it until it hits our shores. By then, it’s too late. It’s difficult to detect. To our naked eye, the surface of the ocean may appear to be a bit darker and rougher, but it’s still relatively calm compared to the huge waves that we associate with tsunamis. Thus, we don’t see it coming unless we know what to look for.
As far as tsunamis go, the MOOCs that are lapping at our campus borders today are minuscule, perhaps a few inches high at most. But many are taking the threat seriously and believe the worst is yet to come. Is it? To answer this question, we need to look for signs. Not surprisingly, we turn to the most visible figures on our college campuses — administrators. As leaders, they should know. Right?
Well, no. That is, unless they’re in very close touch with teachers in the classroom and students. And this is especially true at the junctures where students, who are comfortable with the latest communications technology, and teachers, who are independently exploring and implementing strategies that are in sync with the open online learning environment, intersect.
The signs are easy to miss, like the subtle surface changes in the open ocean that indicate a massive tsunami is racing toward land, just below the surface, at the speed of a jet plane. For the full impact of MOOCs, what are the signs that we need to look out for?
We get a hint from an article by Laura Pasquini, “Online Learning: More Than Just a MOOC” (TechKNOW Tools, 28 July 2012). Pasquini is an education professional and a doctoral student in learning technologies at the University of North Texas. She turned to MOOCs to connect with “new concepts, research ideas, learning networks.” She says, “My intention when signing up for this type of free, online learning was to support my own professional development and expose myself to new learning concepts.”
Student interest in MOOCs is definitely an indicator, but what really caught my attention was this comment: “I reflected my MOOC experiences to my faculty advisor and he believed that participation in any one of these classes could be an added elective for my doctoral degree plan since this informal learning environment was contributing to my research design.”
[Note: In his series, Constructing a Sustainable Model for Higher Education, Brian will explore and propose a process and apply it to generate a viable model. In this first part, he begins with an analysis of the major elements or factors that define teaching and asks readers to participate in the discussion that’s attached to this article. In part 2, he plans to discuss criteria for disaggregating teaching functions into different institutions; in part 3, a green-field design of disaggregated higher education; and in part 4, the inhibitors, or economic and sociological barriers, to moving from here to there. – Editor]
You can learn virtually anything online. So why go to college? It does seem that more and more people are asking that question, the most famous (or infamous) recently being Peter Thiel in his description of a higher education bubble. There are, of course, plenty who disagree, particularly those with “skin in the game.” So who is right? Is higher education too expensive? Does it represent a good Return On Investment for students and the country? Is it sustainable in the long run?
To paraphrase Yogi Berra, making predictions is difficult, especially about the future. That has not stopped the many, including myself, who are making predictions on the future of higher education. A particularly dramatic example of such predictions is on the epic2020.org site. Amara’s Law states “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” So it may be some time before we see these predictions coming true, but when they do, they may well be as dramatic as some have predicted.
So, is higher education, as it currently exists, sustainable in the long run? How would we go about answering that question? Those of us of an analytical bent would probably look at this as a design problem. We might define what we are trying to achieve, list all the tools and techniques available to us, and then try to come up with the best solution. To be honest, we’d probably start again from scratch. In a truly competitive world, anyone who did this would win “customers” from the less efficient and this model would win out very quickly. But higher education is much messier than this. The objectives we are trying to achieve are not fully clear and seem to be the subject of much debate. Competition is hindered by bureaucracy, regulations, and cartels. The “product” is complex, and even if you offer the best value, you can’t be sure the customer will recognise it. It may even be unclear who your customer is. The student? The employer? Or even the government, who in most countries picks up the tab for a very significant part of the cost?
Along learning technologies, one of my passions is sports. The Olympics have come to my hometown and I’m loving it. The feel good factor around the city is palpable. This is partly because of the consensus that the games are going pretty well (apart from the odd transport issue) and partly because the GB is doing way better than expected.
The technology really helps as well. Never before has it been so easy to follow any sport at any time. Of course, our BBC coverage is extensive but what makes this games special is the live feed of all sports at all times. This means I could watch a whole sailing race or an entire heptathlon or day of judo without boring interviews and punditry jibber. This was on my PC or on the TV. Also, most GB sports websites have taken to supplying a rolling commentary of events in a conversational, jokey manner. This means I can be primed for events before they happen and be ready to open a new tab containing that live feed. Even four years ago this would not have been possible.
It makes sports watching a democracy. Rather than suffering under the totalitarian BBC 1 coverage where they are interviewing yesterday’s GB bronze medal winner with montages of them crossing the line, I am free to watch BMX qualifiers with all the crashes and blood on the floor I could handle.
I confess I don’t know what’s going on with some of these sports. Judo seems to be mostly about bear-hugging and the horse ballet is a total mystery. However, the sailing is fascinating, the volleyball is compelling (especially the beach variety) and two-hour swimming just incredible. The whole thing is over on Sunday and I don’t know what I’ll do. We’ve had it on the big screen in the office instead of the normal rolling Powerpoint promoting ourselves. Visitors are lingering to watch, which never happens normally. Go figure.
ePortfolio Redux
Tom Segal, in “Rethinking the Learning Experience: Part IV,” says, “Perhaps the most elemental of credentialing bodies is the e-portfolio” (Huff Post, 8.9.12). He continues, “With an e-portfolio, students can share media demonstrating leadership (perhaps film of the league championship game where they captained the team to victory) or teamwork (like video of their A.P. European History final presentation) in an easily digestible format.” He mentions Desire2Learn, Pathbrite, and Pearson as providers of eportfolio services. However, he fails to mention the simplest, most accessible, most flexible, and least expensive eportfolio platform — blogs, e.g., WordPress and Google’s Blogger.
The Dark Side of Open Online Courses
This headline from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Elite Colleges Transforming Online Higher Education” (by Terence Chea, 8.9.12), is just one of many that have been gushing over the open online courses being offered by top-tiers such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. We shouldn’t, however, forget that these changes have been initiated and developed by individuals, many or most of whom are classroom teachers. The administrators who have come around to supporting these innovators ought to be commended for their enlightened leadership and willingness to take risks. However, as of now, the support is apparently still tentative, judging by the conservative language of administrative policy that continues to insist on the superiority of blended approaches. The gap between the visions of innovators and administrators is huge, forcing some of the most progressive teachers to strike out on their own. The time is ripe for influential leaders to step forward and, first, declare the viability of open online courses; second, support explorations into credentialing strategies; and third, implement the development of procedures to integrate open and fully online courses into their mainstream offerings.
The Role of Mobiles in Selecting Colleges and Careers
In “Googling Across India for Education Courses and Choices,” Anubhuti Vishnoi (The Indian Express, 8.9.12) tells us that “India’s students are increasingly relying on the internet to make critical career decisions.” More specifically, they’re turning to mobiles: “There are as many as 70 million mobile internet users in India now and 54 per cent … are in the 18-35 age group.” Among students, “Over 66 per cent … said they use mobiles to access the Web.” The message seems to be clear: As smartphones and tablets erode the lines that separate computers from mobiles, higher ed institutions should be looking at ways to adapt their online info to accommodate mobiles.
A State Dept. of Ed That’s Taking Its Conference Online!
The West Virginia Statewide Technology Conference runs from August 8-9, 2012. What makes it really special is that it is completely virtual and free! Here’s a quote from their site: “You can attend and participate in the conference from the comfort of your favorite internet-connected computer. Look for an incredible collection of sessions from our presenters and demonstrations from our vendors. Yes this is a little different from what you have experienced in the past, but let’s give it a try! After all, technology is what we are about and our virtual conference will explore the limits of what can be done.” Kudos to the WV Department of Education for taking this gigantic leap for its K-12 educators. (Additional source.)
My own experiences with NBC Olympic streaming video ranged widely from fairly good to very poor.
What will tomorrow’s students expect? Do we really know? Online will be a component, certainly. However, what sort of interaction with their instructors will be the norm? Will it synchronous or asynchronous? Probably some of each.
Will textbooks be all online? Or will my vision of the future come true and textbooks in any form will disappear to be replaced by truly interactive online learning software?
Today’s interactive learning software makes a mockery of the word “interactive.” The online game companies know what interactive really means. Must learning software be games? Some think so. I strongly disagree. We can learn from them but don’t have to mimic them.
Regarding the physical plant part of educational institutions, I think that future will depend on the specific institution. K-5 will remain firmly physical. The top colleges, e.g., Ivy schools, MIT and Caltech, Stanford and Duke, et al., will be able to retain their hallowed campuses because their students gain so much for their futures from hanging out together physically. These institutions will also be reaching out to the world with online courses from the best instructors in the world.
What will happen to community colleges? If you can replace a CC campus with an Internet server farm, will it happen?
What about the “Big Ten”? Will football and basketball support the old style? You can’t make football games virtual. These teams must actually play. The alumni must be able to freeze in the bleachers in December while watching their fellows on the field and then donate, donate, donate!
And so it goes. It’s not just about the courses.
Make no mistake. Big changes are afoot. Also, do not make the mistake of rash predictions. The potential for game-changing innovation is strong in the current climate. J. P. Morgan, when asked for his prediction about the stock market, famously said, “It will fluctuate.” So, I say to all of you about the future of education, It will be different. The specific differences are not predictable with any certainty, but some overall expectations are:
Fewer colleges.
Different modes of instruction — especially extremely interactive online learning.
Instructors will be critical, not just dull lecturers and graders; they will probably be paid less for their work — at least per student.
Redefinition of what a degree means.
Increasing separation of teaching and publication (e.g., research) personnel.
Hopefully, all of these changes will settle down to something really good and worthwhile. More hopefully, the escalating cost of a usable college degree will decline markedly.
NBC will be broadcasting the Rio Olympics in 2016, and a seemingly casual comment from a spokesperson in a recent TV news segment should have sent a shockwave throughout the world. The fact that it hasn’t says a lot about people’s attitude toward technology. They are either resigned to the coming upheaval or doubtful that it will ever happen. More than likely, most simply don’t care. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t. The sense is that, either way, they’re powerless.
The comment was in response to criticisms aimed at NBC’s online streaming of live events and archived videos from the current London Olympics. If you’ve made the effort to register through your cable or other service provider and if you’ve then tried to actually log on and view events, then you’re probably part of the mob that’s throwing virtual bricks at NBC. “Poor” doesn’t even come close to describing the ordeal.
To NBC’s credit, the spokesperson made no attempt to defend or gloss over the snafu that takes on massive proportions in the context of the internet. He told it like it is. The planning for the media coverage was conceived two years ago when NBC won the contract to broadcast the Olympics, and in the time frame for change in online technology, two years may as well be two lifetimes, and, needless to say, a lot can and will happen in the interval.
The point is that, two years ago, NBC planners had no way of knowing the extent to which online media would come to dominate communications in general and broadcasting in particular. Television today is where hardcopy newspapers were a few years ago. The sweep is toward digital and online, away from analog and onground.
The lesson from 2012 is clear. For NBC, the emphasis for the 2016 Olympics will be digital and online. Increasingly, people expect and want their video broadcasts over the internet from anywhere at anytime via mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads as well laptops and desktops. What’s the prognosis for technology that’s built around standalone TV sets? We don’t have to look far for clues. Landlines. Phone booths. Film cameras. Dinosaurs.
For educators, the implications are enormous. When the video information we now receive from dedicated TV sets leaves the ground and goes virtual, mobile internet devices will take on a whole new dimension in the lives of students. For example, their visual perception of the world and reality will be continually reconstructed 24-7 in a medium that’s increasingly mobile and interactive. Information and learning resources as well as synchronous and asynchronous personal and group communications will be literally at their fingertips whenever they want it and wherever they are. The outcome is obvious. Students will expect their course work, learning support services, and teachers to be no less accessible — from anywhere at anytime.
Another implication is that educators have to rethink their budgets. Do they continue to pour their limited dollars into constructing and maintaining onground facilities such as buildings, classrooms, and offices? Or do they begin to invest in infrastructures and strategies that maximize the potential for online learning?
By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education
Clintondale High School near Detroit, Michigan, has instituted a different model for teaching in an effort to improve grades, increase learning, and better support students. They are using what principal Greg Green calls flipped schooling (aired on Dick Gordon’s The Story, April 16, 2012).
Students at Clintondale were struggling, not passing classes and not performing well on standardized tests. Green asked students what they thought was going on, and their reply was that they had trouble doing school work at home. They could not concentrate, or they had no one to help them if they did not understand the assignment or the concepts. In turn they were getting further and further behind.
Greg Green
Based on this information, Green decided that instruction was not aligned with how students learn. Change was needed. He and his staff re-imagined schooling so that, rather than sitting in class, listening to a lecture, and doing homework at home, students study background information on the topic at home then work on practical problems as well as ask and answer questions about the material in class. He said they use screen captures, videos, and other technology for at-home lectures. Students can look over the materials at their own pace, as often as they need to, in order to understand the concepts or to pinpoint problem areas. The next day students come to school to ask and answer questions about the materials and to solve problems in class.
Green reported that their experiment is meeting with some success. Failure rates in the courses that are using this flipped model have been cut in half. They also found that students who were in flipped math classes had a 10% gain on state standardized math tests.
The flipped school model is a good example of how technology can be used to enhance learning. Technology in this case can
optimize learning time
align with students’ learning styles and needs
provide opportunities for repetition as needed
When students are in class, they and their teachers can interact in the face-to-face context in meaningful and productive ways. This type of constructivist learning is effective as the student builds his/her own knowledge. They learn the content as they develop problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
In articles on the CNN Blog, Green elaborates on the benefits of flipped schooling and addresses the concerns that readers have about this model:
My friend Charlie Fitzpatrick and I attended a national summer workshop long ago. We were introduced to the rudiments of GIS (geographic information system). Years later, I attended one day of his conference. Charlie is now the education director for ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.). The day I went was map day. I love maps and charts and geography books and citizen science. Some of the maps were on tiles and so beautiful.
A favorite starting point with students is My Wonderful World. This site is a great place to start to learn the GIS. There is also the teacher resource page of the National Geographic.
I never attended the whole conference before this year. At the time I was taking a super computing (SC) workshop and using GIS. But I had no idea of all of the creative and innovative ways in which it is used today. A look at ESRI is all you need to know about GIS. I could make a simple definition, but I like the ESRI definition because it is all inclusive.
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Last summer we worked with inner city kids on several projects at the Joint Education Facilities, Inc., in Washington, DC. It is located in Southeast Washington and is the only neighborhood high performance computing center in the US. The kids came on Saturdays in the summer to learn GIS and then to complete projects in the GIS technology program. We used GIS to solve problems in the social sciences. Continue reading →
All teachers must learn certain things. For example, they learn about learning theory, classroom discipline, and how to write lesson plans. In addition, they learn the material and ideas of their chosen subject area. As I read articles about science education and communicate with many science teachers, I become more convinced that our teachers colleges are not providing the necessary learning to our future science teachers.
What is this necessary learning and why is it important?
To answer this question, you must first understand what science is. Science is not a bunch of “facts,” e.g., Mercury is closest to the Sun; prophase is the first phase of mitosis; force is proportional to the rate of change of momentum; igneous rocks are formed from molten rock. Science is an approach to finding out these things, a way of thinking, of solving problems. It uses the work of previous scientists and new data to be sure. So those “facts” are part of the learning but hardly the most important part.
So-called science facts are always subject to revision, but the means by which they were extracted from nature with great difficulty remains the same. We must teach some science content in order to have material upon which to apply the developing thinking skills of our students.
Science courses inflict lots of vocabulary on students too. Some words seem familiar but are used by scientists in a very specific manner. “Work,” for example, does not take place when you’re holding a heavy weight above your head – if you’re talking about science. Work is a specific and quantitative term in science. Other words seem entirely unfamiliar and even bizarre. In physical science, “entropy” is a made-up word for a measure of disorder in things.
Science education must provide the content of science including vocabulary, an understanding of the nature of science, and development of scientific thinking skills. Anything else is superfluous in primary and secondary education. In post-secondary education of science and medical majors, there’s more, but that part is not the subject of this discussion.
Without an understanding of the nature of science, students will not be able to interpret what’s going on around them every day. You read about global warming and conflicting claims regarding it. You read about protecting species from extinction and then about how 95% of all species in the history of the Earth have gone extinct naturally. You read about an energy crisis and then about how the price of gasoline is being manipulated by Wall Street traders and that the energy situation is just fine. All of this would be just entertainment were it not for the fact that so many countries are democracies, and the people are expected to vote, to make decisions, on these issues in elections. Continue reading →
In response to the explosive trend in higher ed toward open online courses (OOCs), Berkeley’s executive committee for online education published* the university’s plan for change. As a strategy, it’s an echo of similar guidelines across the country and the world. However, what distinguishes it from all the rest is intelligence. It’s obvious that the committee has done its homework and understands the deeper implications of online education.
The plan has two standout elements. The first is a flexible approach to defining “online” education:
certificate and graduate degree programs that are in high demand
undergraduate gateway and hybrid courses that increase available capacity and enrich learning for our on-campus students
“public good” courses that we will typically offer for free to a wide audience as a community service and as a proven approach to exposing potential students to outstanding Berkeley faculty
development and sale of online educational content that can be deployed by other institutions or organizations
Of these, the fourth is the breakaway, and it implies a deeper understanding of how the current flood of open online courses and platforms might play out. That is, in the coming weeks and months, the key to OOCs may be the way client institutions integrate the courses into their programs. In the end, the value of courses may be in their unbundled state rather than in their current bundled, all-in-one platforms. For example, as unbundled content, OOCs could serve course designers from institutions around the world who would pick and choose parts from different courses — from the same or different colleges — to construct unique course mashups for their students.
This mashing process is familiar to educators who have been doing it with textbooks and multimedia for years. The big difference is that they now have anytime-anywhere access to content provided by some of the top teachers in the world. Furthermore, that content is open (not the same as free) or mashable as well as recorded and available in various digital media. This content could be sold in creative packages to institutions everywhere. This OOC-based business model may be the virtual extension of publishing in the 21st century.
The second element is a vision of integration that implies, once more, a clear awareness of the process of change. Unlike the vast majority of colleges, Berkeley understands that the current practice of “bolting” online programs to traditional onground platforms is a transitional phase. The ultimate shape of viable programs is a work in progress, and no one knows for sure exactly what it will be. The one certainty, however, is that “online methods will ultimately transform our traditional teaching program and we need to begin to systematically align our administrative and support functions to meet the changing needs of online and traditional programs.”
“Systematically align” is a euphemism for change, and when applied to staff and leaders, it means to educate or to keep on top of current trends and developments from as broad and as deep a perspective as possible. In short, this isn’t a time for panic and bandwagon decisions, and this is definitely not a time to sit still, pout, or cling to tradition. At Berkeley, the leaders realize that the future is their responsibility and that it can’t be passed off to others, outside experts or entrepreneurs, or borrowed from other institutions. And a critical part of that responsibility is to think — inside and outside the box.
Pre-online models for education are no longer adequate, yet that is all we have for now. The challenge is to draw a clear distinction between the old masquerading as the new and the genuinely new, between the new as a “bolt on” to the old and the new as an entirely different model that fulfills the promise of online technology. Leadership is critical in times of tumultuous change, and at Berkeley, the leaders have stepped up.
Recently, Nora Fleming, in “NAEP Reveals Shallow Grasp of Science” (Education Week, 19 June 2012) reported on a new study regarding the 2009 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) exam for grades four, eight, and twelve. Around 2,000 students at each grade level were given three “Interactive Computer Tasks” (ICT) and one “Hands-On Task” (HOT) to perform. They were asked questions about each task.
We all know that conclusions such as “shallow grasp of science” are fraught with difficulties, especially when the results tell more about the test than the students. In this case, there are more issues. What exactly does “shallow grasp” mean in this situation? What sort of understanding is required to achieve a high result?
You can check for yourself at a website that allows you to take these tests yourself and score your answers, if you have patience with the tests. I went through the grade 8 and grade 12 materials (my work with science education focuses on grades 6-13) and did not approve of most of the content. Because it’s quite difficult to separate student ability from test quality, the results are suspect.
Because generalities won’t suffice, I’ll provide one example that shows how test results can mislead regarding understanding. This example shows how an eighth-grade student responds to the ICT, “Playground Soil.” According to the instructions,
In this 20-minute task, students investigate the permeability of soil samples from two sites a town is considering for a play area. Students use their results to help decide which site has the better water drainage and is therefore the better place for a grassy play area.
Students analyze two samples: soil sample A that is 10% clay, 50% fine gravel, and 40% silt; and soil sample B that is 10% clay, 50% sand, and 40% silt. Note that the only difference is the middle component. Diagrams illustrate the soil composition.
Students are asked to predict which soil will be more permeable. Generally speaking, the one with more voids (more space between soil grains) will be more permeable. Clearly, fine gravel has larger particles than sand. Now, do a thought experiment with me. Suppose that you increase the size of the fine gravel particles substantially. You might even have a rock in the midst of a clay-silt mixture. The permeability of this rock plus clay-silt will closely match that of clay-silt alone. Now, imagine reducing the size of the rock while keeping the volume equal to one-half of the total. Once the particle size reaches that of clay (60% clay, 40% silt), you’ll have very little permeability because mixtures that are mostly clay don’t allow much water to pass through them. Continue reading →
On May 7, 2012, Dick Gordon aired an interview with Sebastian Thrun and David Evans called Udacity: Teaching Online, an online university that came about almost by chance. Although The Story does not air on my NPR station, thanks to modern technology, namely the iPod and podcasts, I was able to download this story and listen to it two months later.
Thrun is Google’s vice president and is recognized as a pioneer in artificial intelligence and robotics. He was a tenured professor at Stanford when his story began. Fall 2011, Thrun decided to make his graduate level AI course, normally taught in a lecture hall to about 200 students, available online for free. He wanted to try to reach a larger audience. He sent out one email announcement. Much to his surprise 160,000 students from all over the world enrolled, and 23,000 completed the course. Thrun was gratified that his experiment was so successful, that free quality education could reach anyone who wanted it.
Sebastian Thrun
During the semester, Thrun had to mend some fences with the administration at Stanford. He had made this decision on his own, and they were concerned about having the Stanford name on certificates he had promised completers. They finally compromised that completers would receive a “statement of accomplishment” from Thrun, a private individual but affiliated with Stanford. So began Udacity, which offers STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) courses that students can take for free. For a fee they can take tests that certify their knowledge. Although there have been bumps along the way, Thrun says that he cannot imagine teaching any other way. William Bennet, in an interview with Thrun for CNN, “asked Thrun whether his enterprise and others like it will be the end of higher education as we know it — exclusive enclaves for a limited number of students at high tuitions? ‘I think it’s the beginning of higher education,’ Thrun replied. ‘It’s the beginning of higher education for everybody.'” Continue reading →
Kris W. Kimel[1] says that “higher education, once open to a select portion of the citizenry, is now increasingly available to virtually everyone, anyplace at any time and oftentimes for free.” He also says that “the rise of the innovation and information economy is also sweeping aside the traditional role and position of gatekeepers, those institutions and people who have historically controlled access to the economic playing field, professions and customers.” These are the types of observations that we’d expect from the “president and a founder of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, a non-profit company with an international reputation for designing and implementing innovative and broad-scale initiatives and programs.”[2] A gem, eloquent and accurate.
But hidden under this gem, barely noticeable, is a small stone so rare that it takes your breath away. It’s a comment by someone who goes by the username Seabees1. S/he says that “a larger question relates to academic resistance exercised by countless so-called educators and education planners.” He asks:
Why so much duplication in majors [courses?] among institutions, which siphons off excellence while also wasting taxpayer dollars? Why continue old-fashioned methods of foreign language instruction when new — yes, through technology — techniques trump the status quo?
Why constant boredom in classrooms thanks to professors offering limited lifetime working experience regarding the subjects they allegedly teach?
“Perhaps,” he says, “the culprit is a combination of petty politics, internal self-preservation couched in collegiate mumbo jumbo, and declining teacher preparation by the very organizations offering education degrees. ‘Physician, heal thyself’ doesn’t apply only to medicine.”
It seems Seabees1 has the kind of crap detector that is sorely missing among the vast majority of educators and so-called experts. When those with the power to impact education rely on “collegiate mumbo jumbo” and ignore the signs of their own failure, then the outlook for change is gloomy. Continue reading →
Two Americas? Are we marginalizing people of diversity by not including them in the conversations? Research? Advisory Boards? Are we the New Invisible Man? I don’t know what it was like during slavery. I do know what it was like during the days of segregation that were a big part of my life. We were an invisible part of the society. We had to follow all the rules, but we were like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
Now I think there is integration, but I think people in the U.S. live in two worlds, and if the world that they live in is good, they don’t include those from the other world who need to be a part of the ongoing conversation to make the whole continue to work. Most of the reports that we receive in journals and at conferences are well written and researched. However, very little involves those people who are not connected, whose schools are not the best, and whose teachers are not a part of the conversations. I am not talking about the media mavens with one minute pronouncements that dot our television stations. I am talking about the thought changers and the people who guide new ways of thinking, learning, politics, and all. A sustained exposure of diversity issues is critical because technology takes a longer time to dribble down than those twenty year old books that used to come to my community.
I am a member of ISTE. This year’s conference was great, like a moving train. I know how to negotiate it, network. I try to select the ideas that I am interested in and to see the rock stars of education. I notice that there are not that many people of diversity in the mix. A token or two. I watch the crowds to see who of broadening engagement is a part of our groups. Not many. I think ISTE is not making it happen because many people cannot afford the costs of the conference, membership, and travel.
ISTE is no longer a teacher organization per se. It has changed. You can get updated on the latest technology, see this year’s trends, and meet and greet people. One highlight for me this year was to see that Elliot Soloway and Chris Dede‘s ideas of mobile technology have taken off. And then I thought of this article from MindShift. No one was talking about the lack of broadband or permissions to use technology in the schools or the way to negotiate that move. Digital equity seems to have died a quiet death. We did have an SIGDE workshop in the conference. Maybe it is our fault — we have no sponsors. I suppose that lets us know that we are not a real part of the mix. Or does it mean something else? Continue reading →
At this time of year I always wonder at our slavish adherence to an agrarian schedule for schools. Million dollar plants are closed for the summer. Well, not completely. We often have the athletic departments active with team sports.
Staff, from teachers to principals, find summer jobs. I once had a principal who had a summer company to paint houses. He hired his male teachers, and they had a good business. Some of his teachers made more on their summer jobs than they did teaching.
We know that students lose much of what they have learned during this down time and that much of the first two months of the fall semester is spent relearning what they have lost.
If Walmart and others can serve their customers 24 hours a day year round, why do schools continue to tie themselves into a rigid and ill-conceived obsolete schedule?
What if we had a year-round, open schedule school system designed for modern families? For example, the schedule follows the family’s schedule. The students are in school from 8 to 5 each day or from 10 to 6 or even assigned as it fits their individual learning plan (ILP). The school is open from 7 in the morning to 7 in the evening. Students are assigned based upon their ILPs. Teaching staff schedules are also flexible in order to cover the entire day.
In this projected school system, there are traditional classes as well as virtual learning at home and at school through social media. All year long students engage in special learning experiences built around project based learning where learners, working in teams, experiment with such things as actually constructing a robot to serve disabled individuals.
It’s hard to disagree with John Eger’s[1] take on the significance of the UVA president’s resignation and reinstatement. The message is change — or else. But this is precisely the problem — a definition of change that everyone agrees with is nice, but is it useful?
In my mind, change, per se, is not the issue. In fact, every leader in higher ed has embraced change via technology. Teresa Sullivan is no exception. However, in her case, the pace of change at the University of Virginia[2] seems to have been the thorn.
Still, in Sullivan’s case, I’m not sure if speeding up the incremental pace would produce the kind of change that edX and Coursera represent. These MIT/Harvard and Stanford MOOCs (massive open online courses) have apparently set a new standard for change that is a radical departure from the incremental. The incremental model is appealing because it seems to satisfy the majority of professors[3]. Those who want to change while maintaining business as usual can have their cake and eat it, too. They can go blended, which is another way of saying that they can change without really having to change. They can continue to base their instruction in F2F (face-to-face) pedagogy and satisfy the demand for change by adding bits and pieces of the latest rage in technology. Post your syllabus and course schedule online, add a whiteboard to your F2F lectures, replace a percentage of your lectures with online activities, allow students to contact you via email — and, presto, you’ve changed.
But the question remains: Is this enough, and, perhaps more importantly, what exactly is “enough”?
Do we attain “enough” by placing a greater percentage of course work online? Adding more whiteboards? iPads? Clickers? Incorporating mobile devices into the instructional mix? Using more social media such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter? Expanding learning and teaching media to include teacher- and student-generated videos?
Herein lies the problem. No. All of these and more of it — even at a faster pace — doesn’t move us any closer to enough. Classrooms overflowing with the latest gadgets and online activities can come close, but they can never be enough. Change demands something more. Continue reading →
For nearly 150 years since Darwin first published The Origin of Species in 1859, the controversy has continued. Despite mountains of evidence collected from many branches of science, some still fight vigorously against teaching evolution in our school science classes.
I maintain that those fighting against this teaching are harming our society but may just be helping out science education. I refer here to what’s happening in the United States, which seems to be the country most affected by this controversy as well as being the one in which I live.
Answering why the anti-evolution forces are harming our society and how they might end up helping improve science education requires some digging. Society depends on technology to support our standard of living and on the creation of new technologies for export to fund our ability to buy technology. More and more of these technologies are biological in nature. Research into biology and medicine moves forward best when we understand the underlying principles of life. A framework upon which to set ideas and to imagine new ideas helps immensely in both research and development of new technologies and new products.
If you study well the advances in biology and medicine in recent decades, you will see that the concepts inherent in evolution have played an important role. If our students leave school without this important framework, then they are ill-prepared to participate in the advancement of science. If, even worse, they leave school opposing science and its precepts, then they may work to retard scientific advances. Evolution, as a concept and framework, has become the underpinning, tying together previously disparate aspects in all of our life sciences.
Right now, the world is on the verge of eradicating polio. One of three strains has already been destroyed, and only a few countries still harbor reservoirs of the remaining two and possibly only one. While this effort has been largely one of vaccinating everyone, development of new vaccines rests on medical research that depends on understanding how life works. Evolution is a crucial component. The speed with which we find cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease are likely to depend on scientists who use evolutionary theory in their work.
In ancient times young people were trained in apprenticeships. A few were lucky enough to sit at the feet of great scholars. For the most part young people learned by imitating skilled seniors. Only a few scholars and scribes were literate. Great events were often recorded in paintings by master artist and carried forth by storytellers and ballad singers.
The invention of the printing press slowly changed society. Books and libraries became storehouses of history, science and mathematics. Eventually textbooks gave rise to schools, as we know them today. Historical events were recorded in print, and it became essential that people become literate. In the 1850s there was an argument as to whether textbooks for learners should include pictures and illustrations. Books allowed the master scholars, scientists and historians to store and distribute their wisdom and knowledge.
Until about five thousand years ago society used a strictly oral-aural system of communications. Once writing became available, mankind could store information and knowledge over time and space. Ideas that were printed could travel over land from one place to the next. Printed materials could be handed down one generation to the next. The users had to be literate in the language used. Literacy became the doorway to self-learning.
Mankind took a major step forward when we learned to transcribe speech and language into a stable code called writing. When the printing press was invented new ideas of schooling were possible. A mediator, that is, teachers, could transfer the writings of scholars to the masses. No longer did the learner need to be in the presence of the master scholar.
Today, technology allows us to go far beyond the printed word. Digitization of information is as significant a change as the printing press. We are at a major shift because we have the ability to bring live living color and enhanced graphics to any learning event. If our students are learning about John Glenn’s first space flight (20 Feb. 1962), they can see the actual footage of his orbits. Moreover they can see and hear him talk about the event and what he thinks it meant to the world. In fact, with social media we have the potential to create a Facebook page where he answers learners’ questions. Technology through social media allows us to practice team learning. Through social media, team members can be in the same classroom or even in different countries around the world.
[Note: This is the last in a three-part series by Judith McDaniel. Read part 1 and part 2. – Editor]
If we define learning as content delivery, much that we now “know” about education follows from that premise. Freire calls it the “banking” method of education where the instructor deposits knowledge in the head of the willing “learner.” When that is what it means to learn, what could be wrong with standardized tests that measure content knowledge? If the transfer of knowledge is what it means to learn, then WHAT is transmitted takes on importance and HOW it is transmitted can be fairly standardized. This basically describes education today.
But if the cyberization of knowledge has produced “an unknowable body of knowledge,” how can anyone maintain that learning is about content, about knowing what has been known in the past? Not that we don’t need to know history and government and science and math, but that we need to know them differently?
I asked Sener, “If learning is NOT about content delivery/transfer/absorption, how should we define it?”
[Note: This is the second in a three-part series by Judith McDaniel. Read part 1 and part 3. – Editor]
I asked Sener, “How can we improve education, using all of the knowledge and resources available to us?” In Seven Futures, he provides data indicating “that at least 70 percent of American jobs now require specialized skills and knowledge, and that students need education that will help prepare them for jobs which haven’t even been invented yet” (29). It seems obvious to me that our entire educational system needs a jump start and that teachers trained in the old methods of teaching the old knowledge don’t have any chance at all of meeting that challenge.
Imagine what teaching today’s students for tomorrow’s needs might entail — “Realigning Education with Redefined Knowledge.” Simply put, old knowledge isn’t enough. What we know is changing, changing quickly, and it’s not just the sciences. Yes, the number and definition of the planets has changed, but so has every branch of knowledge. I talked with a discouraged college student who recently graduated from a prestigious university in journalism. His last course in college had consisted of an advanced journalism class that exclusively included information on working in print media. The professor was a woman in mid career who seemed not to know that these students had a very small chance of working on a newspaper or magazine. They were not even being prepared for the careers that have been invented in information production on the internet. Continue reading →
[Note: This is the first in a three-part series by Judith McDaniel. Read part 2 and part 3. – Editor]
So much about John Sener’s new book, The Seven Futures of American Education: Improving Learning and Teaching in a Screen-Captured World (CreateSpace, 21 March 2012), strikes me as right on and important that my first impulse is akin to wanting to take education by its figurative neck and shake it. He says things I have thought or intuited for years — and he says some things I need to argue with. He says things that educators and parents and well-intentioned politicians need to hear. Capturing the arguments of the book in one short conversation was not possible so I asked him three basic questions:
In a world of surplus information, a surfeit of easily accessed data and analysis, is there anything at all that “everyone” needs to know?
How can we improve education, using all of the knowledge and resources available to us?
If learning is NOT about content delivery/transfer/absorption, how should we define it?
When I was in graduate school (long before the internet), I remember being impressed when I read in one of John Keats’s letters that he was going to spend his summer rereading all of Greek literature. He was going to read it in Greek, of course, but that wasn’t what impressed me. What astonished me was that the amount of Greek literature was so small, only 100+ years before, that anyone could read it all in a summer. My job as a Ph.D. student was to read and read and read and then to select an area or two that I would focus on. In that general area, say Victorian literature, I would again select a smaller area that I would become an “expert” in.
Graduate school hasn’t changed that much since I was there; students in literature are still required to read the classics. There is a sense that “core knowledge” is important and every graduate student in literature needs to have read certain texts which we then have in common. Those texts become the basis for scholarly conversations.
“Friend Your Students? New York City Schools Say No“* focuses on the new social media policy put in place by the New York City Department of Education. The policy, which establishes guidelines for teacher use of social media, allows educators to use it to enhance their students’ educational experiences and to be more accessible to them. However, this policy and others like it raise concerns about the potential for social media to blur boundaries that should not be crossed in teacher-student interactions.
As I was reading this article, I found a link to another All Things Considered post related to a new technology segment that began in May 2012. It is a social media advice column, and the plan is for pros to answer listeners’ questions. This in itself is a 21st century approach to advice columns. Listeners can email their questions or post them to the site’s blog.
The first column addresses the question Should You Friend Your Boss on Facebook?, and two experts on social media offer their opinions. One issue is that social media uses a different meaning for the word “friend” and the types of boundaries that word implies. In a workplace relationship, you may ask yourself, “Are there items that I would normally share with a friend that I really don’t want the boss to see or know about?” One expert suggests putting the boss in the “safe zone” to create specific boundaries for your social network. In that way you still come across as a team player without opening up your personal life in a way that may be uncomfortable for you.
However, one cannot ignore that there are power issues inherent in any boss-employee relationship. Depending on the situation, some of your actions can be misinterpreted or used against you. Linking to a competitor’s website, for instance, may be interpreted as a lack of company loyalty or as possible interest in moving on. If the boss links to a site that lists donations and learns that you haven’t donated, how will s/he interpret it? What happens if the boss finds that you have linked to a site with political views that he opposes? In my opinion, this issue is a minefield, better to be avoided.
Why all the flap over the flip? On the surface, it seems nothing more than an ancient idea resuscitated by a hip metaphor. Ever since the first school bell rang, this has been the model for many disciplines, especially the ones that emphasize performance. Study, practice, and learn at home, alone; perform under the teacher’s watchful eye in the classroom. In other words, students prepare at home and demonstrate what they’ve learned in the classroom. Teachers use their performance to identify shortcomings and devote class time to coaching, guiding, and shaping.
However, as long as the paper medium held sway, the flip remained a good idea that was simply too cumbersome and labor intensive for both teachers and students. Back then as now, the medium is the message. Teachers could do little more than assign readings in outdated and often irrelevant textbooks, and if they made the time to compose and photocopy instructions and information, they soon learned that the effort to prepare handouts is extremely labor intensive. They could leave additional learning resources at the school library, but the number of copies available and the library hours made this alternative impractical for students.
The flip, sad to say, was mere lip until the arrival of smartphones, those bright little appendages that students reconnect as soon as they leave the classroom. Sit outside a classroom building when students, en masse, are emerging or entering. You’ll quickly notice the choreography: those entering are reluctantly shutting down and stowing their cellphones, waiting until the threshold before doing so, and those emerging are reaching into their pockets and bags for their cells, reconnecting with the world and reviving their lifelines.
We’ve passed the point, I think, where the classroom is the hub of learning. The hub is moving ever outward, and this transition has enormous implications for schools and colleges. One is that the classroom is quickly becoming a place for restricting rather than facilitating the information flow that’s vital to learning. And another is the flip. With smart phones and the web, a good idea is now sustainable best practice.
In two Illinois schools, Pekin Community High School and Havana High School, enlightened educators are head over heels for the flip, and at the forefront is Havana School District 126 Superintendent Mark Twomey. Hat’s off to Twomey, a leader for the 21st century who demonstrates that imagination, creativity, guts, and plain old-fashioned common sense can do far more than dollars when it comes to using the latest technology to improve learning. The formula is a simple one: Use the tools that are becoming readily available and accessible to leverage a practice that makes sense.
Midway through 2012, I can’t help but feel that the toughest job in higher education is that of president. With stakes so high and change so rampant, chaotic, and divisive, it must be close to impossible to please everyone. Thus, those who take on the challenge and actually thrive have become masters at tiptoeing around the edges of controversy. Perhaps the most active sinkhole on college campuses is technology, where presidents are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Thus, I take little pleasure in spotlighting Adam F. Falk, president of Williams, for a presentation* at a recent conference, defending the traditional practices that have defined liberal arts colleges against the onslaught of the latest technology. However, I feel that the issues are important and that discussing them openly, even if it’s in the context of an outstanding educational leader, is necessary.
Falk defines the core values of a liberal arts education as a learning environment
that is “personal, intimate, collaborative”
in which students “will know the faculty and their fellow students, and the community will know them”
“that will prepare them best to be purposeful in their lives and effective in the world”
in which “education is still as much about human interaction as about delivering content”
He says “that the great potential of the new technologies is not to upend these core values, but to allow us to fulfill our existing educational mission more effectively, especially by giving us new strategies to transcend our limitations of scale and location.” He cites distance education in particular, which, “if thoughtfully deployed, [extends] our curricula into areas not covered by our relatively small faculties.”
Education is sometimes such a dance. There are so many ingredients that affect what we do and so many groups that influence it. A small child (a friend’s child) in Africa told his mother that he did not need to go to school any more. I laughed. My brother made the same pronouncement years earlier.
Jack Taub used to say that what we consider time out is exactly what we do in school. We sit them in a corner and don’t let them talk. Technology and well trained teaching professionals change that. But everyone is not ready for change. What is sad is that there are so many layers of bureaucracy between teachers and the latest technology and innovative practices. Not quite like slavery, but there are many overlapping levels of management.
The first several years of teaching can drive a person mad. There is never enough time, enough ways to get the job done, and it is a grueling task. Then one day, one day, you get it, and you feel like the teacher you wanted to be.
I loved learning from Project Tomorrow what I had discovered in my early years of technology use. There were two projects that led me to understand the value of technology in learning. One was the National Geographic, which offered a series of science projects for kids. So exciting.
It was science right on, a different kind of citizen science at the elementary level. It was called Kids Network. We had a PI in various areas, and we reported data to the group. We were placed in teams, some national and a couple international.
The project was about water or trash or pets or soil, but what really happened was that the learning became joyous because we were using math and science in a research way, and we plotted graphs and shared our sense of the place that we were in. But we also communicated with groups from various places in the world. Every child wanted to be a part of it. The other thing is that I was moved from the center of the room to the role of facilitator. I was the mailman — that was because we only had one printer. The folders of letters and information were so important to the children. Children who told me that they hated to write were sharing ideas and information with people from all around the US and the world. I had such joy in watching them share their information on a personal level. The learning was not incidental. We used math tools, graphs and pictographs, and we understood them well. We learned to use maps and charts. We were citizen scientists.
Michelle Fabio, in “Has the Internet Increased Plagiarism in Schools?” (Legal Zoom, May 2012), presents a useful distinction between plagiarism and copyright infringement. She also asks if plagiarism is illegal and answers yes, that is, “When the act of plagiarism is also copyright infringement.” The question of whether plagiarizing should be considered illegal is interesting. Most colleges and schools have policies on failure to credit sources, and these provide varying degrees of sanction. However, these regulations don’t have the weight of state and federal laws, and ethics rather than legality is the primary issue. An interesting topic, but perhaps for a later time.
For now, my interest is not in whether the internet increases plagiarism but, rather, how we can use technology to eliminate it. Fabio mentions online services such as The Plagiarism Checker and Turnitin. Teachers and students copy and paste suspected text in the site checker and receive reports on portions that may have been plagiarized. However, a far simpler and cost effective method is to do as Lynn Zimmerman, ETCJ associate editor, suggests: paste a suspected text string, in quotes, in a search engine such as Google. If there are hits in the works of other authors, then the text may have been plagiarized.
Teachers read literally hundreds of student papers a year, and after a few years, they develop a sixth sense for deviations from typical student prose. I’ve been teaching college composition for decades, and for me it’s like stepping into a suddenly cold spot in a shallow stream or a suddenly dark section of a forest. The change is abrupt, startling. It’s often a change in style, from the colloquial of students to the formality of professionals. It’s the use of vocabulary that sticks out like an island in an endless sea. It’s the appearance of complex sentence patterns in a field of simple and compound sentences. It’s the ray of logic in an otherwise cloudy sky. It’s a lack of transition from one thought to another, like missing planks in a dilapidated rope bridge. It’s a gut feeling based on the expected and unexpected. In short, a teacher can sense whether text has been plagiarized.
In the USA every child is entitled to a free and appropriate education regardless of ethnic background, disabling condition, or socioeconomic level. In the last part of the 20th Century, federal legislation ensured that all disabled children had a right to a free and appropriate public education. The contributions of disabled people in America have been tremendous. From Thomas Edison, Franklin Roosevelt, and Stephen Hawking to Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Helen Keller, disabled people have enriched our society. Deaf people, blind people, cerebral palsied people, and mentally challenged people have made our lives better though their accomplishments.
Many of these young people have done well in regular classrooms with average learners. Others have had to have special programs and may from time to time be in separate classes or even individual tutoring. Learning comes through our sensory input, especially our sight and hearing. However the human mind is a marvelous thing that can compensate for distortions in our sensory inputs. Think with me for a moment about how we might reach a deaf blind infant. True, there are cochlear implants that might give the child a form of hearing. There have been experiments with ocular implants, but these have not been practical to date. How then will a deaf blind infant know his or her world? They must know their world primarily through the sense of touch, taste, and smell. Unlike sight and hearing, these three are near senses.
As everyone knows, college has become less demanding, students don’t learn much in college, and students spend much less time studying in college than they used to. At least that’s what most everyone thinks they know — thanks to the unfortunate residue of the study Academically Adrift, whose legacy has endured long after the storm of attention and controversy which accompanied its initial publication in early 2011 has faded.
An article by New York Times columnist David Brooks about this “landmark study” is our latest reminder of what happens when important opinion makers trade in the currency of catchy memes as received truth. As Brooks asserts in his recent NYT article (based on Academically Adrift’s findings, e.g., p.69):
Colleges today are certainly less demanding. In 1961, students spent an average of 24 hours a week studying. Today’s students spend a little more than half that time…
“Certainly”?? It’s understandable that informed laymen such as Brooks equate time spent studying with level of intellectual demand, since professional educational organizations such as ASCD do the same — but that doesn’t make it any less specious.
The real problem is that the destructive memes which Academically Adrift has spawned are based on a seriously outdated perspective about what constitutes a “demanding” college education. For starters, nothing says “welcome to the 20th century” quite like equating rigor or effectiveness with time spent studying. In almost any other endeavor, spending less time to accomplish a task would be called “improved productivity.” Back when students spent an average of 24 hours a week studying, a lot of that “study time” involved sifting through card catalogs, browsing book stacks, writing papers by hand or on typewriters, and doing many other tasks which can be done much more efficiently now via other means. But instead of giving higher education any credit for this, critics both inside and outside higher education persist in treating the act of studying as if it were analogous to punching a time clock. Study time is work; socializing time is play and doesn’t count, which is not surprising since Academically Adrift reflects an almost total lack of regard for the value of student time, and the notion of optimizing student time is nowhere to be found in its memes.
Thanks to the generosity of Bert Kimura of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I was able to sit in on the 2012 Technology, Colleges and Community Worldwide Online Conference (TCC). This was not my first online conference, but it was the first I’ve encountered that incorporated a badging system so intrinsically into its programming.
Badges are by no means new to conference programming, though different environments lend themselves to different applications. For example, the first thing I do at Educause events is find the ribbon table and procure a “runs with scissors” ribbon for my badge. In some ways, I find this ribbon more important than the one labeling me as a presenter, as it gives those I meet an insight into who I am. Active in social media? Yes. Blogger? Yes. Instructional designer? Yes. The one in any given presentation most likely to say something a little crazy? Maybe. At Educause, badges are used as conversation starters, or ways to connect with those you meet to build richer dialogues and perhaps expand your personal learning network.
The Technology, Colleges and Community Worldwide Online Conference is an annual professional development event organized by the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The online conference invites faculty, staff, administrators and students worldwide to share their expertise and engage in discussions about innovative practices in the use of educational technology.
I was invited to attend and review this year’s event on behalf of ETC Journal. TCC 2012 took place from April 17-19. Over 500 participants gathered online for three days of online presentations and discussions. The conference schedule featured 2 keynotes, 50 general presentations, 40 student presentation and 7 peer-reviewed contributions in two parallel tracks.
Though many sessions were outside my time zone, I enjoyed several inspiring talks and was particularly impressed by the conference organization’s innovative technology use. “We are pilot testing ‘badgification’ in this year’s conference,” explained conference organizer Bert Kimura. Continue reading →
(Note: This is the second of two reports on the iFacilitate 2012 online workshop. I participated as a student and opted for the certificate option to make sure that I stayed the course. I created a temporary blog for the coursework, and the excerpts below link to posts in that blog. Click here to see the first report. -js)
The five-week workshop ended last Thursday. It was an exhausting yet exhilarating experience. Greg Walker and his team put together an event that challenged and inspired all of us to address key issues in online teaching and learning with an emphasis on facilitating discussions. As expected, I emerged from the experience with far more questions than answers, and I’ll be addressing some of these in future ETCJ articles. One that remains sticky for me concerns lurking.
The common wisdom is that the ratio for active participants to lurkers is 1 to 10, i.e., only 10 percent of participants actively engage in posting and commenting in online forums. This means that the vast majority, 90 percent, lurk. Is this simply a given, a natural phenomenon that can’t be changed? If yes, then why do we expend so much energy trying to get all our students to become active participants? It seems we’re swimming against a current with no expectation of success.
If, however, lurking is a problem, then what are the implications when educators themselves are lurkers?
There’s much truth in what Prof. Diane Ravitch says in “The Pattern on the Rug” (Ed Week, 3.27.12) and some exaggeration. She tars every single effort at improving our educational system with the same brush. However, education is not so simple.
The budget cuts have been devastating. Some even seem to believe that our education “deserves” this treatment. Right here at the beginning, everyone should recognize that we will not be able to survive as the preeminent nation in the world with a poor education system. Everyone should also understand that universal public education will not become 100% private in any believable scenario. Our K-12 public schools and community colleges are a bulwark of our free nation. Competition in schooling with a profit motive attached would spell disaster for schools. It’s just too difficult to measure success for a business except for gross revenues, profit, and market capitalization.
Ravitch turns the Race to the Top into white hats and black hats. I have some disagreements with this program, especially its definition of the “Top.” However, such programs can be a stimulus for our schools. As for NCLB, our problems lie not with the intentions but with the execution.
She lashes into the multiple foundations that fund education initiatives. Again, although I don’t agree with all of these, we have to try something to evaluate it. The effort by the Gates Foundation to make many small schools out of one big one had an obvious flaw before it even started, but the foundation did realize its error and withdraw its support.
It’s an oft-discussed topic in the media that Chinese, specifically the Mandarin Chinese form that has become the official language of Mainland China, is the “language of the future.” This might sound a bit odd because Chinese is in fact one of the oldest languages in the world, but it’s pretty irrefutable that it’s also one of the fastest-rising languages in terms of global prominence. Learning to speak, read and write Chinese is becoming increasingly popular around the world, but as such an old and unusual language, Chinese presents a lot of problems for learners. Technology, however, is beginning to alleviate this on many fronts.
Chinese is a unique language and can be very difficult for Westerners who are native Romance or Germanic language speakers. Even Japanese speakers, whose native language has a lot in common with Mandarin (including some characters), can struggle mightily with learning it. That’s part of why it helps to approach Mandarin more methodically and tactically than one might a language that’s closer to their native tongue. For instance, while exposure and listening practice are still very important, it’s much more difficult to simply “pick up” Chinese than it would be to pick up Spanish for, say, a native English or French speaker. Much of this has to do with Mandarin’s tonal nature, with different pronunciations of the same syllable taking on (often wildly) different meanings. Without careful instruction and practice in differentiating the five tones, it’s tough to get going in the learning process. This hurdle is especially problematic for adult learners not only because they’ve spent decades in non-tonal or semi-tonal language environments but because they often don’t have the big blocks of time necessary to devote to language learning.
Digital textbooks are all the rage these days as students and school districts clamor to get the iPad, download and fill it with $15 textbooks, and rid themselves of the heavy traditional versions once and for all. But digital textbooks are not the present – or even the future – of education. Here’s why:
1. School districts still save money by using textbooks.
Yes, digital textbooks are far cheaper than the physical variety. But various other costs – chief among them the price of an iPad and the need to periodically repurchase digital versions – drive the digital price far higher. One study found that an average school would spend $215 per student per year when following a digital textbook strategy. This compares with a far lower cost of $90 per student when only traditional textbooks are used. Although some schools with sufficient resources will surely still jump at the chance to make backpacks lighter and lessons more interactive, the significant costs associated with a digital program will prevent most districts from following this course.
(Note: This is the first of two reports on the iFacilitate 2012 online workshop. I participated as a student and opted for the certificate option to make sure that I stayed the course. I created a temporary blog for the coursework, and the excerpts below link to posts in that blog. Click here to see the second report. -js)
In early February, when I found an invitation from Greg Walker, Leeward Community College (University of Hawaii System) Distance Education Coordinator, in my emailbox, I decided to go for it. Some of my ETCJ colleagues have written about their MOOCing experiences, and I wanted to see, firsthand, what it was like. In the following weeks, I’ll be sharing some observations and comments that I’m posting in my workshop blog.
The invitation was for a five-week online faculty workshop, iFacilitate:
Aloha mai e. Are you an adventurous “life long learner” who is interested in experiencing the future of online learning? iFacilitate is …. FREE and open. It does not consist of a body of content you are supposed to remember. Rather, the learning in the course results from the activities you undertake, and will be different for each person. In addition, this course is …. distributed across the web….Your active participation in this workshop will help you to acquire the skills needed to function in this type of course. iFacilitate is a 5 week open workshop [beginning 2.27.12] that introduces a variety of facilitation skills to help participants engage learners across a range of conversational spaces, including online discussion forums, web conferencing rooms, and wikis and blogs. This workshop explores building online learning communities and communities of practice …. Online learning communities develop through interaction among participants. Participation is open to everyone …. Your level of participation is up to you. [One of the options is a letter of completion.]
My First ‘Week 1 Online Learning Communities’ Post
Feb. 27 – I haven’t done the readings yet, but here are some preliminary thoughts and concerns. I’ve found that both a challenge and an advantage is the openness of online learning communities. In other words, as a teacher, I can’t and shouldn’t want to control the networks that students naturally create with classmates — individually and in small groups — as well as with me and course spaces I’ve created. In the students’ personal [click here to read the rest of the post]
Social Justice and Digital Equity SIG has, with Mike Searson, created a project in Digital Citizenship that is funded by Facebook. We will hold our first meeting tomorrow to iron out details. We are at the SITE.org Conference in Austin, Texas.
Digital Citizenship is a concept which helps teachers, technology leaders and parents understand what students/children/technology users should know to use technology appropriately. Digital Citizenship is more than just a teaching tool; it is a way to prepare students/technology users for a society full of technology. Too often we are seeing students as well as adults misusing and abusing technology but aren’t not sure what we can do. The issue is more than what the users do not know but what is considered appropriate technology usage.
You have probably heard about the parent who shot his child’s computer. There was an interview with the student and parent on NBC to explore the incident.
In part one of this series we covered many of the fundamental tasks of Twitter, and in part two we addresed basic techniques and workflow management. As you gain more experience with Twitter and grow more confortable using it as a platform for sharing and conversation, you may find you need better organization techniques and more advanced tools. Dashboard applications present linear, chronological streams. If you prefer a more reader-friendly format in terms of information browsing, you should consider other options.
Reader-Friendly Formats
Paper.li, Zite, Twylah, Summify, and The Tweeted Times are all applications with easy to read interfaces featuring the most popular items of the day, as shared by members of your social network. These tools aggregate links in one place, display images, and categorize the information for easy scanning.
Establishing an account includes opening a link to your Twitter feed (or other social media account, as applicable) and configuring the customization options in terms of categories, keywords, screen layout, color, etc. The result is a custom user interface crafted to your specifications. You’ll find headlines, article snippets or previews, links, and navigation menus that cycle through periodic updates (e.g., every 24 hours).
Our technology has led the way to thinking of new and efficient ways to distribute videos and computer learning experiences. The entertainment fields with programs such as NetFlix have set the stage for a new format for marketing learning resources. The streaming of video or transmedia distribution can make thousands of lessons available to learners when needed. For an inexpensive monthly service fee, we can make vast libraries of lessons universally available in the home, the library, the classroom and the workplace.
While we are in an economic slow down, we are at the same time faced with the most productively efficient period of American industry. With a high rate of unemployment we are faced with increased individual productivity based upon technical applications of digital technologies. The retooling of the auto industry is an example of this increased efficiency. We are manufacturing better and more efficient automobiles with fewer people and more computer driven machines than ever before.This is true not only in the auto industry but in many manufacturing industries. As new and more complicated machines come on line, we need fewer but smarter workers.
[Note: Dr. Withrow was the Director of Educational Programs for the NASA Classroom of the Future from 1996 to 1998. He served in the U.S. Department of Education from 1966 to 1992 as the Senior Learning Technologist. In the USDE, he was the program manager for the development of Sesame Street and also supported some work on Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. Click here for a brief bio. -Editor]
From the late 1960s until the Reagan Administration, the U.S. Department of Education invested $150 million in children’s television series. Half of this investment was for general television, such as Sesame Street, and half for ESSA television. ESSA TV was devoted to emphasizing Hispanic, Afro-American Asian American, Franco American and Indian American heritages. These efforts funded fifty-four series from Sesame Street to The Voyages of the Mimi. They were not limited to PBS carriage but most were aired on PBS. No commercials were possible when they were broadcast. Sesame Street has become a worldwide early childhood success and is coproduced in many countries and in many languages.
Frank and his wife, the late Margaret Schram Withrow
There was a concerted campaign against ESSA TV by talk radio hosts claiming that Social Security was in danger because of these minority-based programs. Sixty Minutes ran a segment on “Hollywood on the Potomac,” which featured World War II training films but was used to kill USDE television programs. Since most of the productions were multi-year contracts rather than grants, we were able to finish the work that had been started, but Congress at the urging of the Reagan Administration killed the programs. The third season of The Voyage of the Mimi, which was to be a trip down the Mississippi, was canceled, but we were allowed to finish the second season.
There are some people that have extraordinary visions of greatness. President Lyndon Banes Johnson’s vision of a Public Broadcasting Service was one of those great accomplishments. Senators Barry Goldwater and Jacob Javits’s unrelenting support of Joan Ganz Cooney’s dream of television to teach young children has changed early childhood education around the world. Senator Ted Kennedy’s vision of distance learning through technology has opened the door to 21st century learning and teaching though Star Schools.
By 2020, most learning and teaching will be a blended experience of online and classroom courses tailored to the needs of each learner. Learning for the average student will take place at the home, the classroom and the workplace. Young and older workers may spend as much as one fourth of their time refining and improving their work skills on their jobs.
Access to high quality learning experiences will continue to expand to mobile devices. Management of learning will continue to increase as we are able to track learning progress by the student and to reinforce those areas where the learner shows weaknesses. There will be a cornucopia of online resources that can address the learner’s needs.
The University of Edinburgh MSc in E-learning program’s “Manifesto for Teaching Online” is a bold move to break the chains that bind completely online to traditional and blended instructional models. The basic assumption is that onground and online are fundamentally different and that whereas approaches to one are well established, approaches to the other aren’t precisely because little or no effort is being made to fully understand the differences. The list of 20 tenets provides a useful starting point for a discussion, and the developers are to be commended for opening this discussion to the world.
The first tenet, “Distance is a positive principle, not a deficit,” decries the current practice of viewing online as simply a crippled or inferior extension of traditional or blended instruction, a second best alternative when the first is unavailable. This statement provides the raison d’etre for the manifesto, the radical view that “distance,” the factor that distnguishes one from the other, has the potential to not only provide a different learning environment but a superior one. In other words, the twin concepts of anytime and anywhere are the foundations for a whole new approach to teaching and learning.
The second tenet, “The best online courses are born digital,” is an amplification of the first, a declaration that methods brewed for onground classrooms fail to take advantage of the VLE (virtual learning environment) and are, thus, ill-suited for online teaching. Online pedagogy, at its best, must make full use of the features available in the anytime-anywhere classroom. The fourth tenet, “‘Best practice’ is a totalising term blind to context,'” is an extension of the second. The message here is that best onground may not be best online.
In “Manifesto for Teaching Online,” I find a subtext that’s disturbing. The statements suggest an active and strong group of people opposing online distance learning in a variety of ways. In other words, such a manifesto would not be necessary in a logical world.
Imagine the introduction of the book. Was such a manifesto necessary to get people to use books in learning? Did people suggest that books stifled creativity by putting the ideas on pages? Did they say that books created a “literacy divide” by denying learning to those who could not read? Did they complain that books result in a decline in people’s ability to remember because they could just look in the book? Of course, I wasn’t there at the time, and anti-book people would be unlikely to put these thoughts into books for us to read today. Some historian may be able to answer this question. It doesn’t matter.
Learning through online communication makes perfect sense. Books actually allowed people to learn things without being physically present at the side of the author. In a sense, they were the first distance learning. I learned electrical wiring through books and much more without having to sit in a class or become an apprentice. That learning was “distance learning,” although not as wonderfully dynamic as today’s online distance learning. Continue reading →
The Manifesto for Teaching Online (2.24.12), written by teachers and researchers in the MSc in E-learning program at the University of Edinburgh from June 2010 to May 2011, is arguably the most exciting document for discussion to emerge thus far in 2012. It was distributed in the following format, but other formats are also available.
Click the image for the PDF version.
The manifesto is described as “a series of brief statements that attempt to capture what is generative and productive about online teaching, course design, writing, assessment and community. It is, and may remain, a living document that is reviewed and reworked periodically with colleagues, students and amongst the programme team …. Its primary purpose is to spark discussion, and to articulate a position about e-learning that informs the work of the project team, and the MSc in E-learning programme more broadly.”
The creators, however, are opening the discussion to a wider audience: “Our intention is that over the next few months the manifesto will stimulate discussion on a wider stage, fuel further research, and draw attention to the work being done here at Edinburgh in developing new perspectives on e-learning.”
Updated 6/15/15
Years ago, when I first began reading about a smartboard in every classroom and a laptop for every student, I was overjoyed. When the smartboards grew increasingly sophisticated and laptops morphed into netbooks then tablets, I was ecstatic. Yes, teachers and students were finally beginning to use some of the latest internet technology to breach the classroom walls and tap into the growing universe of online information, resources, and services.
The transformation was nothing short of miraculous. The electronic screens in classrooms became instant windows to a seemingly infinite wealth of not only information and knowledge but of experts and other human resources. Stepping through the electronic windows, teachers and students broke free from their tiny classrooms and soared into the new world of learning that transcended time and space barriers. Without moving an inch from their desks, they could, with a click, be anywhere and communicate with anyone in the world.
But as the trickle of technology into classrooms grew into a torrent and every day brought a flood of new announcements of schools and entire districts investing in smartboards, laptops, and iPads, I no longer found myself cheering. Now that we’re past the initial hurdle of simply getting the technology into the classroom, I’m beginning to pay attention to other factors, and some of what I’m seeing worries me.
For example, I’m becoming increasigly concerned about the hands in the cookie jar. I expect to see the hands of students and teachers — the intended recipients, the targets of the funding for new technology. However, I don’t expect to see other hands, especially when they’re grabbing a sizable portion of the cookies.
English has become one of the world’s most widely-spoken languages as well as the most popular second language and lingua franca of academics in no small part due to the heavy concentration of top universities and the large quantities of educational materials produced in English-speaking countries. Another reason for its popularity is the huge amount of entertainment content and other media produced in the Anglosphere. For instance, nearly every English-language training school here in Shanghai has a TV in the lobby showing DVDs of “Friends” (老友记, Lǎoyǒujì) or other American television shows to help students practice their English.
One of the great victories of the Information Age is the ability of learners the world over to access content in almost any language, giving them unprecedented variety in terms of learning style, pace, and method. English-language TV has been around for decades, of course, but the spread of high-speed internet and satellite connections has made accessing content, be it entertainment or educational, much easier. DVDs and streaming web video, for instance, have brought English-language educational content to places that had none just a decade ago. In addition, technology like smart phones and tablets has made mobile learning much simpler and more effective – convenience and flexibility can make it seem as though there’s more time in the day, so to speak, for practice in speaking and listening as well as exposure to a language, and with English in particular it’s easier than ever.
Of course they should, but what tone should it convey? Actually, I’m really asking about students’ digital identity, but the title of this post merely reflects the “branding” I employed to attract students to my upcoming presentation about personal branding and digital identity. It is that presentation which prompts this post.
This is a touchy subject because parents and schools are so “conflicted” about it! On top of that, students’ immaturity calls for lots of caution! The “facts of life” are that most students do indeed have a digital identity so digital literacy compels that we teach them to be prudent about what they post with respect to content they create or share, permissions, and much more!
Nevertheless, the personal branding principles that apply to their parents and teachers apply equally to students with the exception that we can “cut them some slack” (or can we?) for not starting to “build their brand” yet (my daughter is among them L), but they certainly ought to be made aware of the implications for their future competitiveness, don’t you think?
After all, almost all of them are already online and, in many cases, they have already lost their opportunity to make a positive first impression. So, what should I say (or not say) to the students?
This post is full of questions and I hope to follow it up with subsequent posts with some answers…or at least to let you know what happens next. The future is full of problemsandopportunities!
For a conference to run smoothly and professionally, a large amount of work happens “behind the curtains” without the conference attendees being necessarily aware of it. The Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE) was founded in 1981 and has been organizing international conferences since the 1990s. However, bringing a conference online requires new approaches from the program committee. Theo Bastiaens, program chair of the 2011 and 2012 Global TIME conference, talks about lessons learned, the quality of online talks, and the online experience from an attendee’s point of view.
Theo Bastiaens, program chair of the 2012 AACE Global TIME conference.
SP: What makes or breaks a successful online conference?
TB: As the online conference Global TIME was organized for the second time we certainly fine-tuned the format, schedule, and technical platform. Since an online conference is somewhat different from a face-to-face conference we had to make sure that people had a virtual space to contact each other. For that reason, AACE developed “Academic Experts.” In my opinion, a great new platform to organize these online conferences. A very important aspect of this platform is that it integrates participants’ social profile with discussion features and the paper presentations. Little things that we learned from the online conference last year, like the automatic adaption of the program to the time zone of the participant, are very important for a smooth organization. Continue reading →
The second edition of the AACE Global TIME online conference took place from February 7 to 9, 2012. The annual event aims to connect and engage educators, researchers, consultants, trainers, policy makers, curriculum developers, entrepreneurs, and others. Sectors covered include adult learning, higher education, informal learning, K-12, libraries, and museums as well as vocational education and corporate training. It was my pleasure to cover the second edition of Global TIME for the Educational Technology and Change Journal on behalf of AACE.
Global TIME 2012 hosted attendees from 28 countries, 34 presentations, 44 additional “asynchronous” papers, 3 excellent keynotes, and 4 workshop sessions. Even though the program was less packed than the usual week-long AACE conferences, the following overview is still necessarily a rather idiosyncratic collection of my manifold personal impressions and encounters.
Day 1 – Getting Started: Cultural Change in Workplace Learning
“We are having a PowerPoint war.” With these words from Sarah Benson, member of the AACE organization team, the conference started on February 7 at 4 p.m. GMT. Benson’s comment referred to some initial technological hiccups with loading the keynoter’s slides – fortunately, one of the very few problems with the Adobe Connect virtual conference space.
Program chair Theo Bastiaens, director of the Institute of Educational Science and Media Research at the German “Fernuniversität Hagen” and professor at the Open University of the Netherlands, officially opened the conference with a short welcoming address, greeting everyone from a freezing Europe. Approximately 20 participants from all over the world joined in – and immediately started to compare notes on their local time, weather, and physical location. Penelope Neuendorf said “Hello” from Canberra (Australia) at 3 in the morning, Luigi Riscaldino from the University of Calgary (Canada) sipped his coffee at 9 am, Manar Hosny logged in from Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), and Mark Curcher said “Hi” from Dubai (Arab Emirates).
OK, I am spoiled. Henry Jenkins, Bill Clinton, Vice President Gore, Danah Boyd, George Lucas, Ron Brown (he is deceased), Seymour Papert — and lots of other luminaries. In person and in your face. Wendy Pye face to face and online. More about that later.
Face-to-face, people intrigue me. I know Chris Dede and was mentored by him. I worked with Seymour Papert and was taught by him, and I have had tussles with people who are very well known about technology in schools, broadening engagement and digital equity. In courses, there are people who have watched my work and who know my personality, even when I shrink back from too much of everything in technology. Gently they beckon. I meekly follow. I think I only have the courage to continue to learn based on the friendship and encouragement of my educational friends. Vint Cerf has remained a friend and email keeps us in touch.
I sat around tables that contained important CEOs and learned to negotiate, I learned to listen well, I learned to push MY ideas.
If I had only met these people online, the relationship would be different and unreal, but the Facebook, and online communications cement our friendships and continue the dialogue. I loved talking with Henry Jenkins about New Orleans and our first impressions as children when we went.
According to Kyle Webb, at yesterday’s Lane Community College (Oregon) Board of Education meeting, the dean of academic technology, Brad Hinson, “presented the state of online education and its potential future.”* Webb quotes Hinson: “Faculty [need] to understand ‘the demand is there. It’s modern education. It is what the students demand.'”
Hinson’s observations are enlightened, but they didn’t push me to the keyboard to write a comment. The shove came from concerns by two of the board members. Gary LeClair, according to Webb, “said there seems to be more ‘social isolation due to more computers.’ LeClair said he already notices students glued to cell phones and computers as it is, and that he is concerned that students with college-issued iPads might increase this social isolation, thus impeding their educations.” Webb also quotes Jim Salt, LCC’s Education Association president, who, along with LeClair, “voiced concerns about the potential loss of student-instructor connection.”
These two concerns, about the causal relationship between personal communication devices, on the one hand, and social isolation and deterioration of student-instructor relationships, on the other, are the issue. They’re reminders that, in most disagreements, the root is not in what we actually observe but with our interpretations. We’ve all witnessed the first scenario where students share the same geographical location, e.g., a cafeteria table, but are oblivious to one another because each is engrossed in her/his smartphone or tablet PC.
[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. This article by David Nagel was brought to my attention by ETCJ science education editor Harry Keller. Please send your catch of the day to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]
David Nagel, in “Feds Look to Accelerate E-Textbook Adoption with ‘Digital Textbook Playbook'” (THE Journal, 2.1.12), describes the “Playbook” as “a guide designed to help schools overcome the challenges associated with the shift to e-textbooks. The ‘Playbook’ is the product of the Digital Textbook Collaborative, a group put together by ED and the FCC and composed primarily of technology companies and textbook publishers, along with two education organizations, one school district, and one university.”
Nagel quotes FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski: “‘When we talk about transitioning to digital textbooks, we’re not just talking about giving students e-readers so they no longer have to carry around backpacks filled with 50 pounds of often out-of-date textbooks. We’re talking about students having interactive learning devices that can offer lessons personalized to their learning style and level, and enable real-time feedback to parents, teachers, or tutors. Imagine a student who has trouble doing his geometry homework; the digital textbook automatically inserts a supplemental lesson. Imagine a teacher who has instant access to the results of a pop quiz; she can immediately see that four of her students didn’t understand the concept of photosynthesis and is able to offer an extra lesson.'”
You are invited to be part of the second annual Innovator Spotlight virtual event!
Every year the League honors outstanding innovations through the presentation of its Innovation of the Year Award. These innovations represent significant achievements at member colleges and the continuing renewal of the spirit of innovation and experimentation upon which the League was founded. Award-winning innovations will be presented in collaboration with Teaching Colleges and Community (T.C.C.) and Learning Times by some of the brightest minds in the community college world. Join us Wednesday, February 15th, 2012, for this exciting one-day online event for as little as $75! Register today! Continue reading →
People have been learning languages since…well, since people have been, pretty much. For as long as we can remember, however, most people have approached SLA (second-language acquisition) with what we sometimes call a “classroom mentality,” meaning language learning must involve long hours in a classroom with static (sometimes outdated) textbooks.
This is the way language learning has been for a long time primarily because there really weren’t many alternatives: it was prohibitively expensive (and time-consuming) for most people to travel to a foreign country to learn in a native-speaking environment, and there weren’t many good or affordable ways to access educational or entertainment content in other languages. Those days, however, have come to a spectacular and speedy end since technology has totally changed the game.
In the Information Age, there’s really nothing you can’t do if you put your mind (and your web browswer) to it. First and foremost, learning a new language is about exposure and access. Hearing a language spoken proficiently, processing it, and then using it yourself is a fantastic way to advance your skills, and technology has made that easier than ever before. For example, programs like Skype have made live video chatting, not long ago an elaborate and expensive pipe dream, as convenient as a few clicks of the mouse.
Nearly a year ago, in “On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan” (NY Times, 2.7.11), Nicholas Bakalar quoted Randy Moore, professor of biology at the University of Minnesota: “With 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teaching creationism, this is the biggest failure in science education. There’s no other field where teachers reject the foundations of their science like they do in biology.”
A week ago, Sam Favate, in “A ‘Critique’ of Evolution Proposed in Oklahoma” (Wall Street Journal, 1.23.12), reported that Oklahoma has just introduced the sixth anti-evolution bill this year.
It’s not surprising that some people still deny evolution, but the size of the effort does not bode well for our future in science. Evolution is not only established scientific fact, but is the central unifying concept for all of biology. It allows scientists to understand life better and to decide where to look to find new drugs, cures for diseases, and prevent new infections from becoming pandemics.
Not only do 15 to 20 percent of biology teachers teach creationism, but 60% take no stand on evolution versus creationism. Generations of students are being handicapped in their desire to understand and succeed in life.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, long after he had formulated his theory. He was attacked immediately and, at the same time, lauded by a minority who understood science. At that time, as today, too many people misunderstood the role of science, what it’s really about.
[Note: Snagged spotlights some of the latest and most stimulating articles on educational technology. This article by Anthony Cody was emailed to me by ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton on Jan. 27. To share your catch of the day, email it to me, jamess@hawaii.edu, for possible snagging. -Editor]
Anthony Cody, in “How the War on Teachers Is Changing the Profession” (Valerie Strauss, The Answer Sheet, Washington Post, 1.27.12), calls it like it is. The national reaction against teachers (and their unions) is gaining momentum, and the blame for failure is being dumped on their shoulders. In Cody’s article, we find the following statements:
“The teaching profession is being redefined. Teachers will now pay the price: They will be declared successes or failures, depending on the rise or fall of their students’ test scores.”
“Under NCLB, it was schools that were declared failures. In states being granted waivers from the most onerous requirements of NCLB, it is teachers who will be subjected to this ignominy.”
“The individual teacher’s accountability for student performance is absolute.”
To hold teachers 100% responsible when they can account for only “10 percent of the variability in student test scores” is insane, especially in light of the fact that other factors such as “family income and education levels” account for 90% of the variability.
Why is this happening? Or more importantly, why are we, educators, allowing this to happen? -js
A game is not “educational” just because it involves a few puzzles or steers away from violence. An educational game has to have certain characteristics beyond the obvious one of helping students learn. It can be argued that, in some way, all games help people learn. Even a violent fighting game can help with hand-eye coordination (Roach). Does this mean that all games are educational? Of course not, but it does help us develop characteristics that will make a game educational.
The best educational games in my opinion are those that are based on textbooks. The material and research is already developed. Should a grade two math game involve long division? Check a grade two textbook and see what is covered! The game does not have to be word for word of what is in the textbook (this would involve partnering with the publisher and going through many legal procedures), but it should be relevant to what the children are learning at that grade level.
So now that we know what material is going to be covered in the game, we still need to know what makes the game educational. Obviously content is a big part of it, but the look, feel and gameplay is also important. First, the game should offer some sort of social interaction. This does not mean that the game needs to be multiplayer, but it should somehow involve players talking to and interacting with each other. For example, together, they could be creating avatars, going through levels, or experiencing compelling stories. The students should care about what they are doing. Continue reading →
I’m wondering if some of those definitions of “distance/online courses” are just legalese. Here in Florida, we have definitions like these two below:
Each community college may assess a student who enrolls in a course listed in the Florida Higher Education Distance Learning Catalog established pursuant to s. 1004.09 a per-credit-hour distance learning course user fee. For purposes of assessing this fee, a distance learning course is defined to mean a course where a least eighty percent of the direct instruction of the course is delivered using some form of technology when the student and instructor are separated by time, space, or both. (From CS/SB 844 – Postsecondary Distance Learning [SPSC])
Then there is this:
Distance Learning Delivery Indicator denotes that the student and the instructor are separated in time and/or place during 50% or more of the instruction. (From Florida DOE)
The definition above is used for “Automated Student Information System — Automated Student Data Elements” (Florida DOE) and includes codes like these:
A Web-based or Internet-based courses.
B Video conferencing.
C Other distance learning delivery.
X Those combinations of Technology which do not meet the 50% requirement.
Z Not a Distance Learning class.
I’m pretty sure there are even more definitions floating around in the state laws. Not sure any of it is rational or has anything to do with pedagogy! It seems like it is just a way to do accounting! <grin>
Politically motivated program, “Race to the Top” (RTT), hits state politics head on. What did Arne Duncan expect? By putting political goals into an education program, the Department of Education has ensured problems would arise.
The Hawaii state teachers have rejected the RTT contract that required performance-dependent teacher evaluation and compensation for the simple reason that no teacher evaluation system shows an accuracy that would guarantee rewarding better teachers.
We can have national curriculum guidelines without harming education. RTT put some of Secretary Duncan’s personal preferences ahead of good education practice. Eliminating tenure would have much more benefit than these uncertain teacher evaluation programs. However, dropping tenure opens up the potential for schools firing the most experienced teachers to save money in times of stress. Instead, we might have a system where the teacher firing process has standards that increased over time so that teachers who have proven themselves for fifteen years would be more difficult to fire than those with only a five-year record.
It’s unclear exactly how best to fix things in the existing system, and I’d like to see comments from others. Moving forward, I would like to see higher pay for teachers tied to better qualifications and a way to eliminate tenure as it now stands. Getting a lifetime job after just three years makes no sense to me. Universities require seven years. Our K-12 schools are more important to our country.
Hailed by U.S. News & World Report as the “industry standard definition of what constitutes an online course” (Brooks 1.9.12), The Sloan Consortium’s nearly decade old “at least 80 percent” rubric was the basis for selecting education programs for its 2012 rankings. Here’s the rule, which has remained unchanged since the inaugural Allen and Seaman report in 2003:
Online courses are those in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online. Face-to-face instruction includes courses in which zero to 29 percent of the content is delivered online; this category includes both traditional and web facilitated courses. The remaining alternative, blended (sometimes called hybrid) instruction has between 30 and 80 percent of the course content delivered online. (2011 report)
I’m not sure if the results of the U.S. News rankings would have been any different if it had not been based on this rule. Regardless, though, it may be time to re-examine the 80-percent rule, which, from its inception, seemed arbitrary, irrelevant, and practically impossible to apply.
For example, how would anyone possibly determine, with any kind of accuracy, that a course was 79.4% online and 20.6% F2F (face to face)? Six-tenths of a percent shy of 80% and the course is blended rather than online? This distinction is ultimately irrelevant and serves no practical purpose. And when you come right down to it, who cares? Or more importantly, why should anyone care?
The simple fact is that colleges need a workable “online course” definition for program planning, development, and evaluation. Those responsible for these types of operational decisions are practical. They have to be. Otherwise, they can’t function. Thus, to be useful, the rule has to be simple, clear, and applicable. As seems to be the case for the ones that work, the best standards can be found in the programs themselves. And the one that appears to fit most naturally is the fully online versus partially online division.
As any resource that talks about it will tell you, plagiarism is a serious infringement whether intentional or not. As the saying goes, ignorance of the law is no excuse. However, despite the numerous books, articles, brochures, blogs, and websites dedicated to educating and warning about plagiarism and how to avoid it, it still happens and happens frequently. The Plagiarism Prevention Blog, for instance, highlights a case of an individual being stripped of his PhD in education at the University of Virginia when plagiarism was discovered in his dissertation. Unfortunately this is not the only case.
As an instructor I make it clear to my students that plagiarism is a violation of academic integrity and encourage them to use sites such as Indiana University’s How to Recognize Plagiarism tutorial and Purdue OWL’s Research and Citation Resources. If they are still not sure, they should ask me.
We also have at my university, Purdue University Calumet, a couple of proprietary resources that can check for plagiarism. I am reluctant to use these because they store the student’s work for future comparisons and I am not comfortable with that. However, I do often use the simple expedient of searching for the suspicious word or phrase in Google. By capturing the phrase in quotes, I can learn if this exact wording is used in any of the millions of documents linked through Google. Sometimes, a phrase may fall under “common knowledge.” However, that is usually a fairly easy call to make. There are two red flags that identify a phrase or sentence as suspicious. One is when it is referring to something that is not really common knowledge, such as specialized knowledge about a topic. The other is when the tone or voice of the paragraph changes. For instance, a student’s style in a paragraph is rather informal and, suddenly, a very formal phrase or sentence, very different in character from the surrounding text, appears.
If you’re a gamer like me, you fire up your Xbox 360 and await that glorious in-game moment when the flashing icon on your screen notifies you of an unlocked achievement, earning you a fancy graphical badge and additional points on your geek cred card. Even for non-gamers, small tokens of recognition can make the mundane feel special: that final punch on your coffee frequency card, the “good point” from a fellow book club member, the envelope notifying you that you, too, may already be a millionaire. Well, maybe not that last one. Students in today’s increasingly wired, competitive and rubricated classrooms frequently seek the same spark of achievement and, from what I’ve seen, ClassDojo can provide it.
According to Kalen Gallagher, “Grand Hustle” at ClassDojo, this award-winning application puts real-time classroom management in the hands of instructors. In-class behavior, learning habits and skills can be immediately assessed via Internet or smartphone.
Here’s How It Works
Instructors sign up for an account and are taken through an intuitive walkthrough tutorial showcasing the different functionalities available on the site including setting up a class.
While primarily aimed at K-12 classrooms, flexibility is provided for university and other settings.
NSF has the potential to lead a new wave of STEM initiatives through its CyberLearning: Transforming Education program and its cross-cutting initiatives in cyberinfrastructure. To continue to lead in an increasingly crowded space of contributors from other agencies, corporations, and interest groups, however, the community NSF funding fosters will need to realize the “transformative potential” called for. Realizing this transformative potential requires vision, strategy, engagement, talent, and commitment to moving forward.
The Cyberlearning Research Summit is a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. In the style of the TED conferences, speakers will:
Discuss big ideas on at the intersection of emerging technology and research on learning;
Articulate the “transformative potential” of a direction or approach;
Communicate a sense of the broad research on this topic;
Engage, inspire, and stimulate thinking in this new program area.
This is the year 2020, and Bobby is a freshman at UC San Diego worming at the New York Einstein, a three-star hybrid. His holemate, Chiu Wai, is a sophomore at Beijing University. Bobby is from Hawaii, and Chiu Wai is from Singapore. They’re up early this morning to complete their online classwork. Their plan is to spend the rest of the day hanging out at Union Square with friends from other worms.
Today, “going away to college” means selecting a college and a worm, a shortened version of worldwide dorm. All worms serve students from anywhere on the planet. Three-star worms offer shared holes, or rooms. Hybrid worms serve students from different colleges around the world; pure worms are reserved for students from specific colleges. The vast majority of worms are hybrid. Students are accustomed to and prefer international social networking, both online and onground.
In the context of worms, wormhole also refers to the spacetime curvature that theoretically shortens the distance between two points. Similarly, via the internet, students are able to instantly interact with classmates and professors from anywhere in the world.
Worms developed naturally as a result of two seemingly opposed forces colliding during the first decade of the 21st century. One was the value students, parents, and educators placed on “going away to college,” a rite of passage that boiled down to living in a dorm and experiencing a rich and full social life away from parents. The other was the virtual learning environment, or VLE, which theoretically negated the need for college campuses. College students grew up in and were comfortable in the VLE. They expected to take most if not all of their classes online, and this held true even when they lived in dorms.
As the VLE grew exponentially in response to a generation that actually lived in it outside of school, colleges began to not only upgrade but rethink the idea of dorms (see Cliff Peale’s “These Aren’t Your Parents’ Dorms: Residence Halls Provide More Amenities,” Cincinnati.com, 8.15.11). They realized that campus life was shifting from classrooms to dorms, where students were beginning to spend more of their formal learning time. In fact, most of the students who lived in dorms were taking classes online, and this trend was growing, fueled by an influx of younger professors who were equally at home in the VLE. In many large universities, students were registering in courses on different campuses throughout the system, and because the courses were online, students could do it all from the comfort of their dorms.
By Harry Keller
