Technology | Educational Technology and Change Journal

‘Emerging Technologies in Distance Education’ ed. by George Veletsianos

Posted on July 24, 2010 by Claude Almansi

By Claude Almansi
Editor, Accessibility Issues

Emerging Technologies in Distance Education, edited by George Veletsianos, has just been published by Athabasca University Press, a Canadian publisher of Open Access, peer-reviewed, scholarly publications. The book, under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada Creative Commons License, can be bought in print or downloaded (at no cost) as PDF from aupress.ca/index.php/books/120177.

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Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Alec Couros, Aleco Christakis, Andrew Whitworth, Angela Benson, Athabasca, Athabasca University, Athabasca University Press, Belinda Tynan, Beth Perry, BJ Eib, Bob Heller, Brendan Calandra, Canada, Catherine McLoughlin, Charles Xiaoxue Wang, Creative Commons, Deborah Vale, Edna Tal-Elhasid, Elizabeth Wellburn, emerging technologies, Gayle Underwood, George Veletsianos, Hagit Meishar-Tal, Margaret Edwards, Mark J. W. Lee, Mary R. McEwen, Michael Dowdy, Mike Procter, open acces, P. Clint Rogers, Rita Kop, Robyn Smyth, Romina Laouri, SaraJoy Pond. Richard Caladine, Technologies, Technology, Terry Anderson, The Learning Technologies Collaborative, Trey Martindale, Trish Andrews, Yiannis Laouris, Yoav Yair, Youngjoo Yi | 3 Comments »

Deconstructing STEM

Posted on January 14, 2010 by JimS

In K-12 education these days, you’ll see frequent use of the acronym, STEM. This word stands for “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” This term is so widespread that no one even seems to question its use. Yet, the inclusion of these four subjects and the exclusion of any other is actually rather arbitrary and tends to mislead the general public about the nature of these subjects and how to teach them. Possibly, it’s the push from industry for more employees trained in these areas that has resulted in this emphasis.

Many people, even in education, do not have a full understanding of the essential differences between these four subjects. Science teachers may present them to students as being essentially the same. Funding agencies are proposing lots of money for STEM education. What are they proposing to fund? Even if you know all about STEM, please take a moment to read the analysis below and comment on anything that’s incorrect or incomplete.

To begin with, why exclude other subjects? For example, physical education uses science, technology, engineering, and mathematics extensively. If the use of one subject by another is reason enough for inclusion in a grouping, then physical education certainly should be added to form something like STEPEM. You can make a case for inclusion of some other subjects as well. Roping off four subjects from everything else makes no real sense for education.

However, it’s the lumping together of these four that makes the least sense. Why not HELASSAWL, grouping history, English language arts, social science, arts, and world languages? Yeah, it’s a mouthful compared to STEM, but logically, it makes as much sense. To understand why, take a look at each of the four STEM subjects.

Mathematics began centuries ago as a means to an end. It was used to regulate trade (arithmetic) and to deal with land (geometry). Then, Euclid came along and made logical, step-by-step proofs the bedrock of geometry. Mathematics hasn’t been the same since. Instead of being just a means to an end, mathematics now stands by itself in pure abstraction with its proof-based system of functioning.

Something that hasn’t been proved in mathematics is merely a conjecture. Mathematicians don’t have to relate their work to anything going on in science, technology, or engineering. They start with axioms and build a tower of theorems, corollaries, and lemmas. Doing mathematics requires a special way of thinking and extensive training.

In total contrast to mathematics, science is all about disproof. Science doesn’t stand apart from the real world in abstractions. Science involves inquiry, exploration, and discovery within the context of reality. It’s a voyage into the world of ideas that develop into explanations of the universe. Scientific theories mean nothing unless they can be compared with real data.

Scientists know that they can never prove their theories. That’s one reason that they’re called theories. New data tomorrow could overturn or at least modify today’s favorite theory. Examples abound. The geocentric view of the universe was overturned (probably more than once) by the heliocentric theory, which itself was modified when all stars were found to be rotating around a galactic center.

Mathematics plays an important role in every branch of science. The eponymous Lord Kelvin, immortalized as a temperature scale, said, “When you measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it.” Mathematics then allows processing of those numbers. Whether physicists are doing quantum mechanics or biologists are making statistical analyses of experimental results, mathematics permeates science. Nevertheless, mathematics is not science. Doing science requires a special, nonintuitive way of thinking and extensive training.

Engineering is all about making things. Engineers use the knowledge they have of how things work to create new physical entities. Much of this knowledge comes from other engineers who have tried numerous approaches and found which work best, and the data used are empirical. Other knowledge comes from the discoveries of scientists.

Engineers design, build, and test. They create skyscrapers and highways, toasters and microwave ovens, automobiles and racing bicycles. Scientists discover; engineers create. These two acts, discovery and creation, seem to be wired into our brains so that we consider them to be very pleasurable. There’s little other connection between these two disciplines, except that they seem to require each other. The discoveries of science help to fuel new engineering, and the new stuff that engineers create often provides devices that scientists use in their research such as telescopes, microscopes, spectrophotometers, and so on. Engineers require extensive training.

Technology is the stuff that mankind creates. It comes originally from engineers and inventors.

Technology is the stuff that mankind creates. It comes originally from engineers and inventors. Building a fire and crafting a spear were early examples of using technology. Today, it’s hard to take a step without involving technology, for example, the technology represented by your shoes. Because technologies are closely tied with scientific discoveries and with engineering designs and creations, people may readily confuse these.

A course on technology, by itself, will be a rare occurrence in elementary and secondary schools. Instead, you find technology woven into K-12 science courses along with engineering (e.g., robotics). Technology makes our lives easier, delivers better health, and allows us to explore places previously inaccessible. It also complicates our lives, pollutes our environment in numerous ways, and requires us to extract our planet’s resources to feed it.

Scientists discovered the ideas that made today’s flat panel televisions possible. Engineers turned these ideas along with engineering principles into televisions. The technology consists of the televisions, all of their pieces and parts, and the means to capture and send the images and sound to the individual televisions. In all of these activities, the scientists and engineers use lots of mathematics, but mathematicians play no role in creating televisions. A technologically literate person will know much about the technologies involved in delivering the television experience to living rooms but may not be familiar with the engineering principles involved in the design. This same person may not understand the nature of science either.

Interestingly, the California Institute of Technology provides bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, many branches of science, and several disciplines of engineering. However, there’s no degree in technology.

This conflation of four terms into STEM, an artificial thing that we’re supposed to be excited about teaching to K-12 students, makes little sense. Science and mathematics departments like it because it elevates them somewhat in the din of the discussion of how to improve education. Here’s what’s actually happening on the ground in many school districts. The districts receive some federal money for improving education. The various departments put in their proposals for a piece of this funding. ELA (English language arts) and mathematics ask for more, in total, than is available and receive all of the money. The science and history departments, not to mention music, arts, physical education, and others, get nothing.

The push for improved reading and mathematics scores trumps everything else and shortchanges the places where real learning takes place. But that’s material for another column.

[Note: The paragraphs on technology were revised by the author after initial publication. 1.15.10]

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: and mathematics, California Institute of Technology, disproof, ELA, engineering, English language arts, Euclid, geocentric view, heliocentric theory, Lord Kelvin, Science, STEM, technologists, Technology | 6 Comments »

India Steps Forward in Science Education

Posted on April 21, 2009 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The well-known challenges in science education today include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview with Bert Kimura: TCC 2009 April 14-16

Posted on April 8, 2009 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See his Kimubert photo gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on April 2, 2009 by JimS

By Steve Eskow
Editor, Hybrid vs. Virtual Issues

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

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

The campus has always been the scene of blended learning.

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

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

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

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

Distance learning is the negation of place-bound learning.

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

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

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

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

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

A Model for Integrating New Technology into Teaching

Posted on January 10, 2009 by JimS

By Anita Pincas
Guest Author

I have been an internet watcher ever since I first got involved with online communications in the late 1980s, when it was called computer conferencing. And through having to constantly update my Online Education & Training course since 1992, I’ve had the opportunity to see how educational approaches to the use of the internet, and after it, the world wide web, have evolved. Although history doesn’t give us the full answers to anything, it suggests frameworks for looking at events, so I ‘d like to propose a couple of models for understanding the latest developments in technology and how they relate to learning and teaching.

First, there seem to be three broad areas in which to observe the new technology. This is a highly compressed sketch of some key points:

1. Computing as Such

Here we have an on-going series of improvements which have made it ever easier for the user to do things without technical knowledge. There is a long line of changes from the early days before the mouse, when we had to remember commands (Control + X for delete, Control + B for bold, etc.), to the clicks we can use now, and the automation of many functions such as bullet points, paragraphing, and so on. The most recent and most powerful of these developments is, of course, cloud computing, which roughly means computer users being able to do what they need on the internet without understanding what lies behind it (in the clouds). Publishing in a blog, indeed on the web in general, is one of the most talked about examples of this at the moment. The other is the ability to handle video materials. Both are having an enormous impact on the world in general in terms of information flow, as well as, more slowly, on educational issues. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and “smart” applications are on the way too.

2. Access to and Management of Knowledge

This has been vastly enlarged through simple increase in quantity, which itself has been made possible by the computing advances that allow users to generate content, relatively easy searches, and open access publishing that cuts the costs. Library systems are steadily renewing themselves, and information that was previously unobtainable in practice has become commonplace on the web (e.g. commercial and governmental matters, the tacit knowledge of every day life, etc.). As the semantic web comes into being, we can see further advances in our ability to connect items and areas of knowledge.

3. Communications and Social Networking

We can now use the internet – whether on a desktop or laptop or small mobile – to communicate 1 to 1, or 1 to many, or many to many by voice, text and multimedia. And this can be either synchronous or asynchronous across the globe. The result has been an explosion of opportunities to network individually, socially and commercially. Even in education, we can already see that the VLE is giving way to the PLE (personal learning environment) where learners network with others and construct and share their own knowledge spaces.

For teachers there is pressure not to be seen as out of date, but with too little time or help, they need a simple, structured way of approaching the new technological opportunities on their own. The bridge between the three areas of development should be a practical model of teaching and learning. I use one which the teachers who participate in my courses regularly respond to and validate. It sees learning and teaching in terms of three processes:

acquiring knowledge or skills or attitudes,
activating these, and
obtaining feedback on the acquisition and activation.

I start off by viewing any learning/teaching event as a basic chronological sequence of 3Ps:

But this basic template is open to infinite variation. This occurs by horizontal and vertical changes. The horizontal variations are: the order in which the three elements occur; the repetition of any one of them in any order; the embedding of any sequence within any other sequence. The vertical changes are in how each of the three elements is realised. So the model can generate many different styles of teaching and ways of learning, e.g., problem based, discovery based, and so on.

Finally, this is where the bridge to technology comes in. If a teacher starts from the perceived needs in the teaching and learning of the subject, and then systematically uses the 3Ps to ask:

What technology might help me make the content available to the learners? [P1]
What technology might help me activate their understanding/use of the new content? [P2]
What technology might help me evaluate and give the learners feedback on their understanding or use? [P3]

then we have needs driving the use of the technology, and not the other way around.

Here is a simple example of one way of organising problem based learning:

(Click on the table to zoom in.)

I have developed the model with its many variations in some detail for my courses. Things get quite complex when you try to cover lots of different teaching and learning needs under the three slots. And linking what the learners do, or want to do, or fail to do, etc., with what the teacher does is particularly important. Nevertheless, I find that my three areas of new development plus the 3P scaffolding make things rational rather than being a let’s-just-try-this approach. Perhaps equally important, it serves as a template to observe reports of teaching methods and therefore a very useful tool for evaluation. I have never yet found a teaching/learning event that could not be understood and analysed quickly this way.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 3Ps, Anita, Artificial intelligence, asynchronous, blog, Communications, developments, Integrating, latest, Library systems, Management of Knowledge, methods, Model, models, New Technology, Online Education & Training, personal learning environment, Pincas, PLE, robotics, scaffolding, smart applications, social networking, synchronous, Teaching, Technology, template, Video, VLE | 1 Comment »

Poetic Faith—the Magic of Belief

Posted on January 9, 2009 by JimS

By John Adsit
Staff Writer

Bill Turque’s January 5 Washington Post article on Michele Rhee’s reform efforts contains this interesting comment in reference to staff development efforts:

Within the first five years on the job, most enroll in The Skillful Teacher, a program of six day-long sessions devised by Jon Saphier of the Massachusetts-based Research for Better Teaching program.
Saphier said the program fosters teachers’ belief in their power to lift student achievement despite conditions outside school.
An independent study in 2004 showed that before taking the course, Montgomery teachers rated students’ home life and motivation as the factors that most influenced learning. After the course, home life dropped to 11th on the list, and teacher enthusiasm and perseverance were described as most important.

A skeptical reader’s response would almost certainly be “So what? What difference would that change in attitude make?” In my experience, it is the most important difference-maker of all, for it is the basis of all other positive change.

In my own teaching, nothing transformed what I did more than adopting that attitude. Once I believed that all students could succeed if I made the right instructional decisions, I became diligent in seeking those approaches, but before that I just accepted student failure as a problem beyond my control.

When I was still a relatively young teacher, I was assigned sections of sophomores with a history of failure in writing. I saw that they universally wrote in fragments and run-ons, so I dedicated the next few weeks to intense, traditional, grammar-based instruction on sentence structure. When I saw scant improvement despite my most diligent efforts, I determined that they were incapable of doing better and moved on. There was no reason for me to change because their failure was their fault.

Not many years later I was a department chairperson trying to improve a school’s horrid writing achievement. I created an innovative (and controversial) approach, and, as a part of it, I assigned myself a class of sophomores with a history of writing failure. Once again, I had an entire class writing in fragments and run-ons, but this time I was armed with a new belief, a belief that they had the ability to succeed if I did the right thing. I therefore abandoned that intense, traditional, grammar-based approach that had failed in the past and did something totally different.

I taught almost all mechanics through editing. In my mastery learning system, students could not get credit for a piece of writing until the conventions met standard. A draft might be met with a response like, “Great ideas and support! This makes a lot of sense! Now, just fix those fragments and you’ll be done with it, and you’ll get a great grade!” Within a few weeks, 100% of the students were writing in complete sentences.

Not long after that, I was part of a research team examining the results of a writing assessment given at the elementary, middle, and high school levels in a low SES area in a large school district. The overall results (a little over 50% proficient) had been reported for each grade level, and we surveyed the teachers to try to get more information. What none of the teachers knew was that none of them had anywhere near 50% proficiency in student performance. Teachers had either nearly all of their students proficient or nearly none of their students proficient. Even though our survey was anonymous, it was therefore easy to tell from their responses to certain questions which camp they were in.

We asked them for their overall beliefs about student achievement, using the kind of wording you see in the Turque article. All the teachers with high success rates believed that their actions were the primary forces determining student success. Every single teacher with high failure rates believed student success was entirely determined by student ability and other factors beyond the teacher’s control.

Just after Turque’s article was published, my hometown newspaper published an article about a similar survey done by the state department of a school with a history of failure to meet No Child Left Behind achievement goals. The school has a large Hispanic population, and the audit revealed that teachers believe that their population is not capable of achieving at a high level on state tests. The report noted that “Some parents and students feel that some of the teachers do not believe that all students can achieve at high levels. . . . It was observed and reported that there are some populations of students held to higher standards than others.”

Once you have accepted a reason for failure that is beyond your control, you are freed from any obligation to try to succeed.

In his Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the famous phrase “willing suspension of disbelief,” which he called “poetic faith.” In modern terms, this is the human trait that allows us to weep as a movie actor pretends to die. It causes us to jump in fright at the flickering image of a monster on a TV screen.

Poetic faith is a trait that serves a teacher well. The effective teacher looks at every student and thinks, “I believe that if I make the right instructional decisions and follow the right approach for you as an individual, you will succeed, despite all that stands in the way of that success. If I look long enough, I will find the path to your success.” The effective teacher searches education literature for strategies that will lead to that success.

In Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, Clayton Christensen predicts that technology and online education will transform education because it will enable the teacher to identify student learning needs and take the appropriate steps to meet those needs. That cannot happen, though, until teachers fully believe there is a reason to make that effort.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: achievement, Adsit, attitude, Bill Turque, Biographia Literaria, Clayton Christensen, Coleridge, Disrupting Class, fragments, Hispanic, How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, John, Jon Saphier, Magic of Belief, Michele Rhee, Montgomery, No Child Left Behind, online education, Poetic Faith, Research for Better Teaching, run-ons, Samuel, Taylor, teachers, Technology, The Skillful Teacher, Washington Post, willing suspension of disbelief | 2 Comments »

If We Don’t, Someone Else Will

Posted on January 9, 2009 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

The United States is falling behind. For many, that’s not a surprising statement, but others will find it hard to believe.

We see statistics summarizing our declining science education, our lack of world-class Internet infrastructure, and many more. What we haven’t seen much of are examples of us falling behind in innovation. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s been predicted for quite a long time now by some more pessimistic prognosticators but not demonstrated.

My field is science, and my current work centers on technology to support science education. It’s no surprise that my example comes from that area. For years, I’ve watched as company after company (and even individuals) make science simulations and attempt to sell them as science “labs.” Of course, they’re not truly labs, but that’s beside the point.

These companies all have produced essentially the same product. It’s a Flash-based animation system wherein students make some choices of parameters and see the result. These animations are two-dimensional and have little support added online for learning and essentially none for tracking. I don’t have to list them here because a quick Internet search for “virtual lab” will give you lots of examples.

So, from where does the first visually appealing, three-dimensional simulation system sold in the United States come from? Turkey! You may have thought of Turkey as some backwater country with lots of small, dusty villages. Not so. It’s a vibrant, secular society that’s put a premium on education in general and science education in particular. Furthermore, they’ve committed to using online education to reach their goal of an educated society. Sebit Technologies has been created by Turkey’s telecommunications leader, Türk Telekom. With all of the money at their disposal, they have made some real waves in online education.

You can bet that Turkey will not be the last place we see new competition for United States education dollars. Unless our country gets moving with true innovation, we’ll watch as more and more foreign-created innovations take over our schools (and other business markets).

As I’ve suggested before, teaching itself could eventually be handled offshore. Your children or grandchildren may be learning from teachers in India or China. That might sound quite cosmopolitan but will have a huge impact on one of our most stable professions — teaching.

We shouldn’t give up without a fight. It’s time for our government to foster real education innovation. I don’t mean with tax breaks or allowing free market forces to work. We must have serious investment by government in technology infrastructure for education. We may even have to put tariffs on these sort of imports for a while in order to get our companies back into the game. The alternative is just to sit back and let the rest of the world take over education in the United States.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: animation, China, dollars, Education, falling behind, Flash-based, free market, Harry, If We Don't, imports, India, infrastructure, innovation, Internet, Keller, leader, science simulations, Sebit, simulation, Someone Else Will, system, tax breaks, Türk Telekom, Teaching, Technologies, Technology, telecommunications, three-dimensional, Turkey, United States, world-class | Leave a comment »

Michelle Rhee Has a Broom: Should She Use It to Sweep Out Experienced Teachers?

Posted on January 5, 2009 by JimS

By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Editor, Policy Issues

If you want to start a heated discussion in the District of Columbia, just mention the name “Michelle Rhee.” We who live here don’t have a real political vote or a real senator, and now we have one more injustice to suffer. Ms. Rhee is the chancellor of education in DC with unlimited powers granted to her by Mayor Fenty. And one of those powers is to fire and hire.

Ms. Rhee doesn’t want citizens, parents, or teachers involved in her decisions about DC public schools. My concern is that many of us, DC educators, who have given our lives — our time, our money, and our dedication — to help bring up the race without special funding or fanfare, may be out of the picture. With Ms. Rhee in charge, we’re viewed as too old and unfit.

Seeing the ads in the help wanted pages, I initially intended to work with Ms. Rhee’s program. I had worked with Teach for America informally in Arlington schools. I used to stay three hours after school to allow my students to use technology, and the Teach for America volunteers learned my software and used my resources to teach. I still had to put in time because it was important for me to know what the students learned or did not learn. But I changed my mind about applying after hearing Ms. Rhee’s comments about “seasoned” teachers. She felt that older teachers were not up to the job.

I am the teacher who was the technology director for the 21st Century Project when it was new. I am not a newbie. I know teaching, and I know curriculum. But given Ms. Rhee’s attitude toward “old” teachers, I simply decided not to apply.

As many of my “seasoned” colleagues and I disengage from the DC public school system, we take with us valuable knowledge and years of experience as well as an understanding and love for students that can’t be measured by test scores and dollars.

I am not a stranger to urban schools. I thought that my expertise and experience would be a good match. But I decided to keep doing outreach on my own. Ms. Rhee does not want interference in her plan. She knows it all.

For three years I worked in Anthony Bowen Elementary School in Southwest Washington, DC, before NCLB (No Child Left Behind) was even a policy. It was difficult work, but I loved it. I left when we were reduced to teaching on benches in the gym while renovations were taking place during the school year.

I had a foundation and funding to work with the school. But it was like flushing money down the toilet to see what happened and not fun to monitor. We never had enough for regular school supplies, field trips, books, art materials, and other things we take for granted in other schools. Still, I made a difference in the lives of some of the children. The school was and is a ghetto school, and it was located across from a high rise in which kids fell to their death in the elevator shafts at least once a month.That facility has, thankfully, been shut down. It was about as ghetto as you could get. The little girls sometimes traded sex for sandwiches from the men working the food trucks. Drugs were a problem in the neighborhood. The school was ancient, and on the first day of heat the smell of ancient urine would choke in your throat and make tears come to your eyes. Then you would get used to it. Well, you can get used to it. As the children must.

I worked in Ballou High School, the one with the marching band that went to the Rose Bowl parade. Nearly 80 per cent of the students are so poor they qualify for a government-paid-for lunch. The school had many people trying to help. But not much has improved. Crime and student behavior were always a problem. A rape took place on my first day of work. Getting to the school was also difficult unless one drove. Cabs would not take you there.

Teachers who teach in urban schools suffer a very different set of circumstances. Children come to us with a variety of problems. I won’t detail them all, but often the biggest is the lack of involvement of the parents and community, as well as poorly chosen resources for students. Some of the children live in environments where being out after dark is dangerous. Still, some children try to do after school programs.

When I taught in DC schools, children would follow me home and sleep in front of my door if I didn’t know they were there, and once I found a child sleeping under my car. When they came to my home, I would feed them and walk them back home. I did not keep students overnight in my home. I was asked to move from an apartment because the children followed me there to sleep in the lobby or in the halls. It was a safe haven for them when they could not get into their own homes. I was called the pied piper of Southwest, but I could not care for all of the children.

I doubt if anyone monitored those kinds of problems, the drug problems, the kids who were being mistreated in foster care. We met them all in the classroom, but we were judged in the same way as those schools where the problems are less severe.

Every set of schools has its own unique problems. Read the DC news for a while and you will see what I mean. Once a child brought me a still breathing aborted child. Life is not easy in very poor urban schools. You have to think about much more than the basics. In fact, you learn the skills of a social worker if you can.

Substituting is a good way to get a picture of the reality of the schools. I recommend it for a reality check.

In DC schools, the nurse only came once a week. So my friends who were medical doctors did duty for me by treating the students with permission from the parents.

The non-textbook equipment that I shared in school was mine, paid for out of my own pocket. I couldn’t leave my resources in the schools because they would disappear. I know that they made a difference. I worked in Arlington schools and DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependents Schools) in 22 countries. There was a tremendous difference in terms of equipment. In surburban schools and DoDDS there were supplies and budgets for special resources. In DC, most of the funding went elsewhere. There was no budget for field trips. We only had $40 worth of supplies so I spent a lot of my own money at the teacher’s store, the book store, and the museum for material to enhance the learning environment.

I fed the children with government cheese, crackers, and peanut butter or foods that were available, but until breakfast was started in the schools, bubblegum was the smell of the classroom in the early hours of the day. It was strong enough to make one nauseous. The lunch was nothing special, but it was food. Some children’s parents were missing often from their homes. Here in the DC area we have had students killed and put in freezers, stabbed by their parents, and otherwise mistreated. The social network is hard to improve with those in need. People care, but there are so many problems.

Often I went to service establishments to find coats, shoes, socks, and hats for children without proper clothing. You have probably heard of the glove tree, or the coat collection, or the backpack that children now are given so that they will have food over the weekend. I even know how to find old eyeglasses when there is no other way. The Optimist group. Welfare does not take care of everything especially when parents are not involved or knowledgeable. A teenage group helped me teach students to go to the mall and to the museums, but we quickly found that they were not welcome unless we were there.

We had rats in the school that ventured out in the daytime. No fear. If the rats ate the graham crackers that were provided for students, the teacher had to pay for them. It was not unusual to find a tunnel through those crackers. The vermin were everywhere.

When I taught in DC schools, the library sent us a box of books for a month. They did not want the kids in the library. So I made them let the kids sign out the books by taking them there and complaining loudly.

Then there is the matter of science. There wasn’t anything to teach with. Science was in a book, but a set of books had to be shared with four classes. Therefore most teachers did not teach science. We lived within walking distance of the national museums, yet most children had never been there. I was able to change that, but I found that the children were not welcome in the programs because of the logistics involved. They had to be picked up after a three or four hour session at the museum. Most parents did not drive and transportation was a problem even just to the mall.

My students could make money in drugs, prostitution, and with a five finger discount as well as the underground economy if you know what I mean. It really isn’t fun to teach where everything is a problem, but you do it for lots of reasons but certainly NOT the money.

Have you ever heard anyone say that teaching is lucrative? I have never. I also doubt that people enter teaching to bore the heck out of children. I doubt that people in DC, having been through so many changes, know what the pulse of education is. NCLB has created some problems in that teachers felt bound to teach to the test, but truthfully, DC schools have always been a problem for many reasons. Congress funds DC schools if it feels like it. Some special initiatives are poised for DC schools whether or not the schools really want them. The school board meetings can be a challenge. Ms. Rhee remarked that she did not have to put up with that “crap” (her word).

The technology in DC schools is wanting. Just take a look at the schools’ website. Sadly, I was working to create change in technology. It proved impossible at that time. Some groups make changes in a school, but the district is lacking in technology resources. Even Ms. Rhee will admit that. When ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) has its conference in DC this summer, Virginia teachers will man the technology.

Later in my life, when I worked for President Clinton and Vice President Gore, we tried to change schools in DC, too. We deliberately picked those that needed the most help. I worked with the vice president on the CyberED Initiative that had us traveling the country in empowerment and enterprise zones. We worked in Baltimore, New Jersey, New York, Boston, Atlanta, Houston, Clinton, Tennesee, Oakland, and other sites. Our job was to demonstrate, share, and let teachers, parents, and the community try out the new technologies. It was a wonderful job. It was a sharing of possibilities. We worked with community members, teachers, administrators, and parents.

Schools are communities made up of students, parents, and educators, not just a woman posing as a witch with a broom. Ms. Rhee should take that broom and sweep out the problem of thinking that the community is her enemy and that she alone can bring about change. She should use the resources available in the community, and that includes the layer of accomplished and experienced teachers.

[Editor’s note: For related articles, see Two Ambivalent Views of Michelle Rhee’s Efforts
and Michelle Rhee – What’s Really at Stake? Here’s a tip from Jim Morrison: For an update on Michelle Rhee, see Bill Turque’s 5 Jan. 2009 article, “Rhee Plans Shake-Up of Teaching Staff, Training,” at washingtonpost.com.]

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 21st Century Project, Anthony Bowen Elementary School, Arlington, Ballou High School, Bonnie, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, Bracey, coat collection, community, CyberED Initiative, D.C., District of Columbia, DoDDS, empowerment, enterprise, Fenty, ghetto school, glove tree, Has a Broom, International Society for Technology in Education, ISTE, Mayor, Michelle Rhee, Ms. Rhee, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, pied piper, President Clinton, Rose Bowl parade, Schools, Should She Use It to Sweep Out Experienced Teachers, Southwest, Sutton, Teach for America, Technology, The Optimist group, urban, Vice President Gore, Washington, zones | 3 Comments »

Innovation in Education: What? How?

Posted on December 18, 2008 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

What is innovation in education? How can you make it happen?

Within my focus of science education, I see little in the way of really innovative ideas being implemented in classrooms. Part of the reason has been discussed by John Adsit (“Needed – A Professional Approach to Teaching“). More on that later.

I’ll begin with where education innovations originate.

“That which has come to be, that is what will come to be; and that which has been done, that is what will be done; and so there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

And so it is with ideas. There are really no new ideas, just remixing and repackaging of old ideas. As I researched the ideas underlying the use of student science laboratory experiences in teaching science, I found a single theme repeated again and again: inquire, explore, and discover.

In many of these cases, the author did not acknowledge those who had gone before, suggesting a rediscovery rather than building on previous knowledge. What a waste! You’ll detect echoes of Adsit’s article here. If educators would just study what has gone before, they could save time and improve education.

Therein lies at least one fertile area for innovation. Seek out previous ideas that worked well in the classroom but failed to spread for some reason. Understand that reason. Find a way to overcome the problem and repackage the good idea so that it will work this time.

As for inquiry learning in science, Prof. Edwin H. Hall of Harvard University was using it in 1891. He wrote a book, A Text-Book of Physics: Largely Experimental, that included his philosophy in its introduction. Reading that introduction was a real eye opener for me. Those old guys were really quite smart. I should note that Prof. Hall was famous for discovering the Hall effect.

Hall had great success initially with his idea, but it foundered. Why? The reasons are not hard to find. Hall himself states that the laboratory class sizes must be no greater than twelve students. Try to imagine that in today’s typical public schools. New York City limits class size to 34 students, nearly triple the Hall limit.

Another reason can be found in the writings of Frederic W. Westaway, a very well-known writer on science philosophy and education from the 1890s through the 1920s. He also supported the inquiry approach to learning science and wrote eloquently about the qualifications of a science instructor in the inquiry mode. Such a person must be conversant with all science subjects, not just the one being taught. The instructor must also be well-acquainted with the history of science and understand the philosophy of science.

No amount of teacher recruiting, professional development, increase in teacher salaries (a good thing for other reasons), curriculum reform, or other traditional methods of improving instruction will fix these problems – at least not in a reasonable amount of time and with a reasonable amount of money. So, for over 100 years, this concept has languished. Periodically, it’s been resurrected and promoted by this person or that. Teacher workshops result in enthusiastic responses. Yet, it dies again and again. The pressures of required curriculum, tight budgets, limited and diminishing instruction time, remedial work with unprepared students, and so on prevent using this technique. Also, the teachers are not prepared for the demands of this teaching style. They haven’t the background that Westaway suggests they must have.

The rapidly and exponentially increasing computational and communication capabilities provided by today’s technology provide the best means to get out of this situation. Software can build in process and support so that teachers don’t have to be experts. Software can track student progress and success and suggest where extra effort should be expended. Administration can see whether teachers are using the tools well. I’ve implemented these ideas for online/offline science labs and found that they work very well. The best part, in some ways, is being able to make adjustments in the software rapidly. The software evolves much more rapidly than traditional textbooks or curricula. It just keeps getting better.

I can recommend this approach to innovation to anyone:

Research your particular area of interest.
Find educational approaches that have worked very well but failed to spread out into the general population.
Find out why.
Think about how technology can overcome the obstacles.

If you find a way, you could be the author of the next great education innovation.

Lest you jump too quickly into innovating, allow me to add a small caution. You’ll have to get the educators who will use your innovation on board. Here’s where Adsit’s comments really come into play. Working for a school is completely unlike working for a company. The company will tell you what tools to use. You’ll be reviewed once or twice a year. Your salary and continued employment depend on the outcome of the review. Even if your job has little that can be measured objectively, you’ll still be measured.

If you invent a truly astounding education innovation that can transform students everywhere into great learners, you’ll face very high hurdles. You won’t be able simply to sell a school district on your invention. They have to get the buy-in of the teachers, who may say nice things about your idea and then go back to the classroom and continue on as though you didn’t exist. The teachers cannot be forced to use new ideas. Unless you’re relieving some real pain that these teachers feel, you won’t succeed without Herculean efforts. And failing students are not pain.

Adsit comments that a school leader was sticking to the “tried and true” methods. He was right to put that phrase in quotes. The real tried and true methods are those that have been tried and found to be true in that they work well. The methods the leader was implementing were “tried and false” instead. It’s insanity to expect doing more of the same in a failing situation will change the result.

For all of us who would like to see education progress to greater success, we have to identify the problems. That’s easy. We have to determine how to fix the problems. That’s proven to be very hard indeed. Someone once told me that education is the institution that is the third most resistant to change. “What are the first two?” I asked. Monasteries and nunneries was the answer.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: 1891, A Professional Approach to Teaching, A Text-Book of Physics, class size, curriculum reform, Ecclesiastes, Education, Edwin H. Hall, Frederic W. Westaway, Harry Keller, Harvard University, How?, innovation, John Adsit, laboratory, Largely Experimental, Needed, New York City, Online, software, Technology, textbooks, tried and false, tried and true, What? | 4 Comments »

Ineffective Use of Computers in Schools

Posted on December 10, 2008 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

On Tuesday, December 9, 2008, the New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote, “Obama wants to put more computers in classrooms, an old idea with dubious educational merit”[1].

It’s true that people have been putting computers in classrooms for many years. It’s also true that the impact of these computers has often been less than wished. However, neither of those facts tell us that we should stop. Rather, they tell us to review how and why computers are being used in those classrooms.

In my own visits to schools across the country, I have seen those computers being both underutilized and over-utilized. In some schools, the computers sit idle while traditional instruction continues. Occasionally, students are allowed to use the computers, and they get to use the standard business tools available such as spreadsheets and word processors. Sure, it’s nice that the students are learning to use those tools, but are they helping students learn their subject? I think not.

In other schools, I’ve seen computer rooms fully booked so that some teachers are unable to use them at all for their students. Upon inquiry, I discovered that math and English classes have priority because of high-stakes testing. The computers have various programs on them that drill the students on concepts required on those tests. In my opinion, these schools are wasting a valuable resource.

Computers slowly and quite certainly have revolutionized many businesses. Lawyers, among the last to succumb, now cannot live without their word processors with the ability to rewrite accurately, insert boilerplate, and check spelling and grammar. Software has been created to support the advances in productivity that we’ve seen in many industries. So, what’s the matter with education?

The larger class sizes we see in schools are not the result of improved worker productivity; they’re caused by budget shortfalls. Clearly, computers have not improved teacher productivity. Students aren’t learning better. Just look at any number of international measures of student success in mathematics and science. We (the United States) are losing.

At least in traditional classrooms, neither the quantity nor quality of product has improved in this age of technology. Charter schools are making some headway mostly because their employees work multiple job descriptions and long hours. Generally, online education works because students self-select based on study skills, and teachers have tools to allow them to have slightly larger numbers of students. Those tools come with “learning management systems” (LMS) that online schools use to handle administration of classes.

To be fair, the United States has over 50 different sets of standards for education and administers those standards from a very large number of individual school districts. That fact makes creating software usable across the entire country quite difficult. Turkey has committed its education system to online learning and doesn’t have the same problems. The software I’ve seen from Turkey is first-rate and shames our own home-grown efforts.

If we don’t get moving on real innovation in education right now, we may find our children learning from online schools headquartered in Turkey, Israel, and Singapore quite soon. Teachers, like factory workers, will see their jobs disappear overseas.

Instead of waiting, as the automobile industry did, until it’s too late, begin today by merging the various state standards, requiring teachers to use good computer-based learning tools, and having our federal government support innovation that uses technology to make a real difference and that’s not just drill repackaged or textbooks converted to online format with animations and sound or other similar old methods with new facades.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: automobile industry, budget, Charter, classrooms, columnist, computer-based, Computers, David Brooks, districts, drill, educational, English, factory workers, federal government, Harry, Ineffective, International, Israel, Keller, lawyers, learn, learning management systems, LMS, math, New York Times, Obama, Online, over-utilized, overseas, programs, Schools, self-select, Singapore, spreadsheets, standards, students, Technology, tests, Turkey, underutilized, United States, Use, word processors | 2 Comments »

Defining One’s Diversity Philosophy: A Crucial Skill in a Changing World

Posted on December 8, 2008 by JimS

By Randall E. Osborne
Staff Writer

In a world that is becoming increasingly “smaller” due to technology and ease of travel, it seems imperative to help individuals to expand their diversity views BEFORE they venture out into that world. In other words, it seems important to make an effort to expand people’s abilities to accept difference before they venture out into a world that is so obviously different from any one individual’s background. In an effort to do this, the author incorporates a diversity philosophy into his internet course on the Politics and Psychology of Hatred. Through assignments on middle class mentality, analysis of hate sites on the web, reading books about the Holocaust, personal explorations of privilege and other assignments, students are required to explore their own personal philosophies and views about the importance of difference.

The following is excerpted from a “Philosophy of Diversity” survey created by Cornell Thomas and John Butler (2000). Students are given an opportunity to answer questions about their diversity philosophy and then score them to determine whether they had more responses in assimilation, tolerance, multiculturalism, or inclusiveness. These categories were defined by Thomas and Butler in the following manner:

Tolerance = acceptance and open-mindedness of different practices, attitudes, and cultures; does not necessarily mean agreement with the differences. Implies an acknowledgement, or an acceptance or respect. Not necessarily an appreciation and usually consists of only surface level information.

Essentialism/Assimilation = the practice of categorizing a group based on artificial social constructions that impart an “essence” of that group, which homogenizes the group and effaces individuality and differences. The word implies that we are forming conclusions, relationships, and other cultural ties based only on the essential elements, as determined by “us.” It also implies that there is some minimal level of understanding that applies to groups.

Multiculturalism = the practice of acknowledging and respecting the various cultures, religions, races, ethnicities, attitudes and opinions within an environment. The word does not imply that there is any intentionality occurring and primarily works from a group, versus individual, orientation.

Inclusiveness = the practice of emphasizing our uniqueness in promoting the reality that each voice, when, valued, respected and expected to, will provide positive contribution to the community.

This was a learning experience for many students. For example, the “lesbian-identified bisexual” wrote that she was surprised to find that several of her responses had only been tolerant. She said she had expected that, because she was different, she should have all multicultural or inclusive responses. Another concern she brought up revolved around the possibility of using inclusive language but having the goal of making all people think or act the same way. This sparked an interesting debate about both inclusiveness and assimilation.

Before another assignment was due, students had a chance to “talk” via email and to “interact” through two discussion forums, one centered around the relationship between fear and hate, the second related to our moral or ethical obligations when dealing with hate. These fora allowed students to share their views and develop a sense of trust with each other. Next came the “hate site” assignment. It required the student to go to sites on the web that promoted hate and to analyze them by describing each site, defending its right to be there, and then explaining why it should not be there. By the time we were faced with the “hate site” assignment, many of us had already started to develop a sense of understanding regarding our own assumptions and biases. What resulted was that many of the students this semester did not “pat themselves on the back” over their own acceptance of difference after the evaluation of these sites; instead, many of them discussed their own reactions to the sites, sharing how it angered them or frightened them because some of the sites were written so well that they could almost be convincing.

It seems to me that such an exploration would be healthy for everyone. As people are exposed to more people in the world (through travel and through technological access to that world), stark differences in viewpoints and ideologies are going to become even more apparent. If we are to avoid having these differences only strengthen existing prejudices or even prompt hate-based behavior, it seems necessary to promote progression along the diversity philosophy continuum outlined by Thomas and Butler. This must be done at home, through schools and through the media.

Reference

Thomas, Cornell, and John Butler. 2000. Diversity philosophy. Paper presented at the Race, Gender and Class conference, Southern University at New Orleans.

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Michelle Rhee – What’s Really at Stake?

Posted on December 3, 2008 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

She’s on the cover of Time (week of December 8), in a classroom, unsmiling, dressed in black, holding a broom, with the cover title, “How to Fix America’s Schools,” set to look as though it’s the lesson for the day written on the blackboard. Framing her head is the huge “TIME” trademark. She is Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of Education, District of Columbia Public Schools. And the question for the “class” is, Does she have the answer to America’s failing public school systems? Is it, finally, time to make the kinds of sweeping changes that she represents?

Her goal’s clear, “To make Washington the highest-performing urban school district in the nation” [1]. The yardstick is a simple one: reading and math scores on standardized achievement tests. And her formula’s just as simple: reward teachers who can help her reach her goal and get rid of the ones who can’t.

This unflinching focus, she says, places the student’s best interest at the forefront of schools. Higher scores will eventually translate to college degrees and better jobs, which are the tickets out of poverty, discrimination, and all the other social ills.

The underlying assumption is that all students can significantly improve their scores IF they have teachers [1] who are willing to set that as the primary goal and do everything it takes to reach it. In this picture, there is absolutely no room for failure. Little or no gain in scores is a sign of failure, and failure means a quick exit from the teaching profession. When student success is weighed against teacher security, there is no issue. Tenure is a dead horse. For teachers, the decision is a simple one, too: Deliver higher scores or get out.

“She is angry at a system of education that puts ‘the interests of adults’ over the ‘interests of children,’ i.e., a system that values job protection for teachers over their effectiveness in the classroom. Rhee is trying to change that system” [2].

What about the gray area, the affective dimensions that defy objective measurement? Rhee says, “The thing that kills me about education is that it’s so touchy-feely. . . . People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning.’ . . . I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap.’ Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job” [1].

In pursuit of her goal, Rhee has the complete backing of D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who appointed her chancellor in June 2007. “In her first 17 months on the job, Rhee closed 23 schools with low enrollment and overhauled 27 schools with poor academic achievement. She also fired more than 250 teachers and about one-third of the principals at the system’s 128 schools” [3].

Rhee scares the daylights out of me because she may very well be the wish that we’re warned to watch out for, the one that we might actually get. Now that we have someone with the power to really change the system, I suddenly have cold feet. Yes, she seems to make sense. Student achievement should take precedence over the needs of teachers. But are there other issues waiting below the surface that might just jump out and bite us if we follow Rhee?

For example, despite the radical nature of her approach, the bundle that we think of as “school” remains pretty much the same. The burden of accountability has shifted to the teacher, but the roles, resources, goals, and environment remain constant. Even pedagogy seems to be the same–more homework, more demanding tasks, more discipline, more testing. In other words, the same, but more of it.

One could argue that Rhee’s changes don’t go far enough and need to include innovations in information technology. There’s the possibility that these innovations could enhance learning by dramatically altering schools as we know them without some of the harsher consequences that seem to be a part of Rhee’s strategy.

Another issue is the effectiveness of strategies that Rhee lumps into the category of “touchy-feely.” Are these affective, student-centered, holistic, indirect methods proven ineffective? Or are they, perhaps, just as if not more effective than Rhee’s hard-nosed direct approach? Are we ready to toss these out as useless?

Yet another issue is the similarity of Rhee’s model to test-oriented systems in Asia. Is Rhee simply transporting a traditional model from China, India, Japan, and South Korea to the U.S.? If yes, then are there consequences that we need to be aware of?

Finally, are we beginning to draw a line between schools in general and poor urban schools in particular? A line that requires a radically different approach for the latter? Are we bending to the notion that schools not only can be but should be different for resource-poor inner-city schools? If this is the case, then could we be developing a system that channels or tracks children into careers at an early age, forever excluding college for many in favor of technical training? This could result in a form of economic and racial discrimination with far-reaching consequences.

In conclusion, my initial reaction is that Rhee’s ideas sound good, but I’m not quite ready to dump what we have now for an approach that we haven’t fully discussed or studied. At this juncture, an open discussion about the implications of Rhee’s tactics may be in order. I’m sure there are many other issues at stake. Thus, please share your thoughts with us. Either post them as comments to this article or email them to me at jamess@hawaii.edu

(Note: For a quick background, see Amanda Ripley’s “Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge” [26 Nov. 2008] at Time.com and Thomas, Conant, and Wingert’s “An Unlikely Gambler” [23 Aug. 2008, from the magazine issue dated 1 Sep. 2008] at Newsweek.com. Finally, go to YouTube and do a search on “michelle rhee” for lists of videos.)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: accountability, achievement, Adrian, affective, Amanda Ripley, America’s, An Unlikely Gambler, approach, Asia, careers, Chancellor of Education, channel, children, China, Conant, cover, crap, creativity, D.C., discrimination, District of Columbia Public Schools, failing, Fenty, highest-performing, holistic, How to Fix America’s Schools, India, indirect, information, innovations, Japan, math, Mayor, methods, Michelle, Newsweek.com, poor, public school, racial, reading, Really, Rhee, Rhee Tackles Classroom Challenge, school district, scores, social, South Korea, Stake, standardized, student-centered, sweeping changes, systems, teachers, technical training, Technology, tenure, test-oriented, tests, Thomas, Time, Time.com, touchy-feely, track, urban, Washington, What’s, Wingert, YouTube | 4 Comments »

Resistance to Technology: Conscious or Unconscious?

Posted on November 10, 2008 by JimS

By Lynn Zimmerman
Editor, Teacher Education
10 November 2008

In July 2008 James Morrison initiated a discussion on Innovate-Ideagora which he called “Addressing the problem of faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies.” This lively discussion has touched on any number of issues related to education, teaching, and learning. The contradictions inherent in education always fascinate me, and this topic has brought up many of them, from assessment issues to institutional climate.

In his introduction to the discussion Jim wrote that “we should be using technology enhanced active learning strategies to improve student learning” and effect changes in the organizational culture “so that most professors [and teachers] will be receptive to adopting active learning methods and using IT tools to enhance the effectiveness of these methods in their classes.” I assert this “resistance” is also embedded in how teachers view education.

Although most of the discussion centered on higher education, as a teacher educator, I am always focused on what is happening in the K-12 classroom and what my students may confront as they go into their classrooms. The issue of teacher resistance to technology has immediacy for teachers in K-12. As I was thinking about these issues, I remembered something I had read when I was teaching an Introduction to Teaching course: many teachers consider that they have a fairly liberal teaching philosophy. However, in practice, their teaching styles tend to be more conservative than their philosophical stance. (If you would like to make this comparison yourself, you can look at your teaching style at Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Style Inventory.) Therefore, it is possible that not only are teachers actively resisting learning about technology and technological advances, but some are perhaps unconsciously resisting it. In trying to determine where the disconnect is, researchers may need to look more closely at what teachers are really doing as opposed to what they think they are doing in the classroom/educational space.

My undergraduate students recently observed teachers and classes in a new elementary school which has up-to-date technology. One student was dismayed to see that the teacher was using the Smart Board to produce worksheets! I know that teachers at this school had received in-service training for using the technology in their classrooms and I assume the training was focused on the effective use of these technologies. As the student described the teacher’s style, it appeared that she used an authoritarian model of teaching, which seems to be reflected in her view of how to use technology. Was she consciously resisting using the technology to its fullest or was she just unaware that she had not made a shift in her thinking about using technology?

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Conscious, Grasha-Reichmann, Innovate-Ideagora, Introduction to Teaching, Inventory, James Morrison, K-12, Lynn Zimmerman, Resistance, Smart Board, students, teacher educator, Teaching Style, Technology, Unconscious, undergraduate | 6 Comments »

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‘Emerging Technologies in Distance Education’ ed. by George Veletsianos

Deconstructing STEM

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

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