Class 12: March 25, 2010

TED Mash-up: Part 1

Well, that was fun! Julye, you were missed. Hope you are better soon!

To see my my TED again, click here. Will be back later.

March 27

Still working on this post. Right now, I'm preoccupied with getting my tax information ready for ultimate processing. However, in response to Denis's class summary e-mail, I figured to at least post this. Denis asked to post Ma & Pa Kettle. It is accessible from the link to my TED, but it's also below for your convenience.

In his summary e-mail, I like what Denis said about Ma & Pa. I inserted that clip more as a hee-haw wrap-up, but also to remind us of 1) how our students can make mistakes and how sensitive we need to be in debugging their thinking, and 2) to illustrate how one culture may represent math vs another. It's a good LO for both pre- and in-service math teachers (and others, as Denis has pointed out the possibility of incorrectly applying technology). As Denis said, Ma's & Pa's answers were wrong. True, but only if judged against what we consider to be right. Their logic was apparently ok. How do we get a student, maybe in grade two who makes some creative but consistent mistakes, and who maybe presents a legitimate understanding issue, to learn the "right way?" There is more than one idea/technique, I know. At a cultural level, I think Ma & Pa remind us again of the relativism card. Given that, and this is actually part of a title of a course offered by the faculty, is education all about cultural practice? Consider ICT, it certainly is a major part of our culture. Anyway, have to go. I'll be back again a later (again). See Mike N's post for a Ma & Pa equivalent video.

Ma & Pa Kettle Video



March 27 (cont'd)

Well, I'm back again, this time to finish. Just to let you know, it's Saturday night and I have my slide rule handy to help make sure my post is properly calculated! As I go back to culture and technology, I want to say one last thing about Ma & Pa Kettle. When I chose the video, I truly did not think about the technology angle the way Denis did, how Ma’s & Pa’s doing math is similar to the way educators today try to make the old paradigm of education fit into the reality of current social conditions. That analysis of Ma & Pa was very insightful. Thanks, Denis! By-the-way, doesn't Ma & Pa remind a bit about the Beverley Hillbillys?

The TED mash was capped nicely with the Jap Zero. If the film embodied the best of education practice of the time, what would a film representing the best of today's techniques look like? Could film be made about how to collaborate globally using a PLN? Of course! The same idea applies for the older technologies of scrapbooks (portfolio is today's buzz word) and slide rules. LOs would be easy to do, but the holograph? There I ask, is it necessary? I'm still wrestling with that one (not literally!). In a nutshell, I think the TEDs gave us a snapshot of the best of educational technology as our culture has evolved. I'll be reading some material over the next week and will post separate entries. I may say more about Thursday then. For now, I'll leave by citing a quote from one article. I think it speaks volumes about the cultural transformation taking place today. The paper is by renound sociologist Manuel Castels, Toward a Sociology of the Network Society:

We are just at the beginning of a most extraordinary cultural transformation that is reversing the course of thought that has prevailed among the world's dominant groups since the Enlightenment.

Given that, can we expect much more from the field of education as it is now evolving?

Class 11: March 18, 2010

Is E-learning Just Another Educational Fad?

Hi. Sorry that I missed class, but you may say that is where I belonged. Sore throat, coughing, nasal... you get the idea.

So what was said? I already posted remarks about Horizon 2010 and 21st Century Skills in the March 11, No Class entry. So, here I'll discuss the film Jap Zero and Thwarted Innovation. But true to form, not all at once.

NOTE: I did the wrong report for Lana. I'll put some thoughts about Kaiser here in a day or so (today is Sunday, March 21st).

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March 22

Kaiser Report. What can I say? It’s a work of statistical beauty, and when reading it, one doesn’t even need to know much about multivariate analysis!

Since I chose the wrong article initially, I skimmed this one or read only parts of it, so I’ll just give a highlight reel. What I read did tell me a few things. First, in a big way, this report challenges one of the assumptions stated in Thwarted Innovation: “If we build it, they will come.” Kaiser’s data tells me that if it is built, they will come. The report definitely shows that as the number of media products to hit the market has increased, so has the number of teen hours consuming content delivered via that media. It appears that Say’s Law (economics) is at work here – supply creates its own demand (Keynes). If it is built they will come, especially when the first ones find the experience irresistible. Then, it’s like a fire. There’s nothing like word-of-mouth advertising.

So, if they have come, what do we do? Did Kaiser cite e-learning as a category? No, but this is very interesting: for the 1999 report, the survey included two questions about why time was spent in front of a computer or TV. Participants were asked if it was to be entertained, to kill time (who in their right mind, at least as one gets older, ever wants to “kill time” *), or learn something (see pp50-51). Curiously, for the 2004 and 2009 reports, those survey questions were dropped. In fact, the word learning is not present anywhere else in the report other than in the 1999 edition questions. Yes, there is lots of talk about grades and race/ethnicity, and the correlations make sense, but this report is tuned with white bias; consider the oversampling of African and Hispanic Americans. Remember X-Box boy from the video?

All data/information seen and considered, the most significant point for me in the report has to be the influence parents have on the way their children spend their time. Connectedness, rules for media use, parent readers likely producing child readers – a certain type of parenting has almost everything to do with how youth spend their time. The sad thing to think is that parents might be either be too tired or just not interested in spending quality development time with their children. Too tired because of work... something needs to change; not interested in your kid... that is just wrong.

* I once heard Dr. Charles Stanley, a Baptist minister, talk on the radio about the foolishness of killing time. We don’t get much of it, so why waste it.

March 20

I heard that Jap Zero wasn’t shown during the class, so I won’t elaborate about it, but since I have watched it I’ll just say it makes one think about how to best offer a film for learning, which I’ll add, is connected to learning objects in a big way.

Thwarted Innovation. Was that an academic work or a written infomercial applauding the success of a research methodology? Sometimes it was hard to tell. Take away the festoon of charts and the verbiage surrounding the innovative tracking tool, and the paper might be condensed to about 20 pages or so, minus the appendices. But having said that, I was pleased that these authors addressed the biases associated with predictions, in particular the way they explained Michael Moe’s wild speculation of what was going to happen. In the long-run, Moe may well be right, but he was obviously wrong for the short-term.

The heart of this paper, for me, was the focus on learning objects. I am partial to them in many respects, and I agree with the authors when they say that the future of e-learning rests with the implementation of such tools. The thing is, depending on the kind of learning object (LO) that is being created, there can be a fair amount of labour expended when making one, not to say a set of them to support a course. Making a PDF is easy, making a Flash animation... not so.

The report commented on the fact that there is a very good LO repository on the web called MERLOT. I have known about MERLOT for a while and I can say that there’s a lot there, but one has to go shopping to find something of value. MERLOT in itself is a good repository because it tags the objects and allows ratings and comments. But it is by links that LOs are accessed, and some links may contain ads or other distracting extraneous information; hence the shopping. Further, many of the LOs that I’ve looked at there are not geared toward K-12 students.

My survey of the LO literature within the last two years shows that there has been a fair amount done about repositories, principally about how to best make one. It’s amazing what can be written about such a simple concept. When it comes down to it, a repository is just an archive, and it doesn’t really do anything to further the use of LOs. That needs to be done by users, and creators. It is true that by definition, an e-learning object (LO) is just a re-usable computer (digital media) file. It might be an applet or an animation, a video or a podcast, or a PDF file or some kind of interactive website, but none-the-less, it’s just an electronic file. But if I make a file and you make a file, who is to say that the files are compatible for use in a course, or that they will equally meet the same student’s needs? This is the current problem with the volume of independent learning objects out there. Sure they are re-usable, but as the report points out, the interface of the objects may be very different, not to mention the content or presentation. The report suggested that what is needed if LOs are to take-off is a consistent system that people can gravitate around, a defacto standard like PowerPoint or Blackboard. To me, in general, this just goes to standards. But to define a standard interface for LOs when the number of creators potentially number in the 100’s of thousands, well, that just might require legislation! Whose is the best? Why? I have asked why the Manitoba government doesn’t create LOs for the on-line courses. The report answers that clearly: it’s about money. There may be institutional will, but support to develop means big budgets, and when there is no proof to show the effectiveness of a program, budgets can shrink fast.

The proof? Where is it? What data exists to show that the use of LOs really does make a difference in teaching and learning? Thwarted Innovation didn’t offer much. Yes the study did find that both faculty and administration said that e-learning is valuable, but it also said that there is little evidence LOs are in demand.

So where does e-learning stand? Will it be just another educational fad? I don’t think so. Though in the early days there may have been a lot of innovators to bring a bunch of very differentiated e-learning products to the market in the hope of a dot com boom, get rich very quick outcome, and though there was a speculation-not-realized failure, as it says in the report at the end, “ultimately, the lure of anywhere-anytime learning will prove irresistible – educationally as well as financially.” Being able to access education at one’s convenience is the catalyst that will keep the fire burning, hence providers need only supply good product. The marketing of on-line benefits will be handled by the communications and tech companies – consider cell phone ads showcasing text messaging. The e-learning engine may be slow to develop, but I am optimistic and think that the 21st century will see an educational revolution. And, I think e-learning will pay for itself, easily. What it may have a very hard time doing – maybe impossible – is replacing the quality of face-to-face learning. Consider this: when a student asks a question in class, say to have an explanation repeated, let the repeated explanation become a canned video. If e-learning, the student would replay the video if the concept wasn’t grasped the first time (another explanation, please). But, exactly the same explanation would be given. With whom does the student connect when the video explanation is heard? In a live setting, perhaps the student needs to connect with the teacher at a deeper level for the concept to be grasped, and maybe that’s the real need to make the concept stick. Possible? Perhaps, but with whom is someone connecting on-line in an e-mail if there has never been a face-to-face encounter or at least telephone conversation? Oh yeah, last tidbit... in the report, the statement was made, “no one had ever asked the students whether or not they actually liked e-learning.” I wonder how significant that is.

No Class 10: March 11, 2010

TED Time...

Everyone please notice that this post went up on Friday the 12th. That will likely be the most significant element of this week's post, the fact that I released my anal concern for getting my post up the same day as the class would have been. Considering that this weekend the clocks go forward, timing seems to fit.

My TED will be on the 25th. The plan is to discuss learning objects in the math classroom.

Will be back soon with comments about some articles.

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The Articles: Horizon 2010 & 21st Century Skills

The day after Pi Day. 3.14, you know? In this section I'll say a few words about Lana's and Roland's articles.

NOTE: Old Mike has mentioned to me that it was Kaiser that Lana did, not Horizon. I'll post some Kaiser thoughts in the March 18th post, above Thwarted.

First: Horizon 2010. Question: will mobile computing become, as Jan Chipchase of Nokia says, one of the objects in our center of gravity (see Jan's TED). Our center of gravity is defined here to be the place/space where we keep our critical survival gear, what we really need daily and can't forget: keys, money, and... mobile phones! If the mobile phone has gravitated into the survival space, then it is a logical consequence to have rich media course being offered via smartphone, as is being done at Cyber University in Japan. I am not so sold on this yet. It is here, it's now, but doing a course by mobile phone? Why not? Interestingly, all the schools cited in the report are post-secondary. This here/now idea of phones connects to the rest of the technologies/ideas cited in the report because all the information delivered can come via a phone. Read a book, augment reality, analyze virtual data or do gesture computing... all at a mobile phone. I think that if we (teachers) want to keep up, we need to let the kids show us the technology. We just need to be smart enough to ask the the right questions. In many ways, I still live in the poetic world of timing the rotation of the hands at impact so that the struck golf ball will turn in the desired direction. I have yet to see someone use a mobile device to hit the perfect draw or fade. We are supposed to control the technology, and having said that, I'll mention the issue of making absolutely sure that the software which controls cyberspace is controlled. I can only imagine that once the little bots in the Sematic Web become so numerous that everyone can talk to everyone else regardless of platform, there could be one bot whose record gets mysteriously destroyed, but it remains out there doing its thing. That is dangerous. If something were to go wrong, it could impact many users and data, which brings me to the idea of non-authoritative sources creating information repositories. When Denis hosted the MMYA during our class, we talked about what is important in an encyclopedia. Authoritativeness was raised as an important element. If as it says in the Horizon Report that "the role of open content producers has evolved ... away from the idea of authoritative repositories of content and towards the broader notion of content being both free and ubiquitous," then in 100 years, what will be considered true? Who will be the reliable author of the truth if anyone can create it? I think of Homer Simpson here. What about the Guy Maddins of the world (see Ben's post for this week)? By-the-way, e-books are a good thing, but I think Kindles & the like will eventually be swallowed up by iPads and other integrated devices. The big issue for me with those technologies is the display. Getting a display to read as easily as paper is the challenge. The current ones aren't too bad, so there is hope.

Now Roland's: 21st Century Skills. Hmm. Better ramp-up that competitive spirit! That document read a little like a military campaign, perhaps the way the film Japanese Zero will come across. America's fixation on being the best and dominant society in the world is again made clear. Economic prosperity. Sure.

What is said right on p1 about education being the engine of the 21st century economy, is noteworthy. I would argue that has always been the case, though it seemed not 40 - 100 years ago because of the mass amount of manufacturing here (Canada & US). Also, on p10, there is a statement about skills that "will stand the test of time." Perfect! What are they? The document points us to p13 where it lists a lot of student outcomes, and in the list the word literacy appears six times. So, it appears that a needed competency is literacy. Not all literacies, though, stand the test of time. We know that some of the literacies needed for economic success today have changed. For exmaple, an assembly line job of repeatedly putting in one's 12 bolts for 8 hours during the day is not what it once was. Also, if you don't know how to turn on a PC (or Mac), economic opportunities may be limited. No, if America will be the kind of economic competitor it once was, the report shares an urgency that the student outcomes listed on p13 be met. Having said that, consider what is said on p7:

The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not just for top professionals and managers, but up and down the length and breadth of the workforce.

There's nothing new here; headhunters have been around for a long time, and so has the brain drain. How many Canadians have flocked south with their cheaply acquired skills during the last 25 years? The thing is, it is not only American companies who will pay the top dollar. So, if Americans ramp-up, then they potentially will become economic exports to foreign firms, just like the Canadians have been to the US (and elsewhere, I know). Also, with education and standards going on-line, the proverbial competitors will have access to all the goals the Americans set. Hence, everyone will have the potential to be as good or better than the Americans. Perhaps, in its own twisted way, the US has seen as an opportunity, through it's global education rating, to exercise its messianic mission on Earth, to emanicipate the whole of humanity through technology while playing underdog. Now isn't that a far-out thought! Hey, then they will have competed well, and won.

The 21st Century Skills document reminded me a little of Winner in the sense of business influence on education. We need it, honestly, as much as business needs the graduates of the schooling system. In light of that, what everyday people need to realize is that it is not a government's job to make sure business hires homegrown talent. Why would anyone who is in business pay a native Canadian kid who barely knows how to spell, $20 an hour when there is an immigrant from India with a master's degree who is willing to work for $12 per hour? The sadness here is that the Canadian kid figures that the $20 per hour is an entitlement. Consider that attitude a product of forward thinking no-fail policies of the last 20 years. And there's to the 21st Century!

By-the way, does anyone know when educational technology really began? Denis said 1658 (see his article The Year Educational Technology Began?). Comenius's first picture book, Denis's first educational technology, contained a defined canon of necessary knowledge. In mathematical terms (think linear algebra), we call that a basis (a minimized set). Each era, even generation, has its own vector space (think time). And the basis of the each era's space (time) are the literacies needed to be able to traverse the space. Literacies can and do change, so there is a different basis for every space. This implies that people need to be able to change, adapt. That seems to be the enduring attitude learners of every era need to have, because being able to recognize change and adapt to one's environment is the basis of success, economic or otherwise.

Class 9: March 4, 2010

The Maple Leaf Forever!!

Well, since I'm in the city for a two day in-service, I have the luxury of spending some time at "home." So after I got home, and when eating even more, I asked my mom if she knew that song from the Olympics that Michael Bublé sang. She proceeded to tell me it is an old song and then sang it, the Wolfe version. Uh huh. She then told me that my dad knows it too. Ya, mhmm. My mom and dad both said it was in the Manitoba Song Book and that they used to sing it in school (both my parents were teachers who began their careers in one room country schools... yes, back a few years). The point is, they know it. When I told my mom we talked about it in class tonight and said it was considered a second national anthem, she said "that's right." Yep. Where have I been? Argh! I guess I just read too many Richie Rich comics when I was a kid. You know, we actually had Gold & Silver #1 plus a bunch of others that were low numbers. Don't have them anymore though. I guess it's no wonder that I identified with the commodification of education... have always had $$ on the mind!

Ok. My post is up. Check back in a few days.

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Hi, I'm back, evening of Mar 8. Lots can be discussed from this week, enough for about a 10 page essay. But, won't go there; will try to keep it modest, but won't promise full connectivity (more edubabble).

I'll start with Anderson's chapter. I found what he wrote to be full of connections to what I read in Kirschner, and more. Beginning with the term affordance, Anderson gives us some ideas about how the Web can be used to make distance/on-line education almost as good as face-to-face instruction. His play on constructivism is interesting; he says it's about hyperlinking related ideas together. Here I think of the Delicious website: everyone's memory conveniently archived in one spot. I actually read Anderson after Winner and I had to laugh when I read the top of p43, "Communication technologies are used to enhance interaction between all participants in the educational transaction." The emphasis is mine, but the word spin is what is laughable in light of Winner's paper. Winner, as we know, really slammed the commodification/corporatization of education, shall I say, transactional education. Anderson wrote with such nice intentions, but Winner was at war. Actually, I think Winner and Openheimer would get along well.

So, back to hyperlink constructivism: it’s engaging and gets kids asking questions, what I like. Just today I had my middle years students using the Canadian Encyclopedia and doing some searching and reading about the Olympics in Canada. I also had them open a second window tuned to an online dictionary so they could look up words they didn’t know in the Olympics text. It was more like hyper-application-jumping, but it was interactive and effective. This little bit of evidence supports Anderson’s on-line constructivism ideas. There are all kinds of interaction happening when we go online: student-student, student-content, student-teacher, teacher-content. However, it’s not a truly web-based environment because we have the face-to-face component. Also, I’m always there to guide. I give a lot of just-in-time assistance, something Kirschner’s article cited as beneficial.

Anderson again echoes what was said in Kirschner when he quotes Prensky asking “How do students learn what?” Anderson quotes Prensky as saying, four times, that we all learn through imitation and practice. Imitation: examples and explanations; practice: applying what is demonstrated in examples and explanations. On-line teaching-objects for this kind of learning can easily be created and are part of the proposed Semantic Web, which to me really is a rich set of learning-objects designed to afford learning maximization in the on-line environment. Getting back to Kirschner briefly, it is interesting that Anderson points out that the web affords learners the ability to interact with content in multiple formats, but ... that many students choose to have their learning sequenced, directed and evaluated with the assistance of a teacher. Guided instruction, anyone?

I’ll say one more thing about what is written by Anderson. He points to the world-wide collaboration potential that may result by using translation agents. Just imagine being able to discuss ideas with someone in France who is working in French while you work in English. Google translators?

Does the Berners-Lee Semantic Web and the possibilities it represents describe an assault on education the way Winner does? I don’t think so, for as I’ve already said, students want the input of teachers in their learning. There is so much in Winner’s work that reads like Heidegger’s danger, the darkness of education becoming a standing-reserve to the higher power of profit. But, Winner also says that students believe that what is important in their education are clear explanations, fair tests, caring professors and reasonable workloads. Computer integration was at the bottom of the list. That, however, was 1996, not 2010. What might be the outcome of the same survey today?

There is no doubt that the standards Schoffner outlines are related to Winner’s technoglobalism. Actually, those standards in Schoffner read more like job descriptions than educational standards. Some of them are, quite frankly, ugly. You will do this, you must do that. Buzz off! I know those kind of documents need to be deconstructed and then reassembled in a context, and usually I think we can interpret such standards in one page rather that twenty. But it’s not so much the number of standards, it's the demanding techno-language in which they are couched. It’s that corporatism at work, again. If there is one standard that Winner may espouse it’s this, “[develop] a set of well-tuned habits of inquiry and critical thinking that a person [can continue] cultivating throughout a lifetime.”

I could babble more here, but I’ve said enough. There’s more we’ve read and heard that can be connected to these recent articles, ideas from Plato, Heidegger, and Hlynka. The idea of figure/ground Denis discusses in his article Recognition of the Japanese Zero really says a lot about how priorities can be set and what can be made present and spun to ordinary people as important by the powers that be. Consider Heidegger’s presencing again. What is revealed to people as figure or ground is like that exemplar picture of the young and old woman. Which face do you see first? As educators, we need to keep in the figure (foreground) of our teaching those enduring learnings that can ultimately push into the ground (background) the desperate wants of capitalist reformers. Whether we do it on-line or face-to-face is moot.