Mon 21 Jan 2008
Though I stubled upon it completely independently, this Quotation Search tool is of a similar theme, and could have similar application to my previous post.
Wow. That has to be my shortest post ever.
Mon 21 Jan 2008
I stumbled upon an interesting Acronym Search tool today that I thought had interesting potential uses in the classroom. I guess I am just one of those (annoying?) guys who likes making acronyms, so seeing what is already out there also has some appeal. But I know that I am not alone and suspect that this could also engage some students in some interesting activities.
As a starter, you can search for acronoms of your name. Who would have thought there were 9 main acronyms of ‘ERIC’ and another 91 less common ones? As these acronyms generally represent organisations or concepts, it is even more astounding to see the huge variety of that these acronyms represent – in my case, from “Educational Research Information Clearinghouse” to “Ervmisbe’s Intelligent Combat-Armour”, although there was a high strangely high proportion of education-related acronyms. Coincidence? Anyway, getting students to do an acronym search for their name, then choosing some of the results to Google and write a summary paragraph on could be an interesting option.
It also told me 14 acronyms had ‘ERIC’ in their meanings. This could provide interesting insight into a project, when the topic has already been set. For example, a search of ‘SHARK’ revealed “White Shark Research Institute (Cape Town, South Africa)” and “Outlaw Shark Digital Interface Unit”.
And for a more creative project, this resource could support students in creating their own acronyms, either on a given topic, or to fit a given word.
Tue 3 Jul 2007
Its great to see the NECC Conference releasing stuff to the wider world that cannot make it to the conference. In NECC Live 2006 (only 2007 content is currently available), the item called “One Laptop Per Child: Hope or Hype?” had a number of interesting comments that I have transcribed below.
The three pannelists were:
Ian Jukes – We need to transform learning, not just use the new technology in an old way.
David Thomburg – You need both the technology and the staff development to make the most of it.
David Thomburg – The technology can play a very important role if we can get the educators to realise it is learning about learning, not learning about stuff. (There is still a need for some learning about stuff, but not the dominant need).
David Thomburg – I think 1 to 1 is a myth, I don’t think 1 to 1 is a goal. I think 1 to 1 is a waystation on the way toward somwthing else. I think technology needs to be ubiquitous. I don’t operate 1 to 1, I operate 5 (technologies) to 1 (person). The critical issue is that those become useful to the extent that they interoperate. (a lot more work to make devices talk to eachother effortlesslessly).
Ian Jukes – In Singapore … they are truely 1 to 1 there, but you have to ask yourself “what has changed?”. I had a conversation with their Minister of Education two weeks ago where he said “top academic kids in the entire world that couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag if their life depended on it. We are a nation with no natural resources – not even fresh water. We can’t just have people that regurgitate the old, we have to have people that create the new”. And so if you put the technology in there by itself, I say “So what?”. The real issue here is about how you use that technology.
Barry Vercoe – Singapore … are running scared, just as they are in Taiwan, about the industry that has supported their economy for the last 20 years – the economic miracle of those places. …they can’t just stamp out copies any more, they are being undercut by Mainland China. The people in Singapore and Taiwan have to learn to create, have to learn how to invent, have to move higher up in the food chain in order to come up with products, new ways of thinking. So it has to do with how you think about technology, how you use technology to invent and create the economic community.
Ian Jukes – With ‘No Child Left Behind’ (no Superintendent left standing) we end up graduating highly educated, useless people – people who have really good school skills, really good test writing skills, but they arn’t ready for the world out there. … these kids leave the system that has held them up for 16 years and fall flat on their face.
Ian Jukes – So the real issues arn’t hardware issues, the real issues are headware issues. … about how we take the technology and leverage it. This isn’t about teaching powerpoint, it is about teaching kids to be better communicators. This isn’t about teaching Microsoft Word, it is about teaching kids to be better writers. Learning about the technology is nothing but an incidental (but essential) byproduct of that process. The real issue is education is about thinking – the technology is just the vehicle that will allow us to go there.
David Thomburg – (believes US is loosing its creativity. e.g. Motorola Razr Cellphones is designed in Brazil, not because it is cheap (it cost Motorolla a fortune), but because of the creativity of the Brazilian software engineers and their interdiciplinary perspective).
David Thomburg – This (lack of US creativity) is being exaserbated by the NCLB perception that we need to teach to task, that it is about a body of regurgitatable knowledge, as Ian says “the binge and purge model – information bulimia”.
David Thomburg – When did joy leave education? At conference it used to be so much fun … teachers were giving other teachers software they had wrote themselves … now it is all shrinkwrapped, you have al the booth barbies with bodies by Nautilus, brains by Matel. Come on, lets have some fun.
David Thomburg – You take Linux on a little box, you put in some creative stuff, you put that in the hand of some kids and teachers, you sit down in a corner and the next thing you know its Tuesday because your having so much fun with it. Anything that brings that joy back is going to be good for this country (USA).
David Thomburg – When we get all of the children who can celebrate knowledge, celebrate culture – not as a melting pot or soup that is homogenised but like a salad bowl where you get the delight of different flavours … it is not a perspective that supports the concept of (armed) conflict. When you truly understand other people in the world and that this is a planet, how can you fight?
Barry Vercoe – Its the people that have creativity and a natural desire to express themselves, are going to burst there way through whatever technological barriers are there, these are the people that innovate. Innovation occurs when there is a clash of cultures, a clash of ways of thinking, a clash of ways of doing things – the interaction of those people (is where the innovation happens).
Ian Jukes – We live in a media culture that builds things up in order to tear things down. My greatest fear is that the media jumps to a conclusion (like after a team looses one game) that all is lost (before we build enough momentum to reach Gladwells tipping point).
An audience question – “How can we get the same scale of conversation moving (as around the OLPC) about what real rich learning looks like like when it is facilitated by teachers?”
Ian Jukes – Neil Postman said “Children enter school as a question mark and exit as a period. Primary kids like school, high schoolers like lunch. Primary teachers teach children, secondary teachers teach subjects”. I beleive the tipping point is about grade 3, where learning goes from this incredible multimedia experience to being increasingly drudgery.
Ian Jukes – What is the opposite of pro? con? What is the opposite of progress? congress? Many of these people that are making decisions that affect the lives of these kids – their senior year was grade seven, their toughest two years was grade one … and they haven’t been in a classroom for 30 years.
Ian Jukes – We have these incredible tools, but as yogi bearer says “Its deja vu all over again”. What has changed? … My fear is that we are going to take this magnificent tool (OLPC) and instead of letting the children shape the tool, the tool is going to shape the childern and basically it is going to be the same old same old all over again.
Ian Jukes – I think we do a great job in American schools today (2006) of preparing kids for 1950, and I may be being optomistic there.
Barry Vercoe – Our philosophy at the media lab is “tools to think with”.
David Thomburg – This also evokes some fear, some negative fear I have read (about OLPC) is that “oh my god – if this happens, education is going to change. We can’t let that happen”. They will hide this in other ways by saying “the machine is underpowered” etc (but based in this fear).
Barry Vercoe – The $100 laptop is already forcing people to think differently … The Intel $400 knockoff … it looks just like the (MIT) machine, but it costs $400. You have to admit the software systems are just bloated, they are very slow … so the small hardware is going to force the Linux people to come down (to match it).
David Thomburg – … they want something that is reliable, that works, you turn it on and it is there. You are not going to get that with anything that runs software that comes out of Redmond Washington.
David Thomburg – Dell is now releasing a $450 computer … but they are not going to preload it with the kind of software that MIT is doing because they are going to say “out maket doesn’t want that”. You see, focus groups are almost the worst things to have because what people will say what they want is what they already have. If you keep going where you are going you will keep getting what you’ve got. Its time for something new.
David Thomburg – The positive opportunity is that in November 2007, NCLB going to be rewritten. …MIT’s project has made enough noise that I think there will be a seat at the table to talk about what education might look like here. If this country starts to see what other countries are doing and take it seriously, they will realise “we have tennis shoe marks up out back”.
Lindy Mekeuwan (audience) – In working with professional development … I’ve moved my crosshairs of the teacher and have moved it onto the university staff. Anyone who can only run Powerpoint, Word and the Library software can’t possibly prepare a teacher for the kind of world that this machine is going to open up. … I think what you need areound the OLPC is the salvation army of education – the people who will work with the people as the devices arrive and bring the ideas to them. What I have found working with teachers is that they are wonderful, creative, teriffic people – all you have got to do is give them a little bit of time and some great resources and they will do astounding things with them. It is just they are not prepared for that by their faculty or in their graduate programs or the professional development that they are offered – it very targeted to maintaing the status quo. … The concept of a lecture about constructivism is our issue.
Barry Vercoe – The problem in Australia is that Brenda Nelson who was the Minister of Education last year is noe the Minister of Defense. These people are making some of the decisions. … the problem is that the decision making is not put into the hands of the people that have the real experience.
David Thomburg – One of the best instructional TV series is JunkYard Wars (you have to build a machine to fit a challenge with any junk you can find). During the process they go around and interview the teams about the decision making process and their materials testing etc. What you get to see is the most delightful thinking and problem solving. (and you learn the lessons you need in a practical way you will never forget). There is also “Make” Magazine dedicated to this topic. I think that we would be better off if textbooks were more like make magazine and schools were held in junkyards, because that is where people could really build stuff and do stuff. We are human beings, but we are also human doings.
Wed 13 Dec 2006
I think I have stumbled across a parallel that is worthy of note between the idea of rhizomatics and the Discovery 1 school. The idea of rhizomatics is briefly mentioned in a seminar I blogged about, and detailed more in some of Dave Cormier’s blog entries, starting with this introduction. The Discovery 1 school is a local experimental primary school I blogged about.
In a sentence, rhizomatics “describes theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation”. And Discovery 1 School focuses on letting children discover the knowledge that they are personally interested in.
So it seems to me that Discovery 1 children are operating in a very rhizomatic way – they are taught from their very first day to seek out information in many and varied ways, and integrate this into their own knowledge. Of course they need some help in the early years, but parents are encouraged to come to school with the child and assist them. They are also taught the associated skills that support this: choosing educatonal goals, planning how to acheive these goals (so essentially creating their own lesson plans), managing their time, recognising ‘blind spots’ in their knowledge and resolving them, and at the end of the topic, creating an output that will fairly represent the knowledge they have gained (their equivalent of assessment).
So what can we learn from this? The first thing that hits me is that rhizomatics does not have to be a digital process. Sure, it is made easier by using the internet, but it can equally work in a classroom of 10 year olds who enter and exit from knowledge via talking to people, observing or interviewing an expert, reading books, performing experiments or possibly using the internet.
In addition, at the end of the presentation, there was a discussion on how to apply rhizomatics in traditional teaching situations, especially with regard to curriculum and assessment. I beleive there is a lot to be learned from Discovery 1 School (who themselves have had to learn from the ground up over the last 5 years). Bear in mind I am not the expert on this (in fact, I can probably line up someone from Discovery 1 to attend an EdTechTalk – if someone is interested, let me know), but my second-hand knowledge would be as follows.
With regard to assessment, the student has to create one or more outputs by the end of the topic that will fairly represent the knowledge they have gained. These outputs can be in any form that does the job, so can be any or all of text, diagrams, photos, video, audio, multimedia, posters, paper mache or performance etc.
With regard to curriculum, the teacher (or parents) works with the child to ensure that all curriculum objectives are acheived within the topics of the student’s choice. Often, this is simply a suggestion that the student also looks at xyz as a part of their chosen topic (maybe if the topic is dinosaurs, the student is encouraged to calculate the fraction of various species’ life spans compared to a humans). Occassionally, when the student presents their learning goals to the teacher, the teacher may have to suggest that, for example, they have covered enough music topics recently and should think about something involving science, but generally this does not seem to be a problem as the students seem to naturally have diverse interests.
I am sure there is more that can be drawn from this comparison, but for now, real life becons.
Wed 13 Dec 2006
The Eight Competencies of Online Interaction: What Should We Be Learning and Doing? was recently presented at the NYSAIS Mohonk 2006 Conference. Its a long (89 minute) mp3 so jammed full of interesting observations that I had to go back and have a second listen. The energy of the presenters also helps keep you interested for its entire length. My only negative comment would be that in the audio version it was not clear what the 8 competencies were, with only some indications when they were moving on to the next topic, but that does not detract from the insights within.
So what is it about? The title really sums it up, and because online interaction pretty much applies to everyone nowadays, I would reccommend that anyone online take a listen (especially if you are eclectic enough to be reading this blog post). Why? I think it can offer valuable insigts into what you are doing online and how you go about it, and quite importantly, better understand your own strength and weaknesses, which in turn will help you play to your strengths and improve or at least anage your weaknesses. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Thu 2 Nov 2006
In my typical ‘blocking‘ style, I have been going through a few of the 21st Century Learning podcasts, and was I should comment again – this time on Episode 10: SLA, Education Bridges, Info Literacy.
I thought it was interesting that almost three times in this episode, the guys mentioned doing things that they had specifically told their students should not be done.
The first was travelling on a train to meet a guy he had ‘met’ on the internet. The second was peer pressure – “me pressuring you into doing this podcast”. In the third case, the presenter almost mentioned where he lives, but caught himself and instead mentioned the general area.
I’m not shocked and outraged or anything, I just think it is a funny/interesting situation. The guys were aware of it, and if anything, it stressed how easy it can be to do these things. One of them mentioned “adult social pressure is better than teenage social pressure though”, which I can understand – (some) adults understand the deeper implications and risks of what they are doing and manager those.
However, it does pose a problem for teaching younger people these things, especially if you prefer to ‘lead by example’. On the other hand, maybe it just shows that we can’t be simply teaching children by rote (to always do x and never do y), otherwise they may never find their lifelong partner on the internet (probbaly not the most solid example I’ve ever given, but never mind). I guess this leads into “don’t teach a child facts, teach them how to learn”, which was a very clear message from a tour I recently had, and will cover in the next blog entry (Discovery 1).
Thu 13 Jul 2006
At the end of this post are some quotes from a very interesting article by MATT RICHTEL called “Once a Booming Market, Educational Software for the PC Takes a Nose Dive”. It was published by the NYTimes on August 22, 2005 – the original is here.
In summary, the article shows that the retail sales of educational software for home computers had dropped from $498 million in 2000 to $152 million in 2004. Similarly, overall spending on software by K-12 schools was $2.3 billion in 2004, up 2 percent from a year earlier but down from $3.4 billion in 2001. So it may be understandable that companies do not want to get involved in a contracting market. But the article also proposes some reasons why this market is contracting. Below is a list mixed with our own observations:
However, it does note that overall spending on teaching tools and toys had increased (up to $4 billion on tutors alone). Therefore there is an opportunity for educational software to make a comeback if it adapts to market needs (e.g. points of difference over free internet content and parent’s interest in measuring their children’s academic progress) and perceptions (e.g. making it engaging and entertaining) and takes advantage of new technological opportunities (e.g. using the internet to streamline content delivery and permit the delivery of richer content). “It’s like a forest fire has burned through, making the scorched earth ready for future growth.
Below are a few quotes from the article:
Edward Vazquez Jr., 6, has numerous educational tools at his disposal. He learns math from flashcards and the alphabet from a popular electronic gadget called the LeapPad. But when it comes to instruction, the family’s personal computer sits dormant.
“He has a lot of toys for learning – not the computer,” said his father, Edward Vazquez, 28, a waiter in San Francisco. One reason, Mr. Vazquez said, is “you don’t see a lot of that software.”
That statement would have been unthinkable a few years ago. In 2000, sales of educational software for home computers reached $498 million, and it was conventional wisdom among investors and educators that learning programs for PC’s would be a booming growth market.
Yet in less than five years, that entire market has come undone. By 2004, sales of educational software – a category that includes programs teaching math, reading and other subjects as well as reference works like encyclopedias – had plummeted to $152 million, according to the NPD Group, a market research concern.
“Nobody would have thought those were the golden days,” Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review, said of the late 1990’s. “Now we’re looking back and we’re saying, ‘Wow, what happened?’ ”
…
The result in business terms has been a downward spiral. Only 222 educational programs for PC’s sold more than 10,000 copies in 2004, down from 447 in 2001, according to NPD. As sales began to decrease, retailers devoted less and less shelf space to these titles, making recovery for the industry more difficult.
To regain their footing, some companies are starting to create programs that can connect to the Internet and cater to parents’ interest in measuring their children’s academic progress.
One reason for hope is that parents are spending more on educational tools and services than ever. Kirsten Edwards, an education software industry analyst with ThinkEquity Partners, a research firm, noted that overall spending on teaching tools and toys had increased. Spending on tutors, she said, rose to $4 billion in 2004, from $3.4 billion a year earlier.
Yet educational software is getting an ever smaller share of that consumer dollar. It is among the lowest-priced of any software category; in 2004 the average price for an educational program was $18, compared with $23 for the average computer game, according to NPD.
…
Educational software makers in the consumer market are not alone in their struggles. Those making software for schools have suffered too, executives and analysts said, from cutbacks in school budgets. Overall spending on software by K-12 schools was $2.3 billion in 2004, up 2 percent from a year earlier but down from $3.4 billion in 2001, according to ThinkEquity Partners.
Nonetheless, some say that children’s software can make a comeback. Mr. Buckleitner, an occasional contributor to the Circuits section of The New York Times, says there is still a future for teaching tools for the PC, especially as high-speed Internet access permits the delivery of richer content.
As for the drop in sales, he said, “it’s like a forest fire has burned through,” making the scorched earth ready for future growth.
Thu 13 Jul 2006
I listened to a great podcast at www.ITConversations.com called “Lessons Learned from Game Design” by Will Wright (the inventor of Sim City, The Sims, The Movies etc.) during the SD Forum Distinguished Speaker Series (2005). You can listen to it here. It was a very interesting talk in general, but also covered Will’s views on education in gaming. Will talked about how he built lots of models as a kid, and how he sees the irony that he helped replace that hobby, but that he sees gaming as just building different types of models. There were two main points that hit home with me. I have made a clip of this part of the speech available at the end of this post.
How Montessori Can Impact Gaming and Vice Versa. (paraphrasing from the speech)
It is easy to see how Will was inspired by this in Sim City, and the other games he has created. Keep an eye out for his latest work ‘Spore’, where you start off as a single celled organism and direct its evolution to a sentient species that develops space travel. Info and teasers are available on Spore, but the game is not due for release until 2007. I also totally agree with all these points, including ‘Why have computers not been used more for this?’. Hopefully the Imaginality work I am doing will address a lot of this…
Educational Gaming – Failures and Potentials. (again, paraphrasing from the speech)
Hmmm, I guess I had better stop calling Imaginality ‘educational’ 
. But with any luck, it will be fun and engaging enough to break down this barrier. I’ve noticed that Sony Playstation has pretty much gone out of its way on a number of occasions to avoid being associated with education. I think this is a sad, sad state of affairs indeed, especially if it had the opportunity to do public good like this and turned it down for commercial gain.
My next post actually develops this idea further, with more statistics and opinions from educational software developers.
My last comment is that www.ITConversations.com rocks! This is where I found and listened to this seminar, but they also have audio recordings of a large number of (mostly tech oriented) conferences available for free. Thanks to www.ITConversations.com I have been able to ‘attend’ at least three conferences from the other side of the world, without taking a single day off work, for free. Incredible stuff.
Clip from ITConversations-195 - Will Wright - Montessori and Education in Gaming [4:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadMon 3 Jul 2006
In addition to this blog on Technology in Education, I have started a blog/podcast hybrid on my website www.MindSpaceArt.com on Technology in Art. It has the very original name of the MindSpace Art Blog/Podcast. Occasionally there will be some crossover, and this post is one of those times.
On the MindSpace Art Blog/Podcast I recently posted my perspectives on the O’Reily ‘Web 2.0 Conference’ StyleMark protection issue. In addition to sharing my two cents worth, I mention how it is actually quite damaging for this issue to remain largely unresolved (even though O’Reilly has backed down) and I propose an interesting solution. I have cited this below:
Unfortunately I tuned into this podcast a couple of weeks after the fact, but even so, I’d like to share an interesting perspective. It was one of many discussions that flared up around this blog post by Tom Raftery from IT@CORK (in Ireland) who received a cease and desist letter from the legal team of O’Reilly publishers. Apparently O’Reilly StyleMarked (similar to TradeMarked) the term “Web 2.0 Conference” and after many opportunities, took this opportunity to start enforcing it on a small 1/2 day conference on the other side of the world. Follow either of the above links for more info.
Firstly, I should mention that I am not against companies protecting their ideas and their names, but I think O’Reilly has stepped way out of line for many reasons. Firstly, having known about it for 9 months and waited till the last 2 weeks was just rude. Secondly, not bothering to have a polite discussion and jump straight into legal threats is not only very rude, but very inefficient (unless you like feeding legal piranhas). Thirdly, when I was taught about trademarks, I was told that you had to be careful, because if your trademark becomes a generic term, you loose control of it, so I think O’Reilly has lost their dubious control anyway.
It is almost an anti-climax that O’Reilly have no jurisdiction in Ireland to be trying to enforce anyway – while it is extremely shameful to O’Reilly, it kind of leaves the core issue unresolved. And as I learn from Lawrence Lessig, unresolved issues are a lawyer’s playground, and ‘chill’ the environment. In this case, people in America will still be scared of receiving a letter from O’Reilly, so many will confirm, whether they really need to or not.
So I propose an interesting solution to this issue. I think from now on, everyone should refuse to refer to the term “Web 2.0″ and instead use the term “Web 2.1″. Not only does this give O’Reilly no leg to stand on, it also sends a clear message that the social web will not stand for corporate intimidation. So in this way, it is describing a new version of the web, which justifies an incremental version increase. And with an almost self prophetic irony, it is creating a new version of the web that the term itself ushers in. Web 2.0 has been around long enough for it to look significantly different now compared to when it first emerged, so I think it is high time to evolve to Web 2.1. Web 2.1 can also represent the related fights for Internet Neutrality (www.savetheinternet.com and www.itsournet.org) and Free Culture (www.lessig.org and www.eff.org).
To pre-empt any future issues, I’ll state that not only Web 2.1, but Web X.X can now be considered a generic term, so no one can own trademark control over it in the future.
Of course, the only way for the term Web 2.1 to become completely generic and for people to be free of unacceptable corporate restrictions and intimidation is for this idea to be spread and used. Ok, sure, it is a long shot, but if it was to happen, ideally, it should not be used blindly, but should be used with knowledge of what it represents and why it became necessary.
I’ve now dug a little deeper, and found that quite a few people have proposed that incrementing Web 2.0 is a good idea, which is great – it might just catch on yet. Liam Breck mentions that Web 2.5 is already coined for “the fusion of web 2.0 tools with mobile tech” so its probably a good thing we steered clear of that. However, none of the posts that I read went into the same detail I’ve covered above:
Mon 3 Jul 2006
This is another post on my views on the EdTechTalk discussion (audio here and transcript here) recently between Stephen Downes and George Seimens about (among other things) views on objective and subjective knowledge and its impact on teaching (transfer of knowledge vs. connective learning). See this post for many more details and transcripts etc.
This discussion also asked the question: “What is the role/goal of education”? I agree that this is fundamentally important question, because we cannot hope to achieve this goal if we are not clear what the goal is. While I will not comment on what the role/goal of education is now, I would like to ‘remind’ people what the role of education was in the past – in the industrial age.
I have heard it said that the two goals of education in the industrial age were essentially:
This is particularly important because the current education system as we know it was actually instigated during the industrial age, supposedly to achieve the two goals outlined above. As we are still bound by this industrial age educational system, we should be aware of this, and aware of the goals it had in mind. We should seriously ask ourselves if they are the same goals that we have today, and if not, can the current educational system achieve our new goals?
The alternative is not a pretty picture. If we continue to use an education system designed to make human robots, what happens when these human robots become obsolete in favour of Chinese human robots and eventually, true blue robot robots?