EdTech

From an Op-Ed in the June 1 online edition of the NY Times by Brian Greene: Put a Little Science in Your Life

The entire piece is worth the read. If you are pressed for time and need to choose between reading this blog post and the article, choose the article.

Some excerpts that struck me as particularly relevant:

in teaching our students, we continually fail to activate rich opportunities for revealing the breathtaking vistas opened up by science, and instead focus on the need to gain competency with science’s underlying technical details.

In fact, many students I’ve spoken to have little sense of the big questions those technical details collectively try to answer: Where did the universe come from? How did life originate? How does the brain give rise to consciousness? Like a music curriculum that requires its students to practice scales while rarely if ever inspiring them by playing the great masterpieces, this way of teaching science squanders the chance to make students sit up in their chairs and say, “Wow, that’s science?”

and

At the root of this pedagogical approach is a firm belief in the vertical nature of science: you must master A before moving on to B.

In reading this, I was struck how applicable this is to most disciplines, and how the requirements of a system that uses high-stakes testing as a primary means for assessing mastery (and as the basis for funding/management decisions) squeezes out the time required for engaging students around a big-picture vision of a subject -- and how that subject really cannot be contained within curricular lines. While most subjects have a set of core competencies that allow for a greater exploration of the subject, the core competencies cannot be confused with the end goal.

Among the many benefits of open content, this feels like one of the most compelling: content that can be freely edited and redistributed allows a teacher to balance the core competencies against the big-picture understanding. If this learning is supported within a learning environment that supports student-directed inquiry, the information contained within an open curriculum could provide a supporting framework for student work. This type of blended learning environment (part online, part face to face; part teacher directed, part student directed) would allow shared focus on core competencies and larger questions.

Note: this is a comment that is currently in the moderation queue of the original blog.

Hello, Ken,

In reading through this post (as I did, a couple times) before replying, I was left wondering if you had actually read any of the posts you linked to. For example, you link to the post Authority is not truth — in this post, the author links to a very detailed analysis that debunks some blatant inaccuracies of a WaPo article. What is the matter with that? It’s an excellent model of critical thought. Read the article. Please.

RE: “These guys look intellectually and emotionally indistinguishable from their students.” — I don’t know what’s worse, the disdain this shows for students, or the pretension about the value of appearance.

This also flies in the face of your line in a recent comment: “You mentioned suits. I don’t wear ‘em.” — which flies directly in the face of your picture on your about page, which is of some guy (you?) in a coat and tie. Personally, I don’t care. But, since you brought it up… IMO, wisdom doesn’t need a fashion sense.

You also mention “Forty year old tenured men” — and this comment again raises the specter that you haven’t actually read the people you criticize. Who among them has tenure? (Hint: not many). Your generalizations diminish your credibility.

In your original post, you say, “Ultimately, however, I would not recommend that we politicize learning 2.0 and certainly not by reducing it to the level of of DIY culture.”

Then, in a comment, you say: “I also tried to post on your Half an Hour, but Blogspot is blocked here in China and I can’t comment through a proxy.”

This juxtaposition raises a couple thoughts: First, in the states, anyways, education is politicized. IMO, learning 2.0 is a useless expression that, like most labels (and I include edupunk as well, btw) reduces some useful ideas to bitesized pieces the marketing guys can sell — but that’s an entirely separate conversation. NCLB, net neutrality, the role of texbook companies in creating policy decisions — you’d need to be blind to deny that politics and economics haven’t played a role in shaping educational policy.

And then, you say that Blogspot is blocked in China. So how is it that blogspot is blocked? Feels a little political to me. Any impact/connection between learning/net neutrality/censorship?

Also, as you read the posts you link to, do you ever get the sense that maybe, just maybe, there’s a little tongue in cheek going on here? Maybe? Because, as the author of one of posts you link to, I feel pretty comfortable saying you missed it.

Cheers,

Bill

Over on his blog, Miguel Guhlin asks:

Anyone have suggestions on how to respond to this question? I welcome all brainstorming ideas...

We are ready to implement a student portal (with teacher and parent portals to follow) for our 1:1 campuses. We would like for this portal to be a web-based, searchable, "pretty"

While "pretty" is subjective, this is one place where spending a little time with either an ID or a graphic designer, or both, will benefit your site. "Pretty" has a frequently overlooked cousin, "Usability" -- sorting out your navigational structures (done in Drupal using the core block and menu items), and making sure your theme enhances these architectural decisions, will often get you both Pretty and Usable, which is a winning combination. Starting with a solid base theme, like Zen, helps you theme your site in a time-efficient way, particularly if you and your team are learning how to design/theme in Drupal. Drupal can be themed pretty effectively via css alone; if you have someone on staff who can work in php, there really isn't much you can't do. Also, if there is one element you decide to outsource, the theme is a pretty good choice.

container for all of the learning materials that we've purchased and/or created for students, including audio books, legal MP3 music files,

The Audio module -- it can generate iTunes compliant feeds, has an embedded flash player, and can be used to create playlists.

clip art, videos and animations,

The Embedded Media Field module (used along with Content Construction Kit, or CCK) allows you to embed and play media from within your site, and embed videos from external sites, such as the Internet Archives/etc. If you want more robust video handling (ie, something that will convert various formats into flv video) use the Media Mover or the FlashVideo modules. In very general terms, Media Mover is designed to work as a media processor with a full harvest --> process --> store workflow; FlashVideo works in a similar way, but has scaled down flexibility for storing media on external locations. Either FlashVideo or Media Mover will get you a site that, to the end user, feels like a YouTube clone.

For most cases, Embedded Media Field does all that's needed.

documents, presentations, and such.

For images, use ImageField (along with CCK), Imagecache (for on the fly scaling of images) and Lightbox2 (for a clean image gallery functionality). This combination will let you store full size originals while generating thumbnails and scaled down versions of the image, and displaying the images inside a clean gallery, all from one upload.

For documents, the easiest thing is probably a content type where you upload files. If you are uploading pdfs/word docs/ppts/etc you can create a text description to simplify finding the doc via searching. If you want to get into coding, there are ways you can extract text from various other formats and expose that to the search index, but that is an added level of complexity that, depending on your goals, may or may not be worth it.

Edit, March 29, 2008
For Drupal 6, it looks like there is now a module for this -- the Search Files module "allows searching through the text of PDF, MS Word, plain text, and other types of files in given directories of the server."
End Edit

We have all of these now on a shared server on our Windows network and the students can access them fine. However, it is not easily searchable and does not provide a way to include a description of each resource, along with other pertinent information (thumbnail sketch, Lexile reading level, etc.).

For each of the resources listed above, you can include full text descriptions, alongside controlled keywords (for things like lexile level, etc), alongside freetag folksonomies (a la delicious). Additionally, using CCK, you can create custom forms/storage mechanisms via the web browser, without writing a single line of code.

And, using the Views module (bascially a web-based query builder/display tool) you can choose how/to whom/where/when you display your data, and filter on keywords.

We have looked at several "document management" solutions, but I don't really feel like they are as broad as what we would like to use. We've also looked at Microsoft SharePoint

Ahh, Sharepoint. Recoil from the functionality; run screaming from the expense :)

, but are frightened by how expensive it is on both a one-time and a recurring basis. We have a Moodle server already, but this doesn't seem to really fit well there as we are not interested in running "classes" right now.

Within Drupal, you could also allow specific users (as defined by role) to create informal working groups using Organic Groups. These groups can be fully public (both in content and enrollment), fully private, or some mixture in between.

Drupal also gives you tools for flagging inappropriate content, setting up publishing workflows (allowing, for example, a submission --> review --> edit --> publish workflow for a newspaper/magazine), setting up private content between users, setting up social networking, online portfolios, etc, etc, etc.

Since some of these materials are purchased and so have user limits, we would also need for this system to use Active Directory to authenticate our users.

LDAP Integration module.

What are you using to run your student learning portals? How is it working? How much did you have to spend up front?

Everything I have listed here is freely available on drupal.org.

• Combined cost, Purchase and Licensing: 0
• License Renewal Fees: 0
• Pricing structure based on number of users: none -- as many users as you want.

I could go on...

Like any system, Drupal has a learning curve, and this is also an area where getting outside help to streamline building internal capacity can save you person-hours, and therefore money. When working with an outside person, always make sure there is a mechanism for archiving the content of these trainings, so that the process of training also jumpstarts the process of creating a body of documentation about your system.

How much maintenance is required?

Server maintenance is pretty standard, and I'd recommend a LAMP stack. For the Drupal codebase, I'd plan on 1-2 hours a month for module upgrades. These can generally be scheduled, and the upgrade process can be made fairly painless by setting up three sites: your production site (the one where everybody is working); your QA site (the one where you experiment); and your backup verification site (where you make sure that your backups work). The QA and the backup site can be run on the LAN, on a pretty anemic machine.

Feel free to ping back with any questions.

I received this email today:

Has Technology Improved Your Home-to-School Connection?

ISTE’s magazine, Learning & Leading with Technology, wants your opinion.

If you would like to share your thoughts on this topic, reply to this e-mail with a 25–50 word response by March 31.

We’re going to select 6–8 of the best comments we receive (attributing them with name, affiliation, city, and state) and publish them in the May issue of L&L.

Not sure? Read the opinion of two other education professionals in the February edition of Point/Counterpoint in L&L on the Web: http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/LLIssues/Volume_35_2007_2008_/FebruaryNo5/35508g.pdf

Comments (25–50 words):
Name:
Affiliation:
City:
State:

We really appreciate your participation!
Kind regards,

Paul Wurster
Assistant Editor
Learning & Leading with Technology magazine
International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE)
Eugene, Oregon (USA)
541.434.8941 www.iste.org

Here's my opinion. And no, I'm not going to respond via email. This is 2008. And no, I'm not really motivated by having my words included in your magazine. Again, this is 2008. I can publish my ideas really easily. And by avoiding print publications, we conserve paper resources.

Here is the email I would like to receive:

As part of ISTE's Open Access Journals, we want to hear your opinion. We're currrently talking about if and how technology has improved your Home-to-School connection. Follow this link to join the conversation!

Is it actually possible to be "Learning and Leading with Technology" when you're harvesting information via text-based email surveys? Why not model some of what is possible? This doesn't feel like leadership; rather, this feels like a mechanism to simulate community in the service of a dated content publishing model.

I probably exceeded the 50 word limit. My bad.

A few more things to look into:

It looks like RDF is coming to Drupal. This has some interesting implications for learning spaces, and doing things that you just can't do in Blackboard.

And here, some very interesting thoughts on using OpenID and FOAF as anti-spam tools. Looks like you and your friends can get together and whup up on the spammers after all.

Over at weblogg-ed, Will Richardson has a post about, among other things, how teachers are increasingly networked outside their district, but not inside their district. As I see it, this is a pretty natural progression, and one that can be loosely compared to how people understood and used the web.

To paraphrase and expand on my comment on his blog:

From Will's post:

But one thing (again) that has really been sticky from EduConn was the idea that local connections support local culture (as well as a few other things, such as leadership, of course) and vice versa.

In many ways, this mirrors how the web itself was understood, and how use of the web developed. Initially, you had large companies creating user silos tied together with an internet connection -- anyone remember Compuserve? Then, people fled these companies and started working on the "real" web, and built sites to connect with "the world" -- Then, as more and more people gained experience on the web, we saw a shift in focus, and people started building web sites to connect with their Neighborhood Association, or specifically for their apartment building -- sites like Craigslist show the power of micropresences, or sites with an intensely local focus.

I sense the same type of pendulum swing in education -- as people get more accustomed to the presence of the tools, the focus will switch to local use. Not surprisingly, this dovetails with work happening around interoperability fueled by open standards, and a safe secure means of maintaining an identity on the web that has grassroots support, as well as support from some of the major players --

I saw this earlier today over at groups.drupal.org --

Kyle Matthews and Clint Rogers built a Drupal site in suppport of a web analytics class. The site aggregates student blogs and expert blogs; this way, everyone blogs from their chosen blogging platform, and their feed gets imported into the course site. In other words, people use whatever blogging tool they are currently using, and the software running the course (in this case, Drupal) adapts to the participant. This is a nice contrast to the usual approach, where all participants must adapt to the structure required by the LMS.

The site was built using the FeedAPI and the Feed Element Mapper. We have talked about organizing classes and building Open Educational Repositories like this in the past, and our main proof of concept site has been humming along for the last few months with no issues at all.

There has been some great development behind the FeedAPI; just last week, the folks over at Development Seed put out another screencast showing how they are extending the functionality even further.

Earlier today, Drupal core was upgraded to version 5.6. This is a security release, and all users should upgrade.

For users with existing DrupalEd installs, you only need to upgrade core Drupal -- you do not need to use this specific package.

For new users to DrupalEd, this is the package for you.

Download it here to get started!

Over at the Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht has posted a series of questions and answers related to the hiring process.

At the outset, Jeff states:

You will notice that my list says absolutely nothing about integrating technology or how the teacher uses technology in his/her classroom. No, this list focuses directly on the skill set and the tools these teachers use for their own learning.

My immediate question, of course, is: why? But we'll get to this in more detail later.

The hiring process has always fascinated me, as it is a frequently overlooked element of maintaining the strength and vitality of an organization. I thought I knew something about hiring until, a few years back, I had the good fortune to be hired by -- and work for -- Trish King. Trish has since gone on to become the head of The Island School, and if you're reading this you know what happened to me, but much of what I describe in this post is influenced by what I learned from Trish. My experience working with her helped me become aware of the potential to have the hiring process accomplish more than just hiring great people. Hiring is an opportunity for a school to refine and revisit its priorities; thus, the hiring process, if done well, can serve as a reality check for how well a school is accomplishing its mission.

Back at the Thinking Stick, Jeff's questions are rooted in a specific context, that of finding teachers capable of and excited about using technology in their teaching:

Hiring teacher that do not get excited about teaching in a new networked space will not help to move any information literacy focused school forward.

Jeff breaks his questions down into 4 categories:

• Basic User -- this section deals with 4 specific programs (all Microsoft: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Publisher), and email.
• The Average User -- the 2 questions in this section deal with information literacy and internet filtering
• The Web 2.0 Teacher -- this section consists of 4 questions about various forms of participation/interaction within online communities. Blog readership, RSS, Google groups, etc.
• Teacher 2.0 -- the questions in this section play to some of the commonly repeated memes of the blogosphere: the rapidly changing world, the coolness of new gadgets, and informal learning

There is some great stuff here, but also some things that should be jettisoned. All of the questions in the Basic User section fall into the "Jettison" category. If I interview anybody in 2008 (heck, if I interviewed anybody in 2005) who possessed and publicized superb Publisher skills I would wonder why they had spent time learning a tool that could be replaced by competent word processing software for most needs, and would need to be replaced by real publishing software for complex needs. In attempting to gauge the technical proficiency of teachers, I usually ask one question: How do you use technology to streamline preparing your course curriculum?

This question allows for a couple details to emerge: it focuses on how tools are used; it reveals what tools are used, and when; it allows the interviewee to talk about their teaching, which in turn reveals details about their philosphy of teaching. A good answer to this question also could how the candidate connects with kids.

Also, the original question focuses on software released by a specific company -- in this case, Microsoft. This narrow focus sets too low a bar.

Interviews provide an opportunity for two-way communications on multiple levels. The stated purpose of an interview -- to allow a school and a candidate to learn more about each other -- only scratches the surface. Interviews offer a chance for the school to engage in word of mouth PR -- most teachers have a network of colleagues, and we talk, and a positive or negative impression gets shared. Interviews should also be viewed as learning experiences for both sides: whenever you have a set of educational professionals in the room, you have a group of people who have something to learn from one another. Additionally, interview questions can be guided -- in some ways a form of teaching with the test (with a hat tip to Eric Hoefler). This is why I like to ask questions that require an answer based in a practical application. As an example, having a candidate self-assess Word proficiency doesn't tell me much, but hearing about a lesson that a candidate prepared using OpenOffice in order to not further Digital Divide issues gives me insight into their pedagogy. And, if a candidate hasn't been using technology in this way, a guided question can serve as a wake up call that, perhaps, they should.

The Average User questions include a great question on Internet filtering. The final two sections -- The Web 2.0 Teacher and Teacher 2.0 -- are designed to gauge a teacher's familiarity with social networks/informal learning. However, questions asking about RSS readers, specific tools that create online communities, and a teachers most recent gadget sidestep the point: we want to find people that are creative. We want to find people who, in the pursuit of knowledge, aren't afraid to fail. We want to find people who can articulate their learning process. And, because we are talking about hiring teachers, we need to find people with the above qualities who want to teach and model these traits for kids.

Technological skills can be taught. Intellectual curiosity, to an extent; but caring about kids -- not so much. I don't care if someone gets excited about an iPhone -- because, I mean, have you seen some of the folks excited about the iPhone, or [fill in the name of gadget/service du jour here]? -- All the gadgets/technological interventions in the world won't elevate mediocre teaching.

And this is where we veer away -- at least temporarily -- from the discussion on hiring.

So, let's take as a given that one goal of the hiring process is to identify candidates with a propensity toward lifelong learning. Lifelong learning implies a network of fellow learners, or what many people now refer to as the social network. Tools don't create our social networks. Tools give us different ways to keep track of them, and different ways to contact them, and different ways to share information with them, but the ability to leverage the power of the social network should not be confused with the social network itself.

I find a comparable and related lack of clarity in much of the discussion around Personal Learning Environments (or, as Chris Lott accurately coins, Personal Living Environments). We all have our Personal Learning/Living Environment -- it's what we see when we open our eyes in the morning. A technological tool helps us organize it, and a great technological tool will allow us to create additional connections that further our learning. The technological tool many of us are working towards would allow easy export/import of swaths of our learning that we have stored online -- and its worth noting that open source tools allow for more portability than any of the proprietary Nings/Facebooks/etc curently out there. The promise of the technologically-mediated PLE is the promise of a tool that tracks, supports, and expands our personal learning -- and, I would argue, by extension, our quality of life.

And this is where we return to hiring: technology use has little to do with just using technology, and everything to do with connecting people with people, and people with ideas. This is doubly true when examining effective use of technology within education. I have heard the memes/arguments outlining the case that change is occurring rapidly, and at unprecedented rates. These also miss the point. Technology succeeds when it is invisible, and when it is taken for granted. If, in our hiring process, we separate technology use from teaching, the current paradigm will remain unchanged, and this will always be funny. Technology integration will have succeeded to a degree when someone can make one of these about a PLE.

Until that point, though, questions and statements about "the world of tomorrow" ring a bit hollow, and the role of technology in that equation feels overblown. The more relevant question is how we can model behavior that allows students to use tomorrow's technology to address the issues of our very distant, recent, and ongoing cultural evolution. While the technology around us changes quickly, human nature remains remarkably consistent -- across time, across cultures, and across levels of technological complexity.

In looking back on this, we've come a fair distance from your average job interview, but that's okay, because most job interviews are just dog and pony shows when they could be so much more. If these things matter -- and if you're still reading at this point, I'm betting you're either a bored insomniac, or that this does matter to you -- then we need to clarify our terms. In trying to wrap this post up -- which is what I've been trying to do for the last several paragraphs, with no luck -- I've been trying to figure out why Jeff's post struck a chord with me. I guess it comes down to this: in the teachers I have worked with, I have had a large amount of success teaching them how to use technology. However, I have also met teachers who were incredibly intelligent, competent in their subject areas, intellectually curious, but who didn't like kids. Some of these teachers were very competent with technology, but it didn't matter. You can teach technology, but you can't teach people to care. As this relates to the hiring process, I'd much rather filter on finding people who care about kids more than they care about gadgets. A caring educator and an informed technologist aren't mutually exclusive, but we need to start talking about them as things that go hand in hand.

I’m writing these ideas out quickly -- there are sure to be holes in this, and gaps in this reasoning -- please point them out in the comments.

For some context on this post, see these two threads on Dan Meyer's blog.

Users working with online lessons will generally fall into at least one of the following categories:

1. People searching for lesson ideas (probably the majority)
2. People already creating content on their own blogs (a growing number of folks, but still a very small percentage, compared to people in category 1, or even teacher-bloggers)
3. People looking for a place to create content (people who want to create blogs, etc -- I have no idea how many people fall into this category, but I’d imagine that if people, particularly younger teachers, saw the benefit they would have some amazing things to contribute)
4. People who will find lessons on another site, edit/revise those lessons for use in their class, and republish the updated content on their own site
5. People who will edit/revise content on someone else’s site (ie, wiki-style) -- the majority of these people would probably be very committed to the ideals of Open Educational Resources (OERs), have part of their professional responsibilities include curriculum development, or have some other type of immediate personal connection to a learning community. These people would probably be the ones to make the greatest use of any social networking features within the site

Produce --> Share --> Reuse --> Remix -- where does influence fit in? The influence of shared lessons, and the role that influence can have in helping a teacher develop and revise their existing materials, should not be overlooked.

Most working teachers do not have the time to collaborate online with other teachers to create freely available resources. Most of the teachers I talk to barely have time to engage in that type of collaboration within their own schools, let alone within an online/social networking context. Most teachers, even the ones currently blogging their lessons, do not have the free time to join another site and learn another system, even if there are long-term benefits. Teacher time needs to be respected, which is why any system that mandates a teacher use a new tool to participate will lose a good number of potential contributors due to that barrier to entry.

Here is what I propose -- and what I have partially built, here: http://threeclicks.org/lessons

1. A site that aggregates lessons already being published online. This way, any teacher currently blogging lessons doesn’t need to change a single thing about how they work. If they want to make it easier, they can choose to tag any lessons with a unique keyword, like “lesson” -- this would allow us (in most cases, anyways) to aggregate posts in that specific keyword.
2. All imported lessons are full-text searchable, and, when possible, tagged with keywords that describe the lessons
3. Organize the lessons by content area
4. Possibly, add in rating mechanisms to allow site members to rate content
5. All posts imported into the site can be printed via a print-friendly page, and exported via rss.
6. As a further development, possibly create a mechanism where site users could clone and revise imported content, or create new lessons to be published within the site. This lesson development would leverage content already created and imported into the site, or could be used by interested people to develop learning resources from scratch. For this type of curricular planning, we could incorporate wiki-type functionality.
7. As noted by David Rothstein here, we could incorporate a “request a lesson” feature

What is missing? Please add any necessary details/suggestions in the comments.