High Schools at the Tipping Point - The Role of Data May 16, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Data, Opinion.add a comment
Nice article from Educational Leadership on the current state of high schools. Some of the background information is very helpful. I appreciate the historical perspective when trying to understand complex issues.
When the “modern” high school system was established in the early 20th century, only 10 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds attended high school (National Center for Education Statistics, 2006). It wasn’t until 1918 that all states required children to attend elementary school; in that era, a high school education was a luxury afforded only to upper-income families.
The article goes on to describe three approaches for reform, (1) align what schools expect of students with the demands of college and the workforce, (2) offer a rigorous, option-rich curriculum; personalize learning; and provide necessary supports, and (3) improve instruction by mining data and using digital technologies. The article isn’t real clear about what digital technologies are, or how they might improve instruction other than the role played by data. However, data is not information.
In order for data to inform our instruction, many factors have to be in place.
First, time is of the essence. Teachers don’t have enough of it, so asking them to do the data mining work without enough training (also a time issue) is asking a lot.
Second, data alone isn’t enough. The link from data to teaching is complex. The data has to be interpreted in order to be informative and prescriptive. Do we really know enough about how the individual child is learning to say that a specific result on an assessment or observed progress indicator should require a specific intervention?
Third, time is still of the essence. The time between the assessment or observation and the intervention needs to be measured in seconds, not minutes or hours or days or weeks, or in the case of standardized tests, in months. The time to help a student learn is at the point where the learning is not taking place, not at a time after the assessment is taken, the scan sheets are turned in, the assessments are scored, the results are returned, the committee meets to review the results, the plan is formed about intervention, and the instruction is delivered.
I’m all for informing the craft of our teaching, but it has to meet the needs of the instructor in the classroom, and more importantly, it has to meet the needs of the learner.
Citizen Journalism - Twitter Style May 12, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
SmartMobs has a nice collection of information on how the recent earthquake in China was covered by individuals using Twitter. This is an interesting example of how individuals are informing others of significant events in a way that traditional media has a difficult time in replicating in terms of speed, usability, and proximity to the actual events. Some will quite rightly question the validity of the information being posted. With the amount of content and the variety of media delivery available, our students definitely need to be better equipped to find and evaluate information. That applies equally to citizen journalism as it does to more traditional outlets of news and content.
http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/05/12/china-earthquake/
Blogging Encourages Writing - Who Knew? May 6, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
eSchool News is reporting that a recent Pew Internet study revealed a link between writing attitudes, habits, amounts, and blogging. I’m not surprised by the results, but what I’d really like to know is if the act of blogging instills a positive writing value, or if those kids that already have a positive writing value are they just more likely to make use of a modern means of publishing their writing by blogging.
Top News - Blogging helps encourage teen writing
Inclusion - Cuban Style May 3, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Net Neutrality, Opinion.add a comment
CNET News is reporting that Cuba is allowing individuals to buy home computers. While we might find this a little odd, think of your home, and how different it might be if you were not allowed to own a computer, or (also recently allowed in Cuba) couldn’t purchase a cell phone. I think it is important for everyone to be included in the on-going conversation that is the Internet, and am glad to see that a close neighbor will finally get a better chance to be included. If any voice is to have value in the conversation, then ultimately all voices must have the opportunity to be heard.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9935007-7.html
Innovation Pixar Style May 3, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
I love animated movies, and especially those from Pixar. So I was very interested when a note came up in my RSS reader about a Brad Bird interview. In the excerpts of the interview presented by GigaOM, many of them apply well to education and thinking about the classroom in new ways. I see innovation as a good way to describe what I believe about education. Here are a couple of samples.
Lesson Four: Innovation Doesn’t happen in a VacuumThe Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team?Brad Bird: I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person… I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together…
Seems like a great description for setting up group work. It also sounds like a view of assessment that is counter to the current classroom norm. Instead of papers graded in isolation, everyone is grading everyone because the point of the learning is to do the best with the task at hand. Of course that also means we need to rethink the task.
Lesson Six: Dont Try To “Protect your success”The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. … “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”
I’ve tried to describe this before and don’t think I’ve done it justice, but too often education is stuck thinking about doing the job the way we’ve already done it instead of trying to make the impossible possible.There are also examples of lessons from the interview that have no easy corollary to the classroom. Lesson Eight is ‘Get Rid of Weak Links’ which refers to removing passive-aggressive people from the team. When we work with students in public education, you can’t just fire a student from your room.Check out the interview excerpts and the whole interview if you have time. Also, think about how focusing on innovation informs the practice of teaching, of how together, you and your students can be the smartest person in the world.http://gigaom.com/2008/04/17/pixars-brad-bird-on-fostering-innovation/
Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web April 30, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
The World Wide Web turned 15 today! In honor of the event, the BBC has put up short responses from 10 of the Web’s brightest in which they provide their views on where we go from here. Worth the read.
Let me first say that I am extremely optimistic. - SIR TIM BERNERS LEE
Where do I think the Web is headed? I think the Web is already finding its way into many more devices and providing many more services. Devices that are location aware begin to create social networks of devices, and not just people, although the people networks will continue to be the most visible. What will people-independent networks do? I don’t know, but I hope they take good care of us! Where do you think the Web is heading?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7373717.stm
Necessary Ingredients Part 5 - Overcoming Success April 22, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Opinion.add a comment
I’ve been thinking about this one for a long time. There are many voices calling for change, but change is slow in coming if it is coming at all. One reason for the lack of change in the educational world is the belief that as educators, we are mostly successful practitioners of our craft. Fortunately, this is partly true. While the generalization can’t be applied with even brush strokes for all teachers, most teachers deliver their curriculum, their students complete most of the assignments, and in the end, there is some growth, even if it is no more than a student might affect with any concerted intervention on anyone else’s part.
It is that modest success that keeps us from adopting new techniques, strategies, goals, and technologies. In order to provide a thriving 21st Century technology-infused learning environment, we (as educators) must not rely on moderate success. Treading water isn’t enough to keep up with the pace of change in the world around us. The ability to feel uncomfortable with doing ‘good enough’ needs to be an integral component of our approach to a life dedicated to teaching and learning.
I’m going to have to think critically about my own practices. I hope the following questions will be helpful to me in identifying where I’ve settled for ‘good enough’ instead of preparing for what’s next.
- What do I believe about how learners learn?
- What can others see in the craft of my teaching that expresses my philosophy of education?
- What did I learn today, and what impact should it have on my teaching tomorrow?
- What am I doing to regularly seek out new information, concepts, ideas, opinions, and the voices of others?
- How much time did I spend in reflection on what I did today?
- When did I say ‘no’ today and why?
In case you missed them, here are links to the previous four ingredients.
- http://villagegreen.edublogs.org/2007/11/02/necessary-ingredients-part-1-access/
- http://villagegreen.edublogs.org/2007/11/05/necessary-ingredients-part-2-neutral-internet/
- http://villagegreen.edublogs.org/2007/11/14/necessary-ingredients-part-3-wireless/
- http://villagegreen.edublogs.org/2008/01/22/necessary-ingredients-part-4-identity/
Shift Happened April 22, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.1 comment so far
Stephanie Sandifer, on LeaderTalk and Change Agency, posted a nice article on what to do once the realization has been made that something must change in education in response to the shift in the world around us that has already taken place. She does a nice job of moving the discussion from tools (what to buy) to people. Stephanie identifies everyone on campus, teacher, administrators, etc. as learners, and I agree with the assertion:
If we are serious about changing our learning environments so that our students leave fully prepared for life and work in a globally connected and collaborative environment, then we are definitely going to be moving the cheese of many people in our organizations — it won’t be easy and we can’t wait for all of the state and federal policies and mandates to catch up before we take action.
Stephanie goes on to point out that traditional methods of distributing change in educational systems, such as committees and pilot programs, are just too slow. She calls on the early adopters to virally spread change. While this is effective among the early adopter set, I don’t think this approach will impact those in the later (and larger) adopter groups. Unfortunately, I don’t have a suggestion for a better way to spread change, especially in educational institutions.
Stephanie does a great job of identifying roadblocks, such as tolerance toward technophobic attitudes and sufficient infrastructure. Some of these same elements I’ve written about in the ocassional ‘Necessary Ingredients’ series. On a side note, the post is nicely annotated with helpful links. Link to the article below:
$100 Laptop - Software Only - Jooce Style March 30, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, OLPC, Opinion, Tools.1 comment so far
Business Week has an interesting article about Jooce. It is a virtual desktop that allows a single access point to be used by many individuals. They make their money through advertising, but it removes the need for each user to have their own hardware or network connection. There are other solutions in this space, some of which I have bookmarked in del.icio.us and tagged as webOS. http://del.icio.us/mwoolums/webOS. I hadn’t thought of web OS solutions in this context, and am not sure how this solves much for classroom use, because you still need equipment, whether it is a lab with one computer for each child, or a mini-lab where students work in small groups or as part of a rotation. Still, in places where there may only be a few access points or limited disk space, virtual (online) desktops make sense.
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/mar2008/gb20080325_844094.htm
Alltop Needs More Tools March 29, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Opinion, Tools.1 comment so far
I’ve noticed a few mentions for Alltop lately. It is sort of a mashup of RSS feeds and a search directory. It has general categories for things like Culture and Geekery, with sub categories for Design, Gadgets, and so forth. Alltop is really handy to see the top sites for the categories in which you are interested.
Alltop is helpful in several ways. For one, it lets you find sources of influence. Finding who to follow, whose voice to listen to in the sea of information, is an exercise critical thinking, and Alltop helps by identifying those voices who are speaking with enough clarity for others to listen. Alltop also assists in bringing focus. By clicking on the link for a sub category, you find yourself with a simplified list of posts from each top site. Each item is a link to that specific article, blog, or tweet. As an RSS aggregator, it does a great job of reducing clutter.
Alltop could be even more helpful in a couple of ways. Sometimes even a plain listing of what is posted can be confusing and intimidating. Taking a look at the twitter collection, I find it takes a lot of time to read through everything just in case I might miss something. A tag cloud would be very helpful, collecting key words and displaying them by size. Sometimes I just want to get a sense for what people are talking about, and that would let me focus better on the specifics in which I might be interested.
Alltop could also open up to users and allow them to create their own categories, both private and shared. I’ve always thought the best suggestions came from word-of-mouth sources. Alltop could easily be a source for my own Alltop stories, the voices I listen to, the suggestions of other voices to which I should listen. I know there are other tools for providing exposure, like Digg, but those tend to get dominated by a few noisy contributors. Alltop brings the simplicity of Google to a sea of feeds, tweets, blogs, and so forth. I just want it to be even better.
Bebo Fighters March 28, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in 21st-Century, Articles/Videos, Opinion.add a comment
The BBC is reporting the arrest of six teenagers after they used the online social networking site Bebo. This is a story because it illustrates that kids can be very resourceful and are likely to use online resources as a daily part of their lives. This isn’t a story because kids organizing a fight by talking in the hallway or meeting up in neighborhoods just isn’t interesting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/derbyshire/7318816.stm
Net Neutrality Update for March 2008 March 22, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Net Neutrality, Opinion.add a comment
I haven’t mentioned Net Neutrality for a while, but in case you were wondering, it is still an important issue. If you are a little unsure about what Net Neutrality is, imagine that everyone in the US is receiving a service, and then that service provider decides to change the rules and charge people based on different ways that service might be used. If your electrical service provider decided today that they would charge extra for connecting solar energy devices in your home, that would be a deterrent to moving to alternative energy sources, right? What if they also decided to charge extra if you wanted to watch TV shows that argued against your right to use solar powered devices? That wouldn’t sit so comfortably, would it? Take it one step further and this service provider makes could make it financially almost impossible to purchase any devices that were not manufactured by them. Suddenly you are locked into a system that determines what you can do with the service instead of working for you.
Now I’m not saying that the electrical company is doing that, but your Internet service provider might be. Did you know that “nearly 99 percent of all residential connections are provided by incumbent cable or phone companies” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/americas-internet-future_b_92763.html?) Your cable company already decides which channels you have access to on your TV. Do you also want them to decide which Internet sites you have access to on your computer or cell phone? That is an essential question to Net Neutrality.
Earlier this year, Verizon and AT&T plunked down a combined $16.3 billion for the largest blocks of licenses to use the public spectrum up for sale on the “700 band.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/americas-internet-future_b_92763.html)
This means that a limited resource to provide Internet access was just sold to those same few limited companies that already make decisions about who does get access, and potentially what those subscribers are allowed to do with their access.Another part of Net Neutrality has to do with access. Many urban areas have considered (or have already started providing) free or reduced cost wireless access. In some places, this effort is falling short because there just isn’t enough profit for the providers.
EarthLink announced on Feb. 7 that “the operations of the municipal Wi-Fi assets were no longer consistent with the company’s strategic direction.” Philadelphia officials say they are not sure when or if the promised network will now be completed.For Cesar DeLaRosa, 15, however, the concern is more specific. He said he was worried about his science project on global warming.“If we don’t have Internet, that means I’ve got to take the bus to the public library after dark, and around here, that’s not always real safe,” Cesar said, seated in front of his family’s new computer in a gritty section of Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. His family is among the 1,000 or so low-income households that now have free or discounted Wi-Fi access through the city’s project, and many of them worry about losing access that they cannot otherwise afford (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/22wireless.html.)
This means that our friendly ISP is already limiting who can participate in this great social collaboration experiment. It isn’t all hopeless though. Even the ISPs have to account for market forces.
Prices for Internet service on the broader market also began dropping to a level that, while above what many poor people could afford, was below what municipal Wi-Fi providers were offering, so the companies had to lower their rates even further, making investment in infrastructure even more risky, he said (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/22wireless.html.)
So what’s next? The issue of Net Neutrality is still being debated. Legislation is working its way through congress (http://www.whereabill.org/#110_s215.) The FCC is holding meetings (http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/03/20/18487350.php There are even things you can do to participate in this on-going debate (http://www.savetheinternet.com/=faq#help.) Your voice is important, but only as long as others have the ability to hear you.
This article was inspired by a single twitter from Will Richardson.
Voiceless Speech March 13, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Hardware, Opinion.add a comment
Techcrunch has posted a video about a new technology called voiceless communication. This is a fascinating technology that has the ability to do both great good and potentially a great deal of harm. On the positive side, those who are not able to produce recognizable speech would no longer be excluded from any voice-related activities. Imagine a world where no one knows what the word ‘mute’ means except in the context of a cell phone or TV.
One potential use for the technology that is demonstrated in the video is the ability to carry on phone conversations without anyone else hearing your end of the conversation. I can see the positive in that as well.
On the other hand (there is always an other hand) the ability to conduct conversations undetected means that students would be able to communicate with each other without any restrictions. Just imagine the cheating possibilities! We’ll have to install jamming devices in schools in order to prevent students from talking to each other.
Turn that around, and you have the ability to listen in on anyone who might be subvocalizing. This seems just one step away from reading someone’s mind. Once we are all fitted with an RFID chip to keep track of where we are, that same chip, or another one, might also be tracking our words, both internal and spoken.
Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the voiceless communication effort and think it should continue. There is much more to be gained in terms of removing barriers for a marginalized segment of society than there is a theoretical danger of the loss of privacy. Still, I think this is a good example of the normal development of technology. There is a problem, and someone provides a technical solution. That solution necessarily comes with its own set of problems, and very little thought is given to those new problems because in most cases we don’t know what they are until the solution is in place.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/13/the-future-of-voice-may-be-voiceless/
Hulu March 12, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Articles/Videos, Opinion, Tools.add a comment
Hulu is out of private beta and open to anyone. I’ve never been a big proponent of commercial TV in the classroom, but I do see this site as a sign of the times. TV as we know it started a long slow decline with the introduction of cable. The Internet is only accelerating the transition of TV to something different. I’m not sure what the future of video will be, but it does seem to be moving toward massive amounts of content of mostly lower quality (like YouTube.) The new Internet is characterized by the long tail after all. Still, it is nice to see some old SciFi shows like The Time Tunnel and relive some of my childhood.
Twitter Reflection #4 March 11, 2008
Posted by Matthew Woolums in Opinion.add a comment
I’ve noticed that I’m now checking my RSS feeds less than I used to BT, or before Twitter. I don’t think it is because I’m getting my most of the news from there, although there is a fair amount of that, but I do think there is a certain threshold for absorbing information. I can only accommodate so much information at a time, and Twitter certainly compresses that information flow by increasing the pace, quantity, and number of participants. By the way, I’m experimenting with time-stamping this article since I’m on overload already and wanted to see how it worked to write a post that appears on its own in the morning.
