PhDCommunity :: Blog

So you may have noticed things have been a bit quiet on this Eduspaces site as of late. I just came back from a much needed vacation and am feeling renewed, refreshed, and revived (the ocean air can do that for you).

I am starting out a new school year teaching two sections of an undergraduate education course titled Integrating Technology into the Secondary Curriculum. The course is a requirement for those students minoring in education and who are thinking about teaching students at the secondary level (US grades 6-12; ages 11-18). As I work through putting together a meaningful experience for all involved, I will be sharing ideas, observations and reflections about the course, the students, and other items as they arise.

One item I am keen on sharing is a new weblog I've been working on. I have always wanted to write a book about metaphors associated with learning and teaching. The catch is, I didn't want to write it in the conventional sense. I wanted "the book" to be a jumping off point, a picture book, designed to spark conversation, reflection, and debate. I wanted the book to be fluid, dynamic, editable on the fly, allowing me to add images as I find them. Perhaps a wiki might be a better option in terms of organizing content in a more user friendly way. On the other hand, I like the notion of simply browsing and viewing images at random. Please let me know what you think.

Finally, I am happy to announce that I have outlined my dissertation and have begun the blissful task of writing up the first complete draft. I should have this completed in about six week. I am standing here beside myself with happiness and cannot wait to share the results with you. Stay tuned!

 

 Image: play station

 

http://www.distance-educator.com/dnews/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&

While conversation may indeed be king, meaningful conversation requires that we check to see whether the king is wearing any clothes.

In my research on using social or participatory media applications to support substantive educator knowledge development, it is clear conversation or professional talk is a powerful element or factor that can lead to deeper knowledge and understanding of one's practice (Hargreaves, A., 1994).

In my initial examination of participant posts and comments within an online professional learning community designed to support knowledge building among geographically separated participants, I have noticed that conversations fall into two general categories with some occasional subtle overlappings. In general conversations in the online learning community fall into two types: thin and thick.

Thin conversations are those that provide little in terms of reflection, feedback,  expansion and or examination of the initial ideas presented. Thin conversations suggest the emperor is threadbare and thus offers no redeeming substance or value (i.e., the conversation is powerless).

Thick conversations offer not only the thoughts and ideas of the participant but they build and expand upon thoughts shared from the initial post. Thick conversations also provide a sense of deeper reflection and emotional cues that offer insight into the participant's sense of self. Thick conversations are not necessarily verbose; they can be short, triggering statements that lend themselves to deeper reflection and deeper contemplation. Thick conversations are the robes and raiment that make conversation king.

In my initial analysis, where these two categories overlap is where conversation may be thin, but attached resources and artifacts associated with the thin conversation are thick and rich. There are multiple examples within my study that show participants offering little in terms of content-rich, back-and-forth dialogue and conversation, yet attach multiple rich resources or artifacts to their post that serve all participants in the community exceedingly well. The conversation is thin, but the knowledge and value associated with the post appears to outweigh the apparent veneer.

Perhaps, this requires a clearer definition of what conversation in a social media supported environment affords participants. Clearly, meaningful dialogue and written exchange can be valuable to knowledge development. Yet conversation can also trigger references to artifacts outside the immediate conversation that can also provide additional meaning and value. Given that the platform being used to serve and support conversation in this instance also allows the exchange of physical artifacts, conversations can be thin in initial substance and thick with associated attached resources.

Hmmmm....

Your thoughts and feedback are clearly warranted!

 

Reference:
Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers' work and culture in the post-modern age. New York: Teachers College Press.

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2008/08/01/smart-technologies-whiteboar

I learned today from Josh Pearce that Smart Technologies has changed their whiteboard software installation requirements. For the past few years I’ve been using electronic whiteboard technologies and collecting sources of free as well as commercial digital curriculum sources for teachers appropriate for digital whiteboards, Smart Technologies has been permitting downloads of their Smartboard technology software, and NOT requiring a registration code or product serial number to install and activate the software. This has been a HUGE benefit to many schools, particularly those which “image” large numbers of computer hard drives for teachers. Not requiring a licensing code had many other benefits as well. If a teacher had a computer at home and one in his/her classroom, it was possible to easily download and install versions of the software in both places so Smartboard lessons could be developed at home and used at school. In professional development contexts, I ran into the situation more than once where the computer I needed to use for a workshop didn’t have Smartboard software installed and configured on it. After downloading the software on the spot, I was able to quickly get it installed and configured. Apparently those days are over.

According to the “How to Download and Install Notebook Software 10 for Mac Computers from the smarttech Website” online document:

To successfully install the complete version of Notebook software 10, you must complete the following steps:

1. Obtain a product key.

2. Uninstall older versions of SMART Board™ software and Notebook software.

3. Download and install Notebook software 10.

4. Activate Notebook software 10.

Why did SMART Technologies make this decision to start requiring a product key to install its software? The fact that their software did NOT require a product key was one of the reasons I’ve heard several technology directors cite in explaining why they had standardized on Smartboards instead of Promethean boards. Note it is still possible to DOWNLOAD Smart’s whiteboard software without a serial number or product key, but you cannot install the latest version (10) without one.

I had heard a rumor that Promethean has STOPPED requiring serial numbers for new whiteboard software installations, but the current Activstudio Version 3 download page requires “a valid serial number for your existing version of Activstudio or Activprimary software at the bottom of this page.” Without the serial number, you can’t even download the Promethean software:

It is not clear whether this serial number is only required to download the software, but NOT to install the software. If the serial number is NOT required for installation, that would be good news for school districts imaging large numbers of computers, and would be a change from Promethean’s past procedures. In February when I presented at NCCE in Seattle I used a Promethean board for my workshop, and had to get both the software and an installation key to put it on the Macbook I was using at the time.

What do you think about this change in software installation requirements for Smartboard software? As a frequent presenter in school districts and at technology conferences, I’ve found it a hassle at times to have to download and install the software drivers for a different electronic whiteboard after I arrive at the conference. I do like and enjoy using electronic whiteboards at times, but I wish all the “stuff” the installation programs put on a computer system could be easily and completely disabled when it is not needed so it doesn’t consume system resources and slow things down.

I’ve noticed some teachers can become quite adamant about the superiority they perceive for either the Smart and Promethean electronic whiteboard. These conversations can be quite similar to the “Mac or PC” arguments which flare up from time time time. As I’ve observed previously and continue to maintain, when comparing platforms the most credible people to ask for their opinions are THOSE WHO INTIMATELY KNOW BOTH PLATFORMS. Quite often when it comes to electronic whiteboards, those arguing the loudest only know one platform well. (Sadly this is also often the case with computer operating systems.) The only school district I know about in Oklahoma which supports both Smart or Promethean boards is Tulsa Public Schools. Generally, most school districts I’ve seen choose to standardize on one or the other. I actually think the technology leaders of TPS have been smart (no pun intended) to permit schools to make the platform decision on whiteboards locally. By letting different schools try different boards, they’ve been able to obtain firsthand, in-district knowledge about different options. It is still rare, however, to find a teacher with extensive experience using more than one whiteboard platform, however.

Whatever electronic whiteboard platform you think is better (eInstruction is also a big player too, of course) it’s impossible to ignore the HUGE sums of money schools continue to spend on these devices. Unfortunately, IMHO, electronic whiteboards are not a technology which inherently encourages pedagogic shifts in instructional practices. Like most of the lessons on Thinkfinity (sadly) electronic whiteboards continue to be used in very teacher-directed, didactic learning settings. It certainly IS vital that 21st century educators have access to a functional LCD projector as well as Internet-connected computer, but rather than pour millions of dollars into yet MORE technology which supports teacher-centered instruction, I’d like to see all our schools proactively plan and implement sustainable one-to-one laptop learning initiatives. (The Anytime Anywhere Learning Foundation (AALF) is one of the best organizations to join and partner with on this front, btw.) Only when we put the technologies in the HANDS OF THE STUDENTS and intentionally seek to facilitate student creation, communication, and collaboration with those tools ON A REGULAR BASIS will we be appropriately utilizing taxpayer dollars for educational technologies in our schools. That’s a strong statement I know, but I am quite tired of seeing so many teachers continue to persist in 19th century styles of teaching using 21st century tools. As Marco Torres says, if teachers are still just asking kids to read pages 1 - 20 and answer questions 1 - 10 from the textbook, but now doing it with a flashy electronic whiteboard instead of a chalkboard or overhead projector, technology dollars have just been WASTED.

Smartboards are fun to use and often represent “low hanging fruit” for school board members as well as administrators who want to find visible ways to show the public “we support technology use in our schools” but at the same time minimize the potentially disruptive impact of those technologies on the traditional teaching and learning paradigm. As much smaller and more power efficient computer processors like the Atom from Intel come onto the scene, I anticipate (and hope) we’ll continue to see laptop computer prices go down as processing power goes up. Certainly Moore’s Law suggests these trends should continue, but we didn’t see laptop prices fall precipitously until the OLPC/XO laptop came onto the scene. Moore’s Law apparently doesn’t apply to videoconferencing codecs for some reason either, and that is unfortunate. As consumers as well as educators, we should be paying far less for far more processing power when it comes to all our computer equipment these days.

Check your local electronics store advertisements in the upcoming weeks to see the amazingly low prices you can now pay for gigabytes of data storage. I saw an ad yesterday for a 2 GB flash drive for $15. A 350 GB external hard drive was less than $100. It was only about a year ago that we had to pay at least $1 per gigabyte of external hard drive storage. Technology advances continue to accelerate, but as David Thornburg observed at NECC 2008, our pedagogies have not caught up. That is OUR FAULT, and we need to continue to work on remedying that divide separating learning potential from the realities in our classrooms.

Technorati Tags:

smart, technologies, promethean, software, whiteboard, license, serial, number

http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/10/scary-minefield-of-ideas.html

I guess this is supposed to be a good news story, and really it's just a relaunched school district site, but the slant of the article just seemed so wrong somehow that I wanted to post it -- County education Web site unveiled:

"Already in place in some Pajaro Valley schools, in a month, every student and teacher in the county will have free access to subscription encyclopedia sites that are aligned with California state education standards and are designed to keep kids from culling half-baked or just wrong information in a general Internet search.

On Google, for example, typing Martin Luther King Jr. pulls up www.martinlutherking.org, a site that acts as platform for white supremacists.

'The great myth is that if it's on the Internet, it must be true,' said Thom Dunks, director of technology for the county office. People think of porn and that which is harmful for kids, but there's also a whole minefield of ideas out there.'"

Yeah, porn is one thing, but imagine kids having access to IDEAS! Lock the doors! Shutter the windows! They just don't get it.

Update: Although this Martin Luther King Jr. reference was just used as an example in a quote, and this humble blog is certainly no "big gun of ed-tech", I like Tom Hoffman's idea to knock the odious site off the front page of the google results. Just paste the links into a post to boost the legit sites and we'll see if it has any effect:

Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.

http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/10/recommender-systems.html

Stephen Downes linked to this older (1999) page on Recommender Systems in his recent paper on Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. It pre-dates the social-software boom, but still acts as a nice overview and notes the value of recommendations in finding people in addition to movies, books and other items:

"Although currently recommender systems are mostly used for finding things, such as books and CDs, Resnick thinks that one promising application may be recommending people. You could use recommender systems to find the right consultant or colleague - or even a potential mate."

Most people sharing a learning goal in 43 Things aren't necessarily looking for people to collaborate with (although there is functionality to form explicit groups to pursue a goal together). It could be used as a sort of recommender system for finding people ("I'm looking for people sharing my goals"), but it looks to me like it's being used more as a recommender system for things you might like to do or learn. The network that emerges around a goal does loosely connect people to each other, but that may not be as valuable as the connections between the artifacts themselves: the entries outlining what their experiences have been in pursuing the same goal, why they decided to pursue it, what they hope to accomplish, how the learning helped them, pitfalls to avoid, etc.

Perhaps it's more important as a way of finding content (advice, resources, opinions, possible applications) than as a way to find like-minded people. The primary "pivot" is the goal itself, with the people associated with each goal as secondary pivots. It is interesting to find out what other goals someone is pursuing besides the one you share with them -- that function is more exploratory than the process of figuring out if you want to pursue a specific goal.

http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/10/elgg-for-professional-developme

Dave linked to this story a while back, and I finally got around to checking it out: Saugus Union School District creates hot spot for collaboration, distance learning. The cool thing about this approach is that a school managed to get educators excited about social networking for themselves -- as personal professional development and as a communication tool -- before wading into the oh-so-scary world of students using the tools. Now that they're seeing the benefits, they want to get kids using it too. From there, it probably improves the chances of getting kids really learning as part of the wider web...help them learn in a safe place first and then gradually open things up. Elgg makes that progression relatively easy with flexible permissions. While I'd love to see schools diving straight into the deep end, this kind of approach probably makes more sense for most institutions.

http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-systems-for-sharing-learnin

I think the intersection between learning goals and social software is heating up. The popularity of 43 Things must be contributing to the interest, and maybe some of my babbling here has helped moved things along, but I think there was probably a certain inevitability about it -- in environments where people are deciding what to learn, who to learn with and figuring out how to go about it, these tools could be really valuable.

George Siemens introduced the U of M's Virtual Learning Commons a few weeks ago and linked to a backgrounder on the project. I had it saved in Bloglines for too long, and thankfully Brian nudged me to take another look at it. It's a system for students to post their learning goals as a way of recording them, finding related resources and connecting with others who share the goal. It seems to be pretty slick, and even in the current closed mode (registered students only) with relatively few participants, it looks like there could be the critical mass to make it useful. George's note about it:

"It sets learning in a conversational spaces...knowledge as a pathway through connections with others...learning as a constant in life. I'm confident that this implementation of social learning (integrated with institutionally provided academic support) is a first indicator of more prominent trends. Learning not as an explicit task...but as a constant action."

I also got an e-mail about Learning Flow and Lee Kraus explains what it's for:

"LearningFlow is a web-based application that allows (you) the learner to identify learning goals, then associate resources from across the web to that particular learning goal. The goal can also be shared with others interested in learning that goal."

It's also got a pretty nice, simple interface and some cool features for sharing goals. The kicker with any system like this is that it depends on large numbers of users and goals to start being really valuable. Until you have a few people sharing a (often quite unique) learning goal, it's just a place to store yours. So we'll see if it catches on. Elgg integrated this kind of functionality last year as well, in the context of a much richer feature set -- I should ask Dave if he's received any feedback about it.

Update: Roger Stack is paying attention to these goal-based networks as well. He describes a cool program at his school where mentoring/counselling groups have formed around areas of interest.

http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/10/groups-and-networks.html

I've been enjoying Stephen Downes' recent writing, talking and showing on the distinction between groups and networks. On Half an Hour, he has two solid posts called Groups and That Group Feeling, and digs in really deep on a full-length paper: Learning Networks and Connective Knowledge. In multimedia territory, he's also got a video explaining the differences (Google Video), as shown in this whiteboard full of goodness, and also audio of one of his talks in New Zealand (mp3), covering somewhat broader territory.

I like how the concept of the personal learning environment pops up in all the right places, but I've been stewing on other personal connections to some of these differences between groups and networks. I got thinking about the kind of angst I had after blogging here for a year. I had been naively (and egotistically, I guess) expecting some sort of community to form around my blogging experience, but I didn't know what it should look like. I thought it should feel like joining and belonging to a group. At that time, Seb Paquet wisely pointed out that I had actually become part of a network, but Stephen's ideas now have really helped clarify what exactly that meant.

I also realized that some of my initial investigation into 43 Things was misguided because I was looking for people learning in groups; something more like the classroom discussion boards in the courses I had been taking. I thought that once you found a bunch of people who shared a learning goal, you would really have to become a "group" to learn much of anything that mattered. I noticed that there wasn't much evidence of conversation or interaction between the people sharing a learning goal and interpreted it as a potential weakness of the site as a learning space. But of course the people sharing a learning goal are part of an emergent, informal network. Stephen's main network words all apply: diversity, autonomy, openness, and connective. There is the potential for powerful learning, but it won't look like a cohesive, unified group of people busy learning something together.

The third thing that popped into my head was my grown-up hockey experiences. I played as a kid, up until I was 16 or so. In recent years, I've half-heartedly started playing again. Last winter, I tried two very different formats. I played a few games for a local old-timer's team, and I played noon-hour drop-in hockey a dozen or so times. It hit me last night that the contrast between the two formats is very similar to Stephen's differences between groups (the old-timer's team) and networks (noon-hour drop-in).

The team was all about unity (us vs the bad guys), coordination (scheduled games, annual fees, obligation to show up, set lines), closed (you had to be invited) and distributive (core group ran the show, stars were central). The noon-hour drop-in hockey was all about diversity (whoever shows up today plays, regardless of skill level or age), autonomy (you decide when you want to come, when you want to rest), openness (everyone welcome every time), and connective (over time you talk to many more individuals than you would have on a single team).

While it is true that there are benefits to playing on a team -- added motivation to support your teammates, more cohesive relationships, and beers after the games -- I found that the drawbacks way outweighed the benefits for me. At drop-in hockey, I played more often, learned more (more ice time, more variety), spent less money, met more interesting people, and just had more fun. It may be a personality thing (some people really do seem to thrive in groups of all kinds), but I think networks make more sense for me.

http://headspacej.blogspot.com/2006/09/space-blog.html

So interesting to see someone's personal reflections on life in space: Anousheh Ansari Space Blog. Not sure if it counts as citizen journalism when she paid $20 million to get up there, but there's just something so cool about photos from the space station showing up on Flickr.