Dangerously Irrelevant

Both of my NECC 2009 presentations are now available!

As I noted earlier, my first presentation, Effective Leadership in an Era of Disruptive Innovation, is available at ISTEVision. My second presentation, Why Aren’t You Having a Bigger Impact?, was targeted specifically at technology coordinators and is now available from Learning.com.

I think Learning.com did a really nice job of highlighting some of the main points of my presentation. Two links on the left allow you to watch the first and second halves of the presentation. You also can download my slides and an audio podcast of the session. I thought the questions and conversations were quite lively given that the session was at 7 in the morning!

Here’s a quick quote from the presentation:

The tech coordinators [like you] that I meet are very dedicated and hard-working. They’re really trying their very best to do a great job for their school and make everything run smoothly. So why do I hear so many complaints about you?

Happy viewing!

Every year the School Administrators of Iowa asks its members what priority it should give to various legislative and/or lobbying issues. Here are my responses to some of the items from this year’s survey…

Funding Formula: Continue to lobby the Legislature to put more items in the formula. Examples could be transportation, health insurance, energy costs, etc.

Technology, technology, technology. Also, where are our grants for innovation? To spur Iowa school districts, community colleges, and/or corporations to REALLY think outside of the box?

Core Curriculum: Request no substantive changes be made to the Core as districts are working to implement the current initiative.

The Core needs to be changed to put greater emphasis on 21st century skills and high-tech, high-skill workforce development. That onus may fall on the Department of Education rather than the legislature but is worth noting here.

Compulsory Attendance Age: Lobby for additional at-risk funding if the legislature decides to increase compulsory attendance age.

Upping compulsory attendance – where we force students to sit EVEN LONGER through the boring, traditional schooling paradigm – is not a game-changing idea. Doing more of the same will not get us where we need to go; doing something DIFFERENT will.

Professional Development/Educator Quality: Lobby for PD/Educator Quality funding and the expansion of administrator training opportunities, such as an additional year of mentoring and induction and funding for a Leadership Academy.

YES, if it's focused on preparing administrators who can lead schools that prepare students for a digital, global age. NO, if it's solely focused on 'sharpening the saw' (i.e., fine-tuning the current, outdated system).

Writing Assessments: Lobby to support writing component being added to state assessments.

YES, if it's a technology-infused, intelligent, applicable-to-the-real-world writing exam. NO, if it's like what most other states have done.

Open Meetings and Records: Lobby to support the provision of public records and open meetings to citizens, while advocating for the privacy rights of administrators, staff and board members.

The burden should not be on the public to request information from its own government. The burden should be on the government to show why its information shouldn't be available to the public from the start. The default should be public and accessible from the start, not only by request.

Please note any other items on which you'd like to comment.

The state is not investing near enough in K-12 online education, technology leadership training for K-12 administrators, 1:1 laptop programs for secondary students, or statewide data collection related to the implementation of K-12 technology- and/or 21st century skills-related initiatives. Will SAI step up and make these a high-visibility priority of its legislative agenda or will it simply focus on issues related to the current system / status quo?

I jotted these off pretty quickly. What should I have said differently (or in more detail) if I had taken more time?

Since my preview of Conspiracy Code: U.S. History at NECC, I’ve been thinking again about educational games…

Here are a bunch of screen shots of different online games for learning. I found them by typing into Google variations of learning games, educational games, learning games high school, educational games middle school, and so on. Most of these appear to be aimed at kids of middle or high school age.

FunBrain Math Baseball

PBS Kids You’re in Charge

Quiz Hub U.S. History Timeline Quiz

Math Playground Math TV

UPDATE: The creator of this would like me to note that Math TV is a 'learning activity' rather than an educational 'game.' See the comments below for more on this.

eSchoolOnline eMath Pretest

Asian Countries – Level Seven

Hotmath Number Cop

Teach-nology Diner Dash

CoolMath Pool Geometry 2

Eat or Be Eaten

Just from a graphics standpoint, I have to wonder how interesting these games are to preteens and teens when the games below are more along the lines of what they see at home.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Madden NFL ‘09

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

Super Mario Galaxy

Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships

BioShock

Plants vs. Zombies

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

So I’ve got some questions…

1. Does the quality of the graphics matter when it comes to educational games? Or is the quality of the learning experience enough?
2. Speaking of the learning experience, just how bad are most of these so-called ‘educational games?’ I wasn’t too impressed with the games shown above. In terms of gaming complexity, many of them are using pretty simplistic techniques to try and reach what I’m guessing are fairly-savvy students. Also, many of them seemed to be games from many years ago that still are being pitched to educators and adolescents. I found two of the learning games as links from a high school web site (Asian Countries – Level Seven and Eat or Be Eaten), which made me feel really sad for the students who were in that school.
3. Maybe it’s completely unfair to compare online learning games with commercial games that are downloadable or on CD-ROM/DVD. So what is out there that’s comparable in the commercial downloadable/DVD educational games sector? Anything good? Vendors, if you think you’ve got educational games that are worth looking at, feel free to comment!

Your thoughts?

I haven’t had a contest all summer. I have some books to give away, so here’s an easy one…

Questions

1. What’s your funniest K-12 ed tech story, vignette, or anecdote? [please anonymize as necessary]
2. What web site or service would be really helpful to K-12 principals or superintendents that they may not know about?

Rules

1. Submit your entry by July 31. You can answer one or both questions.
2. If you include your contact information, you automatically will be entered into a drawing for one of the two prize packs.

3. Please note that by entering this contest you’re also giving me the right to publish your entry (possibly with your associated contact info). Good luck!

Prize Pack 1

• Liberating Learning
• Disrupting Class
• The Tipping Point
• The Emergency Teacher

Prize Pack 2

• Results
• Results Now
• Multiple Intelligences Around the World
• The Total Teacher Book and Planner

Both winners also will receive a CASTLE mug. Good luck!

I was one of the faculty members interviewed by the Associated Press for an article on technology integration in higher education. I think the article came out pretty well. It’s appeared in a number of different online outlets, including U.S. News & World Report. Here’s a short quote:

"They're going to use it no matter what," said [Beth] Simon, of the University of California, San Diego. "How do you use this ubiquitous technology that's out there to change the dynamic of the classroom, to engage the students?"

Happy reading!

For those of you who are curious, here are the standings in our two edublogger fantasy baseball leagues at the All-Star break:

Well, it’s not every day that one gets within six feet of two presidents. Last Thursday, just as my colleague at ISU, Dr. John Nash, and I were walking out of our hotel, the motorcade for President Obama came by:

A couple of hours later I was hanging out with Nkubito Bakuramutsa, head of the ICT department of the Rwandan Development Board, just a few feet from Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s President. Later that evening Kagame won the World Technology Award for Policy:

Lawrence Lessig won the award for Law. Here are two quickly-recorded videos of his statements:

New York City’s a fun place. There’s always something cool happening!

Photo credits

• Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

Here are my notes from Day 2 of the World Technology Summit. I’ve been hangin’ with Dr. John Nash, my colleague at ISU. Today we learned about India’s Barefoot College (impressive!), Microsoft’s vision for the future, rotating buildings, petrofuel, ICT in Africa, and much more.

Bunker Roy, The Barefoot College

• 150 barefoot professionals reach over 70,000 people in 110 villages within a 150-mile radius
• 225 night schools in 6 states are attended by 7,000 children (5,500 girls) that can't attend during the day – school is lit by solar lanterns and run by the children
• Solar-powered campus – first solar-powered desalination plant in India – has extended its solar electrification work beyond India (e.g., 27 women in Afghanistan have solar electrified 100 of their villages)
• The cost of solar electrifying 5 villages in Afghanistan is the cost of one UN consultant sitting in Kabul for 1 year
• Have electrified a number of villages in Africa – men in Africa are untrainable – focus on women, particularly grandmothers

• Disposable, hidden, unobtrusive, personalized health devices
• Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College, London
• Sensium digital patch / BandAid – sits on chest and wirelessly monitors health signs 24-7 (e.g., for Type 2 diabetes) – can send signals to doctor – replaces tethered monitors
• Wireless silicon pancreas chip helps monitor glucose – therapy and diagnosis functions are combined
• Have figured out how to turn on/off semiconductors with DNA – trying to replace big DNA sequencers with small lab-on-a-chip

Andrew Beck, PetroAlgae

• Micro-crops (algae, angiosperms, cyanobacter, diatoms, etc.) are grown and turned into renewable, green fuel for cars, etc.
• 125x more productive than macro-crops (corn, soy, rapeseed, etc.)
• 98% of water is recycled – can use gray or brackish water – doesn't even need clean, drinking-quality water
• Micro-crops absorb twice their weight in carbon dioxide – can be placed next to carbon dioxide-emitting factories
• Physics combined with biochemistry – its light-management techniques are what put PetroAlgae ahead of competitors
• Micro-crops are the only economically viable answer to the biofuels feedstock problem – protein meal byproduct adds to the food supply
• Does not compete with the food supply, does not produce any toxic waste
• Large-scale open bioreactors – 4,700 to 6,000 gallons per acre per year – product can be run through existing petroleum refineries and pipelines – this green diesel system uses same infrastructure as current gasoline-based system – functions as a 'drop-in' replacement for fossil fuels
• 1 unit (5,000 hectares) produces ~75 million gallons of biofuel / year AND 140,000 tons of protein meal / year (the latter alone offsets the biofuel production costs)

• In charge of articulating Microsoft's collective long-term vision both internally and externally – a fine balance between dreaming and plausible
• Microsoft's video, A Glimpse Ahead, shows its future vision and embeds a number of principles, including natural user interfaces, mobile technologies, etc. 

• Buildings generate own energy, plus energy for other surrounding buildings – wind and solar
• Costs and construction time are lower than traditional building processes
• Core tower surrounded by rotating floors, which are built with modular components
• Drive car into core tower, elevator takes car up to your floor, floors can contain garages, swimming pools, etc.

• Harnessing RNA interference (RNAi) technology – potential for a whole new class of drugs that achieve therapeutic 'gene silencing'
• There are a number of 'undruggable' targets that might be addressed using RNAi
• Genomic medicine opens up a whole new class of possibilities
• Clinical trials have been published in a number of top medical and scientific journals

• Every country in the world starts buying automobiles like crazy when average income hits $10K/year – China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and Russia are about to hit that threshold
• Imagine 2 directions in which the trend could go, and write a newspaper headline for each – avoid a simplistic utopia/dystopia approach
• GROUP 4: The evolution of learning
• • Speed of access to learning materials is much faster
  • We scan, find, and access information differently than before
  • More likely to find exactly what you want – also leads to self-selection of learning
  • Are we losing social interactions (or are they just changing)
  • Are we losing opportunity to be exposed to disparate opinions
  • Does it facilitate access to education by everyone
  • Learning will become even more powerful as mobile devices become more prevalent
  • Principles and process are more important than discrete facts
  • Current Internet can't handle tactile / sensory information
  • Current text-based Internet still doesn't work for many students
  • Are we seeing the emergence of a post-literate society?
  • Geography and time are no longer barriers to learning?
  • What does the role of a teacher mean in a computer-aided environment? Choreographers / facilitators / mentors instead of knowledge suppliers?
  • Greater individualization of learning is possible
  • Strength in diversity or latent costs that accompany the nichification of learning?
  • Is there still a place for face-to-face interactions, learning environments?
  • Is virtualization of learning more good than bad?
  • Who controls these learning environments (if anybody)?
  • Internal motivation to learn becomes more important?
  • HEADLINE 1: Barefoot College surpasses MIT in Engineering graduates
  • HEADLINE 2: Server farm failure erases all of human history
  • Other generated headlines
  • • Continued turmoil in online education leads to more students living with parents past age 30
    • Be careful what you wish for: last traditional school (or textbook publisher) closes its doors
    • All printed materials now obsolete
    • SmellTube & haptic interfaces revolutionize the Internet experience
    • The cyberwar between evolutionists and creationists continues to rage
    • Learn what you need for your career in 6 months

• Over last decade, there has been an ICT revolution on the African continent
• Between 1995 and 2005, over $25 billion was invested in ICT in Sub-Saharan Africa
• African mobile phone companies are regional and, sometimes, global players – leaders in innovation and entrepeneurship
• Africa is fastest-growing mobile phone company in world
• Working on a national fiber backbone to facilitate broadband access to corporations and individuals
• Electronic records system to deliver social, health, and education services
• National databases to help combat HIV/AIDS and target appropriate medical services
• Nationwide food stocks database / marketplace that can be accessed by individuals' mobile phones
• Digital content from world's leading universities now available to Rwandan schools, universities
• Rwandan economy grew at 11.2% last year; wages have increased as much as 30% each of the past 8 years?
• The future of Rwanda is dependent on its investments in technology and children

• Presentation panel
• • Jessi Hempel, Writer, Fortune magazine
  • John Borthwick, CEO, betaworks (Summize, bit.ly, TweetDeck)
  • Brad Burnham, Partner, Union Square Ventures
  • Patrick Keane, CEO, Associated Content
• Associated Content: where folks can put their content and get compensated for it – a content monetization engine (makes money through ads, companies that pay to have content created for them) – has over 250,000 content contributors
• Twitter, for example, represents not only the atomization of content (140 characters) but also the atomization of distribution (inviduals rather than large organizations)
• The problem is not the production of content but the filtering of content – people now relying on others that they trust, rather than big companies, to provide much of their information
• The Internet is a medium of cannibalization

• The light bulb of tomorrow is not a lightbulb – microplasma is a planar light source
• The problem with compact fluorescents (CFLs) is that they contain mercury
• Embedded lighting – floors, walls, windows, surfaces, furniture, ceilings – all will be able to contain lighting
• Very thin (2 to 3mm) – currently 4x as energy-efficient as CFLs (even greater efficiency is expected soon) – can be molded into different shapes
• Surface brightness 10x greater than OLED
• Lighting market: US = $15 billion, global = $75 billion

Photo credits

• New York City traffic
• Radio City Music Hall
• Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

Here are my notes from Day 1 of the World Technology Summit & Awards in New York City. My colleague at Iowa State, Dr. John Nash, and I have been having eating from Halal stands, learning about Twitter and the Iran election, and enjoying the enhanced police presence for President Obama’s speech tomorrow celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP.

• Encouraging serendipity
• the right ‘raw materials’
• the right ‘catalysts’
• the right questions
• the right amount of focus and flexibility
• the right attitude
• Thinking about the future
• Passive v. active players in history
• The necessity of a ‘historical sense’ / awareness of trends
• Worldviews (which influence what we emphasize)
• God(s)
• Great men
• Rational thinking/progress
• Natural/rightful rulers
• Human nature
• Class struggle
• Geography/natural resources
• Cultural traits
• Technology
• Some questions raised by the concept of ‘saving the future’
• How much influence do we have on our collective future?
• Whose future are we saving (and how do we strike the correct balance between saving our individual and collective futures)?
• How do we know what to pay attention to?
• What are ‘triggers?’
• Triggers are those forces or events that set into motion other larger events or trends
• What types of triggers have historically had the greatest ripple effects?
• Fall of a superpower and/or rise of new competing powers
• Major, long wars
• Major global viral pandemic
• and more?
• Major advances in technology
• How do we save the future?
• Create it!

• World market for virtual worlds is projected at 186 million total in 2009
• 2015 market projected to be 638 million
• virtual worlds are ‘the next Internet’
• Virtual worlds range from World of Warcraft to Second Life
• Virtual worlds are interactive – everybody plays – everyone has a different experience
• Can travel back in time, can master different professions
• Players play for real money, not virtual currency
• Players purchase game cards to expand their functionality – this is how they’ll generate revenue?

• Current water arsenic removal solutions cost $53 to $300 per 1,000 gallons
• System uses the common cattail weed, a plastic-lined ditch, and a plastic hand pump
• Cost is less than $0.21 / 1000 gallons
• Larger ditch only takes 4% of surface area but can remove arsenic from well water used for irrigation before it reaches the rice crop

• She matches people with pianos
• Also has a patented method for teaching piano
• Invented a video game that teaches how to play the piano – most other piano games are simply rhythmic games
• She showed how it works (John Nash: it’s Guitar Hero for the piano)

• Real-time data brokerage for sensors attached to physical objects (the Internet of things)
• Remote monitoring systems, networked buildings, energy meters
• Interoperable with construction industry standards and Web protocols
• The trend in Web and machine-to-machine communications is toward many-to-many, not just one-to-one
• The metadata about context, location, user tags, history, etc. is also important besides the data itself – this makes us stop thinking about sensors and starts us thinking about environments

• PowerPoint is linear – a holdover from slide projectors
• Prezi is spatial and relational
• After eating at New York’s finest Halal stand, John and I dialogued with Adam, Usman, and Michael Hansen, CEO of Issuu

• Shamina de Gonzaga, What Moves You?
• Timothy Anderson, World Computer Exchange
• Edwin Gragert, iEARN-USA
• Sarah McCue, BluMail/BluWorld
• Suzanne Grant Lewis, Partnership for Higher Education in Africa

• Translating complex science for the general public has turned scientific research into a commodity
• Many of the futuristic visions that we had in the early 20th century are here in some form (e.g., a version of X-Ray specs is at the airport; universal translators) or we’ve actively rejected them (e.g., food pills)
• Do we really want a jetpack or just the idea of a jetpack (i.e., a vision of a future)?
• Technology has not made us all happy, as was promised in the past

• The developing countries are catching up to the industrialized countries – share of world energy consumption soon will be even
• Installation subsidies and feed-in tariffs foster growth in solar energy use
• China is aiming for 10% of energy from renewables by 2010, 20% by 2020
• China is largest solar panel manufacturing country in world
• Suntech is now at 1 Gigawatt (GW) per year production level
• 10 cents / kilowatt hour is the magic threshold

• Presentation panel
• Stephanie Mehta, Global Editor, Fortune magazine
• Lowell McAdam, CEO, Verizon Wireless
• Peter Volanakis, President and COO, Corning
• Wireless cell phone industry is extremely competitive
• The Chinese auto industry is now bigger than the US auto industry?
• Great companies embrace recessions – they create an opportunity to break away from the pack of competitors
• My question: What kind of American workforce needs are you seeing? How well are K-12 schools / community colleges / universities doing at meeting those needs?
• Corning
• Corning is facing some visa / immigration issues… [translation: they are getting their employees from overseas]
• Corning is trying to invest locally to support schools and prepare workers (and doing less jawboning about national workforce deficits)
• Verizon
• In the past 10 years, EVERYTHING has stepped up
• Doing intern programs with universities
• Verizon Foundation / Thinkfinity curriculum is designed to help schools see what Verizon would like them to teach / is offered for free

• Presentation panel
• Lily Mazahery, Founder/President, Legal Rights Institute
• Reza Sayah, International Correspondent, CNN
• Mark Drapeau, Science & Technology Policy Fellow, National Defense University
• Sayah: none of the coverage you saw on CNN would have been possible without Twitter, Facebook, and some Iranian cab drivers
• Drapeau: everything is now happening locally/globally
• Drapeau: cyberspace is the new battle space for PR / propaganda = information warfare
• Sayah: TV news is a business that makes money by getting as many viewers as possible – should TV news cater to advertisers, viewers, the citizenry? – channels will do anything to get viewers, including burying important stories for unimportant ones (e.g., Michael Jackson)

Photo credits

• World Technology Summit & Awards 2009
• Ten cop cars and an ice cream truck
• The best Halal stand in New York City?
• Social networks and societal revolution
• Command Central outside the Hilton

Many of you have been participating in and/or following the conversations for this year’s CASTLE Summer Book Club. 

I am pleased to announce that my interview today with Dr. Dan Willingham, professor at the University of Virginia and author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, is now available as either streaming audio or a downloadable podcast.

Happy listening!