Imagine each of the blocks below represents 1,000 students. That’s how many members of the public high school class of 2008 will fail to graduate without a diploma. Be sure to see the entire Graduation Counts 2008 report from Education Week (free this week!).
Dr. Jim Gee notes:
If learning always operates well within the learner’s resources, then all that happens is that the learner’s behaviors get more and more routinized, as the learner continues to experience success by doing the same things. This is good … for learning and practicing fluent and masterful performance … but is not good for developing newer and higher skills. However, if learning operates outside one’s resources, the learner is simply frustrated and gives up.
Good video games … build in many opportunities for learners to operate at the outer edge of their regime of competence, thereby causing them to rethink their routinized mastery and move, within the game and themselves, to a new level. Indeed, for many learners it is these times … when learning is most exciting and rewarding. Sadly in school, many so-called advantaged learners rarely get to operate at the edge of their regime of competence as they coast along in a curriculum that makes few real demands on them. At the same time, less advantaged learners are repeatedly asked to operate outside their regime of competence.
[Video games] build into their designs and encourage good principles of learning … that are better than those in many of our skill-and-drill, back-to-basics, test-them-until-they-drop schools.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. [pp. 70, 205]
In contrast, here are current teachers’ beliefs (click on graph for full report):
Cable in the Classroom is sponsoring
its annual Media Smart
Research Award:
Media literacy is a key 21st Century skill because it provides a framework
and method to think critically about the media and technologies students and
adults use for information and entertainment. Media literacy means knowing how
to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and create media messages on
television, the Internet and other outlets. It also means knowing how to use
these and other technologies safely, productively and
ethically.
The deadline for
emerging media literacy scholars to submit materials is May
31.
Last June, during Change Week at Dangerously Irrelevant, I blogged about Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory. In that post I mentioned that one of the most underutilized aspects of Rogers’ work was the concept of perceived characteristics of innovations (PCIs). PCIs are those things considered by potential adopters that affect how likely they are to move from awareness to adoption. Rogers noted that issues of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and usability were important when thinking about innovation adoption. The key is that the perception – what’s inside the potential adopter’s head – is what’s important.
Rogers’ work ties in nicely with another concept that I’ve recently been thinking about: technology affordances. As Gaver (1991) noted, affordances are aspects of an object ‘that are compatible with and relevant for people’s interactions.’ In the context of digital technologies, affordances are the characteristics that let us answer the question, ‘What do these tools do for me?’ For example, the digital camera has a number of affordances that a traditional film camera does not, including easier manipulation/alteration of raw images, ease of sharing, and elimination of the need to print unwanted pictures.
The idea of affordances intersects with the idea of perceptions. Gaver has a useful diagram in his article:
Quadrant B represents the situation when the affordance of a digital technology is actually there but is not perceived by educators. For example, essay grading software can do some powerful things but I have seen educators simply refuse to believe that the software works the way it does. In contrast, Quadrant C occurs when educators believe a digital technology might do something for them that it actually cannot (ever bought a technology that didn’t live up to its promise?). In an ideal world, educators would be in either Quadrant A or Quadrant D, rejecting or adopting digital technologies with full understanding of what those tools can or cannot do for them.
Of course we don’t live in an ideal world. In fact, it’s difficult for non-technology-savvy educators to have accurate perceptions about digital technologies’ affordances simply because their level of knowledge and understanding is so low. This leads to vendor pitch susceptibility, inappropriate buying decisions, improper implementation, incorrect rejection, and a host of other issues.
Those of us who are using these tools – who are often living and breathing these tools – need to internalize the diagram above. Although a tool may fall into Quadrant D for us, it may fall into Quadrant B or C for someone else. Indeed, for many, residence in Quadrant A is quite appropriate for the instructional task at hand, even when we might say it falls into Quadrant D.
So is this all a fancy way of saying ‘don’t use technology in unthoughtful or inappropriate ways?’ Maybe. Or maybe it’s a way of saying that teachers will reside in Quadrants A or B unless we help them navigate the implementation dip that’s required to get to Quadrant D. Either way, I believe that it’s a useful framework as we think about school staff and where they fall regarding the innovations we often ask them to adopt. If we technology advocates can’t both show and persuade our potential adopters that a particular digital technology falls into Quadrant D for whatever they want to do, we’re not doing our job. And it’s not enough that the technology actually would be helpful, that it actually has the affordance. When it comes to adoption, the perception is as important as the actual capability of the tool.
Citation: Gaver, W. W. (1991). Technology affordances.
Related links
The latest issue of AASA’s The School Administrator is on the topic of globalization and education. LeaderTalk’s very own Dr. Terry Holliday, Superintendent of the Iredell-Statesville (NC) Schools, is one of the primary authors! Here’s an excerpt from Terry’s article:
I have been amazed at English teachers who have figured out how to get students really excited about writing by using blogs, wikis and web pages. As a musician, I am overwhelmed by the creativity of classrooms using computer-based piano labs, midi-interfaces and software to create and edit music manuscripts in minutes that used to take me days to complete. I visit our auto-tech classes and marvel at the students’ ability to perform computer-based diagnostics and read technical manuals that are well beyond high school reading levels.
I am certain many school administrators, teachers, parents and students share this inner conflict between logic and creativity. I finally figured out the answer. It’s best captured by Rick and Becky DuFour, consultants on professional learning communities, who talk about write about the genius of “and” vs. the tyranny of “or.”
Dr. Yong Zhao, Director of the U.S.-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence at Michigan State University, writes in his article about globally-aware education in an era of AYP:
As educators … we are charged with a much more important task than responding to bureaucratic requirements – the moral responsibility to prepare students to lead successful lives. People may have different opinions about what a successful life is, but it should certainly include financial independence, competent participation in community life and positive contributions to society. Schools should at least equip students with the attitudes, perspectives, skills and knowledge that will help them find and keep a job, interact with their co-workers and neighbors and understand as well as make informed decisions about issues affecting society.
The specific attitudes, skills and knowledge schools aim to cultivate should be responsive to changes in society. What was important before may be irrelevant today …
And then there’s this gem of a quote from Dr. Arthur Shostak, professor emeritus of sociology at Drexel University:
For too long K-12 schooling has lacked an emphatic and rewarding focus on the future, even though futurism should be everyone’s “second profession.” In our bold new world of ubiquitous computing, versatile electronic books, computers as wearable items, exotic virtual reality labs and Buck Rodgers-style educational aids, we are in a good position to change this.
Given the extraordinary global challenges facing all of us, school systems must do more to help young learners master the art of horizon scanning, in all of its empowering aspects.
There is lots more good stuff in the issue, including a conversation between Daniel Pink and Tom Friedman, authors of A Whole New Mind and The World Is Flat, respectively.
Oh, and there’s a great article on reining in school board chairs who are bullies!
Just two days left to complete the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey. We’re currently at 382 participants. Absent a last-minute deluge of responses, I don’t think we’ll make my revised goal of 500 respondents, but maybe we can tip over 400!
A HUGE THANKS to everyone who has participated and helped publicize the survey!
Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)
My latest higher education article for Technology &
Learning, Knowledge
Networks, is now available. The article draws deeply from my previous
blog posts, Linked,
Scholarship
2.0, and The
Future of Academic Publishing.
Here are a couple of quotes from
the article:
[T]he system [of academic writing] is fairly clunky. There aren’t easy ways
to tell who the [top scholars] are, nor are there ways to easily find hidden
nuggets of wisdom. . . . Tracking down a new resource from an existing article
or book also is difficult, since readers have to first find the publication
through trial-and-error searching of various databases and then either download
it or track down a print version. Much high-quality writing never sees the light
of day or isn’t cited by anyone because it’s not in the "right place." We can do
better. . . .If we can figure out how to get beyond academic publishers’ revenue
protection concerns, the world’s body of scholarly research can be available to
anyone with an Internet connection. That’s a goal worth working
toward.
Happy reading!
The second annual Education Blogosphere Survey ends on Saturday. If you have a holiday today, it’s a great time to complete the survey or publicize it to others!
We’re off to a good start. Last year 160 edubloggers participated. Right now the total is 307. It looks like we’ll make my goal of doubling last year’s participants. Dare I strive for 500?
Please use the link and/or the graphic and help spread the call for participants. Here’s the HTML code if you want to paste it on your blog / web site:
As I noted in this year’s call for participation, you can see last year’s survey results to get a sense of how I’m going to report out this year.
A HUGE THANKS in advance to anyone and everyone who helps publicize this!
Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)
The second annual Education Blogosphere Survey is now open for business! 4 screens. 25 questions.
Please use the link and/or the graphic and help spread the call for participants. Last year 160 edubloggers participated. Let’s see if we can at least double that this year?
You can see last year’s call for participation and survey results to get a sense of how I’m going to report out this year.
Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas for questions and a HUGE THANKS in advance to anyone and everyone who helps publicize this!
Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)
[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]
Update: As of October 2010, I now have about 22,000 subscribers to this blog. Alter my calculations accordingly…
According to Feedburner, I currently have about 2,100 subscribers to my blog. While that’s obviously not a huge number compared to many other blogs (see my Technorati rank, which is slightly below that of the TechLearning blog), let’s do the math for a minute…
Let’s say I average 4 posts a week for 50 weeks a year. 4 x 50 x 2,100 readers equals 420,000 person contacts each year. In other words, through my blog I have the opportunity to have 420,000 interactions with my audience every twelve months. These are folks who have actively sought me out and are voluntarily reading what I write (which, by the way, still blows my mind). Over 10 years, that’s over 4 million opportunities for me to spread my message to others, assuming that my current reader totals don’t improve at all (which, obviously, I hope they do).
Now, let’s compare this with a journal article. According to the information sent to me by the editors, the most prestigious peer-reviewed educational leadership research journal, Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ), has approximately 160 individual subscribers and 1,630 institutional subscribers (i.e., libraries), for a total of about 1,800 subscriptions. Because EAQ serves folks interested in a broad range of educational leadership issues, at best only a small fraction of the individual readers will be interested in an article on technology leadership-related issues. This also is true for anyone doing a literature search for a research article or dissertation. For argument’s sake, let’s say that each technology-related EAQ article might have 60 readers a year, or 600 readers a decade (this is probably quite generous): a very rough ratio of one-third of the subscription total. [Note: this is obviously not very scientific. I’m engaging in some very loose back-of-the-envelope calculations here. There’s probably a better way to come up with a more accurate estimate.].
Now of course faculty don’t publish in only one journal. An unbelievably productive faculty member might publish 5 to 10 articles a year, each in a journal with roughly 500 to 5,000 individual and institutional subscribers. For this example, let’s assume the faculty member is super-productive and is publishing in journals with the widest reach. Using the same rough ratio I used for EAQ (i.e., about 1/3 of the subscription numbers over a decade), 10 articles per year x 10 years x 5,000 subscribers x 1/3 = 166,667. Again, I think this is quite optimistic. Few faculty members are this productive and, even if true, it’s pretty likely that readership of a faculty member’s articles is nowhere close to this total.
Okay, let’s review:
The blog wins hands-down from a numbers perspective, even assuming what I think is probably the absolute best case scenario for the peer-reviewed journal path. If we also consider
the case for a blog seems even stronger.
So this raises the question… Why would anyone who wishes to actually reach educators and hopefully influence change in schools not be blogging?
Also… why haven’t more faculty caught on to this?
