by Scott McLeod | May 22, 2007 | Law, Policy, and Ethics, Safety and Security, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Jim Gates points out that Pennsylvania legislators have introduced a bill to ban cellphones and ‘other portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material.’ The language of the bill seems very broad. Wouldn’t digital camcorders, digital voice recorders, boomboxes, laptop computers, portable media players, and other non-cellphone-type devices also fall under its very inclusive verbiage? Note that schools only are able to make two narrow exceptions. Nowhere in the bill does it allow schools to permit students to use ‘portable electronic devices that record or play audio or video material‘ for pedagogical purposes.
Principal Lehmann, sorry. If this bill passes, you’re going to have to shut down Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy. Microsoft, thanks for trying. Unless the language in this bill becomes less inclusive, say goodbye to Philadelphia’s School of the Future. One-to-one laptop programs? Steer clear of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!
Was there widespread abuse of cellphones in Pennsylvania, maybe worse than in other states, that prompted this bill? Or is this just another example of the lock-it-down mentality held by so many policymakers? Ugh. First New York City. Now Pennsylvania.
Oh, by the way, State Representative Angel Cruz, Democrat from Philadelphia, invites your input on this proposed bill. So go ahead, let him know what you think.
by Scott McLeod | May 1, 2007 | Blogging, Communication, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Safety and Security, Tech Tools |
On Monday I got an e-mail from an elementary principal:
Scott, it looks like I won’t be able to follow through with the [Principal Blogging Project]. Our
district technology person has decided not to open up access to blog sites,
therefore I cannot access the site from school (our filter blocks
it).
In other words, the principal cannot set up a blog to communicate with his
school community because the district technology coordinator, who is in a
support position, won’t let him. Here was my reply:
This is disappointing. As Director of CASTLE, I work quite a bit with
principals, superintendents, and technology coordinators. I’m always sad to hear
when technological decisions are made that get in the way of enabling
administrators’ / teachers’ work. I think that technology should be about
enabling good educational practices, not gatekeeping or shutting them down
because of fear / safety concerns. There are many, many schools and districts
where principals, superintendents, teachers, and others are blogging to both
internal and external communities. Why can’t your district be one of those
places? How are you going to expose students, teachers, parents, and
administrators to the technological transformations that are revolutionizing
American and global societies if you shut it all down? If things change (or if
there’s any way I can help you maybe persuade someone to think differently about
this), let me know.
Here is the principal’s final e-mail to me:
I agree. I tried to work it through and was not successful. I loved the
blogging idea, it was nice and easy for me, and I knew that I would be able to
get staff on board. Unfortunately, not everyone is as forward
thinking.
This tale’s been told before. Technology coordinators who are more concerned
with disabling than enabling. Technology personnel that we would hope would be
progressive, forward thinkers regarding digital technologies but instead are
regressive gatekeepers. Teachers and administrators that try to move into the 21st century but run into the brick wall of supervisors or support personnel. Superintendents that allow such situations to occur
rather than insisting that their district figure out how to make it work (like
other districts have). Educators that fail to understand that the world around them has
changed and that their relevance to that world is diminishing daily.
This tale’s been told before, but it’s still depressing.
P.S. See
my previous post.
by Scott McLeod | Apr 3, 2007 | Assessment, Miscellaneous, Tech Tools |
I have seen the future of data presentation and it is Gapminder. Visit Gapminder and click on
- the Play button (bottom left)
- the geographic regions (top right)
- country names (right)
- the magnifying glass (bottom right of chart)
- the Map tab (top left)
Also use the three sliders at the bottom (under Income per capita in international dollars and above and below Population). Notice also that merely hovering your mouse over different parts of the graphs highlights various information aspects. Finally, you can change both the x and y axes by clicking on the dropdown box triangles for Income per capita in international dollars (right of label) and Life expectancy, years (top of label).
I had seen the video of Gapminder founder Hans Rosling at TED Talks, but it’s fun to get to play with the software a little bit. How great would it be to have this tool for K-12 data-driven decision-making?
Wow.
by Scott McLeod | Mar 25, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Miscellaneous, Professional Development, Tech Tools |
[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]
I found this map of Ray Sims’ personal learning environment via a link from Stephen Downes (thanks, Stephen!). It’s a neat idea. I’m guessing that it would be pretty informative to ask K-12 teachers and administrators to diagram their own personal learning environments and then have some discussion around some key questions:
- What sources do we tap into for our own professional learning?
- What overlaps are there between staff members?
- What gaps are there within our school organization (i.e., what learning channels should we be monitoring but aren’t)?
- What are some strategies for staying on top of the incredible wealth of information that is out there?
- How do we learn about new learning channels?
- How are we modeling ‘lifelong learning’ for our students?
- and so on…
This is cool. I may try to create my own map and see what it looks like. How about you? What does your personal learning environment look like?
by Scott McLeod | Mar 17, 2007 | Communication, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
I hate the whole concept of Fox’s television show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth
Grader? Here’s why…
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel thought
it would be fun to have local teachers create
a twenty-question quiz on stuff fifth-graders ought to know. Here are the
questions from the quiz, each of which is hyperlinked to the Google search
results for the question text:
- What
is a hyperbole?
- Which
chamber of the heart receives blood from the lungs?
- Is
the equator a line of latitude or longitude?
- What
is a mixed number?
- What
organ in the body produces bile?
- What
kind of a root is a carrot?
- Nomadic
tribes of American Plains Indians lived in what structures?
- What
did American Indians of the Northwest coast use to symbolize their clan and tell
family stories?
- Which
is larger: 3/5 or 5/8?
- What
are the three branches of the United States government?
- What
are the names of the five Great Lakes?
- How
many hydrogen atoms are there in a molecule of water?
- "You
are as strong as an ox." Is this statement a simile or metaphor?
- What
part of speech is "after": An adverb, conjunction or preposition?
- Who
invented peanut butter?
- How
many pints are in 2 gallons?
- How
many feet are in 9 yards?
- What
part of speech describes a verb?
- What
is a proper noun?
- What
is something found on a plant cell that is not found on an animal
cell?
Go ahead. I dare you to compare the Google search results to the quiz answers. For nearly every question, the first or second Google link has the correct answer.
In most instances, you don’t even need to click through to the actual web site.
You can just read the short blurb for the link on the Google results page.
[Also, note that question 14 is a trick
question and that the teachers’ answer
to question 20 may be incorrect (I think it should say chloroplasts, not
cytoplasm).]
So now we’re not only spending all this time in school making kids memorize
stuff that literally can be found in mere seconds, we’re actually making game
shows out of it (like we’ve always done) and framing it in such a way so
that grown-ups feel stupid if they don’t remember information that
most adults never need to keep in their heads. Let’s be honest
here: when is the last time you really needed to know the names of all five
Great Lakes, whether or not animal cells have cell walls, or who invented peanut
butter?
I’ve
blogged about this before. I know there is some core knowledge that we want
all of our kids to know, both because we want them to be able to recall it even
faster than the time it takes to search the Web and because it’s part of our
cultural / societal background and heritage. But as I said in my
earlier post, I’m guessing that this body of knowledge is much less than
we’ve traditionally believed because of the technology that is now available to
us.
We used to have to memorize things because the only way we could store
knowledge and information was in our heads. We passed that information down
orally from generation to generation. Over time we learned to mark stone
tablets, knot ropes, write on papyrus and then paper, and print books. With each
technological progression, we needed to carry less factual information in our
heads because it was available in other places and we could get it if we needed
it. Our ability to store information digitally on hard drives, DVDs, and the
Internet is just the latest transition, with a concurrent reduction of the need
to carry around a bunch of disparate, disconnected facts that are irrelevant to
our daily lives. There’s a reason we don’t make most individuals memorize the
periodic table or the quadratic equation: they don’t need that information most
of the time and, if they do, they can find it pretty easily.
Am I smarter than a fifth grader? Yes, and it’s not because I have memorized
all of this stuff. It’s because I’m an adult who can find the information that I need in mere seconds when I need it,
critically consume information, and act upon information in professional, ethical, and productive ways.
What do you want your fifth grader to be learning in
school?
Further reading
[Update: I love this follow-up on the Journals of Journeys blog.]
by Scott McLeod | Mar 5, 2007 | Blogging, Leadership and Vision, Professional Development, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Cara Hagen has a fun post on her EdTechConnection blog describing the challenges she faces as she tries to balance blogging and learning new technologies with the other demands of her personal and professional life:
How messy can I let my house get because I’m online instead of on my
knees scrubbing? How much time with my kids am I willing to give up in
order to get up to speed on all the possibilities of Google Docs. How many frozen pizzas can I serve while I try to catch up on the many many sites I want to post to my del.icio.us list?
Of course this is a serious issue for most of us – there is WAY too much cool stuff to learn.
Barry Schwartz has written about the often-debilitating effects of having too many choices. I think the magnitude of learning, and learning choices, related to digital technologies is one of the things that makes them so intimidating / frightening to teachers, administrators, and professors. They see the potential but they also see the time drain. These are realistic concerns; as technology-oriented change agents, we ignore them at our peril.
by Scott McLeod | Feb 21, 2007 | Communication, Gaming, Online Learning, Pre-Service Preparation, Research and Evaluation, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
Yesterday I uploaded our third
CASTLE Conversations podcast. I interviewed Julie Sykes, a doctoral student here at the University of Minnesota, about her Spanish Pragmatics Project, which is using virtual world software (like Second Life) to help postsecondary Spanish students learn how to communicate effectively with native Spanish speakers. Screenshots are included with the podcast.
The intent of CASTLE Conversations is to interview folks that have expertise and are
doing interesting things but may not have much national visibility. Keep giving us feedback and let us know what
you think. As always, we’re interested in your nominations for interviewees.
Happy listening!
by Scott McLeod | Feb 20, 2007 | Assistive and Accessible, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Online Learning, Planning and Funding, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
My letter to Secretary Spellings in the previous post about online multimedia textbooks is the outcome of a conversation that I had with Jim Hirsch, Associate Superintendent for Technology and Academic Services for the Plano (TX) Independent School District, at the TIES conference last December. I’m not the only one thinking on this front. For example, Scott McNealy, Chairman of the Board for Sun Microsystems, said last June that ‘technology trumps the textbook.‘ Similarly, four days ago Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, noted that textbooks as we know them will disappear.
To be honest, the two most visible free online textbook initiatives still have a long way to go. WikiBooks, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, seems to be having a hard time getting off the ground; most of its content has yet to be created or is in the very earliest stages of development. Curriki, which is sponsored by Sun and has gotten a lot of media attention, so far seems to consist primarily of disparate resources and activities rather than comprehensive, meaningfully-organized textbooks. Both seem to be relying on volunteers’ efforts for most of the content. While both initiatives have potential, so far that potential remains unfulfilled. It’s early in the game, though. The National Repository of Online Courses (NROC) also is doing some interesting work but appears to be complementing, rather than replacing, print textbooks.
As my letter indicates, I think we need something more intentional and systematic. A strategic investment of monies could go a long way toward creating some pedagogically powerful, wonderfully engaging, online multimedia textbooks that then could be used by anyone in the country (or world). Can you imagine what a rich, interactive, media-saturated textbook a team of expert teachers, professors, and computer / Web programmers could create given a year’s time and $800,000 to play with (above and beyond their sabbatical salaries)? Can you imagine how fiscally and educationally empowering it would be for schools to have free and open access to 150 to 200 high-quality online multimedia textbooks created by the top experts in the country?
Clearly this an expensive venture from a raw dollar standpoint, at least to do it well. That said, the $200 million per year figure that I proposed represents less than 4 one-thousandths of the current federal discretionary funds allocated for K-12 education. The federal government clearly has the money to pull this kind of thing off. So might a consortium of states or maybe a large private foundation. As big as the numbers are, the return on this strategic investment would be HUGE.
Textbook publishers probably would oppose this idea. So might others, for a variety of political, educational, and sociological reasons. But Public Education Network CEO Wendy Puriefoy’s February 14 statement that "the new federal education budget is full of enthusiasm but lacks powerful ideas and transformative levels of funding" strikes home with me. I think this is a powerful, transformative idea whose time has come and I hope someone besides me will think big and make this happen.
by Scott McLeod | Feb 20, 2007 | Assistive and Accessible, Law, Policy, and Ethics, Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Online Learning, Planning and Funding, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
[send this letter to Secretary Spellings, Director Magner, and Congress]
The
Honorable Margaret Spellings
Secretary
United States Department of
Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW
Washington, DC 20202-7100
Dear Secretary Spellings,
The United States Department of Education currently administers a budget of
approximately $56 billion per year in discretionary monies. I am sending this
letter to encourage the Department to make a relatively small, but extremely
strategic, investment that would pay enormous dividends for our nation’s
elementary and secondary students.
For $200 million per year, the Department could create phenomenal,
mind-blowing online multimedia textbooks that could be used by students all
across the country. Imagine 50 teams, each made up of individuals who took a
paid sabbatical for one year, working to create rigorous, standards-based,
online textbooks that included text, graphics, electronic presentations, audio,
video, simulations, learning games, interactive problem-solving and review
activities, etc. The teams could be comprised as follows:
- 16 expert teachers * $100,000 each = $1,600,000
- 4 university professors * $100,000 each = $400,000
- 8 computer / Web programmers * $100,000 each = $800,000
- 1 assistive technology expert * $100,000 = $100,000
- 1 national organization representative * $100,000 = $100,000
- 1 project manager * $200,000 = $200,000
- Communication and other software, supplies, travel, etc. =
$800,000
Four teachers plus a professor plus two programmers equals a workgroup; four
workgroups per team. Each team receives ongoing feedback from a representative
from an appropriate national organization (e.g., National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics, National Council for Social Studies), has an assistive technology
expert to ensure content accessibility by students with disabilities, and has a
project manager to keep the workgroups moving along. The workgroups create
content; post that content online as they go along for review, comment, and
input from others; and, over the course of a year, create several units each
that add up to a complete, amazing, deep, rich online multimedia textbook.
Each year would see the completion of 50 textbooks. Over three or four years,
these Department-sponsored teams would create 150 to 200 textbooks for common,
key courses (e.g., Algebra I, Physics I, AP English, United States History, 5th
grade reading) that are present in nearly every school district nationwide.
Textbook content would be refreshed every three or four years to ensure content
relevance and usage of the latest digital technologies. If the textbooks were
wiki-based, much of the content could be revised and updated even before their
refresh cycle came due.
Once created, these textbooks then could be hosted by the Department, state
departments of education, and other entities or could be downloaded for hosting
on local school district servers. Federal provision of these textbooks would
free states and school districts to spend funds on laptops, classroom-level
high-speed wireless connectivity, and other technologies necessary to ensure the
global competitiveness of our students in the decades to come. All textbook
material would be free and openly accessible to our nation’s K-12 students and
educators.
I hope that you can see the instructional power of teachers and students
tapping into expert-created content delivered via the latest interactive,
engaging digital technologies. Although a few organizations (e.g., Wikibooks or
Curriki) are attempting to create free online textbooks or learning materials,
their reliance on volunteers has resulted in relatively little progress. A
strategic investment by the Department could make an extremely powerful
contribution to the K-12 educational landscape and would be a powerful lever
toward ensuring that all students had access to top-quality, engaging learning
materials.
Please consider instituting a national online textbook initiative. I believe
that this is an idea whose time has come and would welcome the opportunity to
discuss this further with you.
Sincerely,
Dr. Scott McLeod
Assistant Professor, Department of Educational
Policy and Administration
Director, UCEA Center for the Advanced Study
of
Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE)
Affiliate Faculty, Law
School
University of Minnesota
by Scott McLeod | Feb 14, 2007 | Leadership and Vision, Management and Operations, Pre-Service Preparation, Professional Development, Research and Evaluation, Tech Integration, Tech Tools |
If we’re going to teach Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
literacy skills in schools, we need ways of determining whether or not those
skills have been learned by students. The Partnership for 21st Century
Skills notes that answering the question ‘How do we measure 21st
century learning?’ will be critical as we try to prepare students
who can be productive citizens in the new technology-suffused,
globally-interconnected economy.
Over in the United Kingdom, the British government’s Key Stage 3 ICT Literacy
Assessment for 12- and 13-year-old aims to assess higher-order thinking
skills in conjunction with ICT use. For example, as part of a task to draft and
publish a journalistic article, students must use search engines to collect and
analyze employment data, e-mail sources for permission to publish their
information, and present data in graphic and written formats using word
processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, all within a simulated
computing environment. Student actions are tracked by the computer and assessed
for both technical and learning skills such as finding things out,
developing ideas, and exchanging and sharing information. If
you’re interested, you can download a
demonstration file and see for yourself.
Other interesting projects in the U.K. include Northern Ireland’s Council for
the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment A-Level Examination in the Moving
Image (students must create
and assess digital film clips), the Ultralab International Certificate in
Digital Creativity (students must defend their digitally-produced film,
artwork, and music to a panel of peers and professionals), and the eViva e-portfolio initiative (online
space where students can receive feedback on their research and communication,
data analysis, and presentation skills). If anyone in the U.K. is reading this
post and has experience with any of these assessments, I’d love to hear your
perspectives in the comments section.
Over here in the United States, ETS also is
attempting to create new assessments of 21st century learning skills. I had a
chance last fall to get a personal demonstration of the ETS ICT Literacy Assessment. Like the Key
Stage 3, ETS’ assessment is a scenario-based test. This is a completely new
paradigm for ETS, which the ETS representative said is challenging but also
exciting for its psychometricians to try and wrap their heads around. I
encourage you to visit the
demo site and see how the test works. It may not be ideal, but I think it’s
a lot further from your typical standardized test than one might expect. It’s an
interesting attempt to blend both the technology and information literacy skills
needed by future generations and at least offers some food for thought. Also
check out the News
and Research
links to find out more about the results from ETS’ pilot tests.
We will see the birth of many new 21st century
assessments in the years ahead. Like these early attempts, most of
these assessments will be performance-based and thus will avoid some of the
objections we hear about current standardized tests. Most, if not all, also will
utilize the multimedia, simulation, and tracking power of digital technologies
to create more authentic assessments of real-life tasks. It should be an
interesting journey.
Credits
Much of the information in this post, including some very close paraphrasing,
comes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills report, Assessment
of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape. If you’re interested in 21st
century learning skills, this report should be an important addition to your
reading list.
Other resources
This post is also available at the TechLearning blog.
