'Leading a Digital School' - a useful book for ICT leaders

Leading a digital school , edited by Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney, published by ACER 2008 is a very useful collection of essays on the full range of issues related to this much discussed topic. Naturally, among the fifteen chapters there are some I really liked and some that I had doubts about. I apply a personal ruler to new material about the use of ICT in schools, based on an article I read a while ago and return to regularly by Aviram and Talmi. In short, they suggest there are two main groups involved in the use of ICT in education: the largest group they call Technocrats, who are fascinated by the technology and see great benefit in its use and see it as relatively unproblematic. The Technocrats tend to do the same old teaching using fancy new tools. The other main group, Reformists are somewhat romantic and see ICT as a tool that will almost inevitably bring education to a constructivist paradise. My view is more aligned with the Reformists but recognising that there is nothing inevitable about a change in learning styles. ICT can help achieve more open learning but the technology itself will not make it happen. That makes me a Realistic Reformist I guess.

So, like Goldilocks, I found Roger Hayward's case study of his school St Leonard's College just right, and almost reason enough to get this book. St Leonards is a very affluent school and Dr Hayward is very committed to the us of computers in education. But he offers very salutary observations. "...our efforts to use ICT well are , in my opinion, disappointing" and "...I cannot shake off a feeling akin to driving around in an Aston Martin in first gear with the handbrake on...". He is critical of initiatives to use laptops as a Trojan horse to force a more constructivist learning methodolgy and says, "Schools change pedagogy by changing pedagogy, not by changing technology." But he is not a pessimist, and has a lot of positive ideas on how to apply technology to support good learning.

I liked David O'Brien's case study of his pioneering work in us of IWBs and interestingly talks a lot about the successful use of video games to point to how they have employed good learning principles. Greg Whitby's excellent essay on staffing the digital school barely mentions technology and is all about creating a good learning environment for staff so they will use the technology, and all their other resources, to achieve good learning by students.  David Ingvarson and Michael Gaffney provide a detailed overview of the confusing world of learning management systems and online environments including the burgeoning Web 2.0 world.

My Reformist alarms went off in some of the essays. Mal Lee and Michael Gaffney's introduction recognises that changing methodologies are needed but contrasted a Paper-Based Schooling with Digitally Based Schooling. The implication is that the dominance of paper causes one style of teaching and learning while digital technology causes a more open and progressive approach. There is a lot of evidence from digitally enhanced schools that the latter is not necessarily so. I don't think they intended this implication and the selection of essays in the book suggests the view that pedagogy is the main issue and technology provides powerful tools.

A valuable and timely book for school leaders.

Tags: staff developmen leadership school developme
Posted at 12:59PM Sep 11, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[0]

Newspapers online - their advertising can be powerful, using multimedia

I was recently engaged in discussion about the weakening of newspapers in an internet world, and there was some talk about income and market effectiveness of online versus paper newspapers. The experience below made me think about the power of online adversising and online news distribution. I opened up the online New York Times this evening and....

Tags: advertising multimedia newspapers
Posted at 09:33PM Sep 10, 2008 by John Travers  | 

'Digital natives' experience in using ICT - a little survey

The graph below is a summary of the experience of a number of university students in using a range of common ICT tools. These students have chosen to do a topic on current technologies for teaching and presumably have a greater interest in the field that the average student. The responses are interesting because they do not indicate that the so-called digital natives are heavily engaged in the technologies. There is high level experience with email and with social networking, presumably because these are powerful communication tools. But quite valuable information management tools like delicious and rss are little used.

The question on YouTube needs another: 'have you uploaded videos to YouTube or similar. I suspect that the response would be quite low. The low use of Flickr type photo sharing is surprising. Low use of blog is to be expected since one really needs a purpose to be a blog user. The overall impression I get is that this small and very informal survey shows what we can expect: that young people in tertiary education are mainstream users of ICT, but only in fields that have immediate relevance. Tools to leverage some of the big advantages of the information society have yet to prove themselves.

 

Tags: multimedia literacy digital literacy
Posted at 06:10PM Aug 28, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[2]

iPhone, the path to mobile learning?

The icons on the main screen give a hint of what is to offer. From the top: Photos can be a large image collection, Camera is modes but effective - inserting images into your large photo collection, and they can be emailed immediately too. Maps provides satellite views and maps of the whole world. App Store is the magic feature. Here you can find a quickly growing collection of free or cheap applications that do everything immaginable and some that are not. SpeakEasy is a very simple and powerful voice recorder that can attache images from your photo collection! Reader is a link to your collection of RSS feeds to whaterver you are tracking. FileMagnet is a storage place for Word, PDF, Excel files: small view but readable. Molecules is an example of the Apps that are coming on stream. Drag your finger across the screen and you rotate and maginfy the image of DNA. More protein molecules can be downloaded.

The bottom row, Phone, Email, Web and a complete iPod for audio and video. Storage for the small one is 8Gb - enough for thousands of images and hundreds of audio files.

With wirelss internet access it is a fast and cheap web browser, giving access out of the pocket. I think this is the most impressive aspect of mobile devices, that they can be operated immidiately, from anywhere.  Navigation is the second key feature. The touch screen means that manipulating the image, Zoom in and Zoom out are intuitive. I regularly read the New York Times on my iPhone and all in all it is a better expereince than from my laptop, becuase it is discrete, and drops into the pocket when I want to do something else.

Another free app is an eBook reader, and downloading War and Peace took about 30 sec. The actual size is slightly smaller than this image. The screen is more then double the resolution of a normal computer screen so it is a quite good eBook format.

Navigation is again by touching the  screen to the right or left. It is not as convenient as having paper, but is is more convenient than having a 2 Kg folder in on'es bag.

The view of my blog shows that the mini screen is quite readable, and one can zoom in for a closer look.

The iPhone is a fully fledged computer with navigation and viewing affected by the small size. Typing is on an on-screen keyboard and as one types away with big thumbs making a lot of mistakes, 90% of these are corrected by the predictive text. Correction is easy with the use of an amazing maginfying glass.

I think tools like this will be front and centre in the classroom within a year or two. By the way, they are cheap and about $230 nominal price. If students/parents are responsible for phone costs and home and school provide wireless access, these are very practical learning tools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: mobile learning multimedia literacy iphone
Posted at 04:23PM Aug 15, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[1]

Blending print and internet: a powerful message about the East Sea

Just before munching my vegemite toast this full page ad in The Australian caught my eye.

It basically does nothing more than catch one's eye, provide minimal information about a dispute between Korea and Japan regarding some offshore islands in the East Sea, and provide a link to a web site.

An interesting example of a feature of each media form. The newspaper has a large number of 'eyeballs' and the interent can provide very rich and detailed information, which this site does.

 

Tags: internet digital literacy
Posted at 03:11PM Aug 15, 2008 by John Travers  | 

The fourth screen - the coming mobile wave

This is a quite powerful story that is actually an advertisement for Nokia about the evolution of screens in our lives.

 

Might be self-serving for Nokia, but I suspect it is true. As my Affair with my iPhone matures into its 4th week I have changed my mind about mobile phones and schooling. I think the 4th screen is a valid concept. It is definitely an expressive tool, enabling me to annoy people on a regular basis by whipping it out to show off grandchild pics and a graph on global temperatures to prove a point. It is it's personal nature that is different: always in the pocket, ready to record, connect, find and snap.

Tags: smart phones mobile learning
Posted at 04:07PM Aug 08, 2008 by John Travers  | 

Evidence, internet and climate skeptics

This entry is a bit about my interest in responding to climate change skeptics, but maybe just as important, to look at how one can quickly check the authenticity of views, using internet tools.

The following is an extract from an article by Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist who writes an opinion column in the New York Times. In his article on Aug 1, he expressed some views about US politics and included the following:

"Martin Weitzman, a Harvard economist who has been driving much of the recent high-level debate, offers some sobering numbers. Surveying a wide range of climate models, he argues that, over all, they suggest about a 5 percent chance that world temperatures will eventually rise by more than 10 degrees Celsius (that is, world temperatures will rise by 18 degrees Fahrenheit). As Mr. Weitzman points out, that's enough to "effectively destroy planet Earth as we know it". It's sheer irresponsibility not to do whatever we can to eliminate that threat."

He went on to say that he believes that we should confront dogged skeptics about the human induced climate change as a moral issue, because the stakes are so high. If someone of good reputation told me that there is a 5% likelyhood that I will be killed on my next oversease trip then I would not go!

So the question is about reputation. Who is this chap Martin Weitzman, the economist. So I looked him up, and according to the Wikipedia, he is among the top 200 economists in the world. Who says so? Well, there is a site called RePec which lists an amazing catalogue of economist publications and ratings which produces a 'reputation' listing, and our Martin is currently 122nd! Professor Weitzman's biography is very impressive and he is currently recognised for his work on the economic impact of catastrophic climate change.

Conspiracy believers will not accept any of this evidence, but to a plain thinking person like me it is impressive. Of course this does not prove anything except that an academic of good reputation believes that the evidence for catastrophic climate change is about 5%.

The internet provides this type of evidence, or the lack of it, quite impressively. Students should be skilled in finding and assessing like this.

Tags: evidence climate skeptics digital literac
Posted at 09:03PM Aug 01, 2008 by John Travers  | 

Smart phones, online learning and the iPhone

As the proud and doting owner of an iPhone for two weeks I can start to think of their potential for use as a learning device. The revoutionary aspect of the iPhone is that it is a work in progress rather than a finished product. Almost the entire face is taken up with a touch-screen and there is only one button. Apart from the usual phone features, it can:

1. record and play through speakers
2. accept text through the screen keyboard,
3. store at least 6 Gb of stuff
4. Play video
5. Take photos
6. Respond to movement in its motion sensor
7. Navigate the internet via wireless or phone

It is a small computer with good battery life and storage, with several input types and a large display (for a hand held). Most interesing, it has the Apps (applications store) where hundreds of eager beavers are writing new applications to be sold via the iTunes store or give away free. This means that it is an increasingly personalised device, with the user adding software as desired. So what does it offer for education?

1. Immediacy: This is really valuable. Take it out of your pocket, onto the web in 30 sec. In a lively environment this is very valuable. Desktop, and laptops to a lesser degree, mean that you go to them rather than the other way around. Voice recording and photographs, for example, are more on-hand and therefore productive and relevant.

2. Instant storage: By this I mean instantly available storage. The computer ought to supplement face to face discussion rather than replace it. This little computer allows one ot call up images, text, audio as required. It also can be a means of storing personal files between home school and where-ever.

3. Integration: Integration of phone, and all the other functions, combined with portability  makes this a unique computer. Text, images, voice, audio, video in your pocket. It is a good ebook reader.

4. Apps that have not been invented yet: This is speculation, but it is likely that there will be a huge range of applications of educational value, like simulations, built for the iPhone and similar devices. These can combine built in applications with acces to web data.

5. Motion sensor: This is a big unknown. So far it is displayed in a few very appealing games but has all sorts of potential in a new range of applications. Express yourself my movement?

The major disadvantage of smart phones is a by-product of their portability and instant access: they are really small and so do not offer the full keyboard and visual experience. But just as we drink from portable utensils and also from high quality porcelain, we will work out what is appropriate to each situation.

Tags: online learni iphone
Posted at 02:40PM Jul 30, 2008 by John Travers  | 

Self regulated personalised learning... and climate debate

This entry has two separate motivations: one is to explore a modest example of SRPL (see the title) involging me, and the other is to beat the drum about evidence for climate change.

I have recently been taken-aback a little by some loud climate change skeptics saying that temperatures have actually been falling since 1998, so there! As you can see on the section of the full graph to the right, the top blue dot is 1998, and since then, the temperatures have all been less. On hearing the claim  fell back on my trust in the scientists argument but felt a bit uneasy because the failure of people to reply to the claim in a discussion made me wonder. But today I thought I would try to learn whether there is validity to this or not. So a bit of self regulated personalised learning began. I declare a bias: it set out hoping to find the claim was invalid.

I went to the Wikipedia and looked up the International Climate Change Panel entry, and from there found an entry on Golobal Temperature. The graph is from the University of East Anglia Climate Reserach Centre, with links galore and I am confident that it is a credible source.

Now, here is the graph of temperature change for the last 100 years.

 

The full graph paints a quite different picture. It is obvious that temperatures shot up in 1998 then down sharply for two years, then up for the next six all of which are higher than 1997. The trend is clearly upwards. Clearly, 1998 is an anomaly. And just look at the trend for the last century! I have learnt something. But, did you notice what the graph is measuring? Not temperature, but temperature "anomaly". But I think that amounts to much the same thing for this argument.

Thinking through a learning process like this, and being able to justify one's conclusions is what SRPL is all about, I think. Seems like a very good activity for learners of all ages.

 

Tags: online learning iclass
Posted at 01:30PM Jul 30, 2008 by John Travers  | 

iClass a new generation learning system?

iClass is a new type of online learning system that is a major break from Learner Management Systems LMS like Blackboard and Moodle. It is a under development in Europe by a consortium of educational organisations, universities and IT industry companies. It is a sort of amalgamation of a journal, social networking and an LMS. It has a planning component (to plan your learning) a learning area and a reflection area. There is a good overview of iClass here.

The quite different elements are in planning and reflection. The student is prodded to justify and reflect on their thinking. iClass does some magical things like Google in monitoring what the user is typing, and suggest links to the contributions of others - but not advertising like Google.

The goal of iClass is to manage or rather, support "self regulated personalized learning". It is based on some strong theory led by the very interesting Roni Aviram who is an educational philosopher. I have been very impressed by him for some years following an article he jointly wrote a while ago which claimed that there are three main groups of people leading ICT development and that they act in ignorance of each other. Technocrats who think technology is great and just dandy, Reformists who think technilogy will improve the world by forcing constructivist methods of learning, and a far smaller group of 'Holists' who are a more skeptical bunch. Some are anti technology, and others see a positive side, but are skeptical of the two larger groups.

Aviram and the people behind iClass believe that things are not going well with ICT integration in learning, and that we are going to have to work hard to develop new methodologies to create the wonderful world of student centred learning.

iClass web site

sictac

 

Tags: online learni digital literacy sictas
Posted at 04:33PM Jul 29, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[1]