Mobile learning with smart phones: what they can do

The video below is a very short (1 minutee) overview of the sorts of things smart phones can do, making them potentially very powerful for school use. The example here is my beloved iPhone, but there are more phones with related functions coming on the market all the time. The iPod Touch is a strong contender for mobile learning in schools because it is almost identical to the iPhone but does not have the additional expense and complication of phone contracts. With wireless connectivity, the Touch is a powerful small (in physical size) computer.

Tags: sictas learning smart phones mobile iphone
Posted at 10:51AM Nov 13, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[0]

Diigo - a powerful tool for on-the-web collaboration

I have been using the social bookmarking service Diigo for a few weeks and am very impressed by it to the point that I have imported my delicious bookmarks into Diigo and have jumped horses in mid stream - seamlessly.

The video below is one example of what you can do with Diigo, which is a second generation social bookmarking service. Its main new feature is that one can add sticky notes to specific text in a web page and make it public to all Diigo subscribers or to a sub group of your own choosing. The example in the video shows how it can be used ot respond to student contributions to a discussion forum. 

 Diigo takes collaboration to a new level where subscribers can inform and respond to each other on a web page and not in a parallel environment. Immediacy seems to be a central issue in effective communication and if one has something to say it is important to be able to say or write it immediately where it belongs. Diigo helps this happen. More on Diigo in the future.

Tags: social bookmarking diigo collaboration sictascollab sictas
Posted at 10:45AM Nov 13, 2008 by John Travers  |  Comments[0]

Why is education ICT lagging business and government?

 This just released report from EU Commission staff is a down-to-earth and impressive report on progress in implementing ICT goals in education in the EU since the Lisbon Declaration in 2000.

In short, they say that the impact of ICT on education and training has not yet been as great as had been expected. There has been success in building and using infrastructure and teachers generally see ICT as beneficial for learning, but the impact has not been anywhere near the impact of ICT on business and government. The report suggests that much more needs to be done to:

a. embed ICT tools in education systems so that these can be used in multiple ways: administration, communication, learning, etc. as is commonly done by government and business

b. enable much better use of ICT for lifelong and informal learning

c. leveraging innovation and change so that education becomes part of an innovation-friendly society.

"...ICT needs to be seen as a key tool for modernisation and improvement of all aspects of education and training."

A main theme of the report is that "ICT has transformed society and the economy" and is a major lever for innovation, and this has not yet occurred in education. They point to the potential of ICT to support "learner-centred guidance, group work and inquiry projects" but this has not happend on a large scale yet.

It is an often repeated story. The potential is there but is not yet being achieved. Why not?

We can easily list a large number of excuses, but I like to look to comparisons with other sectors and if one looks at two immediate examples: imagine an airline that has not got a comprehensive online booking system, or a newspaper that has no online presence. Innovation and commercial pressure have forced these businesses to change and change they have. The newspaper business is undergoing a revolution that no amount of traditional journalist huffing and puffing can resist.

There is no equivalent pressure on the education sector - yet. In fact there is a renewed push in some quarters for a return to more traditional modes of teaching - particularly in defining curriculum outcomes.

Airlines and newspapers have some very simple fundamental outcomes to focus on: passenger numbers, and sales of newspapers and advertising. If education could focus more closely on some measurable outcomes then we could be more responsive to the new ICT rich environment that allows new ways of functioning. What if we specified and committed ourselves as a society to some clear student outcomes like: ability to research, sift evidence and make considered judgements, problem solving skills, ability to work in a team and achieve tasks, ability to tell stories and communicate in powerful ways, and so on. In other words, be specific about high level learning goals and teachers would innevitably turn to ICT to help them achieve these. Not because it is fashionable to use ICT but because ICT is very powerful support for many of these outcomes. I am making an assumption here that high level learning is frequently supported most effectively by wise use of ICT. I am confident that there is plenty of evidence that this is true.

Sounds simple but obviously isn't. I think we have got our priorities wrong in implementing ICT. We have focused too much on the technology and learning what it can do, then seek to bend and twist our teaching to take advantage of these tools. If we focused more on what we want students to be able to do, and then turned to ICT to assist when appropriate, we would have our minds on the main game and turn to ICT when needed. Too many ICT promoters (like me) have been, or appear to be, focused on the technology rather than what the learning is intended to be.

The practical problem with this approach is that it does not address the need for teachers and administrators to be working simultaneously on the chicken and the egg. While focusing on the egg of outcomes, one needs to be simultaneously working on how to build a chicken. By this convoluted metaphor I mean that I am asking teachers to focus on learning outcomes and simultaneously be learning about a wide range of ICT applications so that when the need arises, he/she can turn to the appropriate ICT tool to assist in the learning.

But then I guess journalists and editors and publishers have been forced to do this sort of thinking and acting.

Tags: staffdevelopmen schooldevelopment sictas
Posted at 11:18AM Oct 20, 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]