October 15, 2009 – 11:20 am
Diana said that the network has changed everything…this is what is so different in today’s context. She says a 1% increase in tertiary educated workforce increases GDP by around 6%. Innovation drives economic success - entrepreneurship takes ideas and converts to commercial success. However, costs of education continues to grow…particularly if governments want % of all people to be better educated. Society can benefit from small, cumulative contributions of a large number of people.
Emerging educational ecology includes research and scholarship are more conversational, so is learning. Undergraduates spend only 7.7% of their time in formal learning environments. Anytime, anywhere, information and data is at their fingertips. Tim O’Reilly talks about Web 2.0 moving to web squared where the web is a platform and data is used in context aware applications…those people who have iphones know this only too well.
She says that many students are haptic learners…they learn by touch. Haptics augment the learning environment by touch, pressure and sound. She spoke about Virtual Worlds to experience tsunami’s and for role playing.
Adaptive testing (Knewton) responds and learns from each answer the learner provides…..I personally would rather see a debate about what we should actually be assessing..but I agree that we should be treating learners as individuals and testing them against their own learner goals.
She talked about StraightLiner and Peer to Peer Universities and other organisations like flatworld knowledge which is an open source authoring model for publishers. She says their are many new models that have become available because of the network and challenge traditional notions of learning.
I’ll post a link to the presentation when I get same…but worth having a look as she goes onto the impact in scholarship and research…and in Australia we seem to be aligning well to her call for action.
October 12, 2009 – 5:06 pm
I am in Tokyo at the Open University, Japan OUJ-Globe E-Learning Seminar. I have been asked to present on research directions for education.au’s services. In my presentation I have reflected on the most signficant directions that we have had to respond to over the past 12 years. I have presented my thoughts in a presentation you can find on prezi. http://prezi.com/fxuso_61kgo8/
Today I attended the launch of the Cybersmart website by Minister Conroy at the Beth Rivkah Ladies College in St Kilda. Minister Conroy spoke of the enormous benefit to education and the economy of the internet. However, there were negative aspects to the use of the internet. The Cybersmart program was a resource that supported the positive use of the internet for teens, staff in schools and parents. It was intended to take the ‘fear’ out of the use of the internet whilst recognising there were risks associated with it use.
The Cybersmart program consists of the website and an outreach program which provides professional learning for staff in schools. Greg Gebhart who was undertaking a professional development session with staff at the school commented on the fact that the use of mobile devices was now used extensively by students in primary schools and the target audience for things like cyberbullying, cybersafety and security needed to be focussed at the younger years in schools. The comments back from teachers at the school was that what Greg was presenting was a little scary but timely and important that teachers and parents realise the great opportunities and potential risks in the use of the internet.
education.au is proud to have supported ACMA in developing this site. It would also be an oversight if I did not mention that we were ably assisted by Robyn Treyvaud and Lee Burton from the Centre for Strategic Education who provided much of the content for the site.
I am starting to work on my presentation regarding 21st Century Learning Spaces in Melbourne in two weeks and in Adelaide in early August. Yesterday I met with Phil Long, Mark Schultz and their colleagues who work at the Centre for Education Innovation and Technology at the University of Queensland. Mark provided a paper which piqued my interest and is the title for this blog. So the environment in which you exist does impact on your ability to process information.
The influence of Ceiling Height : The effect of Priming on the type of processing that people use. This article claims that high ceilings promote a different response in consumers (in our case, learners). Could high ceilings promote higher order, more creative and abstract thinking? I had been starting to think about why educational delivery really hasn’t changed much over thepast 100 years, and what I was starting to ascertain was that the environment itself is constraining. Classrooms of four walls, doors to close, desks in rows itself was limiting teacher and student creativity.
Recently, I blogged about a Qantas Club model for the classroom, so that space, furniture and technology was functional for the variety of learning that we now expect. Pru Mitchell recently alerted me to the Adelaide University Library setting which closely matches this.
I think this is an area further research could be undertaken.
Arnold Schwarzenegeer has signed an Executive Order in California is intended to tackle the digital divide, California’s competitiveness and leadership role in the US. Some interesting statistics were given to support the Executive Order.
Less than half of Latinos (48%) have home computers, compared with about 86% for Whites, 84% for Asians, and 79% for Blacks.
Only 40% of Latinos have Internet access, and only 34% of Latinos have broadband connections at home, while majorities of other racial or ethnic groups have both Internet access and broadband connections.
Only 32% of Californians are very confident about using the Internet.
More than 56% of parents indicate that they visit their children’s school websites, but only 30% of those with household incomes under $40,000 indicate doing so, as compared to 84% of those with incomes of $80,000 or more.
More than 62% of Californians indicate a concern that lower-income areas are less likely than others to have access to broadband Internet technology.
There is a disparity among ethnic/racial groups, income levels, and regions when comparing rates of computer ownership, Internet access, and broadband connections at home.
A majority of residents express concern that Californians in lower-income areas and rural areas have less access to broadband Internet technology than others.
There are indications that since 2000, computer use has grown among whites (79% to 85%) and blacks (76% to 83%), as has Internet use (70% to 81% for whites, 60% to 82% for blacks), but among Latinos, computer use has declined (64% to 58%) and Internet use is unchanged (47% to 48%), while Asians have seen in both their use of computers (91% to 81%) and the Internet (84% to 80%).
I wonder how much longer before we will be expecting everyone will have a computer with internet access? How can governments ensure that those who do not have the financial capacity do get access to computers? Will the next Digital Education Revolution assist people at home to purchase appropriate technology for learning and workforce development?
Whilst still relatively newbie user of Twitter we are starting to see educators use the technology to great effect.
Thanks to Jude O’Connell, who pointed to this video of a lecturer using Twitter for class feedback. What was interesting about this was that the students found the exercise added considerable value to their experience in the classroom. The Twitter Experiment - Bringing Twitter to the Classroom at UT Dallas
A recent post by dana boyd on her apophenia blog where she asked for people to tweet questions she asks in her research on students. The answers provide some really interesting insights to student views about social networking sites, parents and education. As one commentator suggests, ‘…and no media literacy training!!! Enlightenment 2.0 has a long way to go!!’ So here is two great examples of the use of Twitter….I am sure there will be lots more!!
Thanks to Jenny Lewis (CEO, ACEL), I was pointed to this interesting piece of research out of the US. The Speak Up 2008 Research project was conducted by Project Tomorrow (PT) PT is a not-for-profit national education group based in California. Its vision is to ensure that today’s students are prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders and engaged citizen’s of the world. The research is based on an online survey of students in the US (more than 200,000) and teachers/administrators (more than 29,000)
A major outcome was that only one third of high school students polled in 2008 believe that their school is preparing them for jobs of the future. Yet 56% of school principals believe that they were doing a good job. Students have a different vision for learning than what we are providing in the way of formal education. There is a disconnect that should not get wider!!
The Consortium of School Networking has recently released another report on Web 2.0 titled Leadership for Web 2.0 in education : Promise and Reality. In this report, they surveyed school district superintendents, curriculum directors and technology directors. Their findings indicate that ‘educational mindsets and school cultures do not yet align learning to the realities of the 21st Century, although they report that there is an increasing awareness amongst schools that they need to do so.
Do we have such evidence in Australia? Let me know!!
At the SICTAS symposium on Friday I was a provocatuer and my assertion was that the next Digital Education Revolution might involve the government giving tax breaks to parents (actually, they already do…..see Education Tax Refund) to purchase computers rather than give the money to school/school systems to provide. Now students will own the computers and bring them into the formal learning environment. Some of my colleagues at the table said that this already happens in schools, TAFEs and universities….but it is not widely acknowledged or even supported. If the students own the computers then they won’t want their computers locked down to the system requirements (ie ban Youtube and many other sites). This will truly be a personal learning device.
On my recent trip overseas my iPhone was almost permanently connected to the Internet. As I walked the streets/subways the device locked into the wireless hotspots and seamlessly connected. All I had to do was subscribe to any of the hotspot providers and because of their peering arrangements could connect from almost anywhere and from any European city.
So….imagine a new world where students bring their machines which lock into the wireless network at home and then connect at the local coffee shop and finally connect to the hotspots near schools. In fact, this may mean that schools no longer need to provide fixed line connectivity. So it raises in my mind how the $43b investment in Fibre to the Home (FTTH) would support such a scenario??
So will the next government initiative provide tax incentives to not only purchase a computer but subsidise hotspot access to the internet from anywhere in Australia. Now that would be a great initiative!!
April 21, 2009 – 11:14 pm
For those who have had the experience of coming out of the London Underground and being disoriented, I had that experience today on my way to a meeting with Sarah Porter from JISC. However, my iPhone through its GPS system was able to pinpoint where I was and I quickly realised I was actually walking away from my meeting place. I am now realising how the iPhone is now my personal portable device that I soon won’t be able to do without.
Serendipity has it, that only yesterday I discovered a recent report from Becta called ‘Location Based Technology Learning’ by Steve Benford from the University of Nottingham. Steve says that location based learning can
- can place knowledge in context (ie associate objects with location) on say field trips
- enable learners to document the world around them
- enable collaborative learning from publishing and sharing evidence captured in the field
Steve warns that there are some challenges also. Issues such as privacy (I think this is becoming less and less of an issue) and there are some technical challenges (coverage of networks, costs and accuracy of the positioning systems)
Steve covers some very interesting case studies such as field trips, pervasive games, sport health and bio-sensing. These devices are certainly challenging the notion that the classroom extends beyond the four walls…..it may even be an exercise on the way home from school….and an interstng one at that!!
Anyway, I must admit I am becoming very attached to my iPhone for many good reasons. Perhaps surgery may be required later!!
