Category — Technology

According to Wikipedia, engineering is the discipline and profession of applying technical, scientific and mathematical knowledge in order to use natural laws and physical resources to help design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective.

Because of their sheer intellect and innate ability to tie theory with practice, students entering the engineering field are generally considered a special breed of people.

Within this group of students is another subset of individuals, those who show such incredible promise at a very young age that they are able to gain admittance to a even more select group, the subset selected to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For those who yearn to learn a bit more about the young men and women who are selected to study engineering at MIT, our sister site GoCollege recently featured the amazing work of one such student, Charles Guan. The young man who is part of the groundbreaking smart cities research at the school has been seen zipping around the streets of Cambridge in his own, high powered, motorized shopping cart.

The in-depth, revealing look at the work of Guan reinforces the notion that engineers, especially MIT student engineers, are a different breed of cat.

The release of the latest version of the Kindle has many waxing poetic on the future of books in the digital age.

While books seem to gather the most interest, perhaps a more important and certainly more sophisticated notion is to examine what it will mean to be called a writer/author in the age of new media.

Current Status

Tim O’Reilly of RadarOReilly.com describes the idea of putting a book on an electronic device as analogous to “pointing a camera at a stage play, and calling it a movie.”

While that might have been the initial thrust of Hollywood, O’Reilly points out that the “tools of production and consumption actually changed the format of what was produced and consumed. Camera angles, pacing, editing techniques, lighting, location shooting, special effects: all these innovations make the movies (and television) of today very different from the earliest movies.”

Likewise, we are in the early stages of a new world, one that is shifting to an online medium featuring greater and greater portability. The question thus arises, how will books change in the digital age?

To get a sense of the basics, we turn back to the latest version of the Kindle. The device features the ability to display a wealth of different document styles and formats. As one would expect, the Kindle 2 provides access to and readily displays books, newspapers, and magazines. However, the latest version also displays a vast array of other document formats: Microsoft Word, PDF, HTML, TXT, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, PRC and MOBI files. Therefore the Kindle now has the potential to be a document repository and full-fledged library.

Perhaps an even more exciting option, albeit still in its infancy as a polished product, is that the Kindle 2 can turn a traditional book into an audiobook. There is still much work to be done before the device can be considered a perfect swap for the audio created by a soothing and polished human voice, but the device offers an amazing step forward in the overall reading process.

As proponents tout, one can use the Kindle as an ebook reader on a train or airplane just as you could pull out a book to read. But then later, the earbuds can be connected and you can continue to read (as in listen to the audio production) as you walk through the station or airport.

Of course, the new ereader means that no book has to be printed and therefore there is no such thing as a truly finished product. The ereader concept certainly makes nonfiction works more practical as updates can be easily uploaded to ensure that the book available for purchase always represents the latest edition.

Mixing Platforms

Of course, one of the beauties of the internet and thus the Kindle is the ability to provide documents that then hyperlink immediately to provide a relevant citation or reference. Perhaps even more importantly, nonfiction works can consist of fewer collected chapters as some of the text that would normally be incorporated to build upon or explain certain concepts can instead be simply linked to.

Readers without expertise can peruse the linked material at their leisure while those who have a grasp may forgo those links and delve directly into the new material.

According to O’Reilly, such a concept likely means we will need to develop useful modular formats. In such cases, many books could become more of a collection of loosely-related pages allowing for greater depth and breadth of issue exploration.

Therein comes the real challenge: how does one actually write material for the potential to cross platforms? How can the author ensure her book translates well to an ereader or iPhone application?

As but one example, what happens if a writer uses hyperlinks instead of footnotes but the reader doesn’t have internet access? And even when the reader does have such access, how can writers ensure such cross-referencing links are still active and reliable at the the time the reader examines the link?

Scott Meyers, an independent author and consultant, examines the notion of cross-platforming in “Authoring Challenges in a Multiplatform World.” To the right we present a visual of one of his slides that depicts some of the existing challenges (click to enlarge).

Currently, the conventional manuscript from an author is often designed for the traditional book format. Later, that document is translated where it is viewed on a computer or laptop, an ereader, or PDA or listened to on one of those same devices.

While most everything that works in printed form will work on these devices, simply translating existing documents fails to take advantage of the new technology available. As Meyer notes, text, diagrams, tables, photographs, etc. all work with new media, they just might not work as well.

At the same time, new media offers so much more: color, video/animations and audio are what make the newer platforms so enticing. It is truly as O’Reilly notes, the stage when movies were simply still films of stage plays.

Author Issues

Meyer notes that effective multi-platform publication will require greater author cooperation. It will also mean that writers may well need to develop additional skills if they are to ensure the portability of their work to different platforms.

As it is currently constructed, the idea of designing and writing for traditional print formats then attempting to translate or port that work to other new media platforms makes little sense. Instead, according to Meyer, we will soon see the adoption of new expository and software tools that allow for the construction of documents that are easily ported among devices.

It will also demand new writing skills and that authors understand two relatively new concepts: how to properly express capability-dependent content (eg., displaying a table on devices that have limited viewing screen sizes) and how to apply capability-dependent formatting (eg. including colors when such an option is available, falling back to black and white when color is not present). And as we noted, there will need to be careful consideration for how cross-references and links are utilized, especially given that documents and web sites will not remain static over time.

Teachers are fond of saying that we are educating students for jobs that do not even exist today. Thanks to ereaders and other portable electronic devices, one of the world’s greatest inventions, the book, is undergoing a major review.

At the same time, the notion of what it means to be a writer or author is also undergoing a thorough look. Perhaps it will give rise to a new descriptor or title.

And to a wealth of new career options, much as we saw with the development of the movie industry.

Without a doubt, visuals are critical for kids when it comes to the learning process.

Thanks to some great “Techy Tips for not so Techy Teachers” we were recently reminded of four tech tools (web sites) that can help teachers create some very interesting visuals for their classroom, with the key being that one need not be a techy to put these sites into action.

Subject Specific Word Clouds

The use of tags and word clouds is becoming a web staple and a great way to introduce the concept to students is a web site that will generate “word clouds” from any text supplied by a teacher. With Wordle, teachers have access to a free web site to generate relevant word clouds for any learning task they are about to undertake.

Because word clouds give greater prominence to the words that appear most often in the supplied text, these clouds create a great learning visual for students by prominently displaying the most used terms. These clouds can be made into posters at the younger levels or used as a cover sheet to a course syllabus for older students.

With Wordle, the user can also modify aspects of the cloud through the use of different fonts, layouts, and color schemes for the letters and the background. Because the site is web-based, a user can save their creation to the Wordle gallery and access it from another internet connection.

And of course, with a little pre-teaching, students can have at it, creating their own word clouds for assignments and projects.

Turning Your Creation into a Poster

Once you have created a document or photo for classroom display, you may want to blow it up so as to make a large size poster for the room. Such a task is extremely easy as there are a couple of different web sites where you can easily rasterbate any creation to make a powerful, large image.

Rasterbating is the phrase used to describe the computer program printing feature called tiled printing. It is a process that enables the user to print extremely large images, those larger than a standard size sheet of paper. The computer program creates tiles, each equal to a standard size sheet of paper, and prints a section of the image on each sheet according to predetermined specifications. The individual pages can then be taped together or stapled to a bulletin board to create a large and powerful image.

At either BlockPosters or Rasterbators, teachers can create such tiled wall posters of any size. Totally free, each site allows you to upload an image where the user can then crop the image and choose how many sheets of traditional-size paper to use in creating the poster.

While the word cloud would make a great option, an even better one, especially at the elementary level, would be the periodic action classroom shot of the students involved in a learning activity. The sheer joy students experience upon seeing themselves in photos could only be enhanced by a large classroom poster of them in action within the classroom.

With older students, the visuals they can create could also greatly enhance an individual project or presentation. Blockposters offers some excellent samples of prior work including student project creations.

If you decide to turn some of this over to students, you may want to use another term other than rasterbate. We are not sure how either age group would do with such a risky-sounding term.

Glogging in the Classroom

Instead of just using the written word to create a blog, teachers can have students create some pretty amazing visual mash ups at Glogster.com (be sure with the younger kids you hit the edu site!).

Glogster again allows for the creation of posters, but in this case, creativity remains supreme. With Glogster you can mix all forms of expression: graphics, photos, videos, music and traditional text.

Not only a fun way to enhance learning and foster creativity, glogging is a perfect tool for visual learners who may struggle with traditional text-oriented classroom setting. Glogging also gets students using the power of technology and collaborating with one another on potential creations.

You will need a few more in the way of tech skills for Glogster than for our other suggestions (especially, if you want to download movies and images) manageable with even a modest effort. But as with our sites featured, Glogster is also a free resource, so you can familiarize yourself with the concept on your own terms.

Photos taken from Wordle.com, BlockPosters.com and Glogster.com.

One has to go back to Sir Francis Bacon in 1597 for the origins of the quote, “Knowledge is power.”

Because of its capacity to control and influence, knowledge was once hoarded by those in position of authority. Today, however, knowledge is readily available to anyone who wants it.

According to the folks at the Davinci Institute, there are:

• More than 3.5 million songs available on iTunes.
• More than 4 million books available on Amazon alone.
• More than 60 million blogs available online.
• More than 4 million entries on Wikipedia.
• More than 6 million videos on YouTube.

Yet, in a Pew research poll from last August, while 58 percent of Americans claimed they followed “international affairs,” only 28% could name the British prime minister. And while two out of every three respondents said they followed “political figures and events in Washington,” only 43 percent could name the American Secretary of State at that time.

Given that we are in the midst of an information age, the fact that so many of us are uninformed has experts scratching their heads. Is the failure one of effort or a result of the pace of our society? Is it a lack of intellectual prowess that prevents the assimilation of all the available information or an overall malaise that overcomes even the most well-intentioned of efforts?

Information Overload

While access is now less limited, the sheer volume of material available has many contending that the issue is simply one of information overload. A Washington Post editorial by Dusty Horwitt, “If Everyone’s Talking, Who Will Listen?” recently made such a claim.

Horwitt asserted that TMI (too much information) was the root cause of many societal issues today. Readers will find that he even went so far as to assert that the volume of information available had the potential to undermine our democracy.

While it is a frequent assertion, it is interesting to note that Tim Stahmer at Assorted Stuff isn’t buying the notion of Horwitt’s suggestions as to how to better handle information moving forward. Stahmer is suspect of such a message, one that contends the volume of information available “is burying us in extraneous data” and preventing “important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience,” especially since it is coming from someone who works in the now-failing, traditional media market.

Writes Stahmer:

“Maybe his concern is that fewer people are reading big media publications like the Post.”

Stahmer then adds the words of Ben Stein to the mix, yet another of those who has at times insisted society would be far better off with a more limited flow of information. As one might expect, the blogger has a different take.

He does not favor a return to “a few traditional filters of …. information (like the Post, the Times, and Ben Stein)” being “the ones telling us what’s important.” Instead, Stahmer insists, “I’d rather learn to sift through the flow of data myself.”

It is a strong message, one that insinuates that big media simply wants to return itself to its former position of power, i.e., the aforementioned situation where once upon a time knowledge was held by a select few.

Columbia Journalism Review

Bree Nordenson offers some additional insight into the matter in “Overload! Journalism’s Battle for Relevance in an Age of Too Much Information.” Given that the piece is on the Columbia Journalism Review site and the recent revelations that the school is in fact rethinking its journalism program, we probably should attach the same healthy skepticism to Nordenson’s piece as Stahmer attaches to the Post writer.

But still, buried within the article, is some very helpful information. First, there is a great synopsis of the change in available information.

“The information age is defined by output: we produce far more information than we can possibly manage, let alone absorb. Before the digital era, information was limited by our means to contain it.

“Publishing was restricted by paper and delivery costs; broadcasting was circumscribed by available frequencies and airtime. The Internet, on the other hand, has unlimited capacity at near-zero cost.”

While Clay Shirky would take exception to the notion that the new information is defined by output only (we tend to agree that the new age is more defined by interaction), there is truly more information available today than any of us can completely manage. And the increase in production is obtained without the prior costs associated with distributing and storing information online.

As to why more people are not better informed about world affairs, despite the increased output, Nordenson notes that there can be a “tendency to become passive in the face of too much information.”

While that is definitely true, it is likely far more attributable to the vast array of choices now available to internet users, choices that also offer greater control and personalization. She quotes Delli Carpini and Markus Prior who offer simple explanations as to why more people are not up on key public-affairs issues.

“As choice goes up, people who are motivated to be politically informed take advantage of these choices, but people who are not move away from politics,” states Carpini. Prior adds, “Political information in the current media environment comes mostly to those who want it.”

Unlike Horwitt, Nordenson sees the new trends as having potential benefit for our democracy. She writes, “Our access to digital information, as well as our ability to instantly publish, share, and improve upon it at negligible cost, hold extraordinary promise for realizing the democratic ideals of journalism.”

But she does note, “As information proliferates, … people inevitably become more specialized both in their careers and their interests. Personalized home pages, newsfeeds, and e-mail alerts, as well as special-interest publications lead us to create what sociologist Todd Gitlin disparagingly referred to as ‘my news, my world.’ ”

Explanatory Journalism

To produce more savvy readers, there is a move away from the traditional news format to one Nordenson calls explanatory journalism. Such journalism goes beyond reporting a specific news event and the facts related to it.

Explanatory journalism attempts to supply depth and context to what is being reported and even adds a touch of information filter. While many news outlets are struggling to retain readers, she notes that the publication “The Week,” has actually seen a circulation growth.

The magazine seeks to determine the top news stories and then synthesize them for readers. The editor of “The Week” notes the fundamental purpose of the magazine is “not to tell people the news but to make sense of the news for people.” Therefore, almost like the teachers of yesteryear, “The Week” seeks to be the sage on the stage, a news outlet that does the sifting and the filtering that busy Americans do not have time for.

The model has also taken shape at the BBC News web site. A major news story on the BBC page has several links prominently displayed in a sidebar that offer numerous additional articles that explain and add context to the feature story.

Ironically, the concept that appears to work best is one that does move from the gatekeeper mentality, the knowledge is power model, to one that guides readers towards additional information that then allows them to gain the necessary insight to wrap their arms completely around an issue.

At the same time, what is most telling is that explanatory journalism does not necessarily involve reducing the amount of information available to readers.

Technology Is the Issue

Ironically, nearly 20 years ago, Neil Postman delivered a rather extraordinary and prophetic speech at a meeting of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) in Stuttgart. “Informing Ourselves To Death” offered many pearls including the notion that school teachers as we know them will disappear in the technological age.

“School teachers, for example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by television,” offered Postman, “as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press.”

In regards to the information issue, Postman insisted that the public was not so uninformed as it was unable to place ideas in context. He spoke of a little research he had done, albeit not so rigorous or traditional in its ability to control variables, but extremely telling nonetheless.

Postman would select an unsuspecting victim, a colleague who appeared not to be in possession of the morning newspaper. He would begin

“Did you read The Times this morning?”

If the colleague were to answer yes, he would end his experiment for that person that day. But if the person said no, he would begin to make up some far-fetched story.

“You ought to look at Page 23,” he would state. “There’s a fascinating article about a study done at _______ University.” When an inviting reply came, one that matched the traditional response of a colleague, something like “Really? What’s it about?” Postman would let loose with something outlandish.

An example he used in his speech was one he often tried on peers he knew to be health-conscious:

“I think you’ll want to know about this,” he would go on. “The neuro-physiologists at the University of Stuttgart have uncovered a connection between jogging and reduced intelligence. They tested more than 1200 people over a period of five years, and found that as the number of hours people jogged increased, there was a corresponding decrease in their intelligence. They don’t know exactly why but there it is.”

Postman summarized the results of his informal study thus: “Unless this is the second or third time I’ve tried this on the same person, most people will believe or at least not disbelieve what I have told them. Sometimes they say: ‘Really? Is that possible?’ Sometimes they do a double-take, and reply, ‘Where’d you say that study was done?’ And sometimes they say, ‘You know, I’ve heard something like that.’”

Still, Postman railed of too much information before others began to make the assertion. In fact, twenty years ago, Postman noted that information came “indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness.”

He went on to add, “we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it.”

But for Postman, the fact that we do not know what to do with or how to handle this information came from a whole different perspective. He adds a touch of the spiritual in his first reason:

“First, we no longer have a coherent conception of ourselves, and our universe, and our relation to one another and our world. We no longer know, as the Middle Ages did, where we come from, and where we are going, or why. That is, we don’t know what information is relevant, and what information is irrelevant to our lives.”

He then headed off to construct the place where others believe we are today:

“Second, we have directed all of our energies and intelligence to inventing machinery that does nothing but increase the supply of information. As a consequence, our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don’t know how to filter it out; we don’t know how to reduce it; we don’t know to use it.”

Postman also managed to express one of the possible reasons as to why in the face of a great deal of information so many people feel overwhelmed. The simple fact of the matter is that the information “cannot answer any of the fundamental questions we need to address to make our lives more meaningful and humane.”

Our technology cannot “provide an organizing moral framework” and “it cannot tell us what questions are worth asking” offered Postman. Instead, “The computer is, in a sense, a magnificent toy that distracts us from facing what we most needed to confront — spiritual emptiness, knowledge of ourselves, usable conceptions of the past and future.”

And so, in simplest terms, for Postman, it was the unmet promises of technology that formed the ultimate issue.

“Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better,” stated Postman, “religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense.”

A Golden Age

If knowledge is truly power, then we should be entering a golden age, one where everyone has unlimited access to the authority once held only by the elite in society.

The fact that we seem to be far from such a place does beg several questions.

And the biggest one befalls education – many have written that the next phase of schooling must move towards a focus that places the information age at its core for the next generation of learners. In fact, it would seem that the words of Postman are most prescient – twenty years ago he noted the volume of information that was being produced and the issues that it would present.

But education changed little over those 20 years. So we now have a large group of citizens unable to emotionally and intellectually handle the breadth of information available to them.

The answer is certainly not to limit information. The answer is in creating an educational system that helps individuals understand how to best make use of the knowledge.

The power that today’s information-rich society has available is truly unprecedented. As always, education is the great equalizer, but now we must turn our attention towards helping our young people learn how to filter, reduce and use the knowledge that is accessible to them.

Flickr photos courtesy of World Economic Forum, Michael Marlatt, Will Lion, Will Lion, just.Luc and Will Lion.

Most college students would likely concur – fifty minute lectures can be a bit much. With current research indicating that attention spans (measured in minutes) roughly mirror a students age (measured in years), it begs the question as to the rationale behind lectures of such length.

Given that it is tough to justify the traditional lecture timeframes, it is no surprise to see online educational programs seeking to offer presentations that feature shorter podcasts. But in an astonishing switch, David Shieh of the Chronicle of Higher Education recently took a look at a community college program that features a microlecture format, presentations varying from one to three minutes in length.

The Micro-Lecture
While one minute lectures may be beyond the scope of imagination for any veteran teacher, Shieh reports on the piloting of the concept at San Juan College in Farmington, N.M. The concept was introduced as part of a new online degree program in occupational safety last fall. According to Shieh, school administrators were so pleased with the results that they are expanding the micro-lecture concept to courses in reading and veterinary studies.

The designer of the format, David Penrose, insists that in online education “tiny bursts can teach just as well as traditional lectures when paired with assignments and discussions.” The microlecture format begins with a podcast that introduces a few key terms or a critical concept, then immediately turns the learning environment over to the students.

Penrose, a course designer for SunGard Higher Education, offers the following explanation of the process:

“It’s a framework for knowledge excavation,” Penrose tells Shieh. “We’re going to show you where to dig, we’re going to tell you what you need to be looking for, and we’re going to oversee that process.”

More in Line with Current Theory
With educators seeking more active learning environments, the microlecture format seemingly offers great potential. Not only will the process allow students greater ownership of their learning, the more open-ended nature of the follow-up materials should provide greater time variation opportunities for students who may need such time.

But as with all educational developments, the process clearly is not one that can be used for all classes. It clearly will not work for a course that is designed to feature sustained classroom discussions. And while the concept will work well when an instructor wants to introduce smaller chunks of information, it will likely not work very well when the information is more complex.

But just as most writers are taught to say what they need to say but do it in as few words as is necessary to accomplish their goal, the microlecture format similarly requires teachers to get the key elements across in a very short amount of time. Most importantly, it forces educators to think in a new way.

Instead of the framework being defined by seat time, the microlecture format ditches the traditional notion that all students must spend the same amount of time in class to receive credit. The concept focuses on what is to be learned and it allows, in the online environment, students of various skills and abilities as much time as they need to digest the learning objectives related to the microlecture.

Given such positives, one would think the format would soon become a critical component of every online course.

For those interested, here are Penrose’s steps to creating a one minute lecture:

1. List the key concepts you are trying to convey in the 60-minute lecture. That series of phrases will form the core of your microlecture.

2. Write a 15 to 30-second introduction and conclusion. They will provide context for your key concepts.

3. Record these three elements using a microphone and Web camera. (The college information-technology department can provide advice and facilities.) If you want to produce an audio-only lecture, no Webcam is necessary. The finished product should be 60 seconds to three minutes long.

4. Design an assignment to follow the lecture that will direct students to readings or activities that allow them to explore the key concepts. Combined with a written assignment, that should allow students to learn the material.

5. Upload the video and assignment to your course-management software.

Flickr photos courtesy of teddY-riseD, Stephanie Booth, and catspyjamasnz.

It has been a while since we did a simple web walk and pointed readers to some interesting material and helpful resources. Today we offer readers four interesting link options, everything from Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy to a look at why ignorance does appear, in fact, to be bliss.

Digital Bloom’s Taxonomy

Almost a year ago we featured some of the work of Andrew Churches. The teacher and self-professed ICT enthusiast has taken the time to do a modern day mash up of one of education’s long-standing models for analyzing learning.

Bloom’s Taxonomy, developed in the 1950’s, clearly holds a place of reverence within the educational community. Using a hierarchical framework to express thinking and learning, Bloom’s offers a set of concepts that begins with what we call lower order thinking skills (LOTS) and then progressively builds to higher order thinking skills (HOTS).

In education, the best teachers have made it a point to bring their students to the HOTS level of the taxonomy whenever possible. The belief has always been that acquiring knowledge and comprehending information (LOTS) pales in comparison to being able to analyze, evaluate, and apply that knowledge.

Where Churches comes in is that he began examining the traditional theory against a backdrop of the new digital age and the use of technology in the classroom. From his efforts, educators began being able to associate specific digital techniques with the traditional categories set forth in the taxonomy.

While there is clearly still much to be done to clarify these associations and properly place digital technology tasks in each category, teachers at least now have a framework from which to start and dialogue from. In keeping with the open source movement that is defining the future of education, Churches has now published his work in e-book format over at Scribd.

Those wanting to see both the rationale and the depth of assessment Churches has employed will find a free resource, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy (v212), at the site. The 44-page document is filled with information and is available for download, free, in multiple formats.

We highly recommend all teachers take the time to read this important document.

Among the Inept – Ignorance Is Bliss

An article that is now more than nine years old recently started getting tagged on Del.cio.us. As one great example of the challenge of filtering the wealth of material on the Internet, we missed the original article that takes a look at the behaviors demonstrated by people we might call incompetent.

In her article, Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss, Erica Goode cites the research of Dr. David A. Dunning. In true tongue-in-cheek mode, Goode sets the tone for the article with the following intro:

“There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear he might be one of them. Dr. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

“On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities — more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.”

It seems “that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured” because ultimately “the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.”

Given that education is a people-profession, the article is a must read for everyone working in the field, especially those working in administration. With a strong push to ensure that every classroom is staffed with a competent teacher, the research of Dunning offers great insight.

Especially in the case where feedback is absent or ambiguous – in such instances incompetents generally do not realize their level of ineptness.

Open Courseware Toolset

A summary resource that offers a list of links to open courseware materials is available at the web site Best College Rankings. The Ultimate Open Courseware Toolset: 60+ Directories, Search Engines, and Web Tools offers readers an extensive set of links to a wealth of materials now available on the web.

What makes the list so worthy is that it contains some individual tools but many of the links offered are actually to other sites or web pages that then feature more links to more resources. The site lists links in alphabetical order (not weighing in on good, better or best) and breaks the material into three distinct categories.

They begin with a list of directories of various open courseware projects. The list features 22 links (some offering lists of 100s of sites) to “books, video lectures, teaching tools and more, all labeled with the open courseware tag.”

The second category features 16 links to a number of search engines and archives while the third and final category focuses on 23 web tools “that can help teachers, parents and students.”

The sheer volume of material, however, reminds us of how important our own ability to filter Internet materials has become.

A Parental ADD Resource

Finally, in recent days we stumbled across the web site of Brenda Nicholson, ADD Student. The mother of 3 children with Attention Deficit Disorder, Nicholson is a trained ADD Coach who began learning about the disorder over 20 years ago.

Surprised that many educational professionals knew little about ADD, Nicholson found she needed to educate herself. Because of her experiences, she has set up the ADD student resource portal for parents and professionals alike.

One simple aspect that spoke volumes to us was her advice regarding students on medication. Instead of pluses and minuses regarding meds, she notes that the taking of medications at school has become a major issue for everyone involved: students, parents, and educators.

Another is her focus on diet as a method for minimizing issues with ADD children and managing their symptoms. While some of the information is on a cost basis (a 12 week email coaching program for parents), there is also a wealth of general info free for site visitors including subcategory links to specific areas such as ADD and Life Skills, Organization, School and Time Management.

Flickr photo courtesy of debaird.

Our credibility being of utmost importance to us, today we return to a prior post: “Taped Lectures – Better than the Real Thing?”

We were taken to task to by one of the researchers, Dani McKinney, who had the following to say:

“It is difficult for an author to know how to comment when the author of the blog did not actually read the paper that he is discussing. In fact, the effect of having the podcast only appears when the students in that condition worked considerably harder than those in the live-lecture condition. The effect completely disappears when the podcasts are merely listened to. To see the advantage, the students had to take notes of the podcast AND listen to it more than once. So, far from being able to replace professors, the podcasts might give students the benefit of being able to listen to the lecture more than once, and the ability to get the notes more accurately.

Please don’t comment on specific conclusions the paper makes by reading the abstract alone. That’s similar to attending the first week of class and the last week of class and expecting to get an A….”

Our Integrity

First and foremost, in writing about the results of a new study from Dani McKinney, Jennifer L. Dycka and Elise S. Lubera, iTunes University and the Classroom: Can Podcasts Replace Professors?, we acknowledged writing about the findings based upon the summary abstract. We chose to write about the topic based upon the fact that taped lectures were very timely given some of our prior posts. We also wrote using only the abstract because access to the full article was on a fee basis and not published using the creative commons approach that we have espoused (perhaps we have simply become spoiled).

To ensure we were not making assumptions, we did not speculate as to how it was possible for students listening to a podcast of a lecture to exceed the performance of those who attended the lecture in person. Whatever those reasons might have been, we did point out that if students listening to a podcast could even match the performances of those who attended in person, then greater consideration should be given to the less expensive, podcast option.

Replicating lectures at 100s of colleges then bringing students from far and wide to individual locations represents one of the biggest reasons for the current cost of higher education. Many online education advocates have begun speculating that a lecture repository could in fact replace the current delivery model and therefore reduce the costs of higher education significantly.

The Research

We noted that the basic experiment was quite simple. We wrote:

The researchers wanted to test the effectiveness of taped lectures and contrast that with the performance of those students who attended class and heard the same lecture in person.

One week after the different group sessions, students took an exam on lecture content. In what most would deem a startling development, “students in the podcast condition who took notes while listening to the podcast scored significantly higher than the lecture condition.”

Accordingly, based on the comments of the researcher, we need to add, “To see the advantage, the students had to take notes of the podcast AND listen to it more than once.”

In contrast to our support of others who had already postulated that professors could in fact be replaced, Ms. McKinney notes: “So, far from being able to replace professors, the podcasts might give students the benefit of being able to listen to the lecture more than once, and the ability to get the notes more accurately.”

More Appropriate Assertion

Given the feedback, a more appropriate assertion might be that it is time for all colleges to provide students access to podcasts of each professor’s lecture. That way, highly-motivated individuals would seemingly have access to the best of both worlds, the chance to hear an in-person lecture and later gain greater clarity by virtue of the opportunity to listen to the presentation a second or third time.

In fact, given the current costs of higher education, it would seem that students ought to demand such of their institutions. But at the same time, the added words of the researcher will do nothing to dissuade the current critics who insist that a podcast could in fact replace a professor provided a student has sufficient work habits.

In closing, we return to the words of Ms. McKinney:

“So, far from being able to replace professors, the podcasts might give students the benefit of being able to listen to the lecture more than once, and the ability to get the notes more accurately.”

That said, our guess is that being present to hear a lecture would still be considered exceedingly overrated by those prior critics. Because, unless a professor were in fact willing to repeat the lecture upon request by students, the opportunity to listen more than once and thus gain more accurate notes simply is not possible under the current delivery model.

Which brings us full circle, back to the original title of our article, “Taped Lectures – Better than the Real Thing?”

Flickr photos courtesy of Tama Leaver and Leaver again.

Amidst a serious economic downturn, a small group of visionaries has launched a new educational venture called Singularity University. Co-founded by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, X Prize chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, and former Yahoo Brickhouse head Salim Ismail, Singularity University represents a new academic institution that has little in common with a traditional university.

From the time-frames of the designed programs to the scope of the curriculum, Singularity University will go where no other university has ever gone. Featuring three intensive programs, the founders are seeking to eliminate some of the current pre-conceived boundaries surrounding a number of the cutting-edge technology disciplines.

Looking to weave a course of study that slides across 10 varied fields, the university curriculum features such extremely disparate tracks as: future studies and forecasting, biotechnology and bioinformatics, nanotechnology, AI, robotics, and cognitive computing, and finance and entrepreneurship.

Enormous Talent Assembled
Kurzweil believes the school, named after the theories he expressed in his best-selling book The Singularity is Near, will have the unique ability to bring together leaders from these various fields. Once together, these individuals then would have the chance to collectively approach some of the world’s greatest challenges (global hunger, pandemics, and climate change, etc.).

Singularity University will kick off their work this summer with about 30 students. Utilizing the NASA Ames Center, the program will co-exist with another cutting edge entity, the International Space University which is expected to host 120 students at the same complex.

The faculty list is extremely impressive. Among those committed to teach are Will Wright, The Sims and Spore creator; Cal Berkeley professor and 2006 Nobel Prize winner George Smoot; fellow Berkeley staff member Dan Kammen; Stephanie Langhoff, NASA Ames’ chief scientist; and the legendary Vint Cerf.

Interview with Salim Ismail

For a more in-depth look at the new school we turn to one of the founders and current Executive Director of Singularity University. The successful consultant founded such companies as PubSub and Confabb and recently spent a year at Yahoo as a Vice President and Head of Brickhouse where he worked on Yahoo Pipes, Yahoo Live and Fire Eagle.

Can you give our readers some brief background information on you and how it is that you became involved with the concept of Singularity University?

I’ve been fascinated by innovation ever since learning about quantum mechanics during my university degree. I then got into computers and in the last 10 years I’ve been involved in eight early stage companies. In 2007, I joined Yahoo to build out and run their incubator called Brickhouse. While running Brickhouse I set up a relationship between Yahoo and NASA, and that led to them (SU) inviting me to the founding meeting of SU on September 20, 2008. From the beginning, I was inspired by the vision and the team. When they asked me to head it up, I didn’t blink.

Starting a new university from scratch can never be considered a small task but starting a new university that is the antithesis of the traditional university structure would seem to be even more challenging, especially in these economic times. Can you talk a little bit about the “Founders Circle” and the process of raising start-up capital for such a ground breaking concept?

A key to getting SU up and running is that we’ve licensed the IP and pedagogy of the International Space University, which has very successfully run a graduate program for 20 years. Many of our Founders are at the leading edge of these technologies and saw the need for such an institution to better understand and manage where these disciplines are headed. I believe we’ve had excellent success in these tough times for the following reasons:

1. we’re using and copying a proven model (from ISU);
2. we’re trying to help understand a crucial set of rapidly advancing areas;
3. we’re trying to create leaders who can use this knowledge to address some of the grand challenges facing humanity (e.g climate change, energy, information management etc);
4. the challenges we’re facing today only highlight the need for an institution like ours, and many of our backers have the vision to see that.

The talent you have assembled is extraordinary, from the management team to the board of trustees to the teaching faculty. Can you give our readers a sense of how it is that you have been able to bring together so much talent in such a short time?

Like the donors, many of the leading academic thinkers around the world see the need for such an institution which complements the deep academic teaching of existing universities. We’ve had an extraordinarily positive reaction from them, and very gracious commitments of their time to help with the curriculum and in attracting other leaders.

In selecting faculty, have you set forth specific guidelines regarding those who would be from the business/tech working sector versus those who would be classified as academics (university professors, teachers, etc.)?

We don’t have formal specific guidelines, but we are definitely aiming for a diverse mix of lecturers from both business and academia. We have faculty coming from Stanford, MIT and other leading academic institutions as well as leading companies like Google, Microsoft and others, both locally and from around the world.

Your site speaks to a “First-of-Its-Kind Curriculum” that features ten different academic tracks. Can you explain how you folks came to agree upon these ten specific tracks of study including the process used and the rationale for those tracks?

About a month ago, we held a curriculum planning meeting with about sixty people, including many of the faculty that you see listed on the site. At that meeting we collectively agreed on the ten tracks and currently have a draft version of what will be taught per track – this will of course evolve considerably before the summer program starts. The tracks were determined by examining which technologies and disciplines are considered to be advancing at an exponential pace. Track 1 is about how best to manage, predict and measure these domains, tracks 2-6 are considered the core set, tracks 7 and 8 are areas of application for these core technologies, and tracks 9 and 10 are supporting tracks that we considered crucial to give a framework for how best to take it out into the world.

Likewise, the academic objectives are broken into six specific categories (assemble, teach, focus on humanity, network, spin out, and communicate). Can you talk a little bit about the formulation process for these objectives?

I think this is largely self-explanatory. We want to get together leading thinkers, get them up to speed on the state of the art of these rapidly accelerating fields and arm them with a set of tools and the right contacts to address the big challenges facing humanity today. We feel these objectives are appropriate to help deliver the mission of SU. Larry Page, at our founding meeting, gave an inspiring talk and suggested that the students graduating from SU had a unique perspective and should focus on the grand challenges facing humanity. That formed some of the foundation for the objectives.

You will be offering three separate programs at the outset, a 10-week summer Graduate Studies Program, a 10-day Executive Program and a 3-day Executive Program. Can you give our readers a brief overview of the coursework and the respective objectives that will form the basis of each of these separate programs? Can we assume the price of $25,000 quoted at CNet is accurate for the 10-week? Have prices been set for the others?

The $25k is indeed for the Graduate Studies Program, but it’s actually nine weeks. The 3 and 10-day courses will distill content from the 9-week program and is intended for executives and government officials. We haven’t established the fee for those yet. For example, the CEO of a semiconductor company might come to the 3-day program to better understand the latest state of networks and computing, and get an ‘over-the-horizon’ radar view of what will affect his or her industry.

The agenda for the 10-week program was described by the folks at CNet as “not for the faint of heart.” In addition, in that article, Mr. Diamandis is quoted as saying, “If we do our job correctly” students “will meet, (discover their) common visions, and start companies together.” One of the most impressive aspects of this venture is the lofty goals that have been set forth but is it really possible that in just ten weeks time such relationships could be formed?

A very important question… it is relevant here to again note that we have licensed the model of this curriculum from the International Space University which has very successfully run such an interdisciplinary program for 21 years – today, many of the heads of the world’s space agencies are graduates of ISU. We will adapt their model to our curriculum, but it gives us a proven structure from which to start, and will indeed be a very intensive program. For example, ISU has found that in 9 weeks, a 120-person student body can form quite deep relationships and everyone gets to know everyone else. We will start with 30 students in year one and expand to 120 in the second year.

Teacher designable versions of Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire now available online.

Every week night, roughly 10 million folks tune in to Jeopardy to test their knowledge base as well as watch three contestants display their intellectual prowess. And in the early 2000s, a like number tuned in to the immensely popular Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

The popularity of these games has certainly spawned a number of educational knock offs, including simple low tech blackboard versions, that seek to bring the fun aspects of the game to the educational setting but focus the questions and answers on specific learning topics covered in the classroom. But as technology grows, one has been expecting that there would come a time where a free web version of these popular games would become available for teachers.

SuperTeacherTools.com

Such is the case as both game formats are available for teachers at SuperTeacherTools.com. Each was designed to eliminate the word “kill” from the “drill and kill” phrase that is generally used to describe education that focuses on knowledge retention.

Each is created for teacher use in the classroom as a SmartBoard review game. What makes the games so appealing is that they are available for download as well as online use and are PC and MAC compatible. They are also free.

Each will demand some teacher time upfront but as with all computer-based developments, once created, the games can be saved as well as modified and edited at a later time. Most importantly, the web-based nature means that the games may be shared with other teachers easily and can be assigned to students for homework.

With the Jeopardy version, teachers can create their own categories, 25 individualized answers, and even assign varying point levels to each category and/or answer. There is no need for playing with PowerPoint templates, the typical method by which such games have been created and shared in the past.

The site archives games created online into the Jeopardy Game Library, specifying the name of the game and the creator (if provided), the number of questions in the game, and when the game was created. That means that teachers can either play the game online or download it to play offline at a later time. It also means you can modify any existing game and then save it – the site will create a brand new game file for everyone’s future use.

All of the same aspects hold true for the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game except it is designed to match the popular television format featuring 15 questions and 4 choices for answers. The site also features a library of available games, availability to work online or off with either a PC or MAC, and again is completely free.

Great Fun

The key of course is that both games can create outstanding review opportunities and reinforcement of the specific learning tasks teachers deem most important while bringing some enjoyment to what can be a tedious process.

In other words, a great chance to do that all important drilling at the same time that one finds ways to build a student’s zest for learning.

Editors note: The site also offers “Our Speed Match Review Game,” “FlashBoard Review Game Generator,” and some basic classroom management tools.

Flickr photos courtesy of howieluvzus and jacorbett70.

Needless to say, the general consensus regarding cell phones and schools is that the two simply do not mix. However, a new study from across the pond gives strong indication that schools should give greater consideration to putting these handheld mobile devices to work.

The Current View
When it comes to cell phones and schools, the current position is that these mobile devices have no place in the school setting. At FabZone.net, we found the following rather emphatic assessment:

Distractions such as cell phones don’t belong in school…. Cell phones in school are an unnecessary distraction that takes time away from teachers and can be a source in cheating…. I’m sorry to tell you this, but if you think students will not be texting each other while a teacher is teaching, you’re dead wrong…. Cell phones have become a huge problem.

And as yet another indication of how professors view these wondrous little devices, we turn to a story that appeared in the NY Times.

Halfway through the semester in his market research course at Roanoke College last fall, only moments after announcing a policy of zero tolerance for cellphone use in the classroom, Prof. Ali Nazemi heard a telltale ring. Then he spotted a young man named Neil Noland fumbling with his phone, trying to turn it off before being caught.

“Neil, can I see that phone?” Professor Nazemi said, more in a command than a question. The student surrendered it. Professor Nazemi opened his briefcase, produced a hammer and proceeded to smash the offending device. Throughout the classroom, student faces went ashen.

Let’s be clear about one thing. Ali Nazemi is a hero. Ali Nazemi deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mobile Phones and Learning in Secondary Schools
However, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young and Nadja Heym of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham recently released a research report that would seem to contradict that current viewpoint. While How mobile phones help learning in secondary schools may not be a ringing endorsement of cell phone use for educational purposes, it certainly offers an interesting take on the potential use of these mobile devices to enhance the educational setting.

The study followed teachers in three schools who began exploring ways to use students’ personal phones as well as additional borrowed smart phones. Though in each case there were existing school policies banning mobile phones in class, students were given permission to use cell phones for a wide array of activities.

The study focused on the basic question: Is there a positive side to mobile phones in schools and if so, how might they be used to support learning? The researchers came away with a yes verdict and offered some specific ways in which cell phone technology could support learning.

A partial list of the ways that teachers used the devices included:

• Timing experiments with stopwatch
• Photographing apparatus and results of experiments for reports
• Photographing development of design models for eportfolios
• Photographing texts/whiteboards for future review
• Bluetoothing project material between group members
• Receiving SMS & email reminders from teachers
• Synchronizing calendar/timetable and setting reminders
• Connecting remotely to school learning platform
• Recording a teacher reading a poem for revision
• Accessing revision sites on the Internet
• Creating short narrative movies
• Downloading and listening to foreign language podcasts
• Logging into the school email system
• Using GPS to identify locations
• Transferring files between school and home

Attitudinal Shifts

As one might expect, students were at first quite surprised by the notion that mobile phones could actually be used for learning. Because of their prior use pattern, the phones were deemed items associated with socializing.

In addition, the use of the cell phone technology in the classroom served as a great motivator for students. Almost all students reported greater enjoyment in projects and felt more motivated. In one school, the results indicated that the phone use in the classroom helped students both in their social and learning environments, thereby increasing student confidence and their work ethic.

One key element supporting the use of mobile phones over other handheld learning devices is that most students already own mobile phones. Therefore, the allowance of cell phones was a step towards student ownership and greater personalization of learning. The fact that students used the devices outside of school and in social settings meant they also tended to bring a set of skills to the classroom by virtue of their own experimentation with their phone. In addition, the phones allowed for a reduction in the number of devices to carry – many students reported using them in place of their calculator.

Noting the current concerns, the researchers assert that the eventual aim should be to replace policies that involve blanket bans on the devices. That said, they noted the supervision-related challenges associated with cell phones and therefore noted that whole-school changes should not occur at the outset. Instead, the researchers note a gradual shift would be more appropriate, one that could coincide with behavioral changes when the alignment of mobile devices with purposeful learning occurred. Ultimately, the researchers suggest that mobile phones could in fact come to be perceived as natural in the school setting as any other technology.

Summation

As for mobile technology having the potential to positively impact education, the researchers offered an assessment that contrasts significantly with the view of FabZone or Prof. Ali Nazemi.

In every case, other teachers became interested and involved, and the project teachers decided to continue using mobile phones. These champions of change have shown that, with good planning and anticipating class management and technical issues, using mobile phones can be a very productive way to augment access to tools for computing, communication and photography. As one student said ‘It is good to use new technologies. It prepares us for the future as we will be using mobile phones more and more.’

Full copies of the report are available in word format and in PDF.

Flickr photos courtesy of Justin Baeder, Mark Warner, themarina, and compujeramey