Thoughts and perspectives on technology, learning, and design.

What is Ed Tech...

I stumbled across this blog post  recently by Katrin Becker and have been thinking about her critiques of the Ed Tech field.  I have harbored similar concerns, although  ones tempered by my background as an educator and as a (web) designer.

I was struck by the following in particular:

Educational Technologists, for the most part, do not know enough about how technology works to use it well. I studied CS for 7 years. I wouldn’t suggest that everyone in Ed Tech needs to do the same, but I DO know that they really need to learn much more about the technology than most are getting now. There are approaches and designs I can create that someone without my background just can’t. Just what subset of what I know is core to EdTech? That part I don’t know yet, but I do know that asking someone who only knows either discipline will not give you a useful answer (in the same way that you should not ask a mathematician what the average university student needs to know about math).

There is much in the statement that I agree with, think ultimately educational technology is about both education and technology. What I mean is that educational technologists don't necessarily have to know everything there is possibly know about technology but we should know enough about technology to be able to create, design, and implement technology to foster and facilitate learning. Perhaps we aired too much on the side of focusing on learning theory, instructional theory, educational theory and assume that our students will either develop or possess the technological awareness and skills to apply theory in context.

I graduated from a PhD program whose informal motto was, "We don't do technology, we think about technology." This notion was held proudly, and rightfully so, as technology and its implementation can not be seen as independent of ideology, culture, and economy. The program (at least in the late 90s when I was there) saw itself as the counterbalance to, or critique of the predominate discourses in instructional technology and instructional design grounded in some form of “scientific” practice: behaviorism, cognitivism, systems theories, or various forms of constructivism. The idea is that these perspectives can be limiting because they focus primarily on how to teach with technology, not on how those technologies shape the world in which we live, the ways in which we work, learn, are entertained, communicate, and form relationships. While "traditional" approaches to instructional technology are typically predicated on the principles of systematicity, replicability, and predictability, I began my graduate work considering the social and cultural aspects of technology - not doing technology so to speak.

I'm the only person struggling with this issue -  the tension between technical skill and theoretic knowledge can be found across the field. Heck - the field isn't even sure what to call itself  (for example the recent piece: Labels DO Matter! A Critique of AECT’s Redefinition of the Field)

I don't believe someone should go to a graduate program in education to “learn Flash” – we are not equipped to teach that at the level that other institutions are. Someone can go to a local community or technical college and get great training on Flash–they won't get there is knowledge about how to best utilize the technology and the particular and specific affordances of that technology to facilitate learning.

In my own practice, both teaching and research, have come back to my roots in “making stuff.” I've rediscovered Pappert and the notion of constructionism.  For better or worse, I "do" Educational Technology - I am an educational technology generalist - a Ed Tech guy. Since I stopped being a high school English teacher in 1996, I have been immersed in emerging technology from the early days of the WWW, to switch from analog to digital video editing, to assistive technology, to the emergence of mobile and handheld computing.

Getting back to being more actively involved in technology has been exciting and I think invigorated my research and professional life, and it is building stuff provides a nice balance to the more ethereal products and processes of academic publishing.

With this all in mind I've been working to rethink redesign my classes to provide more engaging experiences and interaction with technology for my students and to model the types of technology development research that I am finding so useful.

Next semester I'm completely reconsider closing one of my classes with this in mind and I am excited to see what will be the outcome. I'll do my courses can provide enough points for my students to explore new technology forms and apply the theory and concepts that they're learning undergraduate program to be able to create and foster meaningful instuctional technology experiences.

Forward!

Youth Engage in Writing Workshop | The Stand

Good to get back in front of  secondary students this weekend at the Writing Our Lives community event. Thank you Dr. Marcelle Haddix for the opportunity to come and participate in this great event!

Around 150 students, from sixth through 12th grades, participated in free writing workshops at the second annual Writing Our Lives community event held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, at Percy Hughes Magnet School. Students came from the Syracuse City School District and the greater Syracuse area.

via mysouthsidestand.com

Teaching Design Based Research (DBR) – Focus Group Activity « Nilay Yildirim

I have been fortunate recently to be working with some great grad students at SU.  This year I am working with Nilay as part of the Syracuse University  Future Professoriate Initiative. She is working with me on the course I teach on design-based research this semester. Last week we conducted a focus group as part of the applied research part of the course (conducting design research on the iPhone App, iAdvocate,  we have been developing). I came home that evening and thought I should write something about it - Nilay DID!

As part of the hands-on experience of the Design-based Research course, the students in the class conducted a focus group to test the web-app prototype of the an iPhone app that was designed and developed by the course instructor and some of his students. Actually, I have never been a part of a focus group before – neither as a researcher nor even as a participant. As a first timer,  I didn’t know what to expect or whether it was going to be a successful one. Although we didn’t have very  strict protocols to follow, everything went smooth last night. Total success… We definitely got great feedback from the participants, but that’s not what I want to talk about in this post.

via nyildiri.wordpress.com -- Teaching Design Based Research (DBR) – Focus Group Activity « Nilay Yildirim

Online Learning Is Growing on Campus

The NYT has a piece on the trend of students on campus taking online courses.

When I was working with learning technology across the UW System a few years ago, I noticed this trend. Online classes were attracting on campus students for a variety of reasons. Besides the obvious (it's much more appealing to go to an online class where you can complete class activities when and where you choose rather than going to lecture early Thursday morning after a late night) online classes (when done WELL)  provide a number of possible benefits.

For individuals with disabilities, distance learning offers an alternative to place-specific classes and Internet technologies offer potential for ease of use for a wider range of assistive technologies. The flexibility offered by asynchronous Internet based learning technologies often makes courses offered via this medium appealing to students with disabilities.

This also underscores the importance of enssuring these courses are accessible and usable. For example, an analysis prepared by the American Foundation for the Blind of a number of predominant online educational tools (including the most commonly used tools like Blackboard, Web CT, Moodle, Wimba, and Elluminate), found that almost one third of respondents (~100) who used assistive technology to access online educational tools reported the experience as unreliable or inconsistent or were not successful in their use of the tool or unable to access it at all. 

 

On a recent morning, as Mr. Patel’s two roommates slept with covers pulled tightly over their heads, he sat at his desk taking notes on Prof. Mark Rush’s explanation of the term “perfect competition.” A camera zoomed in for a close-up of the blackboard, where Dr. Rush scribbled in chalk, “lots of firms and lots of buyers.”

via www.nytimes.com

Design-based research and App Development

We have been busily working on an iPhone App this semester as a part of my course on design-based research. It's been a tremendous learning experience both as an applied research and design project for the class, but also in helping me understand the process of seeing a project through from concept to App Store (not there yet, but I can finally see the light!). 

Ina recent class we were discussing navigation, content, and process issues on a prototype of the App in preparation for a user testing session, and discovered a handy way to work collaboratively and interactively. 

Bad picture, cool process: Working (with Kevin's disembodied, floating head) on the iAdvocate prototype (poor lighting, grabbed from iSite video shot from my Macbook)

By running the App (actually at this stage in the process we are working with a "web-app" prototype version of iAdvocate) in the iPhone Simulator that is part of the iPhone Developer SDK, and using a Smartboard, we were able to "simulate" (in grand scale) the touch/tap affordances of the iDevice that the simulator doesn't provide on a computer...

Hopefully the iAdvocate site will be ready soon so I can share...

 

 

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The iPad and the Hypecycle

In an attempt to avoid becoming some fairly tedious revisions on an article, I started considering the hype cycle (vis-à-vis the iPad, really) in educational technology. More specifically I've been wondering about the iPad's location on the hype cycle. That is, there is a lot of excitement, enthusiasm, and acquisition of iPads in the educational world these days.

If you are not familiar with hype cycle, here's a fairly brief explanation. The concept of the hype cycle was developed by Gartner market research firm to help large organizations enterprises businesses understand and be strategic about where they should be investing their technology money.

So part of the assumption is that every new technology creates some type when everyone's talking about (and Apple is very, very good at creating type) it. As a result there are heightened expectations around this technology and everyone thinks it's going to be the next best thing since sliced bread; however, since new technologies take time to mature and be integrated, they quickly fall into a “trough of disillusionment” and are forgotten and/or become obsolete.

 Some technologies survive the trough of disillusionment brave individuals start to implement or adopt the technology again and find creative and innovative ways to put the technology to use. This innovation leads to the “slope of enlightenment” and ultimately to “the plateau of productivity.”

 Of course we in education are famous for getting excited about technology, rushing to adopt it without fully understanding its promise or potential, not implementing it appropriately given the affordances and constraints the technology, and ultimately abandoning it. 

 Gartner's 2010 hype cycle came out recently and I glanced at them with some interest. Granted the audience for these is industry, not education but are still quite interesting. 

In the chart below, you can see some of things that Gartner has included. Interesting to see what is sliding into the trough of disillusionment (most notably e-book readers, cloud computing), and rising on the slope of enlightenment (speech recognition software, location aware applications, etc.) is.

 I was also intrigued by the chart on augmented reality, context and the real world Web. In it with interest augmented reality the towards the peak a and consider 2 to 5 years from mainstream adoption.

I have much more to say on this (I  have rambled away from the iPad), but really should get back to those revisions at this point…

How do you think the iPad will fare? Will it follow the hype cycle?

Clustered Networks Spread Behavior Change Faster | Wired Science | Wired.com

Unlike infectious diseases and news, behavior change spreads faster through online networks that have many close connections instead of many distant ties. Redundancy is key, as people are more likely to engage in a behavior if they see many others doing it.

via www.wired.com

An interesting bit of research on the role of the types of network (social in this case) connections an behavior change. As we think about the design and development of new and more mobile learning tools, this is an interesting consideration...

New Public Stance by the Dept. of Justice on Web Accessibility

On April 22 Samuel R. Bagenstos, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice, testified before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties on Achieving the Promise of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the Digital Age - Current Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities.

In his written testimony Bagenstos said:

As more and more of our social infrastructure is made available on the internet - in some cases, exclusively online - access to information and electronic technologies is increasingly becoming the gateway civil rights issue for individuals with disabilities.

"When Congress enacted the ADA and Section 504, the internet as we know it today - the ubiquitous venue for information, commerce, services, and activities B did not exist. For that reason, although the ADA and Section 504 guarantee the protection of the rights of individuals with disabilities in a broad array of activities, neither law expressly mentions the internet or contains requirements regarding developing technologies. When Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act in 1998, it added section 508. That provision specifically requires Federal government agencies to ensure that their electronic and information technologies, including their websites, are accessible to individuals with disabilities. 29 U.S.C. 794(d). Within the Civil Rights Division the Disability Rights Section is responsible for enforcement of the civil rights statutes relating to the accessibility of information technologies to individuals with disabilities.
...
There is no doubt that the internet sites of State and local government entities are covered by Title II of the ADA. Similarly, there is no doubt that the websites of recipients of Federal financial assistance are covered by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act."

Given this statement and the recent settlements on the Kindle, it seems likely that the DOJ will will increase its enforcement in the areas of the Internet and Emerging Technologies (at long last!). This is the first time in almost a decade that the Federal government has made an explicit statement about web and technology accessibility related to the ADA.


PS: Coincidentally, there happens to be a course on this topic this summer at SU!
IDE 600 -/ DSP 600
Accessible & Usable Web Design

Online - July 6 – August 13

http://alan-foley.net/access.htm

Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies | EDUCAUSE

An interesting report on Online Learning...

A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes -- measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation -- was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K-12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K-12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).

via www.educause.edu

Measuring Up | The National Report Card on Higher Education

Link: Measuring Up | The National Report Card on Higher Education.

A very interesting report from report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education - hopefully more analysis to follow...