The Horizon Report

In The Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, the New Media Consortium highlights technological trends expected to have a significant impact on education within the next five years.

The Horizon Report is divided into three key parts, summarized below:

Technologies on the Horizon (Pun intended)

Technologies on the Horizon within One Year

1) Collaborative Environments: Because educators recognize the increasing importance of collaboration in the workplace, teachers and students are collaborating with one another in virtual workplaces. Collaborative environments are those in which users can record their thoughts and others can respond to those thoughts at any place and time. Examples of these include wikis and Facebook. These collaborative environments are excellent places for students to critique one another's critical thinking.

2) Online Communication Tools: These tools (including Twitter and instant messaging) provide students with the opportunities to communicate with audiences throughout the world as well as with content-area experts. Examples include Edmodo and YackPack. Online communication tools help students connect with others around the world and practice their public voice.

Online communication tools appears to be the most promising technology addressed in the report. One of the most important things that teachers can do is to make students feel like their work matters. Online communication tools create a real-world audience for students and their work without all of the hassle that teachers had to go through without it. For example, if I wanted students to research a local government policy with which they disagree and prepare a letter to the editor about that policy, I can guarantee that few, if any, of the letters would be published. Now, there are online communities where all students' work can be published. Also, world history students can use Skype to communicate with students in the countries they are studying. This will put in context what the students are learning and increase engagement. These are only a few of the many obvious benefits of online communication tools.

Technologies within the Next Two to Three Years

1) Mobiles: Mobile devices, with their internet access, GPS systems, and other applications are becoming a more important way to provide access to information for users on the go. Educational uses for mobile devices include student responses to questions (without the expense of PRS systems) and research aids.

Although I agree that mobile devices may have some use for students, for several reasons, I think that the costs associated with use of mobile devices may outweigh the benefits. First, as we become a more mobile society, the response-time expectancy decreases. Mobile devices such as Blackberrys and cellular phones may lead to students' calling the teacher minutes before a project and asking a flurry of questions. This blurs the boundary between teacher free time and work time. Second, there are already significant problems with students using cellular phones to cheat on exams. There does not appear to be an obvious way to prevent this. Third, there is the most evident issue of cost. Not every student can afford the mobile device or the applications associated with that device. And, if teachers rely on mobile devices to communicate with students, students who cannot afford mobile devices are left in the dark. Fourth, I must confess that I am not a texting expert, but writing things out on mobile devices is a cumbersome process. I am just not convinced that mobile devices are going to give students that much more than other technologies would.

2) Cloud Computing: The cloud is “the term for networked computers that distribute processing power, applications, and large systems among many machines.” Rather than running on a single computer, cloud-based applications are run on a specific cluster of computers. Examples of technologies supported by the cloud include PageFlakes and Ning. Because users are storing their information on the cloud, they are relying on its continued existence. Through cloud applications such as Slide Rocket, students can publish slide shows and share them with the world.

Technologies within the Next Four to Five Years

1) Smart Objects: “[A] smart object is any physical object that includes a unique identifier that can track information about the object.” Examples of smart objects include Siftables and Poken. Smart objects may be particularly useful in libraries to do things such as linking books with author interviews. Teachers also may use smart objects to measure phenomena such as the weather, and students in class may analyze that data.

2) The Personal Web: The personal web refers to technologies that allow users to reorganize and manage internet data. Undergirding the personal web is the idea that online content can be modified and sorted based on users' personal interests. Although this technology is advanced, the personal web remains on the farthest horizon because of school internet restrictions and the lack of computers regularly available in classrooms. Regardless, the personal web is an excellent way to maintain large resource collections that are easily accessible for students and to obviate the need for index cards with tools like browser widgets. Examples of the personal web include Zotero and Diigo.

Key Trends Affecting Learning in Elementary and Secondary Schools

1) “Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed.” Technology is increasingly becoming a form of communication rather than isolation. Instead of passively reading websites, users are interacting with one another through websites such as Facebook.

2) “Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives.” Through technology, students are introduced to a “real world” audience for their work.

3) “The web is an increasingly personal experience.” Rather than the one-size-fits-all curriculum students experience in the classroom, students are exposed to personalized content on the internet.

4) “The way we think of learning environments is changing.” The learning environment is not just the classroom; it extends to the community and spans all disciplines.

5) “The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing.” This is pretty self-explanatory; businesses want to hire innovative and creative individuals.

Five Key Challenges in Integrating Technology into the Existing Educational Framework

1) “There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.” We must determine what newer literacy skills are needed to succeed, and then we must teach these to both teachers and students.

2) “Students are different, but educational practice and the material that supports it is changing only slowly.” Curriculum, instruction, assessment, and tools used in the classroom must be adapted to the new, younger generation of students.

3) “Learning that incorporates real life experiences is not occurring enough and is undervalued when it does take place.” Teachers need to increase student engagement by assigning projects that incorporate students' real-life experiences.

4) “There is a growing recognition that new technologies must be adopted and used as an everyday part of classroom activities, but effecting this change is difficult.” Teachers should have more training time and professional development to be prepared to use the appropriate technologies in the appropriate manner in the classroom.

5) “A key challenge is the fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment.” Schools must adapt to the changing world, but change is easier said than done.

I hope that you enjoyed the summary. Overall, this was an awesome article that taught me about a lot of technologies. I feel so cutting edge now!

Comments on AT Reading

Because we have only five people in our group and six times that we need to post blogs, this week there are only comments on the reading.

Possible Lesson Plans

Here are some ideas I've thought about for possible lesson plans that integrate technology:

• Using www.glogster.com to create a new, modern-day cover of The Great Gatsby (SOL C/T 9-12.5: Students will "respectfully collaborate with peers, experts, and others to contribute to an electronic community of learning")
• (SOL 9-12.2: "Students will demonstrate proficiency in the use of technology"): Students will use video software to create "documentaries" about The Great Depression and its connections to Of Mice and Men.
• (SOL C/T 9-12.5: Students will "respectfully collaborate with peers, experts, and others to contribute to an electronic community of learning"): Students will participate in an ongoing online community like Blogger or a Wiki in which the teacher will give prompts and students will respond to the teacher and to each other.
• (SOL C/T 9-12.9: "Students will use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences"): Students will use Podcasts to discuss themes and issues in various novels, a la MuggleCast.
• (SOL C/T 9-12.9: "Students will use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences"): Students will record themselves reciting poems and then discussing meanings, themes, and different aspects of poetry (as the AP test would ask), then publish those discussions via Podcast.
  

Parent Communication

· What factors do you think are most important to keep in mind in communicating with parents?

Kathleen Casson (“Communicating with Parents”) makes the point that “the most important reason to stay in touch with parents is that children are more committed to learning if they feel that their teachers and their parents are on the same page. This is true in middle and high school as much as in elementary school, no matter how "grown" students might think they are.” I would also add that this is true no matter how “grown” parents might think their children are.

I agree with Kathleen Casson that to communicate successfully with parents, it is important to “be caring, professional, open, and organized”. She also notes the importance of establishing regular communication which begins on a positive note, rather than starting the relationship by conveying a problem, especially one which should have been conveyed earlier.

Communication is, of course, a two-way street, so I think it’s important to have systems in place so that you are accessible to parents. Tell parents at the beginning of the year how you can best be reached, and tell them how quickly they can expect to hear back from you.

· How do you think technologies may support or inhibit these factors?

I think that technologies can support these factors by making communication possible across conflicting schedules. In the days without e-mail or cell phone voicemail, parents could only reach teachers through notes (and one might wonder if they got delivered) or well-timed calls to the classroom (before or after classes). This would be especially difficult for working parents, as Kathleen Casson mentions.

However, certain technologies are more personal than others; it is easier to read a person’s tone and feelings through voice inflections in a phone call than it is through e-mail. So, if a teacher relies solely on e-mail and doesn’t connect with a parent by phone, he/she may run a greater risk of being misinterpreted.

· What technology(ies) do you think are most promising and realistic to help you to communicate with parents?

As a parent, I rely on cell phones, e-mail, and Edline (a website which gives parents access to their children’s grades as well as important notes from teachers) as the most promising and realistic technologies for communicating with teachers. Class web pages, such as the one described in Sydney Brown’s article (“Using a Classroom Webpage to Communicate with Parents”), are a great idea and a potentially valuable learning experience when done with the students, but speaking from experience, I am skeptical that a large percentage of parents check a class web page on a regular basis (without prompting from their children).

· What issues might you need to keep in mind in using technologies to communicate with parents?

One very important consideration is that not all parents may have access to the Internet. In such cases, hopefully you can rely on phone communication and the efficient delivery of notes if needed.

As noted previously, e-mails need to be written very carefully to convey their intended messages and tones. And, as discussed in David Walbert’s article (“Writing for the Web”), there is much to consider when writing for the web. “Different types of communication require different types of writing and design,”, and in his opinion, “the biggest problem with most content on the web is that it’s just poorly written.” Ask yourself if you want to convey information (the details of an assignment) or ideas (your philosophy of teaching). “If you’re writing for parents, consider their level of education. You may need to make your writing accessible to parents with a high school diploma while still giving those with advanced degrees the level of content they’ll expect from a fellow professional.” He emphasizes the importance of “good, strong, clear writing” no matter what you are writing, and I would add efficient proofreading – spelling and grammatical errors are always bothersome, but they are especially bothersome in a teacher’s writing. (Note to self: don’t forget to run spelling and grammar check.)

The teacher using the classroom web page in Sydney Brown’s article suggests “Don’t forget to obtain parental permission to post student pictures and work.” After a year’s experience with a classroom web page, she found that parents were much more willing to give permission.

The article by Rhonda Bodfield (“Should Teachers/Kids Be Digital “Friends”?”) explores the question of whether or not teachers and students should communicate through social networking tools such as Facebook or texting. “Because the issue isn't clear-cut, it's often a topic of conversation in ethics classes taught by Sheri Bauman, the director of the school counseling program at the University of Arizona. Her university students have said they could see educational uses for using networking sites. Teachers might discover interests or hobbies that could help them engage kids in the classroom. They might be able to see whether there's anything going on outside class that's affecting academic performance.” My reaction to this is that discovering interests, hobbies, or asking what’s going on in a student’s life outside class can and should be achieved through methods other than Facebook and texting.

“On the other hand, Bauman said, there are risks.”The kind of interaction that often occurs on the site [Facebook] is more personal than the average teacher wants to be with a student," she said. "And with no facial clues or voice clues, that kind of communication is just much easier to misinterpret."” I think that heeding the wise advice “be friendly with your students, not friends” means not going to your students’ Facebook pages and not texting them. As Kathleen Casson pointed out, being a reflective practitioner means being clear in your mind about the purpose behind everything you do as a teacher. This should translate into being able to explain everything you do to parents, and I personally wouldn’t want to risk upsetting parents by crossing a boundary into space they consider inappropriate when my goals in doing so could be achieved through other methods.

Multimodal Learning Through Media: What Research Says

In the article Multimodal Learning Through Media: What Research Says, Charles Fadel (Global Lead, Education) states, “There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the effectiveness of multimodal learning, some of it seemingly fabricated for convenience. As curriculum designers embrace multimedia and technology wholeheartedly, we considered it important to set the record straight, in the interest of the most effective teaching and learning.”

Remember this? <---cute pun.

We remember...

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we say

90% of what we say or do

According to this article, the "Cone of Learning" idea created by Edgar Dale,is often misused. The Meriti Group disapproves of this idea because the shape of the cone "is not related to retention, but rather to the degree of abstraction." The only beneficial truth in the cone is that towards the bottom of the shape when more senses are engaged.

So how to people learn?

Educational Psychology Refresher

3 types of memory:

-sensory memory

-working memory

-long term memory

Answer to...how people learn:

• students preconceptions of curriculum must be engaged in the learning process (trigger a priori knowledge).
• expertise is developed through deep understanding (engage in a deep thought process)
• learning is optimized when students develop "metacognitive" strategies (think about thinking/ predict outcomes/ make sense of something)

So... teaching styles that include a variety of media are most effective because more senses are triggered. Major increases in achievement levels are possible when teaching styles "adapt to include a variety of media, a combination of modalities, levels of interactivity, learner characteristics, and pedagogy based on a complex set of circumstances." However, sometimes it's best to for students to work individually to build automaticity.

This article has a lot of meat. It's hard to summarize, but I enjoyed the section on Future Research. I am most interested in "the importance of the attention and motivation of the learner." It talks about reducing distractions to focus the learner. This is an important thing to think of when using multimodal teaching. It's cool, and I will consider multimodal teaching. However, it can't be too over the top. Like all technology, it needs an effective purpose.

Life on the Screen, Digital Directors Guild, and Podcasting

Life on the Screen
In the interview Life on the Screen, George Lucas expanded on his views of education. Not surprisingly, he thinks that film and other artistic media have an overlooked but important role to play in the classroom. He described the need to stop looking at art and music as separate topics taught to the emotional mind, and instead incorporate them in other classrooms. Many of his opinions aligned with modern learning theories, but one statement was fairly novel. He said,

"One of my concerns is that we're advancing intellectually very fast, but we're not advancing emotionally as quickly."

He pointed out that it is common to see highly educated people (professors with PhDs, anyone?) who are clueless when it comes to good form in presentation and visual communication. This comes from an educational system rooted in 19th century thinking, according to George Lucas, clinging to tradition in the face of a society and business climate that demands change and flexibility. He also touched on the outdated idea of education "as a way of storing facts," and its impossibility with our current rate of information expansion.

Digital Director's Guild
The Digital Director's Guild is a project to bring digital moviemaking into K-16 education. Moviemaking's flexibility makes it a powerful learning tool, because it can pull from many different theories of learning, and the final product can take so many forms. The DDG website lists guidelines created by the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) for "new skills that students will need to excel in the Digital Age." These are

• Digital-Age Literacy
• Self-direction
• Teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills
• Prioritizing, planning, and managing for results

Projects using digital moviemaking incorporate them well. There are broken links all over the examples page, but here are a couple that work.

Math Movie Minute
This video created by middle schoolers is a good example of cross curriculum teaching. While explaining how to find the surface area of a pyramid, students show understanding of storytelling, use of humor, editing, and sound mixing.

Immigration iMovie
In this video, students presented immigration experiences from a first person perspective, essentially role playing. I chose this because it is a project that could easily have been assigned as a paper, which would have faded into the background of so many other papers in the students' memories. Doing a project like this is more likely to be both pleasant and memorable for the students.

Podcasts
I'm fond of podcasts because they remind me of the days when the radio ruled the entertainment scene (not that I was alive, then). The defining feature of a podcast is how it is delivered. A program is used to automatically fetch the latest audio or video file from each (and every) given podcast the user is subscribed to. It is not uncommon for users to also automate the process of moving the file onto their portable player, although many people listen to podcasts on their computers. The incredible ease with which they allow subscribers to follow is a major draw.

My favorite example was the Mathgrad Podcast's description of how people solve Rubik's Cubes in terms of set and group theory. I'm not convinced it is "math for everyday people" as described (I think most people's eyes would gloss over during the math portion, here), but it is an interesting presentation, and could open the door for discussion in a classroom.

Copyright and Fair Use in the Classroom

Obviously copyright and fair use are complicated issues, but I felt the article did a pretty thorough job of summing it up. Here are five principles I felt are important for both teachers and students to know:

• As a creator, your the works that you author (in a "fixed" format) are protected under copyright laws. However, there are some things that are excluded from this, like ideas and processes that are not written down, and works by the U.S. government.
• Generally, use of works under copyright is consider "fair use" when it falls under the following categories: 1) criticism or commentary; 2) news reporting; 3) research and scholarship (and generally, more factual than creative use is more permissible); 4) nonprofit educational uses; and 5) parody.
• Using works under copyright for nonprofit use is okay; using it for commercial purposes is not.
• The article gave five basic rules about fair use:

1. Using works under copyright is okay when you are incorporating it into a new work, but not if you are just copying it.
2. Using a work is not okay if you are competing commercially with that work.
3. Just because you give credit to the source doesn't mean it's fair use.
4. How long is the work? How much are you using? The more you use (relatively) the less likely it is that you are operating under fair use policy.
5. Just as you shouldn't use too much of a work, you shouldn't necessarily use the "heart and soul" of that work.

• Finally, if the work is unpublished, it's probably not okay to use it under fair use.

I think one of the best ways to address these issues with students would be to teach a class on copyright laws and fair use. I have never actually had this topic addressed in a class in such a concise way. Usually teachers just comment that as long as works are used in an academic setting, using work under copyright is okay. I would also encourage students to ask me whenever they might have a question about fair use. Finally, it might be beneficial to have a brief seminar for teachers on fair use policy by a lawyer who knows his way around the law and could answer questions, so that teachers would be well-informed in order to teach their students.