EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
Archive for January, 2006
January 30, 2006 at 5:46 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts
My five-year old son Hunter is a philosopher, he just doesn’t know it. I find myself constantly amazed by the things that I learn from him.
Take yesterday for example, I’m driving my kids to my daughter’s basketball game and Hunter is in the backseat making some sort of vehicle with his Legos™. Holding up something he has built he says to me:
Hunter: "Dad, look what I made. It’s a ship."
Me: "Wow Hunter, that’s pretty wild."
Hunter: "I had to take something else apart to make it because I don’t have enough pieces."
Me: "That’s ok Hunter, that’s the best thing about building with Legos. You can make things and then take them apart and make new things."
Hunter: "I know Dad, I do that a lot. I like building new things, but sometimes I don’t like it when they break."
Me: "Yeah, that happens to me sometimes too. I try to find another way to build them that is stronger."
Then silence, Hunter was back in the zone.
It got me to thinking that knowledge and information are a lot like Legos. We acquire all of these various bits and pieces, which alone are useless, but can be combined to build incredibly intricate designs and constructs. Then we can break them down, and build them back up into something new - based on whatever new problem is thrown our way. Sometimes our designs have flaws and what we build falls apart when we test them. We deposit this experience into our knowledge bank, and then go back to the drawing board and either strengthen our construct or rebuild it from scratch.
Thanks Hunter!
technorati tags: legos, learning, knowledge, philosophy, connectivism
January 29, 2006 at 12:05 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
Just hanging out before the start of the Glengarry Bhoys concert at the Tupelo Music Hall in Londonderry, NH. They have wireless access here and being the geek that I am, had to see what it was like to blog from my PDA (Dell Axim X5 w/ CF Wireless card for those keeping score). It’s cool.
Uh-oh, house lights just dimmed. Time for the show.
P.S. - The concert rocked - as always the Bhoys are better in concert than on a digital track. Only a live performance can capture the energy and enthusiasm that the Bhoys convey. Their new CD "The Mill Sessions" has gone to press and should be in hand by Valentine’s Day. And for those that follow celtic rock, Greenwich Meantime is a new band on the scene with a new CD due out by the end of the month. This is another band that you have to see live to truly have a feel for their music.
technorati tags: glengarry, bhoys, celtic, music, tupelo, pda, blog, greenwich, meantime, canada, scot, irish, cd
January 27, 2006 at 4:00 am · Filed under Higher Education, Random Thoughts
After my post about the Chronicle article yesterday I started to think about the perception that appears to permeate the educational "industry" (from K-12 through higher ed); a paradigm which treats knowledge and learning in an almost proprietary sense. When I say proprietary I mean two things: 1) that knowledge and learning are accepted and recognized by our culture as occurring primarily, if not solely, in a formal environment and transmitted by a particularly small subset of that culture and 2) that curricular content is "owned" by the institution and/or its members.
This dogma is being challenged furiously by what has been termed informal learning - not only are we no longer place-based learners (then again have we truly ever been) but our access to information and our ability to learn from a higher quality of social network has come to mean that we no longer place formal learning on the pedestal upon which it has so long resided. And as George Siemens illustrates in his theory of connectivism, between the sheer quantity of human knowledge and the impact of technology on our ability to access, process and remix that knowledge to create new understanding our culture is at a crossroads. If the education industry desires to remain competitive and viable, it must adopt a new business model rather than a model based on knowledge scarcity and knowledge as a commodity. The divide is growing, and our educational industry must rise to the challenge.
It brings to mind the lyrics from a song by one of my favorite groups, the Glengarry Bhoys.
"I fear that everything is changing.
I fear the world is spinning, around and round and upside down.
And I fear my ship is leaving and I can’t get it off the ground."
technorati tags: knowledge, learning, connectivism, formal, informal, proprietary
January 26, 2006 at 7:32 pm · Filed under Higher Education, TechTalk
My CIO passed an article on to me from the January 27th edition of The Chronicle. (Note that the Chronicle requires subscription so access to this article is limited.)
Entitled "Facing the Faceboook," it was authored by Michael Bugeja of Iowa State University, and at first glance seemed to deal primarily with the perceptions of faculty about the Facebook social networking service. Had the article maintained that scope, I wouldn’t be quite so torqued as I find myself at the moment. The author introduces the concerns that many of us in the field of education (and not just edtech) have been talking about for the better part of a year regarding the lack of concern over privacy, content and the pervasive nature of this social app.
Unfortunately, there are a number of broad assumptions and generalizations about the negative impact of technology and social networking. Here are some of the quotes from that article that I found frustrating because the are not backed by primary sources (the bolding is my own):
"To be sure, classroom distractions have plagued teachers in less technological times. In my era, there was the ubiquitous comic book hidden in a boring text. A comic book cannot compare with a computer, of course. Neither did it require university money at the expense of faculty jobs."
This is an inflammatory statement with no supporting references. Is it true that technology is replacing our faculty or is that a faulty attribution based solely on one’s individual opinion?
"John W. Curtis, research director at the American Association of University Professors, believes that investment in technology is one of several factors responsible for the well-documented loss of tenured positions in the past decade."
The key phrase here is "one of the factors." What are the others and where does technology fall in terms of its true impact on this loss?
"Unless we reassess our high-tech priorities, issues associated with insensitivity, indiscretion, bias, and fabrication will consume us in higher education."
Is the assumption here that technology is to blame for our continuing devolvement? For when it comes to the social failings quoted above, these our human culture has faced since the dawn of its age. Lest we forget that technology is simply a means and not an end. It is a tool and as such is only as effective as the one wielding it. As the employer of that tool, it is we who determine its impact on our culture, and whether it is used to build or to destroy. Educators throughout the spectrum have been struggling with these topics for far longer than technology has been on the scene.
"… the younger generation views technology largely as a means of delivering entertainment—be it music, video games, Internet access, or television—and secondarily, as a means of communicating."
I’m not sure I can support this statement, particularly in light of the reports coming out of the Pew Internet and American Life project which clearly show our "net gen" or millenials as content creators, rather than passive consumers. This begs the question about how we define communication and what it means to communicate ideas, thoughts and knowledge. Simply because a certain generation does not communicate in an historically acceptable fashion should not invalidate their methodology.
"… we must make hard decisions about our investment in technology and our tradition of high standards."
Should technology and standards be treated as mutually exclusive? I would hope not.
The Chronicle: 1/27/2006: Facing the Facebook (while the link lasts)
Looks like I am not alone. Both Bryan Alexander and Stephen Downes are following this as well.
technorati tags: facebook, chronicle, higher, education, university, college, social, software, networking
January 25, 2006 at 2:18 am · Filed under Random Thoughts
I know I’ve been going off on all these cool iPod gadgets but this is wild. This Koyono jacket is made of an electro-fabric called Elektex that is washable and waterproof, the iPod controls are built-in.
I have to admit that I am not all that keen on the design. My vision would be more along the lines of a sport jacket for the tech exec, but hey this is like a concept car, right? If this takes off, there are plenty of designs I would love to see - one involves incorporating directional speakers into the collar of the garment. I’ll be following this with interest.
BlackCoat Work - Industrial Elegance and iPod controls
technorati tags: ipod, clothing, koyono, elektex, wearable, technology
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite 
January 24, 2006 at 4:23 am · Filed under TechTalk, Web 2.0
As I have been consuming podcasts at a ravenous pace since last summer, I’ve always wanted the ability to throw in markers for significant thoughts so that I could come back to them later. How cool would it be to have a mechanism to throw in personal bookmarks throughout a ‘cast. Perhaps even to the point that if your MP3 player of choice had voice recording capability that you could have your own thoughts embedded within that podcast as a margin note.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Zach over at nosheep.net wants:
"…built-in bookmarkable ability. In other words, when I stop listening at a random place, I want it to pick up where I left off. I know it does it for some files it identifies as audiobooks, but how do I make it do this for ones I want to control. This part is merely the difference between an AAC with a .m4a and a .m4b extension. Though making a change like this to a pile of files could still be cumbersome.
You can solve both of these problems by grabbing a couple AppleScript’s - Join Together and Make Bookmarkable."
[link]
technorati tags: podcast, bookmark, mp3, ipod, technology, listening
January 24, 2006 at 4:02 am · Filed under TechTalk, Web 2.0
Not too long after the iPod with video came out, I picked one up. A 30GB model. Because it was new I accepted that it might be a while before I saw the good accessories come out for it. And while it’s not officially out yet, the folks at Xtreme Mac have me hooked already.
The Micromemo is a 44KHz, 16-bit audio recorder which connects to the docking port. The device has a flexible mic and built-in speaker, but as it runs off iPod power, it will be interesting to see how that affects battery life.
Regardless, it will be an interesting experiment and I look forward to its release in "late Spring"!
Estimate retail price, $79.95
technorati tags: ipod, video, xtreme, mac, accessories, microphone, micromemo
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
January 14, 2006 at 3:19 am · Filed under ED506
This is the framework within which this project is being developed.
- Pick something that you have learned in the past month (or will learn during the next two months),
- Summarize the experience objectively understanding that the purpose of the course is to think about how learning takes place,
- Connect the experience to various theorists’ approach to learning with a mind towards enabling teachers’ understanding of learning theories,
- Describe/reflect on your frustrations, successes, and personal learning styles.
technorati tags: ed506, learning, theory, philosophy
January 13, 2006 at 11:51 pm · Filed under ED506
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the focus of my M.Ed. is on educational technology, specifically the prescriptive application of the appropriate technology to achieve or improve an educational experience. Over the past 6 months or so, I have found myself exploring an explosion in innovative web-based applications which have been assigned the unofficial moniker of Web 2.0. Blogs, podcasts, wikis, social bookmarks, aggregators and virtual communities (the online equivalent of social networks) are just some of the latest trends in the online experience. That is all well and good you might say, but why is this important to me as an educator?
Two recent research studies have led to some startling revelations about our current generation of young learners. In early November 2005, the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) published the ECAR Study of Students and Information Technology, 2005: Convenience, Connection, Control, and Learning in which they describe the characteristics and aptitudes of the generation that has been termed the “digital natives.” Other monikers include the “net generation,” the “twitch generation” and the “Millenials.” Around the same time, the Pew Internet & American Life Project published their report, “Teen Content Creators and Consumers.”
Each of these studies identified trends in this generation of learners that are important for educators to bear in mind. The ECAR report shows that among the participating colleges and universities:
- 96% of student respondents own at least one computer
- 55.6% of these computers are laptops, an increase of 10% over the 2004 results
- Yet only 14.1% of the students actually bring these laptops to class
- 90% of student respondents had access to broadband connections
- The average student spends 11 - 15 hours per week on their computers.
One important item to note is that while students self-reported that they were sufficiently versed in computer and internet technologies, ECAR data
“…suggests that students are possibly rating their skills higher than they ought. Students report difficulty with new kinds of applications or technology, and troubleshooting their computers.”
As educators we should bear in mind that comfort with computers and applications does not necessarily imply an ability to employ those skills for academic purposes. In addition, a technology proficiency gap already exists between the skill levels and technology preferences of the incoming freshman and outgoing seniors. In a span of only four years, there is already a significant difference in the aptitudes and comprehension of our learners. This gap is borne out, at least allegorically, by my experiences working with students at both ends of the spectrum in my role as the coordinator of the Technology & Learning Center on my campus. Couple this with the fact that sum of our human knowledge has grown more in the past ten years than at any other point in our history and according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD) continues to double every 18 months (Siemens 2004), it is clear that if this is a challenging time to be an educator, just imagine how overwhelming it can seem to our learners.
Unlike the ECAR report which identified trends in students’ use of and comfort with technology, the Pew Report examined the role of teens in content creation on the internet and summarizes their findings as follows (this is a national study; I have not yet found international statistics for correlation):
- 57% of online teens are creating content for the internet
- 19% of online teens keep a blog, 38% read them
- 15-17 year old girls are the predominant bloggers
- Teen bloggers are tech-savvy and heavy internet users
While ECAR identified four themes in student expectation of information technologies: convenience, connection, control and learning, we will, for the purposes of this project, focus on the aspects of connection and learning as they apply to educational technologies. The prevailing theme in the Pew Report is that our millennial learners are no longer satisfied with being content consumers, they are becoming content creators. These trends, connection and learning, and content creation, will become pivotal as we explore the potential impact that Web 2.0 applications can have on facilitating the learning process for this digital native generation.
technorati tags: web20, web, 2.0, learning, technology, educause, ecar, connectivism, philosophy, theory, social, software, networking, ed506
January 13, 2006 at 9:34 pm · Filed under ED506
By way of introduction, I am currently matriculated in a Master’s degree program at Plymouth State University. While the official title for the specific track is Computer Technology Educator, my focus is primarily on the use and integration of educational technologies into the curriculum. One of the core courses for this M.Ed. track is ED506 - Theories of Learning & Cognitive Development. As an overview of the process of cognitive development over the course of a learner’s lifespan, this class includes the biological/physiological perspectives of brain theory as well as the more commonly accepted theories of learning. Ultimately, this course leads to the development of personal philosophies and strategies which will facilitate the incorporatation of these strategies into’s ones curriculum design, development, delivery and assessment.
This blog category (ED506) represents my culminating project which begins to touch upon the philosophies and strategies I have cultivated as they apply to the incorporation of the newest educational technologies commonly referred to as Web 2.0. To find just those posts in my blog related to this thread, please enter this tag into the search column found in the right-hand column. For those new to blogs, you will find that many of the terms or resources are actually hyperlinks to the original online resource. These links are used not only to cite references, but also to provide the reader with additional valuable background information. As you follow this project thread, please take the time to visit these links as they contain information that serves to illuminate and/or define this project.
This link was published using the Performancing plug-in built for Firefox (although it was used in my Flock browser).
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