Derek's Blog

This area is really gaining traction - here's a bunch of links to online journals on the topic. Some require subscription - but it's impressive just ot see what is available:

Knowledge-based systems (Elsevier Science)
International journal of Human-computer studies (Elsevier Science)
International journal of information management (Elsevier Science)
Journal of Intellectual Capital (Emerald)
Journal of Knowledge Management(Emerald)
Knowledge management research and practice (Palgrave Macmilan)
Knowledge and information systems (Springer-Verlag)
Data mining and knowledge discovery (Kluwer online)
Journal of information and knowledge management (JIKM)

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

From the same source (eSchool News) another story that illustrates the disturbing trend I spoke about in the previous posts and after my visit to NECC - the empahsis on test scores as a driver of what happens in education.
This time, the article refers to a $5M investment announced by the Idaho Board of Education to further develop their PLATO learning tool. In their own words, the purpose of this tool is to "help struggling students pass the state's mandatory high school graduation test."
Admitedly, further on the article reports...

Through the agreement, PLATO Learning will provide K-12 language arts, mathematics, and reading curriculum aligned to the Idaho Achievement Standards and Idaho Student Achievement Test (ISAT). The system will be known as the Idaho PLATO Learning Network. The technology-based program will allow each school district in the state to import individual student scores from the ISAT exam. The program will then identify a personalized learning path that prescribes appropriate curriculum to remediate or advance skills."

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Really interesting news from eSchool News today announcing that the US Department of Education is embarking on a three-year project to create a decision support tool that will enable educators to track and manage professional development, report on data from various sources and create various scenarios to enhance the practice of teaching in schools.

"We know high-quality teaching make the biggest difference in improving student performance," said Brian Rowan, a professor with the Educational Studies Program at the University of Michigan. "What we don't know is how to routinely target professional development so that it meets the needs of teachers and students. That's what this grant will allow Co-nect and the consortium to explore, understand, and act upon."

Rather than use traditional sources of data, such as explicit assessments from teachers' skill exams or student test scores, the consortiuum plans to perform climate surveys as its data source, claiming that this approach is most likey to yield changes in the shortest period of time.

This announcement interests me for three main reasons...

1. it would appear to go against the grain of much of what I saw at NECC where the emphasis was on usig test scores and grades as the basis of data driven decision making
   
2. in NZ, the Education Review Office (ERO) is about to publish the first of a series of reports on how schools are using ICT, with a view to informing furture PD directions (at school and national level) Things have developed along way from the picture painted in ERO's 2001 ICT report - (the matrix appended at the end of the report which was used in the analysis of ERO data is something I helped create at that time!)
   
3. the work that I've been doing with Dr Vince Ham and others in developing an Educational Positioning System (EPS) is designed to provide data from a contextual point of view as a starting point for planning for PD etc.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came across this blog today - Lilia has posted list of links to knowledge management journals and magazines . Most offer email updates.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday I attended the launch of an innovative project involving the schools in the Nelson region who are embarking on an ambition project which will give them broadband access within a Virtual Private Network which they call "the Loop".
The project is a collaboration between schools in the region and several key businesses, including Network Tasman who are the providers of PROBE for the region and Allied Telesyn who are supplying the network systems.
The project has come about due to the vision and generosity of the regional Power company who have put in an extensive fibre loop around sites in the district as part of their control systems.
Marion Hobbs, associate minister of education and Paul Swain, minister of ICT both made appearances via video conference to give support for what is happening.
I'll follow this project with a great deal of interest as I believe it has the right ingredients for a a VPN that will deliver knowledge-age services not only to the schools in the district, but eventually to other groups and busniesses in the Nelson region.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 6:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've just been reading a fabulous book called "knowledge management" by a couple of Kiwis, Carl Davidson and Philip Voss from Massey University.
I'm only half way through, but already two things have really struck me...

1. the issue of valuing knowledge is amazingly complex, and not easily (of at all) captured within our traditional accounting systems. Davidson and Voss suggest that the capturing of narratives of what happens in our organisations is an essential first step towards valuing knowledge - I'm inclined to agree. They even point to some models that have been developed overseas, one called The Knowledge Capital Scoreboard, developed by Baruch Lev of the the NY School of Business and the other from the Swedish insurance company, Skandia, called The Navigator" that are well down the track of "accounting for knowledge" in an organisation. I'd love to see these strategies employed in some of the contexts I'm currently working in!
   
2. Another chapter I really enjoyed for its thoroughness dealt with the oft-talked about taxonomy of data-information-knowledge-wisdom. Reminded me of a model that I drew up for lectures I gave at Christchurch College of Ed back in 1992 (View image) which I happened to 'dust off' the other day for an online course I'm running at present as a discussion starter. Funny how things go round...
   

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

During the NECC conference I blogged my thoughts about the National Educational Technology Plan in the US. One of the fundamental principles in this report is the notion of Data Driven Decision Making - simply put, this concept involves the collection and analysis of test results, demographic information, and other student data to make more informed decisions about instruction.
One of the concerns I have about this is the tendancy I observed at NECC for the 'data' being considered to mean 'statistics', mostly in the form of 'grades'. We need to ensure that the definition of data is much richer than this.

The article referenced above is worth a read - it includes three case studies of DDDM in action.
I've added the email I received in the extended entry. The whole report is available online free for a limited time.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Since the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act, you've undoubtedly heard or used the expression "data-driven decision making"?3D for short?in many conversations. NCLB puts unprecedented emphasis on the collection and distribution of assessment-related data, but it also requires educators to be both efficient and creative in using those data to improve student performance.

Data-driven decision making is not about crunching numbers. It's about understanding what's behind the numbers and determining what must be done in the classroom to improve them. Better student performance is the ultimate measure of success, and the keys to change often reside in data already being collected.

The editors of eSchool News have spent years reporting on the collection, analysis, and application of assessment-related data. Now, with financial support from Dell, we bring you an in-depth look at this important trend in school leadership.

It's in the brand-new eSN Special Report titled Data-driven Decision Making. In this report, we give you the lowdown on how very different school districts are using technology to dissect data in ways that lead to more efficient and effective learning strategies.

In this report, you'll learn how:

Community Consolidated School District 15 in suburban Chicago was ahead of its time in discovering a data-warehousing solution that eliminated many previously unrecognized inefficiencies.

The Pennsylvania Education Department's pilot program involving about 30 school districts led to "value-added assessment" and enabled educators to spot testing trends over time.

Officials at Cleveland Municipal School District in Ohio developed new diagnostic assessment tools by rethinking its approach to data collection.

You'll also be able to share in the insights of an IT services director from Overland Park, Kan., who talks about the value of a data warehouse and how it can help to improve instruction. It's all part of our latest eSN Special Report, Data-Driven Decision Making. The report is planned for sale in the eSchool News Online Store at $19.95, but it's available to you now, and for a limited time, it??s FREE.

You can view this new report right now by visiting:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/reports/datadrivendecisionmaking/

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I first noticed this article from Wired magazine in George Seimen's blog.
George comments on his own personal journey as a blogger - traversing personal journaling then personal knowledge management to simply a 'personal space'. I expect we're going to see more of this sort of reflection as the use of blogs matures and more defined.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Earlier I blogged about my chat on a plane with Jason Ediger, an Apple Distinguished Educator from California and the site he has developed specifically for iSight users. Check out iSightEd and see if there is a project here that you could link to using your isight camera.

This site is even more significant in view of the latest news release from Apple regarding their new operating system called "Tiger". Among the new features is an updated version of iChat AV that supports multi-audio and video chat: up to three other people for video and 10 total people for audio.
Apple is also adding H.264 support to iChat AV, which brings a great improvement to the quality of video chat.
The only downside is that Tiger and the new version of iChat AV will not be available until early 2005.
Another interesting announcement is the release of AIM 5.5 which means that PC users will now be able to link with Mac users in the multi-point iSight environment.
For an interesting description about video conferencing, compression and standards take a look at the powerpoint presentation available at Periscope , by David Preece, and impressive young person with whom I've been working here in Wellington recently.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I've been reflecting more on the NECC conference in New Orleans recently where I attended a workshop given by Bernie Dodge from Sandiego State University, well known for his work in the development of 'webquests'. (Bernie will be presenting a workshop in webquests at the Navcon conference in Christchurch later this year)

Bernie's session was titled "Blogs and Wikis as Webquest Tasks". This link is worth taking a look at - there are several links from the page which illustrate how Bernie has been using blogs and wikis in his teaching, and some thoughts about the developing pedagogy behind this.

I also attended a round-table session run by Bernie and a colleague, Philip Molebash, titled "When Teachers Blog" (available here as a downloadable pdf). Bernie and Philip's paper describes their experiences across two semesters of having students maintain a blog as a personal journal as part of their course in teaching English. I must admit I was a bit disappointed in this session - seemed that the rationale for using the blogs was a bit "thin" (why would you expect students to keep a journal online when we've not been successful in doing it to any great extent on paper??) - and the statistical representation of the research also left me unconvinced given the low sample rate. I'd be interested to hear what others think having read his paper.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This week i am in Dunedin attending the DEANZ/COL forum , along with Vince Ham, Stephem Powell and Helen Gilmore from Ultralab

There have been a number of really challenging speakers from various parts of the world, including Sir Shridath ("Sonny") Ramphal, the form Secretary General for the Commonwealth who spoke compellingly about our need to keep the focus on our humanity and care for our environment as a place to live for future generations.
This morning we were addressed by Mrs Ann Therese Ndong-Jatta, secretary of state for education in The Gambia, who provided an excellent overview of the challenges and developments among hte African states - in particular the emergence of the African Virtual University as a means of addressing the widening gap between demand for education and supply.

Here's a shot of Vince, Stephen and I enjoying a chat at morning tea, in the background are the flags of the 50 or so countries represented at the conference.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I came across the following two items in the CIT Infobits newsletter - useful both in terms of comparison, but also in terms of the list of features to consider when choosing blog software. (Thanks to Carolyn Koltas)

1 - Blogging services feature comparison
"Using a blogging service generally doesn't require any software other
than a web browser. Users have no administrative control over the
software itself, but have some control over a blog's organization and
appearance. Depending on the particular service, blogs can be hosted
either on the service??s servers or on the server of one??s choice (e.g.,
www.unc.edu). Users purchasing a paid account with a service typically
will have no banner ads on their blogs, more features at their
disposal, and better customer support from the service."
Check out the
Blogging Services Feature Comparison chart.

2 - Blogging Applications Comparison"Downloadable blogging applications require the user to have access to
server space (e.g., www.unc.edu). Most of these applications are
comprised of CGI scripts that must be installed and configured in a
user??s cgi-bin folder. Although they are packaged with detailed
instructions, applications can be difficult to install, prohibitively
so for the novice. Blogging applications afford users fine-grained
control over their blogs, and most applications are open-source or
freeware."
Check out the Blogging applications comparison chart online

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)