Derek's Blog

The buzz about the release of Amazon's new wireless reading device called Kindle has been keeping the blogosphere busy recently. As with most emerging technologies there are both the supporters and detractors of this new gadget (see, for example, The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) by Google employee Mark Pilgrim, and make sure you browse the comments!).

I found George Siemen's reference to it in a recent blog post titled reading and books informative in this regard. George linked the news about Kindle with reference to the recently released NEA report from the US which paints a rather gloomy picture of the state of reading among young people in the US, concluding that they are reading less, and are reading less well.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach makes a similar link in her recent post titled the future of reading on the TechLearn blog. Sheryl appears optimistic about the adoption of this technology, arguing that it's a changing world, and that if we want to remain relevant in the lives of our learners then we will need to use strategies and materials that fit their learning styles, not our own. Her post is well worth a read, as she shares her personal story of being one who does not enjoy reading books!

The NEA report goes on to say that...

The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications - Advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages. Deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas.

Such statistics provide ready made ammunition for the technology sceptics and doom-sayers. So where should the real debates focus? Certainly not on the merits or otherwise of the aesthetics of the device, nor even on whether it provides colour or not (the current B/W device is bound to be a decision based on storage capacity etc). To me the development of these wireless reading devices and e-paper etc are further signs of a move towards the ubiquity of access to information, and the promise of the Universal Library, available to all, as described in the New Yorker article on Future Reading in which the author explores the evolution of digitalization of print, and the efforts of companies like Google and Microsoft (and now Amazon?) to dominate the field. :

The supposed universal library, then, will be not a seamless mass of books, easily linked and studied together, but a patchwork of interfaces and databases, some open to anyone with a computer and WiFi, others closed to those without access or money. The real challenge now is how to chart the tectonic plates of information that are crashing into one another and then to learn to navigate the new landscapes they are creating. Over time, as more of this material emerges from copyright protection, we'll be able to learn things about our culture that we could never have known previously.

The New Yorker article explores some of the challenges to accessing information in print form versus the transition of many to the audio and film worlds of expression. We're certainly in for some interesting times over the next few years as this scenario plays out, and the real future of reading is revealed!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I browsed a fascinating report from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) in the US, which reports on the results of a survey of more than 1,458,000 students at nearly 1,200 different four-year
colleges and universities on the issue of student engagement which aims to improve undergraduate education, inform state accountability and accreditation efforts, and facilitate national and sector benchmarking efforts, among others. Titled Experiences That Matter: Enhancing Student Learning and Success, the survey focuses on engagement of learners in the post-secondary (tertiary) sector in the US.

The report focuses on three themes; Enriching High-Impact Experiences, Factors That Support Student Success and Another Look at Gender. I found it interesting to read about what the report calls "Deep Approaches to Learning", described below:

In contrast to surface-level learning, deep-level processing emphasizes both acquiring information and understanding the underlying meaning of the information. Deep approaches to learning are important because students who use these approaches tend to earn higher grades, and retain, integrate and transfer information at higher rates.

One of the strategies for achieving this that is discussed in the introduction by NSSE director George D. Kuh is the idea of "High Impact activities", which he describes as...

High impact activities put students in circumstances that essentially demand they interact with faculty and peers about substantive matters.

Basically, what I took from my scan of the report is if you want engaged learners then provide them with meaningful learning activities that require them to be a participant in the learning activity, and in relating to and with other learners (as opposed to simply being a passive recipient of transmitted information). Nothing new here for those who have been following the developments in pedagogical practice over the past couple of decades - although seems there's still a large gap between espoused theory and theory in practice in this regard from what the report suggests.

This is not to make light of the issue of engagement however. The findings of NZ's own Council of Educational Research recently published the results of their longitudinal research project started in 1993 of a group of 500 students which provides some very useful insights into the sorts of factors that may act as indicators of student engagement through their learning life. Titled Growing Independence - A Summary of Key Findings from the Competent Learners at 14 Project, the report highlights in the section about student engagement in school and learning that engagement is as much to do with factors in school as it does with factors outside of school as revealed in the following findings:

• Students at 14 who are engaged in school and learning are likely to be in positive learning environments where there is good feedback from teachers, relevant teaching, challenging work and a focus on learning at the students' pace.


• There are connections over time between what is happening at school and what is happening at home. For example, those who show signs of disengagement with school are also likely to experience family pressure, engage in risky behaviour, and not have interests that engage them outside of school.

Still on the topic of engagement, I was amused to read an article titled "Digital Distraction" by Terence Day which begins with the question Are laptop bans the answer to the misuse of computers in the classroom? Day discusses the issue reported in many US universites and colleges of tutors and professors banning laptops from classes because they distract students and prevent them from paying attention to what the teacher is saying. Thankfully he doesn't end there - but goes on to look at the alternative, arguing that students need to be actively engaged in their learning. He quotes Teresa Dawson, director of the Learning and Teaching Centre at the University of Victoria, who suggests faculty employ such active-learning approaches as shared exercises, problem-based learning and the new clicker technologies that allow simultaneous class response to questions.

Where have these people been? Come on now - we're in the 21st century, it isn't the technology's fault that students are becoming disengaged (well, not entirely). Long before computers, engagement has always been about participation, collaboration, rich tasks, inquiry, authentic experiences etc - ask John Dewey! However, it isn't simply a case of assuming that the use of technology will automatically lead to higher levels of engagement as Samuel Freedman's article in the New York Times titled New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology (November 7, 2007) points out. Freedman reports on the concerns of a growing number of US college educators who see technology as a distraction in class, with students engaging in all sorts of off-task behaviours (sending personal messages etc) during class time. He does, in my view, pose a perspective worth pondering in terms of how this might be countered. It's all too easy, as Freedman points out, to simply argue that this is a consequence of lessons being too boring. He writes...

"I'm so tired of that excuse," said Professor Bugeja [director of the journalism school at Iowa State University], may he live a long and fruitful life. "The idea that subject matter is boring is truly relative. Boring as opposed to what? Buying shoes on eBay? The fact is, we're not here to entertain. We're here to stimulate the life of the mind."

"Education requires contemplation," he continued. "It requires critical thinking. What we may be doing now is training a generation of air-traffic controllers rather than scholars."

Now there's a perspective worth reflecting on!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So what is this: Neomillennials - a new term for a new year?

This morning I listened to a podcast by Jarrret Cummings of Educause in which he interviews Chris Dede, the Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, on some of the ideas behind his upcoming keynote address at the 2007 ELI Annual Meeting. Dede's topic will be "Emerging Educational Technologies and Neomillennial Learning Styles."

In this discussion, Dede explains the concept and key characteristics of "neomillennials." He also highlights the transformative effect of emerging immersive learning environments on higher education pedagogy and discusses the importance of faculty development in relation to these developments.

My initial scepticism turned to genuine interest as I listened to the podcast. Dede presents a compelling case for his notion of neomillennials, arguing that the thing that distinguishes this group is the way they use media in their lives, and the way that this influences and changes their preferences, their strengths and their styles in terms of learning - and because it is media-based, it is not dependent on age. This is good news for me, as a classic "baby Boomer", I've often struggled with the ageist typecast of the notion of the digital immigrantand digital natives.

For me, Dede takes the whole area of thinking about the impact of media on learning a step further than what has been popularised so far. He focuses on learners' use of a wide range of media - not just the net, and argues that we need to be especially looking at the emergence of interactive media that fosters immersive, collaborative simulation (including things such as MySpace, MMOGs etc).

I particularly like his argument that we need to be focusing on a change of pedagogy in order to realise the potential of these technologies for learning (particularly in formal learning contexts) - his metaphor of "technology is not like fire" will resonate with many.

I don't want to spoil the message -listen to it yourself. While it is presented as a message targeted at the tertiary (higher ed) sector, the main points of the message apply to our endeavours at all levels of the education system.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A useful resource from UNESCO called Using ICT to Develop Literacy is now available as a PDF download from their website. It's an easy read - concise and useful, focusing on five key ways in which ICT can support literacy

1. Enhancing Learning
   
2. Broadening Access to Literacy Education
   
3. Creating Local Content
   
4. Professional Development of Teachers
   
5. Cultivating a Literacy-Conducive Environment

There is a useful discussion at the beginning of the document on how literacy is defined:

"The word ???literacy??? is often used today as a substitute for the word ???ability??? or ???competency???. For example, ???computer literacy??? is the ability to use computers, and access and create information through a computer. Such uses should not be confused with the term ???literacy??? as we use it here, i.e. the skills related to reading, writing and communicating in the written form.

Examples of other uses of the word ???literacy??? include:

• Information literacy: The skills required to organize and search for information, while also analyzing that information.
  
• Critical literacy: the ability to engage in critical thinking, and judge the intention, content and possible effects of written material.
  
• Mobile literacy: The ability to use mobile technology, such as a mobile phone and its non-voice features.
  
• Media literacy and research literacy: The ability to be a discerning reader and the ability to find various types of information.
  
• Cultural literacy: the ability to understand cultural, social and ideological values in a given context.
  
• Legal literacy: the knowledge of basic legal rights and how to protect those rights.
  
• Visual literacy: the interpretation of images, signs, pictures and non-verbal (body) language. "

The resource also contains a range of informative case studies and illustrations from a variety of cultural contexts.

One of the focus areas, professional development, is a particular interest of mine, and on that subject, here are a couple of other links that I found over the weekend:

???Cultivating Digital Educators??? - a paper by two school teachers from the US in which they share their experiences and ideas about how to transform a traditional school environment into one where teachers effectively use technology for collaboration, curriculum development, instructional delivery, and student engagement. Their presentation is available as an 18min movie download and is worth viewing.

Beyond Spray and Pray PD - an article by Wesley Fryer in TechLearn nothing new here at all, in fact, everything he reveals in this latest 'epiphany' is what has underpinned the ICT PD cluster schools programme in New Zealand for the past six years - but always good to have this affirmed!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been participating in an online course over the past few weeks with a group of teachers who are sharing experiences and exploring ideas around the use of new technologies in education. This week we're looking in particular at the impact of Web2.0, or social networking tools, and how they may be shaping the expectations and learning behaviours of students.

With that in mind I was very interested when Clarence pointed me to a paper by Henry Jenkins titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century which explores the notion of media literacy through a lens of identifying what skills and abilities (competencies) learners will require to participate in real spaces and with real ideas, allowing them to interact with others globally for authentic purposes.

Clarence points out that the majority of the paper is spent in exploring the 11 skills Jenkins says that are needed to fully take control of participating in this culture:

1. "Play??? the capacity to experiment with one???s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
   
2. Performance??? the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
   
3. Simulation??? the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
   
4. Appropriation??? the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
   
5. Multitasking??? the ability to scan one???s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
   
6. Distributed Cognition??? the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
   
7. Collective Intelligence??? the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
   
8. Judgment??? the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
   
9. Transmedia Navigation??? the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
   
10. Networking??? the ability to search for,synthesize,and disseminate information
    
11. Negotiation??? the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms."

Seems tome that there's a lot to consider here in relation to the Key Competencies contained in the draft NZ Curriculum that are currently out for discussion.

Clarence's entry provides a more complete discussion around the intent of the paper - however, I was interested to read the first comment that had been made on this blog which contained the following statement:

As Jenkins tells us, we need to look beyond our kids having access to tools (blogs, wikis, etc.) and we need to learn how to use them effectively in our classrooms to support their learning.

While I may be taking the comment out of context, it reminded me that there's still a lot of discussion to be had around whether or not it is appropriate for our priority to be on learning how to use [web2.0 technologies] effectively in the classroom.The idea of schools/systems appropriating these tools and environments doesn't sit immedately well with me. The are fundamentaly designed for personal use, whose outworking is in social networks, not 'managed' learning situations, with formal structures and 'rules'. I'm not saying that there's no place for the useof these tools within formal education settings - I've blogged about examples that I consider good practice in the past - rather, I think we need to be thinking well beyond how they might be incorporated into classroom settings.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 7:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Idesign is an interesting website that provides a well constructed overview of "design thinking". The approach introduces 7 ways of design thinking, and covers everything from the underpinning theories, to practical teaching tools and techniques, to forms of assessment.

Most of the information on this website was originally developed during the Design Based Education K-12 Program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, USA. Initiated in 1989 by Dr. Burnette, the program began with a university course, Design With Kids, that placed design students in classrooms to help teachers conduct design projects related to their teaching goals.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a great 15-minute educational video introducing information literacy to young people titled E-Literate developed as part of the UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies.

I found it great to watch, with engaging use of graphics and images to convey the many ideas and understandings that underpin the notion of information literacy in the digital world. I particularly liked the way the video tackles a lot of the assumptions and "hype" that exists about these issues, and provides a really good platform for further discussion and investigation. I can see this being used by teachers, librarians, community leaders and parents to introduce 21st century literacies to young people.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's a really fascinating set of 16 interactive slides designed to explain what happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimer??s disease. Titled Inside the Brain: An Interactive Tour they explain how the brain works and how Alzheimer's affects it.

The interesting thing for me is the fact that, although designed as a teaching tool to help people understand more about Alzheimer's disease, it provides a stimulating introduction to our understandings of how the brain functions, and how different parts of it appear to be responsible for different aspects of our behaviour and abilities.

I have observed a number of teachers introducing these ideas to their students in the context of understanding the nature of knowledge and learning - often with a limited understanding of the very complex medical and physiological matters involved. This resource may help provide a more informed perspective.

Others who refer to our understandings of how the brain functions in relation to how we learn include Ian Jukes in a recent post on his blog titled Parents get a look at teens brains and others such as those with articles on the Brain Research and Education website.

Another article titled How can research on the brain inform education? from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in the US provides a useful overview, and includes a table listing a number of points suggested by recent research and some suggestions for teaching to address these.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

On April 26-28, 2005, a group of leading authors, researchers, policy
makers, educators, and artists from around the world met in San Jose to discuss recent developmetns in the areas of visual, aural and digital literacy. Their report, titled A Global Imperative: Report of the 21st Century Literacy A Global Imperative contains an excellent summary of the discussions, and points to some important issues for all of us involved in education in the 21st century.

The main point is summarised in the working definition the group came up with for 21st century literacy:

"21st century literacy is the set of abilities and skills where aural, visual and digital literacy overlap. These include the ability to understand the power of images and sounds, to recognize and use that power, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms."

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In recent weeks I've encountered several conversations about what it means to be "literate" in a digital age. While notions of literacy have existed for as long as schools, our understandings of what this means are changing.

At the recent SLANZA conference in Auckland, Karen Sewell, the CEO of ERO , spoke of the importance of a school-wide development of information literacy, and the need for all schools to have an information literacy plan in place.

The American Library Association has recently published its Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education which provides some useful pointers as to what an information literate person may look like.

The ALA provides the following definition: "Information literacy is a set of abilities requiring individuals to "recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.", and suggests that an information literate individual is able to:

• Determine the extent of information needed
  
• Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
  
• Evaluate information and its sources critically
  
• Incorporate selected information into one??s knowledge base
  
• Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose
  
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally

Although written with a higher ed (tertiary) audience in mind, this is certainly worth a read for those in the school sector. The challenge will be to consider what sort of modelling and scaffolding is appropriate in a school-based information literacy plan to ensure that these are the sorts of attributes that our learners will possess once they leave school.

While I am encouraged to read of this approach to information literacy, and find plenty of useful stuff here, I also have a caution about how some schools or teachers may approach the development of a IL plan.

In her book, Catching the Knowledge Wave , Jane Gilbert discusses the need for the development of 'multi-literacies' - ie creating a wider focus than simply the read/write literacies that underpin so much of our present education system. Jane is also critical of an approach to teaching information literacy skills that is divorced from the context of information sharing and knowledge creation that these skills are necessary for. The following quote from her book illustrates this:

"Recent published work on the future of schooling has a lot to say about the role of ICT's in schools. For many authors, the knowledge age of ICT's are virtually synonymous. ICT's are seen as a magic bullet the will revolutionise teaching and learning. However, if we look closely at how these authors think this will happen , we can see that these claims are not very convincing. The first thing to notice is that the ICT's they talk about are not the kind that involve text messaging, MSN, chat rooms, online gaming or downloading music videos. Rather, the focus, in general, is on using ICT's to do more or less what schools have always done, but doing it better, faster, and in ways that are more appealing to students. The thinking is that, thorough ICT's learners can be connected to vast amounts of information, and be part of a worldwide network of learners. Furthermore, ICT's in schools are an important way of bridging the "digital divide". Using ICT, these resources can be offered to a wide range of people who would not otherwise have access to them, and these people can acquire the computer-related skills that, we are told, are now essential in the employment market place. Schools have responded to these discussions by developing "information literacy" programmes, teaching students about the Internet, and designing talks that students can tackle using information available on websites(with the help of online resources provided by their teachers). This is digital "busy work". However, it is valued because students are using technologies that have a high status in the works outside school, and this, it seems, must be a good thing. These approaches, when looked at in terms of how they are educating students for life in the knowledge age, have important flaws. First, and most obviously, the information learners have access to isn't knowledge in either the old sense of the term, or as in the new sense. Second, having access to large amounts of information doesn't necessarily lead to large amounts of learning. Without a clear context for accessing this information, the students quickly experience information overload. Third, while there is a lot of talk about learning, there is very little discussion of what - if anything - students need to learn and/or why they might need to learn it. As far as I can tell, it seems to be assumed that students will learn more or less the same kinds of things they have always learned or that it doesn't really matter what they are learning as long as they are learning something. Worse however, this approach misses the point entirely in terms of what is significant about the new age. All the talk about information - the information revolution and so on - deflects attention from what really matters in the new age, which isn't information at all. What is significant is the relationships between people and between people and organisations, that are made possible by the new modes of communication. It also takes attention away from knowledge, in particular the new meaning of knowledge that is the defining feature of the knowledge age. This new meaning is entirely missed from the current focus in ICT's in schools, and we are consequently losing the opportunity to develop the incredible educational potential of these technologies. Current approaches will do little to revolutionise teaching and learning."

( from "Catching the Knowledge Wave, page 119"

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