Web based multi media design for educators

Dear followers, Thank you for sticking with me. I'm taking a new class now and have opened up a new blog. Please follow me at: http://integratingmultimedia.blogspot.com/2012/06/this-blog-integrating-web-based.html Sheri

The dog (education) must wag the tail (technology).

Scott McLeod, the leader of Castle, expresses concern that the very leaders who are the least knowledgeable about technology are the very ones responsible for creating new paradigms necessary to prepare students for the next fifty years. And while I’m concerned that legislators are dangerous because they don’t understand the alue of technology nor do they understand the fundamentals of learning and teaching, I assert that the principal doesn’t need to be proficient in the use of technology; however, she must believe in technology – in fact, he must have a passion for the role that technology has in learning and teaching.

It’s the job of the principal to create an environment that is encouraging for faculty to be innovators; to fund technology infrastructure so that there is sufficient bandwidth (100 megs minimum), a stable network, appropriate and enough hardware, and an abundance of software. The principal needs to reward innovation and create a community of support among the faculty.

Zhao et. al. discusses what conditions are necessary within a school to make classroom technology innovations a success. The necessary conditions fell in three realms – the innovator (the teacher), the innovation (the hardware, software), and the context (technological infrastructure, the culture of the school). The principal of the school (or the provost of a college) influences all three realms. The principal hires the teacher, controls the budget, and sets the tone of the culture of the school.

The principal is the most single important factor (precisely because s/he cuts across all three realms) in determining how successful technology integration will be. It is not the case that the principal be able to code a webpage or manage border routing protocol or manage a server or administrate software. The principal must be a sophisticated end user of educational technology and have a passion for its use. The principal must set a culture of innovation and budget for its success. The principal must understand that we are preparing today’s students for an unknown future – but a future that includes the use and leveraging of technology as a fundamental skill.

If the principal doesn’t create an appropriate environment for faculty to be innovators, for faculty to change the paradigm of education so that we are teaching for the next 50 years, not the last 50 years, then, as in McLeod states, schools can become dangerously irrelevant.

References:

McLeod, (2010), Are Schools Dangerously Irrelevant? http://youtu.be/-yA6oTU1emM

Zhao, Y., Pugh, K., Sheldon, S., &Byers, J. (2002). Conditions for classroom technology innovations. Teachers College Record, 104(3), 482-515.

University Day - April 19th

I'm thinking more about the talk I'm going to give next week for the faculty at University Day.

I have to work on my short abstract..... Tell me what you think. Would you come to this interactive presentation? (I'm going to have everyone use their smart phones to be involved interactively in the session. I'm going to use Turning Technologies Student Response System. And I'll have extra devices for those without a smart phone.)

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. – Albert Einstein

As teachers we are preparing our students for futures that we can’t even envision; for jobs that don't exist, using technology that hasn't been invented yet. The most important thing we can do is "train (sic) the mind to think."

And this is our (the faculty) challenge. To spend more time teaching our students to learn and less time focused on our teaching. Were teachers successful before the advent of classroom based technologies? Of course. But that doesn’t mean a good teacher couldn’t be even better with the integration of today's tools.

Over the last few years we've told students to put their devices (tablets, phones, computers) in their lockers. Turn the devices off and shut them away. How does that help students to learn to learn? We should embrace technology. Today I'm going to demonstrate some easy to integrate technology into classroom environments and discuss their role in educational methodology and pedagogy.

Be sure to bring your favorite device with you. Open it up and turn it on! Its time to learn!

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. – Albert Einstein

Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think. – Albert Einstein

My day job is to support academic technologies for K20 (Kindergarten through Graduate School) for the State of NJ. To this end I introduce technology coordinators to new vendors, new technologies, pedagogies, and so much more. I make sure that I use these same tools and methodologies in my classroom (both online and on-ground) when I'm teaching and learning. I not only talk the talk, I walk the walk. And yet, (there's always an "and yet") and yet, I strongly believe that its the quality and passion of the individual teacher that creates a successful classroom, regardless of whether or not she uses technology. On the other hand, (and yes, I have multiple personality disorder), as teachers we are preparing our students for futures that we cant even envision; for jobs that don't exist yet, using technology that hasn't been invented yet. The most important thing we can do is "train (sic) the mind to think." Thus, even though I believe that a good teacher can create a successful learning environment with or without technology, to prepare our students for the future, we must integrate as much current technology as we can in order that they learn to leverage technology.

Next week I am the keynote speaker at one of my member college’s faculty day. What is the message that I want to impart to them? I know some of the details. I want to talk about how technology and society share a symbiotic system - that changes in one create opportunities for changes in the other; I want to talk about how today’s students are different from us when we were students; I want to talk about really cool tools – many that I learned from each of you and of course from Cheshta; I want to talk about commitment and passion for learning; I want to talk about social media; I want to share resources and talk about the importance of professional learning communities; I want to talk about institutional support, peer support; and so much more. But these are the trees. What is the forest that I want to paint for my audience? What is my responsibility to the faculty?

Maybe its that our responsibility to our students is not to set them up to learn facts, but to help train their minds to think.

Beyond the Classroom: Video Conferencing with Peers & Experts

Beyond the Classroom: Video Conferencing with Peers & Experts I’m very taken with LOTI (levels of technology integration). LOTICONNECTION.COM. It reminds us of why we are using technology, not for its own sake (the complaint that many of my peers had about Will Richardson’s evangelism.) but rather, LOTI reminds us to integrate into technology for the purpose of learning and teaching. Specifically, I’m interested in Levels 5 & 6, which have us move teaching and learning beyond the classroom and into real world experiences.

One set of tools that I think can help us achieve LOTI levels 5 & 6 is video conferencing and synchronous collaboration tools. Examples of real time video conferencing include Vidyo, Polycom, Tandberg/Cisco. Examples of synchronous collaboration tools include Adobe Connect, WebEx, Blackboard Collaborate.

For this blog, the distinction that I’m making between Real Time video conferencing is that video conferencing focuses on the VIDEO and has a one – to – one or few-to-few where the face to face interaction has priority. The synchronous collaboration tools focus on communications and collaboration tools – chat, polls etc where it’s a one to many, and while interaction is encouraged, the interaction is from the many is text based and from the one is audio based.

My preferred tools are Vidyo (because its desktop high definition without requiring special end user hardware) and Adobe Connect (features are excellent). Yes, there are free tools – skype, big blue button and others… I believe that the commercial products are still superior today. However, the free tools are good enough. Without disrupting the traditional classroom, teachers can bring real world experience into the classroom, thereby extending t & l beyond the classroom walls.

I want to go through a few examples of how these tools reach levels 5 & 6 of the LOTI model. PreK students: Experts in the Sociology of Education know that parental involvement is the most important factor in student success. Yet, with single parent families, with working parents, how do we connect parents into their children’s schooling. Using real time video conferencing and streaming in a protected environment (password required), parents can peak into their PreK children’s play and learn time. Imagine a 15 minute stream of a class session can help parents feel more intimately connected to their students.

Middle School Students: Just around the time hormones start raging, school gets boring. What better way to engage our children’s intellect and curiosity than by making connections to peer groups from around the world. Imagine studying the American Revolution in NJ and having a class-to-class video conference with a 7th grade class in England. The 21st century tools – broadening beyond one’s own provincial understanding of history by engaging with the English perspective. In this environment, with video conferencing, history can come alive. (And, parents can view some of the sessions to increase their involvement in their middle school students’ lives.)

High School Students: DNA. A teacher can have their students watch Jurasic Park (movie), while learning about DNA in Biology class. Then students could have a real time conversation with a bio-ethicist at Rutgers University to discuss what is possible and what is ethical. To excite a student’s love for biology by connecting with working biologists and ethicists, can change a student’s life.

These examples all used real time video conferencing (without any special equipment in the classroom other than a PC, web cam, speakers and a LCD). When used during classtime, the video experience and interaction is most important. It mimics a one-to-one (one class to one class / one class to one expert etc). The high quality video and audio are vital to the success of the experience. A tool like Vidyo is perfect.

Both Vidyo and Adobe Connect allow one to share their desktop, show powerpoints, videos and more. But if this was conducted outside of class time (perhaps an online college course) where each student is a separate location instead of in one classroom. Then the synchronous collaboration tools are more appropriate. When there are more than 6 end users at different locations then the tools such as chat, raising hand, polls etc are invaluable.

Not only do these tools make learning more interactive and more engaging, it gives them the skills that will be increasing required in the work world.

Pedagogy & Technology

This blog is going to be an overview touching on several different issues. Over the net few months, this blog is going to touch on the mutual impact that pedagogy and technology have on each other with an emphasis on Pedagogy 2.0 (coined by McLoughlin and Lee) and the Read/Write Web (coined by Richardson).

The areas I intend to discuss with you include:

Pedagogy 2.0 (Is it really new?)

Role of Faculty (Is anyone in charge?)

Role of Student (What does learner centered/controlled mean to me?)

Public versus Private Social Media (Must learning be in the public domain in order to go beyond the classroom?)

McLoughlin & Lee coined the term Pedagogy 2.0 in their 2007 article: Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical choices with technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era. “The interdependence between ideas, individuals, communities and information networks,supported by technology, underpin the demands of Pedagogy 2.0, and offer a range of choices to individuals to suit their personal needs and goals.” (Emphasis is mine.) In their definition about content and curriculum they discuss “micro units”, “bit-sized modules”, constructivist learning and active participation. My question is if all this is really new – an out growth of Web 2.0? I’d argue that this is not brand new. In fact, these are the principles of good teaching; teachers creating a learning environment for students. There are always lectures – now they are shorter, chunked, but they still exist. Our own excellent model of good teaching, Cheshta, gives us a 5 – 10 minute overview of the unit. One of the first things I did when I began to teach faculty to use WebCT in the late 90’s was to teach our faculty to “chunk” materials; to turn one-hour lectures into 15 minute guides.

This is not to say that Web 2.0 has no role in the transition of pedagogy, after all, part of the definition is that Pedagogy 2.0 is supported by technology. Engagement about the materials beyond the “transmission of the content” becomes easier for both faculty and students because of the ease of continued dialogue and bringing in experts and peers and others. Collaboration wasn’t created with web 2.0, but the tools make it possible for students to create and sustain the collaborations themselves.

I believe that “personal meaning construction” of knowledge is the single most important part of learning. It has its roots in problem-based learning. Essential components of problem-based learning include feedback, reflection and group dynamics. PBL predates Web 2.0, but students were dependent upon faculty and librarians for the materials they needed. With Internet access to experts, databases and peers, students gain control over the PBL experience.

Is pedagogy evolving because the Web 2.0 tools provide the freedom necessary? Or is pedagogy being forced into a specific direction because of the available Web 2.0 tools? Which is the tail? Which is the dog?