Month: May 2006

Blocking disruptive technologies is futile

I have run into a number of issues within the last couple of weeks that have reminded me of the concept of disruptive technology.

These issues include:

  • DOPA – legislation proposed to require schools to block commercial networking sites
  • Net neutrality – issue of whether service providers should be able to prioritize what users access (e.g., preventing dsl providers from slowing access to VOIP)
  • Educational institutions concerned with built-in video capabilities of new Apple computers

What these issues have in common is a perceived threat from new capabilities of technology. Internet users may use VOIP rather than the phone because VOIP is less expensive than long distance. Kids in schools may access inappropriate web content or take pictures and use them inappropriately.

Will attempting to block these “opportunities” be productive?

  • If VOIP is valued, those who access VOIP using DSL will move to cable.
  • If MySpace is valued, kids will access from home.
  • If generating digital images or video is valued, kids wanting to capture images will use their cell phones or home computer.

Technologies with wide appeal have a way of surviving.

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Anti-Plagiarism Software

Mary Pilon, USA Today, describes developments in antiplagiarism software. This appears to be a case of “where there is a problem there is a business opportunity” and companies are creating services offered to educational institutions very much like the sale of antivirus software.

I ran into several cases of plagiarism in my own classes this last year and the issue of student ethics is starting to really bother me. We did not have to use specialized commercial software to identify the problems – searching for phrases within Google was enough. Even after students acknowledged material they handed in was not entirely their words, it seemed difficult to get them to understand that the matter was more than a misunderstanding or a mistake. Either they claimed to be operating within what I would describe as “fair use” guidelines (they typically had some general notion that they could lift material as long as a citation appeared somewhere) or they claimed to have made a “simple” mistake (they patched together a paper using cut and paste techniques and then forgot to paraphrase). It is difficult to tell the difference between students who are manipulative and those who were poorly prepared for the expectations of higher education. This topic will be another thing I will have to add to my syllabus – you should read the book, you should come to class, you should write your own papers, etc.

My wife claims I am becoming a curmudgeon. Maybe so.

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My Letter to Earl (Representative Pomeroy)

Representative Pomeroy:

I am writing to indicate my opposition to the “Deleting Online Predators Act” or DOPA. To me this proposal seems a misguided overreaction to a legitimate problem. Blocking social network sites will remove many significant learning opportunities without addressing the core problem. Students need to learn about the infrequent, but real dangers of the Internet. Blocking access to a wide collection of sites – many of great value – will not increase student understanding or eliminate the problem once students are outside of the relatively well-monitored environment of the classroom or library.

In my opinion, the opportunity to turn access to specific sites on and off is not a realistic compromise and is seldom actually used. Many small schools in North Dakota receive service through Edutech – a state supported provider. I believe if you check you will learn that it is impractical for this provider to manipulate access for individual web sites for individual schools.

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Dev Psych – Internet and Achievement

Several weeks ago, I reported on an issue of Developmental Psychology focused on children and the Internet. The article I highlighted suggested a possible relationship between Internet Use and Achievement. In response to my post, a comment was submitted noting the difficulty of properly attributing a causal relationship (it was reported that use led to improved achievement) based on nonmanipulated environments (i.e., correlational research). In other words, it would seem just as possible that “bright” kids read more online as that reading more online leads to changes in reading skill.

I finally had time to read the paper more carefully (Jackson, et al, 2006) and the causality issue favoring the influence of online experience on achievement is more solid than might be assumed from my original sketchy report.

One technique developmental researchers sometimes employ to address the “causality issue” when variables cannot be manipulated is to take advantage of the passage of time (longitudinal research). If experiences and characteristics (Internet use and reading skill) can be measured at multiple points in time and the correlation of the experience to later measurement of the skill is greater than the correlation of the skill to a later measurement of the experience, the argument for use causing changes in achievement is stronger. This is what the paper in Dev. Psych reports.

I think the research on out of school use of the Internet is potentially of great significance because the experiences of children vary greatly and potential consequences may be easier to observe. Schools would not in good conscience allow the differences in experience that exist in the “real world” and are thus in a weaker position to demonstrate the benefits of technology. It is somewhat ironic that educators must on one hand demonstrate that value of the methods they employ and on the other avoid not providing all students pretty much the same “opportunities”. If methodological challenges can be addressed, the use of these naturalistic data may be quite convincing.

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Graze, Dive, Talk Back

John Palfrey offers a model of how digital natives process the news. The idea is to describe the difference between those of us who get up in the morning and read the Times (or Grand Forks Herald) cover to cover and those of us who go online and take a different approach. I really like the model (graze, dive, talk back) and I would really like to think it was true of high school and college students today.

However, I would really like to see the data on this one. I think the way Palfrey describes the habits of 21st century learners (if present high school and college students are considered 21st century learners) is idealistic and probably inaccurate. My students are more likely to IM and use a cell phone that I am, but I would bet very few of them followed up on what I could consider a legit news story today. I did – this is how I located the link used in this post. So, I am saying I think educators are more likely to at least “dive” and possibly “talk back” than their students. What I would like to see is educators extending this practice to include their students. As I read the research on teacher technology skills, the most frequent limitation that characterizes new teachers is that they apply skills to benefit their own learning and do not extend these same advantages to their students. So, I think a more appropriate criticism, since this piece seems to be about who is out of date, out of touch, etc., is that educators don’t involve their students in the practices they employ for their own information needs.

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Spam

I monitor traffic on my server and I noticed a recent upswing in the hits on this blog. Normally, I would be impressed, but I know I have said nothing profound in a significant amount of time (or possibly ever) so I began to search for another explanation.

Spam

It turns our a new group of spammers seem to have located this blog and are attempting to add “comment spam”. The filter I use seems to be very effective and to my knowledge no inappropriate comments are actually being served. However, I may miss appropriate attempts to add a comment. I have to approve comments before they appear on the site and the experience is something like going through your mail without a spam filter. I glance through about 500 or so comments every day now and 99.9%+ are spam. My experience has been that this problem will go away when those responsible are unable to achieve the desired results.

My apologies if I have missed your comment.

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Technology Counts ’06

Education Week’s special issue Technology Counts (you may need to register to view this online resource) is out. We have used this resource for years to track data on K-12 technology use. Basic stats relevant to evaluating changes in student access (e.g., computer to student ratio) are still provided. What I miss from the early editions are data on student use of technology?

The online resource provides state by state information. The authors provide each state a grade in multiple areas and this evaluation may be of interest if you are interested in local schools and technology. There is even a feature allowing state to state comparisons. Because studies (e.g., Cuban (2001), Hernandez-Ramos, P. (2005)) have often targeted California schools assuming “If not here, where?” to gain insight into technology’s potential, I like to compare California and North Dakota. Perhaps the researchers have not considered the data provided in Technology Counts.

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