Month: January 2018

The willingness of much of the public to dismiss scientific conclusions has led to calls for scientists to do a better job and take the time to describe their work and their findings to the public. I think this issue in this political climate is more complicated and there are some scientific conclusions that are simply too inconvenient for public support, but part of the problem is certainly lack of understanding.

I think I have developed some skills in doing this. I have written several textbooks and this requires communicating in a more basic style. One of my editors told me I had to “unpack” certain ideas I was trying to communicate. I think this meant that I was assuming too much and I needed to be more careful in what I assumed. Given all of the criticisms of college textbooks, I may be assuming too much. Yes, textbooks are expensive and textbooks are lengthy and this is a reason for much of the criticism, but effective communication is still an additional issue. In fact, you may not be able to both “unpack” what you are trying to communicate and shorten what you have to say. I read somewhere that there were more new vocabulary words per page (important, but unfamiliar terms) in Introduction to Psychology textbook than a foreign language textbook.

They tell you in freshman English composition courses that understanding your audience is important. My recollections of freshman composition do not contain any actual strategies or experiences related to this problem. I learned much more when I took a course in “Technical Writing” which I credit as among the most valuable of my undergraduate experience.

Back to the topic of writing so your mother can understand. I don’t think my parents ever quite understood what I did. They understood the teaching part, but not the research or writing part. I did learn to write for novice learners by writing for my wife. I write textbooks that concern the classroom application of technology. My wife worked directly with teachers to help them apply technology. Because she had so much experience in application, she was a great judge of whether I was adequately explaining ideas so that practicing and future educators would understand.

There is a level beyond what I am describing here. What about writing for those without much of background and who may even be hostile to challenging ideas? This is the challenge for scientists. They are not writing for college students enrolled in courses, even introductory courses, in their disciplines.

Here is a blog post that examines this challenge. I found the suggestions and the perspective to be quite helpful. The author describes writing “opinion pieces (op-eds)” that might appear in a newspaper. This seems a practical way to understand the challenge and the techniques. I will not review the ideas here, but I do recommend your attention to what this blogger suggests.

This article from the Grand Forks Herald caught my attention. The articles describes a decision by Minnesota K12 institutions to end their collaboration to support TIES (Technology Information and Educational Services).

TIES is an organization that goes back as far as I can remember in supporting technology use in Minnesota schools. TIES and MECC (the Minnesota Educational Computer Consortium) provided some of my earliest exposure to the field of educational technology back in the days of the Apple II and the first Macinstoshes. TIES was around even before my wife and I first began working in this field which was before the day of the microcomputer. Because of several leading technology companies at the time (Honeywell, Control Data, IBM) and the role of state universities, Minnesota was an early leader in the field.
(see the section on the history of MECC which also describes TIES)

This history is likely unknown to most, but I can often get a hint of understanding among the earliest generation of innovators when I mention Oregon Trail. Cindy and I worked in Grand Forks, ND, so our proximity allowed us to attend NECC and TIES conferences in Minneapolis.

MECC was founded in 1973 and disbanded in 1999. TIES had earlier origins and it appears it is now ending its run as an organization supported by schools and perhaps will live on if another agency steps up. The way schools procure technology (hardware and software) and services (access to larger tech systems and professional development) is changing and funding models have changed as well. The cost to individual schools contributing to TIES increased to the point that schools began to drop out creating a death spiral for the rest.

My own experience has been with North Dakota and this experience has become less relevant as I have been out of the state now for several years. When my wife and I began our focus on educational technology my wife was working in a district that was ahead of the curve. She was one of two individuals hired to support the local school district with the understanding at the time that this was likely a two-year position. Twenty five or so years later, she has been retired for several years and the local staff is much larger. Cindy worked in what was one of the larger districts in a state that has many small districts. The region created a consortium to provide professional development, but the district continued to support a local staff. The state also provides certain services and unlike Minnesota that state is expanding certain services to higher education institutions. It is interesting to see adjacent states moving in opposite directions.

I don’t see a huge role for state level services. There are simply too few services at this level that can compete with commercial online services. I would not spend money at this level. If districts are large enough, I am still a fan of Human Resources available within a the district. The problem with infrequent access to expertise and guidance is the same problem so many see in professional development in general. Too much happens without the opportunity to explore and then too little mentoring is available when ideas are implemented. If practical, I suppose online interaction could provide a way to deal with these issues. I am just unaware that many have been able to make this work.

Many educators follow the blog posts of Richard Byrne whose Free Tech for Teachers [http://www.freetech4teachers.com/] provides frequent suggestions and tutorials on the use of technology in the classroom. Mr. Byrne used to teach, but now makes his income by speaking, conducting inservice workshops, and generating ad revenue from his online content.

Byrne has been aggressive in protecting practices that he believes infringe on his rights as an online author. If you follow him on Twitter, you will receive tweets in which he calls out services that display his material without permission.

The reason I am commenting on a specific Byrne complaints is that a recent target of his ire employs a practice that may seem similar in some ways to a practice I have defended – the layering on annotations on the work of another author [http://learningaloud.com/blog/2018/01/03/layering-update/]. The similarity is that in both cases the original author loses some control over how his/her content is displayed.

Byrne’s most recent target is a service you might be familiar with as an educator – EdTech Update [https://www.edtechupdate.com/]. This site aggregates articles on educational topics. If you visit the site and spend much time reviewing the work of those who write about education, you will likely recognize many of the sources. So, as an educator, you may be looking for a one-stop shop for online education content and this might be a valuable source. As I understand the strategy of the site it does some other things. For example, it provides a list of what are the most popular (trending) articles. So, the site is collecting data and using these data to improve the service provided.

As I understand the Byrne criticism, this service operates without the approval of the original authors and does so through the use of RSS and frames. I hope my interpretation is accurate. Many of us use RSS as individuals. RSS is a method by which a service follows work posted on sites you designate and lets you know when something new has been posted. Most blogging platforms, the wordpress platform I use for example, enables an RSS feed. This is very helpful to readers as they are notified when an author on one of the potentially hundreds of sources they follow has written something new. It is not necessary to actually visit each of the sources to see if something has been added. Depending on the RSS system, the information provided is usually the title and a snippet from the source. You read these short segments and make a decision of whether or not you want to connect to the full post. Byrne is complaining that EdTech Update is doing something similar, but not for personal use. The snippets are aggregated and served to users by EdTech Update. If you visit the Update site, you should see what I am describing.

In addition, when a user selects the snippet made available by RSS, EdTech Update takes you to the full post, but does so within a “frame” from the EdTech server. If you are checking on my description by visiting the site, take a look at a sample URL to see what I mean.

http://www.edtechupdate.com//?source=ditch-that-textbook&open-article-id=6229191&article-title=10-add-ons-to-google-classroom-you-must-try&blog-domain=ditchthattextbook.com&blog-title=ditch-that-textbook

So what is happening this URL is that you are viewing a post from Ditch The Textbook displayed within a window controlled by edtechupdate. If you follow a link within the Ditch the Textbook site, you will still see this new information displayed within this same window.

This may sound like situational ethics, but it could be worse. You do see the ads as intended by the content author so I assume that the original author still receives any revenue generated by his/her work.  Of course, it does not have to work this way. Many of us write blog posts pointing to resources we find valuable, We substitute our personal effort for an automatic process. The frame technique is what I consider the most egregious issue. Moving from snippets to the source is how RSS typically works when you use an RSS reader. I admit I do not understand the motive to keep content within a frame, but it does seem a step too far when relying on content generated by others.

I have explained this issue as I understand it. I welcome corrections should others feel my interpretation is incorrect.