Month: February 2007

Horizon Report 2007

The New Media Center (in collaboration with Educause) generates an annual prediction of emerging technologies that will influence education and learning. The idea is to identify influences during specific time periods – next year, two-three years, 4-5 years. The report is focused on higher education, but with the exception of technologies K-12 institutions might actively exclude or ignore (e.g., cell phones in second grade, faculty publication) I would think the trends would have general impact.

The predictions:

Coming soon

  • User-Created Content (flikr, YouTube, blogs – and tags)
  • Social Networking

2-3 Years

  • Mobile Phones
  • Virtual Worlds

4-5 Years

  • New Scholarship (new models of publication and recognition for publication)
  • MMEducational Gaming

They describe the identification process as research based (qualitative). It is in a sense – they comb the literature for themes. I would rather see some type of survey that quantifies how widely specific applications are used in actual classroom settings, but I suppose with the exception of the “coming soon” categories this would show very little. At some point someone needs to get beyond describing cool applications that exist here or there and attempt to identify trends that have encouraged a little higher level of adoption. Perhaps this organization should go back to the list of applications/activities identified a couple of years and now survey the frequency of adoption.

I found the wiki associated with this project to be more valuable than the actual report (no offense, but this is the same type of content that seems to be the focus of a couple of keynotes at most conference I have attended recently). The wiki offers plenty of links to examples, connects to del.icio.us links, and seems to develop the arguments in the report in more detail.

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Wikipedia is failing

Wikipedia is failing. First, these are not my words. They are the title of an essay posted within Wikipedia. The short essay attempts a logical and quantitative analysis that on the surface suggests Wikipedia is not living up to expectations.

The argument is based on a grading scheme that attempts to establish whether Wikipedia articles are equivalent to articles found in “old school” encyclopedias and a list of vital topics were selected for review (no idea how these topics were selected). The conclusion:

These topics should have articles of the very highest quality. So do they? In fact, of those 1182, only 72 are featured articles. This means that 94% of the essential topics that should have excellent articles fall short of the standard.

The essay also outlines some of the issues Wikipedia must overcome. While many appear willing to contribute on topics of personal interest, the argument seems to be that folks are not necessarily willing to work on essential topics and contribute for as long as it takes to fashion articles of high quality. The essay contends that six years of work have generated 3000 articles of good or excellent quality (out of an estimated 1.6 million).

The template for “grading” articles is worth a look.

I find Wikipedia useful. For me, it is often a place to begin when exploring a topic. I see nothing wrong with a resource that serves just this purpose. I also value the efforts of those who are attempting to look seriously at the quality of Wikipedia.

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picnik – another web-based application

I keep encountering new web-based applications. The most recent is picnik – an online photo editing application. If what this means does not strike home, it amounts to uploading one of your photos to a remote server, appying various basic editing features to this photo (crop, resize, modify colors, sharpen, remove red-eye, etc.) using your browser, and then saving the modified image back to your computer, Flikr, etc. This is not a Photoshop level app, but how often do most of us really require the photoshop-level power. Even if you own a quality editing program, you probably don’t (and shouldn’t) have it loaded on your office machine, your home machine, your laptop, etc. Schools face a similar challenge – how many copies of photo editing software do they purchase and which machines do they load what they purchase on?

Take a look. The present offering is a beta version. When fully developed, there will be a free version (with basic editing features – I did not read what these would be) and a premium version.

edited photo

This image was uploaded from my collection. I used the crop and resize tools to arrive at something appropriate for a blog and then downloaded it back to my own computer.

edited photo

Image after application of vignette effect.

These web-based apps amaze me. At the most basic level, I must admit I do not really understand how they work. My programming background and web/server activities end up making what I experience even more confusing – no idea how you can do things like this through a browser. However, such technological advances are not really what fascinates me the most. I keep trying to understand why those who create these tools do so. Some might describe this reality as the “business model.” I don’t think this is a for fun, open source venture. There must be some long-term vision here. Include ads? Become popular and sell to Yahoo or Google? Beats me.

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Web 2.0 Trends

I am involved in a writing project related to Web 2.0. As I explore online resources, I encounter lots of interesting things. Here is a dynamic site presenting what are supposed to be the web sites generating the most interest. Since Web 2.0 is a vague and “unofficial” concept, scanning through the list sites/services is one way to gain a sense of what others think qualifies to be included under this heading.

I did notice one additional thing – I am working from a middle school lab today and nearly all of the sites on this list are blocked. Wikipedia worked but few other sites were allowed.

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Change in NETS for Students??

eSchoolNews has an article outlining proposed changes in NETS for Students (NETS Draft). This is a significant issue for us – we have a book out there with a 2007 copyright focused on the existing NETS. Assuming the draft is approved, this is a good example of why books, while important, must be backed by readily available web resources. Hate to have students out there learning dated material.

What follows is an initial reaction.

I have been attempting to cross reference the surface level of the existing and the draft standards. The terminology has changed, but in some cases the change in wording mostly reflects an effort to use phrases that are currently in vogue (e.g., Technology Research Tools -> Research and Information Retrieval, Technology communication tools -> Communication and Collaboration). Note the draft standards include numbers to help us see how the older standards have been incorporated or reworded.

Looks to me like the “tool” concept is out. This will take some time for me to digest. In the early days, Cindy and I were influenced in our writing by Jonassen’s “Mindtools” and the message we offered was an attempteto help educators see that technology (in various forms) offered various ways to help students explore content area topics and skills. This was not the modal model (Note – this is not an original phrase, but I have been waiting a long time to use it). Going back even further, it was the third option in the tutor, tutee, tool model. Perhaps the removal of the word tool and the focus on verbs (communication, collaboration, research, information retrieval) is an effort to help teachers consider what students should be doing or learning to do. Not sure I think this change will necessarily be meaningful to most or that it would necessarily differentiate the role of those offering “technology” standards in contrast to those offering standards for content area instruction. Technology does, in fact, offer all of us various “tools”. Those of us who encourage the use of technology are pretty much encouraging educators to assist students in using such tools to accomplish a wide variety of curriculum standards. The application of the tools to the goals of content area disciplines is what I would see differentiating Science, Language Arts, etc. standards from NETS. This is very different than encouraging students to learn about technology (which is really one of the six standards) or focusing technology on improving efficiency (e.g., assessment, record keeping) or on direct instruction (CAI).

Anyway, the “new standard” concerns Creativity and Innovation. Is this the Tough Choices or Tough Times, flat world, etc. standard? I don’t mean to be critical – I like the message.

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GF Podcasters

I have been spending a great deal of time in K-12 computer labs and classrooms this past month. It would be great if I could claim I was making a conscious attempt to get a better view of what goes on in the learning environments I often write about. While it works out in this way, I am primarily in Twining Middle School two days a week because I must move Cindy and her equipment around. Cindy broke her leg during the holiday season and can now neither walk nor drive. So – I either push the wheel chair or carry the bags.

Today was T-Rex day at Twining school. I never did figure out what T-Rex stands for. I am guessing the reference is to a dinosaur, but the mascot is the Thunderbird. This is a special events day during which the students get to select from among several “special” recreational/learning activities. Some left early this morning in the below 0 temperature and wind to ski. Some went to a water park. Some stayed in the school for a variety of activities including podcasting, art projects, and rocket building.

Cindy worked with elementary school children to help them create simple podcasts in KidPix. We have been around KidPix a long time and like so many products you have to pay attention because the companies keep adding new features. A recent option allows the slideshow created from individual images to be exported as an “enhanced podcast.” You hear the audio associated with each image (I guess you could call this the podcast part) and see the images, animated embellishments, etc. matched to the audio (this is the enhanced part).

T-Rex Day

I have also been waiting for a chance to provide a link to the weekly podcasts generated by Deb Canton’s sixth graders. Deb works with curriculum technologhy partner Carla Haaven to orchestrate a process by which a rotating set of three students generates a weekly one-minute podcast. The students have from Monday through Wednesday to generate a script related to an event or topic relevant to the class (a list of possible topics is kept on the board). Carla meets with the group on Wednesday (with a camera in case an image or two is needed) and they turn the script into a podcast with Garageband. Check a few of these out – the quality is great.

Canton Kid's

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