Month: January 2011

The coming generational battle

A tweet pointed me to this article by Don Tapscott. Tapscott (the Wikinomics and Grown Up Digital guy) sees the conflicts in Tunisia and Egypt as harbingers of a coming generational conflict. The argument is based on the growing number of young people in these countries who find there is little for them – few employment opportunities, but a way to share their frustrations using technology.

I cannot help but see similarities in the employment situation in education. There have been general accusations regarding the quality of the profession and now rejection of the validity of the tenure system. It is true that those of us in the profession for some time make a higher income which of course is the case in nearly any “profession”.  This tends to be the way things in most occupations go. What would be the basis for a generational difference in reaction to this pattern?  Impatience?  Lack of a long term vision? As I understand the research on expertise, the performance of new educators improves for several years and then levels off. So, just for argument sake, assume that 6-10 years marks the end of the experience benefit. Would this be the same for other professions? What long term consequences to the quality of practice would there be should “educator” come to be seen as a young person’s job?

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Respond to this – a nice design for requesting reactions

Cindy came up with a technique I thought was clever and perhaps of general utility. It was a strategy she used when she wanted to get and record the reaction of others to a display (in her case a project description from History Alive). So, her situation involved the need to independently solicit the reaction of social studies teachers to an activity from History Alive. I am suggesting this is a general strategy others might use to present something (any combination of media) and solicit reactions from multiple individuals you want to comment independently even if they are in the same room.

The display looks like this (I have purposefully degraded the History Alive content because of copyright concerns).

Here is how this was done. This is a combination of Google Sites and Google Forms. You use Google forms to structure the request for information you want to be brought into the Google spreadsheet. In this case, the inputs consisted of a combination of open ended questions and several forced choice items. You then use Google Sites to create a blank page and then modify by selecting the two column format from Layouts. You insert  the spreadsheet form in the right column (Insert is a menubar item and the item to be inserted is an option under the Insert Heading.). The combination is a sophisticated looking web page that accepts data from users and stores the data in a spreadsheet.

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Planning for the future

Lately, I have generated few posts. I encountered problems with my other two blogs (described here) that I decided I would have to take some time to address in order to make sure my blogs would have some longevity. In brief, my other two blogs were corrupted in such a way that I could not upgrade the software. So, after a couple of days struggling with database issues, I gave up. The only solution was manual. Create a new blog, open the old blog, copy and paste, copy and paste, etc. Repeat approximately 450 times. It took a few days.

If you blog and wonder about this situation, I would suggest you look to see if there is a built-in way to inport and export. Sooner or later your database will become corrupted. WordPress has an input and export tool that makes use of an XML format and allows an alternative to trying to accomplish the same tasks via MySQL database manipulation.

The new blog, Blurts, is what I would describe as my microblog consisting of short posts mostly describing resources others may find useful.

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Lead, keep up, or acknowledge

Cindy retired from the school district last year and now works on consulting projects and with the university. One of her activities at the University involves teaching a section of the “Technology for Teachers” class. For whatever reason, yesterday, she decided to send a letter to her colleagues who teach the same course about the present activities involving technology in the district from which she retired. The message, I think, was that we need to be aware of what is going on out there. There must be some connection to practice that I have described as “lead, keep up, or acknowledge”. In other words, there needs to be some connection between the preparation of teachers and the world these students will soon enter. Clearly, this connection does not necessarily require acceptance of everything that goes on, but the idea is encourage teachers to understand and think through what will soon be their work environment.

I think such connections might be described as questions:

  • What are teachers doing with technology?
  • What aren’t teachers taking advantage of that should be available to them?
  • What are teachers doing with technology that is misguided and why?

Her letter ended up being circulated outside of the group for which it was originally intended and so I decided to do the same.

Good Afternoon,
I had a chance to spend time in the GF Schools this week and wanted to make you aware of some applications being used in the district.

Grand Forks is/has:

  • Adopted Google Apps for Education for collaborative documents, presentations, spreadsheets and form creation.
  • Studied a one-to-one adoption of student devices (presently piloting ASUS Netbooks in Community High School, Red River High School, Central High School, Valley Middle School, Twining Middle School and Elementary, Winship Elementary, Lake Agassiz, and Wilder Elementary). These computer are running Ubuntu Linux operating system.
  • Used many cloud apps such as Voicethread, flickr, Animoto, Glogster, Corkboard, Today’s Meet, Wikispaces, PBWorks, etc.
  • Engaged students in blogging and learning to embed other apps in their blogs as well as work with gadgets and avatars
  • Students are collaborating with schools throughout the world using Skype and collaborative environments.
  • A switch is being made to using Chrome and accessing the Web Store
  • Students are using flip cameras, digital cameras and digital microscopes (some wireless)
  • There are pockets of iPod and iPad projects.
  • There are approximately 200 interactive whiteboards.
  • K-12 Social Studies is in an adoption cycle and they are looking at all digital materials.
  • All teachers applicants apply online, subs are obtained online, classified staff clock in online, IEPs are written online, professional development is registered for online, grades, scheduling and attendance are online, etc.

I think some of these initiatives should influence what we teach in our Technology for Teachers class.

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Mark Writes a Book Report

One of the books I finished over break was Tim Wu’s “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires“. I would describe this as an historical analysis with a message. By the way, Wu coined the phrase (net neutrality) – the origin was new to me, but I have been interested in the issue for some time.

Wu argues information technologies seem to follow a cycle – they begin with the promise of encouraging wide participation and transformation but morph toward monopoly and limited options. He contends this was true of publishing, radio, and television and perhaps now the Internet. I found the analysis and stories fascinating.

It does seem like the progression Wu describes is underway. Google sells books. People complain that the Apple apps will kill the Internet. Everyone complains about the providers. The recent FCC ruling regarding net neutrality must have occurred shortly after the book went to press.

Wu seems to think public opinion matters to companies (at least while some options are still available). To me, the problem is most advanced when it comes to those companies providing access. The latest FCC ruling while protecting net neutrality in one sphere (hard wire connections) allowed greater opportunities for cell providers.

I have been attempting to understand what Wu thought was the government’s responsibility and have checked my own vagueness against what other pundits seem to claim he said (Inside Higher Ed, Laura Miller). Different pundits seem to come different conclusions Wu’s recommendation regarding the role of government. My understanding was that he argued that the role should simply be to promote competition and this could be achieved through his “separation principle”. So, for example, there is danger when the cable company both provides access and has digital content to sell. There would be greater danger if a company generated content, sold the content, and provided access to the Internet. So, if a company provides access with little competition (e.g., the only cable provider in a community), this is a dangerous situation because it is in the interest of the company to both make money on access and also on the content it wants to sell.

Wu seems to think public opinion matters to companies (at least while some options are still available), the convenience may limit complaints until it is too late.  To me, the problem is most advanced when it comes to those companies providing access.

NY Times Interview

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