Category: General

Chromebook – Explain Everything

Explain Everything has long been a “go to” app on my iPad. I created narrated presentations for many situations using this app. Recently, it was announced that Explain Everything was coming to the Chromebook.

My initial reaction to using Explain Everything was neutral. The app seemed sluggish and I had some difficulty figuring out just how to import content to my slides. I understood that I would be bringing in images from Google Drive, but I could not get the connection to work. For some reason, restarting my Chromebook helped. I have a Chromebook Pixel so I was disappointed with the responsiveness of the program. This is an expensive machine and more powerful than inexpensive equipment students will be using.

I wondered about the importance of the Internet connection. I was exploring the app from the cabin and our connection is very slow. Today I had a chance to get to the coffee shop and try the Chromebook with a better connection. I am much more impressed today. Evidently, Explain Everything is more demanding than other online services I use and the speed of the connection seemed to make a difference. Hence, educators who want a class of students to work on Explain Everthing simultaneously may want to be aware of the importance of ample bandwidth.

chromeevery

P.S. – this is probably the first app I have actually bothered to take advantage of the Chromebook Pixel’s touch screen.

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Individualization

I tend to be a topical reader. I get hooked on a topic and follow that thread until I can take it no more and then I switch to something else. My present “professional” thread concerns technology and individualization. I am also reading spy novels, but that topic is not relevant here.

I am about to finish a couple books explaining the role technology can play in disrupting education (Blended and Disrupting Class). These two books are related as Blended draws heavily on Disrupting Class. If you are interested in reading one, I would recommend Disrupting Class. I find this book has greater conceptual depth.

I will likely comment on these books a few more times in the next couple of weeks because the combination provides me plenty of ideas to address. First, a reaction to what is claimed regarding individualization.

Using my own way of conceptualizing issues, I would describe the authors as identify two reasons for individualization – mastery and learning styles. Mastery argues that learners progress at different speeds as a consequence of differences in aptitude and background knowledge. Pushing learners before they are ready creates inefficiency and frustration. The learning styles position argues learners learn in different ways.

Here is where I differ with the authors on a professional level (I worked as an educational psychologist before I retired). I strongly support the mastery perspective. I started reading this literature in the 1970s (B Bloom – group-based mastery and F Keller – Personalized System of Instruction) and published several research studies based on mastery methods. Technology may now offer more practical ways to implement some of these ideas.

When it comes to learning styles, I must say that while the idea strikes a chord with so many, research fails to support learning styles as real. Styles should not be confused with preferences. A style would be demonstrated by showing that individuals with different styles are advantaged when learning in different ways. So, group A learns significantly better with method A than B and group B learns significantly better with method B than method A. Research does not demonstrate this happens. Typically, one method is better or at least equivalent for both groups and this method should thus be the desired method of instruction. There is nothing to gain from the added complexity and cost of matching method to group.

To be clear, the lack of a trait (style) by treatment (method) interaction does not argue that only one method should ever be used. Different methods may develop different capabilities (creativity, achievement) and all learners may benefit from a mix of learning experiences.

Mixing aptitude, knowledge and learning style differences together creates a methodological challenge that is overly complex and costly to address. Individual pacing as a way to address aptitude and background knowledge differences seems a more practical methodology. Kahn Academy resources would be an example of curriculum materials consistent with the concept of individual pacing. Such resources and similar commercial offerings are available now.

 

 

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Preparation

Mid August is time to get serious about preparation for the Fall semester. I realize that some educators are already back and hard at work, but this is for the rest of you.

I have spent the past month or so updating “Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web“. This is one of Cindy and my online textbooks for preservice and in-service educators. We have two textbooks one derived from our original textbook (now a Kindle book “hybrid”) and our experimental online book. We first used our online book to explore how our traditional book might be modified so that educators and students were not forced to rely on a hardcopy book within a field emphasizing other methods for learning. We did move beyond our traditional commercial textbook, but we have retained both products to continue our exploration of content options.

Our online book has gone through a number of iterations over the past ten years. It was first written as a wiki. We then recreated it as a set of web pages. Now, we have redone the book as pages within WordPress. Most use WordPress as a blogging platform, but the software is quite flexible and offers advantages as a content management system. The content of the book has been continually updated and the WordPress environment should make future updates easy.

Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web is out effort to demonstrate the generative learning potential of technology. Using the long accepted value of “writing across the curriculum” or “writing to learn”, we redefined such as activities as “authoring to learn” and “teaching to learn” in keeping with the participatory theme and the enhanced capabilities of digital technology. The book uses the interrelated concepts of tool and tactics to propose classroom activities. For each category of application, we connect tutorials explaining technology use (tool) with classroom applications (tactics).

All of our online resources are available at no cost.

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Scam

scammail

I fell for a scam this morning. In my defense it was 6 AM, I had not had my coffee yet, and I was in bed working from my iPad. The iPad version of Outlook does not reveal all of the sender’s info unless clicked.

I should have known better and I even thought it strange as I entered the requested information. Why would a university tech person send out a request for important information in the middle of the night? The email was not a work of literary genius. The form looked a little primitive like something I would do to collect information and store it in a database. I filled it out anyway. Afterwards, I clicked on the sender to reveal the address and then decided it was likely a scam. I called tech support (the local folks were not at work yet, but the state system had someone on duty) and verified I was correct.

I changed my password and hope that this will be the end of the problem.

The kid working the overnight shift told me I should not respond to requests for my password. If only human nature included the requirement of careful analysis and lack of trust.

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Page Builder

I work on two major writing projects. The first is our hybrid textbook combining a Kindle Primer with online resources. The second project is also a textbook of sorts, but has always been online and has always been available to anyone at no cost.

I first wrote Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web as a wiki. I then converted this resource to individual web pages so I could offer better multimedia. Now, I am converting the Participatory Web site from individual web pages to pages delivered by the WordPress “blogging” engine. The conversions each have taken a considerable amount of time, but the work provides enough experience I feel I can  speak with some insight about each form of authoring.

The multiple web page version of the Participatory Web content was created with Dreamweaver. Working with CSS, templates, and a high end development environment is certainly the way to create sophisticated and attractive sites. I moved on because the sophistication of the tools was no longer necessary to generate the content I wanted to offer and because I prefer not to “lease” software (which is the present Adobe model).

WordPress is probably more known as a blogging platform, but it also allows the creation of “pages“. With the addition of specialized plugins (I am using Page Builder from SiteOrigin), it is possible to create a wide variety of page formats. The combination of the blogging platform with the page plugin has more than provided the flexibility I need to offer my “book”.

There are some interesting differences between building a site with a traditional web authoring tool and with a “blogging” tool. The traditional way to create a complex web site involves creating multiple pages stored as individual files. The page files may load a common CSS format file. In contrast, a blogging platform uses a database with content stored as “records” rather than multiple, independent files. With the traditional approach, the web authoring tool creates pages locally and then uploads the content to a server. With the blogging tool, the content is created within the online environment provided by a server using a conventional web browser. Working online requires different backup strategies. The traditional web page approach already leaves you with a copy on your personal development machine. The use of an online development platform does not and it is important to find a way to backup the database and media files you have uploaded. Of course, an advantage of the online approach is that your work does not require that you work from the same machine or purchase software for the multiple machines you might use/

If you are interested in this project, I encourage you to take a look. The WordPress version of our Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web book is partly finished and available for viewing. I would wait until the entire project has been completed, but I estimate that the conversion project will take another 20-30 hours because of the amount of content involved. I want to offer instructors and K-12 staff support personnel an opportunity to view what is done as soon as possible.

Meaningful Learning and the Participatory Web

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STEMers – shortsighted and misguided

This post began as an effort to recommend some summer reading and as my posts often do, ended taking a slightly different focus.

First the books – these are links to informative sources for those interested in the “short version”, but I encourage reading the books by these authors:

Friedman, T. Hot, Flat and Crowded

Ford, M. Rise of the robots

My argument here concerns education and the focus of so-called educational reforms. I believe that education must lead citizens to new thinking but the reforms being advocated fall prey to old values.

Allow a couple of arguments by analogy.

1) Educators perplexed with the preoccupation of poor, inner-city kids with sports and sports stars try to warn these kids and their parents that Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry are extremely rare and kids would have a higher probability of life success working at McDonalds and investing their wages in lottery tickets (guess that did a little snarky).

By analogy, the odds of making a fortune coding al la Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg face similar odds. Even given similar skills, success depends on many other factors (see Outliers).

2) There is an expression used by economists to describe the foolishness of investing in stocks that were recently on the upswing – “chasing the market”. The notion is that the “easy money” has already been made and purchasing at the new higher price is unlikely to result in the same success.

Flooding an area in which great success requires great talent reduces rather than increases the average benefit to those adopting a given focus.

The books I recommend present some serious challenges:

  • globalization
  • increasing income inequality
  • climate change
  • reduced need for employees in many professions including what used to be regarded as professions

Technology and scientific knowledge may help address some of these skills, but it must also be recognized that technology contributes to these challenges. We need skills in sociology, psychology, economics, political science, ethics, recreation, etc. to address the human contributions to the problems and realities we are creating. It is very possible that in the future a more socialistic ways of functioning will be necessary to achieve an equitable society. It is very possible that too many people are competing for a diminishing number of job opportunities and shorter work careers will be necessary. It is very possible that immediate productivity will have to be curtailed unless costs to society in general are considered and addressed (e.g., greenhouse gas generation).

Narrowing the focus of education will not be a solution on my list.

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