Just stumbled on this article from BusinessWeek. Universities warming up to the idea that their students are coming to class with a powerful computing/communication/collaboration device in their pockets.
OMG! Cell Phones in Classrooms?
September 5, 2008 - 11:17am in- Jeff Allen's blog
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I’ve been thinking about video games in education lately...
Several months ago I was talking to my son about how technology could be used in the classroom. I asked him what he thought was the best use of technology to help students learn. His immediate response was “games”.
My son is a “gamer”. At 7 years old he could direct Mario to effortlessly bounce his way around mushrooms and turtles with wings, on the way to defeating Bowser. Now, as a teen-ager, his taste in games have matured a bit, but he still pulls out the ole’ NES once in a while to keep his Mario skills sharp. So his response to my question was not really a surprise.
However, digging further, he elaborated on how games make him think, problem solve, and in an online environment, collaborate with others. He talked about how playing simulations, like SimCity, allowed him to experiment, make mistakes and learn from them. I must say, there was a bit of fatherly pride welling up in me to hear him talk about the power of learning from games so eloquently.
So as a result of that conversation, I’ve been thinking about games lately… but just thinking.
Then, last night, my son said, “You’ve got to see this game YouTube”. I was a bit reluctant. I’m not a big fan of watching videos of others play a video game (spend a few minutes on a YouTube search of “Guitar Hero” and you understand what I mean). However, I clicked the link and was stunned at what I saw. The game is called Little Big Planet and is developed by an esoteric group of game developers who call themselves Media Molecule. Take a moment and watch this video…
The graphics are stunning, but the game play seems pretty simple; very much like a Mario Bro’s linear path game. Each level is a puzzle that you have to navigate to complete. However, you are quick to realize that this game is using a very realistic physics engine such that the objects move and interact with each other as they might in real life. Kinda’ cool... really cool. But there’s more. This is a multi-player game such that every player is dependent on the others to solve the puzzle and complete the level. Take a moment and watch this video of the game being played and discussed by the developers...
Now here’s the kicker… you can create your own levels and share them with the world. Teams can compete against each other to solve each other’s puzzles. That’s really cool! Now take a moment and think about this game in the context of a classroom. How could it be used? Problem-solving? Communication? Higher-order thinking? Creativity? Collaboration? Sounds like 21st Century Skills to me. I could even imagine this game in a science classroom as a physics simulation.
Like I said, I’ve been thinking about games lately...
Tags: games, education, littlebigplanet
Well, my summer "hiatus" from posting is over.
Looking at my recent posts, you will notice that at the end of June I attended the National Educational Computing Conference in Atlanta, GA. An anticipated event of this year's conference was ISTE's release of the revised National Educational Technology Standards for Students.
The revised standards are excellent and really do reflect the role that educational technology plays in the learning of today's students. Take a look a the comparison between now and what was written in 1998. The new standards position technology within the scope of the 21st Century skills.
In 1998, it was enough to define what students needed to know about and be able to do with technology. Now, we're defining what students need to know and be able to do with technology to learn effectively and live productively in a rapidly changing digital world.
—Don Knezek, ISTE CEO, 2007
| NETS-S (1998) | NETS-S (2007) |
| 1. Basic operations and concepts | 1. Creativity and Innovation |
| 2. Social, ethical, and human issues | 2. Communication and collaboration |
| 3. Technology productivity tools | 3. Research and Information Fluency |
| 4. Communication Tools | 4. Critical thinking, problem-solving & decision-making |
| 5. Technology research tools | 5. Digital Citizenship |
| 6. Technology problem-solving and decision-making tools | 6. Technology operations and concepts |
technorati tags:NETS
This week I had the pleasure of spending a few days in beautiful Port Angeles, WA and working with eleven teachers from the OESD region facilitate their training as instructional technology coaches this summer through the Peer Coaching Program. The teachers, from Bremerton, Crescent, and Port Angeles, were recipients Washington State's implementation of the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) grant program.
The peer coaching training, supported by Microsoft and developed by the Puget Sound Center for Teaching and Technology, provides 10 days of training for teachers to serve as instructional technology coaches. Participants work with teachers in their buildings to discuss how to utilize technology in ways that improve student learning.
In addition to the training, teachers receive funding for equipment for their building, additional professional development, and attendance to the Northwest Council for Computer Education (NCCE) conference on February 26-29, 2007 in Seattle.
I've really enjoyed working with this group. The focus of the training is on developing skills and sensibilities of serving as coaches of other teachers, and these guys are going to be great! I'll be facilitating follow-up trainings throughout the year. I'm looking forward to spending more time with this dynamic group of educators. I'll keep you posted.
Ran into this review of the Asus EEE PC on Engadget. A very intriguing device. Specs:
- 7 " Display
- 512MB RAM
- Flash Hard Drive (8GB or 16GB)
- Intel mobile CPU (900 MHz)
- 2 lbs
- Customized Linux OS
- Cost: $250
The competition is starting to heat up between these types of devices (e.g. OLPC, Intel Classmate PC). I think we are getting pretty close to the "tipping point" where it will be feasiable to put a device in the hands of every student. However, the biggest barrier to making one-2-one environments successful is changes that need to take place in the way we facilitate learning in schools.
Once again... it's not about technology, it's about teaching and learning!
Update: Looks like OLPC and Intel are making nice... for the kids.
technorati tags:asus, technology, education
Ok, a new type of routine tech maintenance… cleaning out my thumb drive. My trusty Memorex drive is 1Gb and so a lot of “stuff” has accumulated over the last 2 years I’ve had it. As I was cleaning it out, I found a video file I don’t remember saving on it. Then I recalled that during the last NCCE conference in Spokane, Chris Hayden grabbed it out of my hand and said, “You’ve got to watch this video!”. Well… with all the things going on with the conference I have to admit… I completely forgot about it. After watching it, I am now saying to you, “You’ve got to watch this video!”
Sir Ken Robinson gave a talk titled, Do Schools Kill Creativity? at the 2006 TED Conference.
[BTW… TED is a annual conference bringing together great thinkers in technology, entertainment, and design (and much more) to share their ideas. Videos of the presentations are posted on the TED site.]
His engaging and entertaining presentation focuses on the importance of creativity and gives us examples of how the current education system is structured to squash creativity. Given our fast changing world and uncertain future:
• Creativity in education is now as important as literacy.
• We are born as creative beings… We don’t grow into creativity; we are educated out of it.
Lot’s more thinking going on in my head after watching this.
Please watch and share your thoughts.
Came across two very interesting posts today, thanks to Will Richardson and David Warlick.
The first is an article about a school district in the UK that is in the process of closing all of its 11 secondary schools and ultimalely reopening seven "Learning Centers".
The new centres will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm.
Youngsters will not be taught in formal classes, nor will they stick to a rigid timetable; instead they will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests.
Much of the learning will be online and could be potentially done from home, but students will be coming to the center regularly to collaborate with other students.
The second is an Invitation to Participate in a Groundbreaking New Online Learning Experience. Roger Schank, founder of the Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern Universtiiy, is taking the idea of open curriculum development to the next level.
In our attempt to build an alternative to the 1892 curriculum and the idea that education means learning to pass tests about what you have temporarily memorized, we have completed construction of our first full year of what is to eventually become the Virtual International Science and Technology Academy.....
The curriculum is delivered entirely on line. It consists of nine projects with regular deliverables.[2] Students work in groups with an on line mentor to solve complex real world problems that come up in the health sciences. No previous knowledge of anything is assumed. Students will be grouped together with students of similar abilities.
These two models are very intriging (students engaged in learning environments that are empowering, engaging and collaborative). Kind of reminds me of my old elementary school. So the question is... are these examples of radical reform of schools or are they examples of what we should have been doing years ago?
technorati tags:schoolreform, Teaching, learning
Today was a treat... I finally got to meet Wesley Fryer in person! He was facilitating a session titled, Reinventing Education for the 21st-Century (Designing School 2.0). All of the materials from the presentation can be found on Wesley's Teach Digital Wiki.
Wes did a nice job of framing the issues about creating schools where innovation and creativity are drivers for learning, and the barriers that the education "system" puts up to stifle it.
A couple of thoughts from the presentation:
- We have control of the destiny of schools in the future. Many are making predictions about what it may look like, but we actually have a great deal of control in what that future becomes. In other words...We can predict the future of schools by inventing it or preventing it.
- School culture is an extremely powerful force in reinventing schools. Wes shared a couple of ways in which culture is defined:
- The dominate technology defines the dominate tasks that we ask students to engage in. Think about the kinds of learning experiences we'll ask students to participate in if the dominate technology is paper and pencil vs. digital tools.
- The way we structure and manage time is both reflective and influences the school culture. Think ringing bells and 54 minute blocks of time vs 24/7 learning.
- School 2.0 is much more about doing differently things, than doing what we've always done in different ways.
It was great to finally meet Wes and I hope we can find a way to get him up to the Northwest for the NCCE Conference in Seattle.
This afternoon I went to Kathy Schrock’s presentation titled Shedding Light on Web 2.0. it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Kathy speak, and she’s still one of the best.
Her presentation focused on Web2.0 technologies centered around the premises that educators need…
• Find each other and mentors
• Join groups and collaborate
• Share and evaluate resources
• Have access to information
• Have the ability to confer with others
• Reflect on information
She then shared a number of Web2.0 tools that fit could meet these needs. I won’t list them here (you can find the complete list at www.kathyschrock.net/web20) but I’ll share a couple that were new to me:
• PageFlakes: www.pageflakes.com
Allows you to create and share a customizable start page for your browser. Think of it as an iGoogle start page. The neat thing here is that you can share it, and multiple people can use it at the same time. You could make it a classroom start page that presents links and blocks of information (flakes) to students relevant to what they are currently studying.
• MediaMax: www.mediamax.com
25Gb of free online storage. Students could use this as their digital locker. Teachers could use it as a repository of resources students could download.
Then Kathy suggested that the next iteration of the web (Web3.0) will be virtual collaborative environments like SecondLife.
Finally she quoted someone (didn’t catch who while I was taking notes… Think is was David Jakes) who said that Web2.0 applications are disruptive technologies. As students try using them in school, they tend to be looked upon as disruptive to learning. But he suggested what I consider a truism… disruption is essential to change.
The first session I attended today included a student panel discussing the question: How would you design the ultimate school of the future? The students shared their thinking around six central ideas:
• Access
• Devices
• Delivery
• Connecting
• Infrastructure
• Assessment
They had some interesting ideas about access. Of course, every student should have their own laptop, but also if students were given freedom to access traditionally restricted tools (i.e. IM, email, cell phones), inappropriate uses in classrooms would decrease. Interestingly, the students also mentioned that they would like more access to tech support staff at school as well.
This event was sponsored by Project Tomorrow and their Speak Up 2006 survey. The conducted surveys of students about their use of technology and what they would like to see in schools. The highest priorities included:
• Laptop for every student
• Time to use the technology during the school day
• Access to email/IM/Blogs at school
These are not earth-shaking findings, but it is refreshing to hear the thinking of students. I believe they are much more discerning consumers of educational technology than we are.
Project Tomorrow will be conducting another round of surveys this fall and every school in the country is invited to participate. This year’s survey will include an emphasis on educational leaders. The survey window is October 1 – November 15, 2007. After the survey period, Project Tomorrow will disaggregate the national data, and provide schools/districts access to their own data. A great tool for school improvement and technology planning.
