03.10.06
Posted in Conferences, Future at 11:06 am by Norm Garrett
If you are looking for a good conference that lets you do some real interacting with your colleagues, try the Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois. It’s an informal conference aimed at educators who are interested in distance learning, online courses, etc.. It is mainly organized by ION (the Illinois Online Network) at the University of Illinois. I have worked with ION for a number of years and they really are pioneers in the area of online learning.
I have spoken with the organizers about the format and topics for this year and it looks better than ever. It will not only have the usual presentations on timely topics, but will have some tracks and groupwork in those tracks, so there will be an opportunity for hands-on collaboration. In addition, the collaborative technologies we like to talk about will be used (conference blogs, wikis, etc.) in the conference itself. I highly recommend attendance if you are interested in online learning.
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02.14.06
Posted in Future, Blended Learning, Learning Theory, Learning Styles at 9:18 am by Norm Garrett
After my post about push vs. pull learning, I flew to Savannah, Georgia, to make a presentation at the ELearning 2006 conference. On Monday, February 13th, we listened to keynote speaker Marc Prensky, noted author and futurist, speak about “Engage Me or Enrage Me,” emphasizing how we need to deal with the wired generation as they come through the school system. If you say that the wired generation is everyone born after the Internet went public then we shall say, for purposes of argument, that it’s everyone born in 1994 or later. That means that the front of the wired generation is now in 7th grade. In higher education, we’ll get them in about 6 or 7 years. Given the speed of curricular change in higher education, that’s the blink of an eye.
Marc gave several keys to dealing with these students and be able to glimpse their world. One of the main keys he discussed is the idea that learning can’t be push (predominantly the current model), but must be pull. He then went on to talk about engagement of learners, which is a prerequisite to pull learning. If you are interested in Marc’s ideas, you can visit his website.
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02.09.06
Posted in Future, Blended Learning, Learning Theory, Learning Styles at 10:43 am by Norm Garrett
I spent much of the morning today learning to use a new Java IDE (Eclipse) that I will need to be teaching in a year or so. As I progressed through the tutorials (which are excellent), it dawned on me that I was very much engaged in what I would term pull learning. In pull learning, I decide what I want to know about and pursue it. It is what I spent much of graduate school doing (once I got past the required doctoral courses). It is what original research is all about. In fact, it is clearly the model that most of us follow in our personal lives and is the foundation for what has often been termed life-long learning.
So why do we insist on using the push model 90% of the time in higher education? We attempt to stuff our students’ heads full of what we think is important and then check on them to make sure the stuffing hasn’t fallen out. If that’s not the model we use to learn, then why do we use that model to teach our students? If our students are to learn to think at higher levels, as I discussed in my previous post, then why aren’t we more engaged in pull learning? I think our fear of pull learning stems from several things:
- We are afraid they will “get off track” and not pursue what we think is important
- We think they will be wasting time and effort on superfluous material or content
- We don’t trust them to think for themselves
- We don’t think they know enough to know what to pursue
- We don’t think they will do any work at all if they are just “turned loose to pursue their own course”
- We don’t think they have the skills to engage in independent learning
- How will we test them on what they are supposed to learn?
- How will we fit unstructured learning into a structured syllabus and curriculum?
- How can we be assured they will know enough to progress to the next course in the sequence?
Well, you get the idea. This is the tail wagging the dog. The structure of the curriculum and the traditional methods of instruction are dictating how we move forward. Can’t we think in other terms, ignore current structures and come up with some new ways of doing things? Maybe we need to use a bottom-up approach where we decide how best to communicate content, then build an entirely new curricular structure around that. Maybe the Carnegie system is outdated. After all, if the structure is so rigid that we have lost all true flexibility, what does the future hold?
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01.19.06
Posted in Future at 10:55 am by Norm Garrett
I heard on the radio the other day that here in Illinois, the Lt. Governor has proposed that we divert some tax money to providing every single seventh grader in the state with a laptop computer. The details are fuzzy, but the essence is that every student would be issued a laptop computer in the seventh grade, which they would keep and use through the twelfth grade. He estimated the cost by guessing that it could be done for about $300 per student and that the funds could be diverted from some unused tax income. Let’s get real. Here is my response:
- As a professor in a state institution of higher learning, I have been told for the past 4 years of flat budgets that there is no “unused tax income” at the state level.
- Think back six years. Six years ago we were still using Windows 98 on 500 mb processors with 64mb of RAM and <10 gb hard drives … hardly a platform that would have a stellar performance for this year’s high school seniors.
- How would these be repaired and replaced as they break or are lost (which they certainly will be … remember that these are 12-18 year-olds!)? That’s easy. They will be replaced with current technology. That gives the students an incentive to lose or break their computers. Further, it creates a mismatch of technologies which would result in untenable support demands, underuse of current technology (i.e. catering to the lowest common denominator) and, ultimately, a degradation in the education of these youth.
My common educational sense tells me that a computer for every child, with a common platform, is a good idea. My common business sense tells me that the model proposed is a very bad idea, replete with technical support nightmare scenarios, mismatches of technology and pedagogy, and horrendous costs.
I attended the E-Learn 2005 conference in Vancouver last November and one session I attended was pertinent to this discussion. The speaker’s point was that we have to remember that technology is (can be) a pedagogical tool but that technology itself is not pedagogy.
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01.13.06
Posted in Future, Web 2.0 at 9:37 am by Norm Garrett
Yesterday, I made an entry in this blog regarding Web 2.0 (actually, a couple of entries). Today, I received an update that Wes Fryer has a new podcast today on the very same topic. Although I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, I think that the fact it is being discussed points out that we, as educators, need to move forward carefully.
Today, I received a Merlot update on an RSS feed that I subscribe to and as I was looking into some new entries, I saw one that caught my eye entitled “Framework for Addressing Educational Issues.” I went to the site and found some very insightful material there. I would recommend to anyone to visit that site and follow the methodology presented there for allowing a meaningful discussion on a very controversial subject with educational circles.
Another link that is interesting is edTechNOT.com, a site where controversy is discussed (both sides) regarding educational issues. It’s worth looking at.
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12.01.05
Posted in Conferences, Future at 9:47 pm by Norm Garrett
I will be presenting a session at the E-Learning 2006 conference in February, 2006, in Savannah, Georgia. This conference is sponsored by The Instructional Technology Council (a consortium of community colleges) and you can access the web site at http://www.itcnetwork.org/elearning2006.htm. My presentation is entitled Using RSS to Facilitate Learning Communities. All of the concurrent sessions are hour-long sessions and there are almost 60 to choose from. If you want to see the whole program, check out the PDF program file at:
http://www.itcnetwork.org/eL2006FullSchedule.pdf
I am looking forward to the conference and to sharing some of my research with others who are interested.
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