05.18.07
Posted in General, Conferences at 5:46 am by Norm Garrett
I was presenting at a conference the other day (the Faculty Summer Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign) and all of my preparation and planning was foiled by some simple settings. When I arrived at the location (30 minutes early as is my usual practice) and connected my laptop, I couldn’t get the projector to take the input from my computer. After fiddling around with settings, etc., for 30 minutes or so, I decided to cut my losses on that and go to backup plan #1. Backup Plan #1 was my flash drive. Unfortunately, as is NOT my usual practice, I had neglected to copy my PowerPoint slides to the flash drive ahead of time. For whatever reason, I now could not get my computer to recognize my flash drive. Time for Backup Plan #2.
Backup Plan #2 was to use the Internet-connected computer in the room to access a web page I had set up with the html version of my PowerPoint slides. At first, I used Firefox as the browser to view the slides, only to find out that the html version of the presentation (created directly from PowerPoint) wasn’t totally compatible with Firefox. One of the participants in the session, who was following along on her computer, mentioned that she was viewing it fine in IE. So I switched to IE and we finished the session.
In Hawaii last fall I had to resort to Backup Plan #3, which was speaking from the printed handout. We had an earthquake that killed the power on Oahu for almost 24 hours and we were presenting without electricity. That experience made me very grateful for the backup plans.
My suggestion? Always have multiple levels of safety nets:
- Ask for the conference to supply a computer even if you intend to use your laptop
- Always have your flash drive with you and always have it loaded with your presentation and other materials you might need
- Have hard copies of handouts and even your slide presentation
A good presentation isn’t about the materials or the slides. It’s about the content. But you can get so frustrated by technical problems that you lose site of that and technical problems can kill your presentation. The same is true in the classroom. While technology is often viewed as a way to save time and effort, it often turns out that using it is more work. There certainly is risk involved. In the end its use can pay off, but don’t walk the tightrope without a safety net (or two).
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03.23.07
Posted in General at 10:25 am by Norm Garrett
Online courses have taken off, but are they all good? They range from PowerPoint slides without narration (i.e. “read the chapter and look at the PowerPoints”) all the way to sophisticated courses that use a variety of technologies, foster a great deal of interaction, and have actual learning taking place! How can you tell where your course falls?
A good place to start the evaluation is using a tool that was developed at the Illinois Online Network. It is called the Quality Online Course Initiative and it was two years in development, taking the best of many other instruments that are out there and placing everything into one easy-to-use rubric. The rubric framework makes it straightforward to use to evaluate a course.
If you are just starting out developing online courses, I would highly recommend that you look at the rubric before and during the development process.
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11.15.06
Posted in General, Blended Learning, Society and Technology at 10:34 pm by Norm Garrett
Last month I put 20,000 miles on my frequent flyer tally, mostly going to conferences and workshops about educational technology. Having attended many of these conferences over the past 6 or 7 years, I have these observations:
- Educators and policymakers are doing all they can to make the current paradigm work. The bad news is that it’s the paradigm itself that is outdated. We are using an early 20th century model in a 21st century environment. Believe me, I know. I have been in this system since 1953 (going on 54 years), which is about 50% of the current paradigm’s life. Think about it. High schools and our current setup have been around since the early 20th century … the last time we underwent any kind of paradigm shift.
- In my thinking, no amount of fixing, tweaking, updating, or streamlining of the current model will work. Again, it’s the model that’s wrong, not the way we are implementing it.
- While I have been developing some possible ideas that might be included in a new paradigm, my basic question is how you design and implement a completely new paradigm. Where does the process start? Is it a bottom-up or top-down process (does it begin with teachers in the classroom or with educational policymakers?)?
- There are certainly many hard-working people out there who are trying to change things. The problem is that they are trying to change things within the context of the current paradigm. Again, this is a paradigm that can’t be fixed. To answer my own question, I don’t think a paradigm shift will be a bottom-up process. Does that mean it’s useless to try? Not at all. Where will the new paradigm come from if we don’t experiment with new ideas within the current one? But it’s not enough. We need to rethink everything from funding to curriculum. That provides the paradigm, the framework within which we operate. Changing things by beginning with instruction (the only thing most of the ed-tech zealots have any control over) is simply not enough to cause a paradigm shift by itself. However, demonstrating completely new models of instruction might provide some impetus for those at the top to begin to look at wholesale changes.
What’s wrong with the current paradigm? I don’t have enough room here, but here are some ideas off the top of my head. Note that these are fundamental flaws of the system and cannot be fixed within the context of that system:
- The academic calendar - Why do we still use an agricultural model for an academic calendar that dates back 150 years? Last time I looked, none of my students were needed in the fields during the summer.
- The curriculum - We target mediocrity. Just ask any students who are high achievers and they will tell you how bored they are. We are NOT targeting our best and brightest, nor are we doing a real service to the slower learners. The system is tuned for the average. The outliers are not well served.
- Fixed Depth - I call this Static Depth Instruction. The course parameters dictate the amount of depth and breadth in a course, not the needs or achivements of the students in the course. What we should use is a Dynamic Depth Instruction model wherein students are dynamically given the depth they want/need, determined as they move through the course. There should be no limits on the depth that could be achieved by a student in a given amount of time.
- Curricular Breadth - Students who attend relatively small high schools are given few choices. Even if they attend large high schools, there are severe limitations to the number of choices available to them. Customized, or matched curriculum is impossible. We are limited by space. It’s like the system is a giant bricks & mortar business that can’t seem to figure out how to use technology to augment its offerings with a virtual curriculum.
- Funding - Our funding mechanisms are anachronistic.
- Administration - The days of the local school board should be over. We are a global society, and our educational system should reflect that. Parochial interests do not serve the system well.
I could go on about this, and will in future postings. There are a lot of hard-working early adopters out there that are grabbing onto technology and enhancing their teaching with it, mostly on their own time and without much in the way of accolades or funding. In fact, many of them reap the disdain of their late majority and laggard colleagues for pushing forward and trying to improve instruction. They know the system is broken and are doing everything they can to start a bottom-up movement to change it. Unfortunately, we are talking here about needing a white knight to show up and get something done at the top. That white knight might be the disruptive technology of the world marketplace and the paradigm shift it will force. How long will we have to wait for that and might we react to late to save our competitive position in the world? Only time will tell.
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10.16.06
Posted in General, Conferences at 5:30 pm by Norm Garrett
I am in Hawaii, having survived yesterdays earthquake, and had some observations I shared with my graduate students. Here is the posting from their class blog:
I had mentioned in class that I would be gone most of this week presenting a paper at a conference. The conference is ELearn 2006, an international conference on ELearning, held this year here in Hawaii. I arrived late Thursday and my presentation was yesterday. At 7 yesterday morning, local time, we had a 6.5 magnitude earthquake. My room is on the 14th floor and it was a wild ride for about 10-15 seconds. Of course, before going to bed the night before I watched a Discovery Channel documentary on the 2004 tsunami and so the first thing that entered my mind, since our hotel is right on the beach at Waikiki, was that. There turned out to be no tsumani because of the depth of the quake (about 12 miles down), but had there been one, it would have arrived here only 20 minutes after the quake. Power went out and was out for over 14 hours before finally being restored about 9:30 last night. By the way, I did give my presentation, but without electricity. Our meeting rooms here have large windows that open, as all face the sea. We opened all the windows, had plenty of natural light and a nice sea breeze, and went ahead with the conference sessions (without, of course, our computers, PowerPoint slides, etc.). I think it turned out OK, though, because the sessions were more informal, allowed for more interaction, and weren’t tied to the canned presentations as much. When it became dark and the power had still not returned, the hotel issued us all light sticks (like kids use on Halloween). They worked fine and we got by.
I wanted to comment on a few observations I had with regard to technology and our dependence upon it. These are small examples that happened here:
- One of the biggest problems at the airport was the toilets. The autoflush systems need power to operate and there is no manual flush backup. Nobody at the airport could use them, and people were stuck there all day (of course, we didn’t know about any of this at the time, since we didn’t have power … I read it in the Honolulu paper this morning)
- Cell phones worked sporadically on auxiliary power, so I got all my news by calling my wife in Illinois, having her look at CNN.com on the Internet, and report to me what was happening here! She wanted to know what was going on, but we were clueless here because we had no communications (TV, Internet, etc.) except cell phones. So she told me what was going on around me because I had no way of finding out.
- When you lack communication with the outside world, you become a community of your own, operating independently of that outside world. Most all of the guests in this hotel (which is a considerable number … it is 25 floors with hundreds of rooms) stayed here, since venturing out was dangerous (no traffic lights since all power on the island was out). Many rumours flew around with no way to verify any of them unless you could get through on a cell call. Without cell phones, it’s hard to say how we would have found out anything. People talked, made friends with total strangers, and just sat around and relaxed. It was really something you don’t see much of any more under normal circumstances.
- People are very resilient and can adapt quickly to unforseen and unanticipated situations.
- We have a great reliance on technology. If it weren’t for the disaster preparedness plan that this hotel has, things would have been a lot worse. They broke out supplies of water, food, and kept us fed all day even though there was no supply coming from the outside into the hotel. They had auxiliary power and knew exactly which things to keep powered and which to shut down. We had lighting in the emergency stairwells and all hallways, but all other lights were off. They kept the ice machines in their kitchens powered so they would have ice for us, and minimal power to be able to cook. They also powered their refrigerators and food stores so that they could provide us with food, having no idea how long the power would be out, as well as the speaker system when they needed to talk to us. They had the supply of light sticks to give us so that we could navigate in our rooms after dark and their employees were well-trained on what to do, moving right into disaster mode without missing a beat. The employees had battery-powered lanterns to cook and work by and they had really planned ahead for this contingency. So while we didn’t have elevators, Internet, radio, or TV, we got along fine as a group and got through it all unscathed.
Today, everything is pretty much back to normal, but a few hours without technology was, actually, quite refreshing. I wouldn’t recommend the earthquake to anyone, but getting away from technology for awhile is good for the psyche.
See you next Monday.
Dr. Garrett
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10.04.06
Posted in General, Learning Styles at 10:41 am by Norm Garrett
I was recently reading an excellent article entitled Academic Generations: Exploring Intellectual Risk Taking in an Educational Leadership Program, by Carolyn Ridenour and Carla Twale.
Education is a culturally conservative profession that rewards conforming rather than bold behaviors. In fact, McCarthy (1999b) characterizes educational leadership programs, in particular, as complacent and unresponsive to needs for reform. After her national study, she concluded that educational administration is fairly self-satisfied, indicating perhaps, less inclination to take risks. Nyquist (2002) calls for innovation in Ph.D. programs; but innovation often involves risk. She calls on doctoral programs to espouse and support creativity and adventurous research, a move away from what traditional educational leadership may have valued. While teaching growth and change to students, the faculty in the field of education may be slow to change their programs or to purposefully take risks.
This is an interesting statement, but not one that is at all surprising. In their oft-quoted paper about 21st century skills, the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory said this about risk-taking:
Risk taking is the willingness to make mistakes, advocate unconventional or unpopular positions, or tackle extremely challenging problems without obvious solutions, such that one’s personal growth, integrity, or accomplishments are enhanced.
The very nature of learning requires risk taking. Asmall child would never learn to walk, talk, or socially interact without taking risks, experiencing successes and failures, and then monitoring and adjusting accordingly.
Quantum leaps in learning, solving problems, inventing new products, and discovering new phenomena require risk taking. Risk taking within the learning environment requires a willingness to think deeply about a subject or problem, share that thinking with others to hear their perspectives, listen to their critiques, and then build on those experiences toward a solution or solutions (Dweck, 2000; Weiner, 1994). Too often, students are engaged in learning activities that focus on the “right answers.” Instead, students should be encouraged to engage in discussions about numerous approaches—and potential solutions—to a problem (Brophy, 1998; Vispoel & Austin, 1995).
Given that we need to teach students to engage in risk-taking, why aren’t we willing ourselves to take risks in the classroom? Education, as is pointed out above, is slow to change. Why is that? I would submit that most educators enjoy their comfort zones and like to settle into them, resulting in a generally risk-averse population. What are the fears (risks) of trying new things in the classroom? Here are a few:
- Failing in front of students
- Failing in front of colleagues
- Having classroom failures result in displinary action
- Looking stupid to students
- Losing control of the classroom
- Receiving a poor teaching evaluation as a result of failures
On the other hand, we can stay in our comfort zone and accomplish all of the following:
- Follow routine
- Bore students
- Not fail in front of students, but not challenge them either
- Get adequate teaching evaluations because we are not “rocking the boat”
- Not have to use new technology, since we can always use older technology with which we are more familiar
In higher education, many of our students look to faculty as examples. How can we talk about taking risk and changing the world (for the better) when we are not willing to do it ourselves? That is a question we all need to ponder.
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10.02.06
Posted in General, Learning Theory, Learning Styles at 1:46 pm by Norm Garrett
A recent paper entitled Technology in Schools: What the Research Shows, published by Cisco Systems and the Metiri Group outlines the current state of research in a variety of technologies. Here is a key quotation from the report:
The research on the effect of technology in learning is emerging. Overall, across all uses in all content areas, technology does provide a small, but significant, increase in learning when implemented with fidelity. While this statistic is encouraging, the real value to research lies in the identification of those technology interventions that get sufficiently positive results to warrant the investment. Most educators are looking for the value proposition that will significantly advance learning, teaching, and school system efficiencies. Taking advantage of these leverage points requires serious review of specific research studies that specifically address the needs and challenges of specific schools and serious attention paid to leadership development, professional development for teachers, school culture, curricular redesign, and teacher preparation.
While this report focuses on research in the K-12 area, some of it is also applicable to higher education and it bears at least a brief reading. We in higher education have to keep in mind that what affects K-12 education today affects our students of tomorrow. While we in higher education are often heard complaining about our incoming students (and often their lack of sufficient preparation) we have to keep in mind that if they experience a complete paradigm shift when they enter our halls, they are on a path for difficulty, if not failure. In actuality, it may not be their lack of preparation, but our inability to teach them in the manner in which they are accustomed to learning. Before we throw all of the blame on our students for not being adequately prepared, maybe we should check out our own (often archaic) instructional methodologies, as they may be, at the very least, contributing to the problem.
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08.24.06
Posted in Uncategorized, General, Conferences at 9:48 pm by Norm Garrett
Well it has been a good summer and I got a lot accomplished. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to keep up the blog but I’m back at it now. Currently, I have several projects in progress that I worked on feverishly over the summer. The research I did was time-consuming but rewarding and I will be sharing some of my findings over the next few months on this blog.
Among other topics, much of my time has been taken up with writing grant proposals and papers for conference presentations. My next presentation will be at ELearn 2006 in Honolulu in October. This is an excellent conference for educational technology and its use in higher education. If you’ve never been, consider it (this year would be a good year to start since it is in Hawaii).
It’s good to be back at it and have another first week of the semester under my belt.
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05.21.06
Posted in General, Society and Technology at 10:28 am by Norm Garrett
Those of us who engage in website development, blogging, and podcasting need to be aware that anytime we put something before the public (which you are doing if you are connected to the Internet), copyright law may apply. The Creative Commons website has a wonderful legal brief on podcasting that is both understandable and straightforward. It is a must-read if you are podcasting, blogging, or putting any form of content before the public. As educators, we often immerse ourselves so much in “fair use” in the classroom, that we don’t realize that when we do things outside the classroom, the same rules may not be applicable. I highly recommend that everyone read this brief, whether you are podcasting or not. It’s a great primer on copyright law and the Internet.
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04.26.06
Posted in General, Learning Theory, Society and Technology at 7:57 am by Norm Garrett
I have always noticed that technology seems to have a direct inverse relationship with age. This has been the case since the early days of the PC (the past 20 years or so). Case in point: My mother still insists on calling an airline to make reservations, even though they are now charging extra for that. She has no use for the Internet, doesn’t understand it, and still can’t figure out how my Dish Network DVR lets me pause live programming.
Here is an interesting article on what some educators have done about this. First hurdle: Admit that the students know more than you do about some technologies. These educators did that and enlisted the aid of some savvy students to help them integrate technology. It’s a great idea.
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03.24.06
Posted in General, Learning Theory at 9:12 am by Norm Garrett
I was reading my subscribed RSS feeds the other day and I came across this site that just fascinated me. After I had spent nearly an hour playing around with it, I thought that I needed to share it here. The site has been set up by George Mason University and it deals with the linquistic characteristics of a variety of English speakers. You can click on a spot on the globe and then listen to a native of that area read an English paragraph. What’s really interesting is to see how different all of the native speakers of English are. It’s also fun to quiz someone else and see if they can pinpoint where a speaker is from.
Included in the site are demographic data about the speakers and the phoenetic text of their rendition. The site demonstrates how a project can be disseminated with the Web in ways we could never imagine before. If you visit the site, think how an English or foreign language teacher might use the site to demonstrate linquistic concepts. Kudos to GMU for this.
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