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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01.12.06
Posted in Web 2.0 at 3:28 pm by Norm Garrett
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in Web 2.0 at 10:18 am by Norm Garrett
The possible implications for education with Web 2.0 (or the loosely related set of technologies that comprise it) are endless. Only our own creativity will limit what we might be able to do. Still, like all technologies, there may be a dark side. Most technologies, no matter what they are, have four characteristics in common:
- They have obvious benefits
- They have hidden benefits that are often not recognized until after they are implemented
- They have obvious drawbacks or negative aspects
- They have hidden drawbacks or negative aspects that are often not recognized until after they are implemented
These technologies share these characteristics with all other technologies, past, present, and future. Most often, the obvious benefits tend to attract our attention and seem, at least at first, to far outweigh the obvious drawbacks.
As educators, we need to progress methodically with these technologies, as with any new technologies, and research their efficacy to uncover both the hidden benefits and the hidden drawbacks before we plunge wholeheartedly into an abyss from which there is no return. Implementing technology is more like a ratchet than a path. On a path, you can turn around and reverse course. Once a ratchet has moved forward, it cannot be moved back. I am 100% in favor of exploring, being creative, and testing new ideas. But lets make sure we test them thoroughly and objectively before we massively adopt and undertake a paradigm shift.
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01.08.06
Posted in wikis at 8:58 pm by Norm Garrett
I am going to attempt to get my students this semester to use a wiki, so I have spent the past few weeks getting things set up for the semester that begins tomorrow. I have identified the software (pmWiki), installed it, configured it, and tested it. In addition to that, I have had to become versed enough in it to be able to guide my students in its use.
My intent is to have each of my classes (each has their own wiki set up) develop content that I will retain for subsequent semesters. The content will revolve around the topic of the class. The classes I teach are undergraduate courses (Internetworking and Tecommunications Programming with VB.NET) and a graduate MBA course in Management Information Systems. As I experiment with this during the semester, with the different levels of students, I will report back here periodically on my progress. My undergraduates are very tech-savvy Computer Information Systems majors, but my MBA students come from lots of different disciplines and tend not to be very technical. The contrast will give me, hopefully, a good idea of how well a wiki tool will work as a collaborative tool. Stay tuned.
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01.04.06
Posted in General at 5:20 pm by Norm Garrett
I have just finished reading several reports and speeches by some of the movers and shakers in higher education. These people operate at the policy and strategic planning level and are concerned with the current model of higher education and its longevity if some important reforms are not introduced.
In the first artcile, Geri H. Malandra, of the University of Texas System, discusses accountability in higher education.
In the second article, Charles Miller, Chairman of The Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, talks more globally about the current paradigm and how drastic changes must be made in order for our system to keep pace with competetive forces.
Probably the best of the three is the article entitled Four Questions on the Labor Economics of Higher Education, by Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin. In this paper, he addresses the issue of the actual value to the economy of a college education. It is a very thought-provoking report.
All three articles are well worth your time if you are interested in strategic viewpoints, particularly those of current policymakers.
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12.30.05
Posted in Blended Learning at 10:27 pm by Norm Garrett
I have been reading a book entitled The Blended Learning Book: Best Practices, Proven Methodologies, and Lessons Learned, by Josh Bersin. This book is a great handbook on blended learning. While it is written primarily for the private sector (business training is the emphasis), many of the ideas and research it contains are applicable to about any educational setting.
One of the interesting concepts that is discussed in the book is the idea of content durability, i.e. the idea that content of certain types can expire. One of the problems with content that is developed using some of our current paradigms (RSS, blogs, etc.) is that the content is not easily managed for validity and currency. This is an essential aspect when managing knowledge (the kind of content that is considered an asset in most businesses). Since the book is narrowly targeted at business and corporate training, it is, at times, difficult to transfer some of the ideas to public sector education. That said, the concepts presented are timely and constitute an excellent introduction to the concepts of blended learning.
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12.14.05
Posted in Tools, wikis at 7:21 am by Norm Garrett
I have been trying to set up some collaborative tools for my MBA course for the spring semester. One of the things I have wanted to do is to set up a course wiki and have the students contribute to it. Unlike what I do with most of my tools, where I erase everything at the end of each semester to give students a fresh start the next semester, I am going to keep the wiki building as an ongoing, long-term project. Each group of students will add to and refine that which has been done previously.
The questions were many as I embarked on this trail. The first was to find a package I could install, given the security restraints of our university’s server. I tried several, but all failed due to various restrictions which we had on the server. Finally, I found one that had both a GNU license and tthat worked on our server. The package I ended up installing was pmWiki. It doesn’t use a database like most wikis. Instead, it uses a flat-file system. While this is not optimal for large wikis, mine is small and it seems to work fine for my use, at least in testing.
Anticipated Problems
I anticipate several problems as I involve the students in this:
The students will have a difficult time posting. Contributing to a wiki is not intuitive, so some training will be required.
The students won’t be sure what kinds of things to contribute. I will have to train them here, too, and give them some good examples.
The students won’t want to participate. Here I’ll be observing the difference between my undergraduate and graduate students, but I have a feeling that students will enjoy participating, since a wiki is a peer-to-peer configuration, rather than a top-down concept.
I’ll report back here as this project matures. A wiki is just one tool in a large toolbox available to us today. In future posts I’ll report on some of the other tools I use, including podcasting, vodcasting, and student-centered RSS feeds.
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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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11.18.05
Posted in General at 9:37 pm by Norm Garrett
Welcome to the edProgress blog. Hopefully, this site can become a forum for discussing all things educational. All ideas are welcome. We’ll be setting the stage during the coming weeks with some posts here as well as the development of our new web site. Enjoy.
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