Posts tagged: learning

In her ALT-C2011 keynote “Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology”, Karen Cator talked about the U.S. Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan. Unfortunately, I missed the first ten minutes, but I’ll sum up what I got from the keynote, anyway.

Karen showed examples for an increase of engagement through social media: The “Darth Vader”-Volkswagen ad is an example for how advertising is boosted by social media. Little baby eagles in Iowa got extensive attention online for months via webcam. There was a massive amount of footage from the earthquake and tsunami tragedy in Japan that got millions of people involved all over the planet, because people where filming with their mobiles.

Four aspects of digital learning environments:

• Mobility – 24/7 access
• Social interactions for learning
• Digital content (example Khan Academy, more content is produced, its quality improving)
• BIG DATA: notion of understanding needs to change; Karen sees education as a data poor, manual practice

The transition from print to digital environments has many people wondering: do we really want our students to read their textbooks on the screen? (This question reminded me of Manfred Spitzer’s 2006 talk “Vorsicht Bildschirm! Der Einfluss von Bildschirm-Medien auf die Entwicklung von Kindern und Jugendlichen” which German readers might know.)

Social media allow for increased feedback loops; access to experts becomes easier which can be more engaging for learners.

Global challenge: can we create an interface that teaches people to read, interfaces that guide a reader?

Karen briefly covers the six chapters of the National Education Technology Plan:

1 Learning: is basically about reaching all learners, whatever their needs are. The important thing is to personalize education: not everybody has to do the same thing at the same time like all the others in a classroom.

2 Teaching: How can we augment human performance? How can we make sure teachers are connected? The goal should be to create an interconnected teaching profession, so that everyone has the help she needs at any given moment. In analogy with a military term Karen describes technology as a “force multiplier”.

3 Assessment: Increasing and perfecting feedback loops.  The goal is to have better data going back to students, teachers, and parents.

4 Infrastructure: The cyber-infrastructure for learning; broadband access; school to become a node of a network of learning.

5 Productivity: How can we make sure that every learner has what he needs, building competency, improving performance, how to make sure we’re leveraging the most effective methods possible?

6 R&D: Grand Challenges

Learning Technologies Ecosystem:

Basic research: cognitive research; computer science; information science; gaming; simulations & modeling; adaptive, cognitive, intelligent tutors; language translation and semantic analysis; speech recognition; interface design and accessibility. The task is to connect that research with the people that offer products and services.

“Digital Promise: The National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies”, new national center for focusing on learning technologies.
Goal: to create a smarter user, an intelligent demand cycle.

Implementation

Evaluation and use

-          League of innovative schools

-          Competency based learning (notion of badges that comes from the gaming world)

-          Responsible use policies

-          Evidence and scale

-          Online communities of practice

• Information exchange and tech support
• Emotional and social support
• Role models
• Stories and examples
• Observe, share, collaborate, co-develop
• Persistent Profile: professional profile that stays with somebody over time, not novel idea, but interesting to think about for how to power up teaching profession

-          Building a new framework, new thinking about gathering evidence.

Discussion:

Turning data into information seems to be the Holy Grail. Cator’s idea is to put big data sets online and make them transparent, of course whil protecting privacy at the same time. Health records already travel with the person. In analogy, she imagines learning data that travels with the student by electronic learning records.  I was a bit puzzled here, as the means to realize this are already there – if only e-portfolios were implemented and used on a broad basis. One of the problems she sees with today’s  data is that it is far away from the learning moment itself.

Q: “Learning for production instead of consumption”? A: Absolutely. Students may be disengaged from school but they often keep producing online. School should get them into a more powered up learning environment.

Lockstep: having every student do the same thing at the same time as everybody else. This may be easier for teachers, but it does not yield the students’ potential. We need better interfaces that guide the learners where they are instead of providing the information they consume. Therefore, we need to create more engaging and compelling assignments that focus on the solution of complex problems, if possible with interactive access to experts.

Q: What if the students don’t have access at home? A: Most important thing that needs to be solved. How do we build equity? Rural areas, poor communities… Working with FCC on broadband adoption rates; ratchet up adults literacy on this, show benefits of being connected: access to governmental and health services and having an online voice in digital communities.

In her conclusion, Karen Cator quoted Obama with a somewhat strange imagery:

“Education is both a moral obligation and an economic imperative. We are in a fight for the future – a fight that depends on education.”

I guess, if you’re American, you just can’t help but see yourself in a fight – whichever it may be.