Technology and Education: Theory & Practice

Laura BlankenshipPresentation for Husson College, March 2008

Overview

• Students, Learning, and the Job Market

• Horizon Report

• Examples, Low-High Threshold Activities

• Topics for Discussion

• Time constraints, Change, and other barriers

Who are your students?

Creators not just consumers

•59% of all teens (12-17) create content online

•28% have a blog

•27% have their own web page

•33% share photos, videos, etc. online

•26% remix content

Technology and School

• 94% use the Internet to do schoolwork

• 44% of 18-29 yo use Wikipedia for information

• Only 14% of teens use email to communicate with friends

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Need our help

Students can use technology forsocializing or entertainment, but still have problems finding information, evaluating it and then putting it to use.

Learning

• Collaboration

• Immediate Feedback

• Active Learning

• Multiple learning styles

Jobs of the future

• Not employed by single employer

• Dislike of hierarchies

• Career is plural

Gaming and work

• Virtually all college students play “video” games

• Failure is a norm; learn from failure

• Take more risks

Distributed work

• Telecommuting

• Work across time and space

• Rewards not based on face time

The Horizon Report

• Joint project with New Media Consortium and Educause

• Attempts to predict trends in technology

• Places within context of education

• 2004

• learning objects

• knowledge webs

• 2005

• gaming

• ubiquitous wireless

Grassroots Video

• User-created video

• Shared via sites such as YouTube, Blinkx, Blip.tv

• Streaming broadcast via Ustream

• Broadband access & simple video apps allow proliferation

Video: Low Threshold

• Find resources

Child Development Economics/Marketing Language

Video: Medium Threshold

•Student assignments

•Language video (Examples)

•Economics--video of economics principles

•News broadcasts

•Skits and plays

•Tools of the trade

•Cameras

•Video editing software

•Method of turning in

•Caveats

•Lessons for students

Video: High Threshold

• Make your own video resources

• DVD of clips

• YouTube Channel--use for storing resources, recording recaps of class

• Create a class video (Michael Wesch)

• Resources the same as for student assignments

• Biggest barrier--time

Collaboration Webs

• Using tools to work with others

• Share work with others

• Converse about projects in real time and across time and space

• No need for expensive equipment

Collaboration: Low

Collaboration: Medium

• Combine local resources with Web 2.0 Applications

• Google docs

• social bookmarking

• blogs/wikis

• Skype

• Facebook

• Contribute to existing projects such as Wikipedia

Example: Book Project

Collaboration: High

Enabling Technology

• Wiki--editable documents on the web

• RSS--Really Simple Syndication, the power behind blogs and other web 2.0 applications (wikis, Flickr, New York Times)

• Ajax--fast interaction with web sites

• Inexpensive video tools, broadband, voip (voice over ip)

Collective Intelligence

• Knowledge is created by groups

• Wikipedia is best known example

• Data is collected, organized, analyzed by dispersed groups

Collective Intelligence: Low

• Use existing resources

• Swivel

• Freebase

• History Commons

• UN datasets

Collective Intelligence: Medium

• Contribute to existing resources

• Upload new datasets

• Add graphs or charts

• Comment on analyses

Collective Intelligence: High

• Make your own data resource

• Civil Disobedience Wiki

• Gulf of Maine Ocean Observations

• Mashup your data

• Match data with geographic points

Time?

• Try one thing at a time

• Get help

• Put your students to work

Change

• Don’t get too attached

• Be open to learning

• Seize opportunities

Resources

• My presentation:

• Resources handout

• del.icio.us/lblanken/techlearning

Questions?