Does this sound familiar? Universities are massive by any reckoning; they employ millions of people, consume billions of tax dollars, have huge collective carbon footprints, and have basically been doing business the same way for hundreds of years. They are so ingrained into our social structure that most people can’t imagine a society in which they didn’t exist in their current form. They’re on a trajectory that will take a truly massive application of external force to dislodge them from their course.

And that force may come sooner than we think, at least according to two items that grabbed my attention this past week.

The first was a television commercial for Kaplan University. I should explain that I don’t watch TV very much and this particular commercial may have been around for some time, but last week when I first saw it it hit me like a ton of bricks. Here it is:

I first thought it was a commercial for Apple, Inc., and was surprised to find at the end of the commercial that it was for an online university–essentially a competitor for my brick-and-mortar institution. My initial thought was that the “professor” in the ad got it right–that we need to be paying attention to learners who may not fit the traditional concept of a post-secondary student. They expect to be able to use their favorite media to learn when and where they can, on a schedule that suits their lifestyle, job, or personal preferences.

The second item was an article from eSchool News entitled “AASA hears what’s about to disrupt schools.” In the article, Clayton Christensen from Harvard’s Business School predicts that within the next ten years half of all instruction will take place online and that schools risk losing enrollment to the online learning market if they do not adopt the model for their own students. The massive external force that may move schools off of their current path is something that Christensen calls “disruptive innovation”–innovation that is so powerful and so different that it completely changes the marketplace, dislodges old market leaders from their positions of leadership, and gives rise to new ways of doing business. It’s not at all difficult to see examples of disruptive innovation that have happened within most of our memories–VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet), the personal computer, the World Wide Web, the iPod, etc. Each of these innovations changed the way business was done before and allowed new players into the market, typically at the expense of the “old guard.” And it’s personal, too. This morning I spent several hours answering e-mail, editing some documents (including a spreadsheet), evaluating my students’ projects (PowerPoint lessons that they uploaded to Google Docs and embedded into their blogs) and recording their grades and my reflections on their work, and the only application I had open the entire morning was Firefox.

My job is to prepare post-secondary students to teach in K-12 school systems. It may take an even more massive application of external force to change their current vector. What should I be telling my pre-service teachers?

I immediately flashed back to the Kaplan commercial I had seen a few days before. Bob Dylan was right:

The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

The promise for a device like the iPhone in K12 education is limitless. It’s not at all difficult to imagine the way it would transform field trips, project-based lessons, and collaboration. The problem, however, is obvious–you need to sign an expensive cell phone contract in order to use one. Unless a teacher or a well-heeled student with unlimited minutes is feeling generous, the likelihood that an iPhone will appear in a classroom is remote.

However, Apple makes another device with much the same appeal as the iPhone–the iPod Touch. As a wi-fi device, it can function on school or public networks, saving documents for later perusal and running much of the same software that runs on the iPhone. It can load and view and, to a limited but growing extent, edit Office documents. It’s capable of loading and viewing very high resolution documents from the Library of Congress and other reliable educational sources. You can add dictionaries, translators, conversion programs, and other useful utilities. You can download and view movies, podcasts and electronic books on a variety of educational topics. With the addition of an inexpensive microphone, it’s a voice recorder. Add a VOiP program such TruPhone and you can make free phone calls over the wireless network to anywhere in the world. (Sister school, anyone?) As is, it makes an intriguing and engaging teaching and learning tool. It’s missing just two elements that would make it a viable replacment for laptop computers in many cases–a camera and GPS capabilities.

An iPod Touch with GPS would be able to make full use of incredible tools such as Google Earth and Google Maps on a school network. It would allow accurate geotagging of pictures (taken with the hoped-for camera), data gathered on a field trip or information from a sister school. The camera would give students an opportunity to gather data for posters, web pages, slide shows, and other place-based projects and transmit them over a wi-fi network to anywhere in the world. The possibilities are endless.

Either way you look at it–a GPS/camera enabled iPod Touch or a phone-disabled iPhone–this is a device that would have as much of an impact on K-12 education as the original Apple desktop computer did back in 1978. I hope someone is listening out there…

In that light, here are a few recent articles that are worth a look by K-12 educators and those who are responsible for preparing them to teach.

One Teacher’s Cry: Why I Hate No Child Left Behind
How much control do K-12 teachers have over their curriculum? Does a “one size fits all” approach to teaching work for everyone? What will current students remember about their schooling 10 years from now?

Remember ‘Go Outside and Play?’
As an adult who very fondly remembers leaving my front door each morning, finding a couple of friends, ending up at someone’s house for lunch, going back outside and returning for dinner, I appreciate this article’s emphasis on the importance of independent, unsupervised play and exploration. There are many lessons for school experience embedded here.

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
How can a teacher who believes in the power of science to explain natural phenomena teach evolution to students who refuse to accept one of its basic tenets? A fascinating, in depth article about a teacher who truly cares about science education, and a cautionary tale for most teachers entering the profession.

12 New Rules of Working You Should Embrace Today
While this article is focused on the business world, there is much food for thought for K-12 and post-secondary educators–particularly in the areas of online collaboration and applications. Schools exist in a social context that is rapidly changing to adapt to new methods of communication and productivity. How should schools educate their students for this evolving context?

Beloit College Mindset List
It’s always a good idea to get a demographic handle on the students you are working with. Beloit’s annual Mindset List is an amusing but thoughtful glimpse at the realities of our students’ lives. Definitely worth a bookmark.

I’ve been aware of the concept of “disintermediation” since reading Donald Tapscott’s Growing Up Digital in the mid-90s. Essentially, disintermediation refers to the elimination of the proverbial middle man in a supply chain. As an example, consider what has happened to travel agencies since the advent of digital technologies. Airlines found that they could save considerable money by selling their tickets electronically directly to customers instead of paying travel agents to sell tickets for them. Travel agents became irrelevant to the process of buying tickets, forcing them into one of two choices: close up shop, or figure out what kind of value they could add to travel that customers would be willing to pay for. The mantra for disintermediation is this: “If you don’t add value to a process, then you’re only adding cost.” If you’re only adding cost, you’ll be quickly disintermediated.

Over the years, I’ve given much thought to the idea of disintermediation with regard to K-16 education. I think it makes sense to apply the disintermediation mantra to schools. We should constantly be asking ourselves which processes contribute to the value of K-16 education and which processes only add cost. True introspection might reveal some shocking answers. For example, elementary school teachers bristle at the suggestion that they are babysitters, but in truth one of the values that K-6 education holds for most working parents is child care. If you don’t believe me, try shortening the length of a school day one day per week to provide professional development to teachers. Parents will not allow it.

In education, we do many things because, frankly, it’s what we’ve always done. We make high school students start school at 7:00 am even though research clearly shows that older adolescents are not morning people–a fact that will come as no shock to most parents. We build schools with multiple closed classrooms and few large or flexible spaces because a class has 25 students and one teacher…right? Schools are probably one of the few institutions that look today much like they looked 50 years ago, despite the fact that very few of the social structures, methods of communication, or technology tools that exist today were around even 10 years ago.

My interest in disintermediation was again peaked by a recent article on OpenEducation.net (Higher Education – Dangerously Close to Becoming Irrelevant). While I do not necessarily agree with every point made in the article, I immediately welcomed another opportunity  to look critically at what I do and why I do it and, most importantly, whether or not it is relevant to the effective education of my post-secondary students.

A citation from Dr. David Wliey immediately caught my attention:

Consider Wiley’s description of the typical college classroom experience.

“Students are inside a classroom (tethered to a place), using textbooks and handouts (printed materials), they must pay tuition and register to attend (the experience is closed), talking during class or working with others outside of class is generally discouraged (each student is isolated though surrounded by peers), each student receives exactly the same instruction as each of her classmates (the information presented is generic), and students are students and do not participate in the teaching process (they are consumers).”

My first reaction was that this pretty well summarized my high school experience in the 60s and is largely accurate in that context today. My second reaction was “Haven’t we learned anything yet?” The reality is that digital information tools and ubiquitous access to information and to collaborative learning tools long ago smashed that monolithic model in most businesses and social institutions, but for many (most?) schools the older models of instruction still prevail.

Again quoting Wiley, the unnamed author provides a potentially more relevant contrast to the old instructional model:

“From her dorm room / the student center / a coffee shop / the bus a student connects to the Internet using her laptop (she is mobile), uses Google to find a relevant web page (a digital resource which is open for her to access). While carrying out her search, she chats with one friend on the phone and another using instant messaging to see if they can assist in her search (she is connected to other people), she follows links from one website to another exploring related information (the content is connected to other content), she quickly finds exactly the information she needs, ignoring irrelevant material (she gets what is important to her personally), and she shares her find with her friends by phone and IM (she participates in the teaching process).”

Sadly, this model happens entirely outside of the context of a classroom. What is the potential lesson for us as K-16 educators?

Basically, I think it is absolutely incumbent on educators at every to critically examine what it means to be a student in our classrooms. What is the value of being in my classroom? Are there ways that I could add greater value to the process of educating my students, particularly with regard to the time they spend with me in class? How much time do they really need to spend with me in class? Assume a class period of 60 minutes. If I have a 45 minute lecture and expect a 15 minute discussion, would it be better to podcast that lecture, assign it to students before class, and use the entire 60 minutes together for discussion and extension activities? Apply the disintermediation mantra–are you adding value, or are you only adding cost?

Let’s put ourselves in the place of the travel agents alluded to in the first paragraph. We may realize that our business model is toast and that changes need to be made, or we may hold on to that model until we become completely irrelevant to the process of travel. In the first case, we need to rethink every aspect of our business, figuring out which elements provide value to our customers and which elements are merely costing us money. We then need to develop a model that is relevant to our customers’ needs, and we need to continually reapply the disintermediation mantra to assure that we remain relevant over time.

Or, we can continue to do what we’re doing until the last few customers leave for a travel service that meets their needs.

• Upload of images is frustratingly slow and often hangs in progress, requiring a browser restart and loss of work;
• компютри втора употребаDragging images from the media folder to a project sometimes simply doesn’t work at all, again requiring a restart;
• Text boxes cannot be resized to accommodate more (or less) text than will fit in a given box;
• Images are fixed and cannot be moved around on a page to facilitate creative layouts;
• Viewing storybooks online seems inordinately slow, even on a fast campus-wide network.

For these reasons, most of my students reluctantly conclude that Panraven is not a reliable classroom tool, particularly for younger elementary students. The final product, while very compelling, is not worth the potential frustration of using the tool in a K-12 setting.

That’s why I was thrilled to be directed by a colleague to Tabblo (pronounce it “tableau”). Like Panraven, Tabblo creates online storybooks. (It also creates comic books and posters up to 24″ x 36″, but that’s another blog entry.) Unlike Panraven, however, uploading images is very fast. In fact, in my side by side tests on the same computer using the same network, Tabblo uploaded images many times faster than Panraven. Tabblo never hesitated to upload properly, and dragging photos into a story within Tabblo worked perfectly each time I tried it.

Viewing storybooks online is also much faster than with Panraven. Turning a page in Tabblo produces a pleasing”page curl” effect (which works forwards or backwards at both the top and bottom corners of a page) and there is no noticeable delay in loading the next page as there is with Panraven. On the other hand, Tabblo stories appear much smaller on a web page than do Panraven stories (which give you the option of enlarging the display if you want), making captions or small text difficult to read. If there is a way to enlarge Tabblo books, I have not found it yet.

Creating layouts in Tabblo is a breeze, and, while you can choose from a variety of preset layouts, the author is afforded complete control over the placement of images and text boxes on any page. Pictures can be moved from one place to another on a page or dragged off the page and stored in a virtual lightbox for use later. Text boxes can be any size and can be resized easily. It’s simple to insert new pages or delete unwanted pages. And–these actions happen quickly, with no discernible delay in execution.

Tabblo doesn’t win in every category, however. Panraven allows you to embed your stories into a blog, wiki, or other web page. I like this feature very much. Tabblo generates code that “simulates” embedding (that is, it places an image of the storybook cover in your blog), but that image is in reality just a link to the Tabblo web site. It would be wonderful if Tabblo allowed true embedding of projects into web pages.

Below is a test story that I created with Tabblo. Notice that the captions are difficult to read. I cannot find a way to increase the text size in the captions.

… See my Tabblo>

Even so, it looks like I am going to have to change my fall semester syllabus. We’re moving to Tabblo as an alternative to Panraven.

Similarly, we may intuitively feel that technology inhibits social skills of K-12 students, assuming that students must be interacting less with each other if they are using a computer. However, a pair of recent studies reviewed together in eSchoolNews suggests that, at least in a school setting, the use of technology can increase social skills among young students.

In “Tech Encourages Students’ Social Skills,” researchers X. Christine Wang and Cynthia Carter Ching explain the social upside of technology in a primary classroom setting. The first study, “Social Construction of Computer Experience in a First Grade Classroom: Social Processes and Mediating Artifacts,” examined the social interactions of a group of kindergarten and first grade students around two computers scheduled for their use during the classroom day. The newer, more capable computer was the students’ favorite, being everyone’s first choice for free time. Access to the computer was determined by a sign up sheet, and the rules were fairly simple. “Only two students could use a computer at one time, and a timer was used to limit each student’s time on the computer to only five minutes. Those students not being the first to select computers as their first choice activity had to sign up on a waiting list and do other activities while waiting for their turns.”

Wang and Ching observed that students tended to cluster at the computer and enforce the rules in ways that were fair to everyone. Achieving a common goal–in this case, reaching a higher level on a popular game–was a driving factor in the students’ ability to maintain order and also be successful at the game. The students were learning valuable social skills through having a common goal and a common interest in using the computer.

In the second study, “Digital Photography and Journals in a Kindergarten-First-Grade Classroom: Toward Meaningful Technology Integration in Early Childhood Education,” Wang and Ching observed kindergarten and first graders in the same classroom who were creating photo journals using Apple iPhoto software on an iMac. While students were to work with an adult helper while composing their journals, the researchers noted that other students typically played close to the iMac and interacted frequently with the journalists, often asking questions, supplying tips, or commenting on pictures or journal entries. They also interacted with each other while they were taking pictures of their classroom for their journals.

Wang and Ching feel that these studies provide evidence that students’ social skills can be improved through the thoughtful integration of technology tools.

“…the children are engaged in valuable social construction…of their classroom experience and culture by engaging with well-integrated technologies, such as computers or a digital camera.”

I realize that the scenarios presented by Wang and Ching are a far cry from the image we may hold of a high school student locked in his darkened bedroom late at night playing games and chatting–although these are also social activities of a sort and probably deserve some additional study as well. But studies like these help us realize that there is nothing intrinsically “unsocial” about technology. In some cases, technology can be a strong factor in successful socialization.

CoSN’s observations speak volumes about the current state of US public schools. In Scandinavian schools, students begin formal education at 7 years, having spent the previous several years in preschool programs aimed at personal responsibility and social development rather than on academics. By the time they get to formal schooling, the situation looks like this:

[CoSN] found that educators in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark all cited autonomy, project-based learning, and nationwide broadband internet access as keys to their success… Grading doesn’t happen until the high-school level, because they believe grading takes the fun out of learning. They want to inspire continuous learning.

What the CoSN delegation didn’t find in those nations were competitive grading, standardized testing, and top-down accountability—all staples of the American education system.

The Scandinavians have apparently learned that drilling young children on facts and figures to produce better scores on standardized tests does not produce well-educated adults. Similarly, they seem to have figured out that guiding students into taking more responsibility for their own learning means that the students…ummm…learn more. And learning can be fun? Why is this surprising?

Could we design a system of public education that was any more backwards? If you need more evidence, visit the Orlando Sentinel.

That’s why resources such as Smithsonian Images are so useful for educators. Images are of very high quality, can be easily verified as authentic, and include a copyright license that allows for fair use for personal, school, or non-commercial use as long as proper credit is given when images are used. (Speaking of which, the image at left is a barite specimen photographed by Laurie Minor-Penland in 1995.)

As you might expect from the Smithsonian Institution, images are tracked by categories that are very useful to educators. The default categories are:

- Air and Space
- American History
- Animals
- Fireworks
- Gems and Minerals
- History of Technology
- Marine Life
- Military History
- Nature
- The Presidency
- Transportation
- Washington, DC

Other categories are available, and there is an excellent search engine on the site.

“Knowing how to use Facebook doesn’t make one an Internet search god, and the report concludes that a literature review shows no movement (either good or bad) in young people’s information skills over the last several decades”

It was somewhat gratifying to see empirical evidence of a trend that I have observed anecdotally for quite some time. We tend to assume that, because post-secondary students typically have laptops, WiFi enabled cell phones, and other digital tools that they are expert technology users. I would agree that most of the “Googlers” are highly facile with the tools and processes that they use, but I would also assert that these tools may be limited in scope and are not necessarily the tools that will bring academic success. Students are quite adept at using social networking tools such as FaceBook and MySpace and with shopping sites, but many do not know the basics of productivity applications such as PowerPoint, Word, or image editing tools. Many do not know how to install software or add a printer. Wikipedia is often the first and only source of information for a research topic. And, for as much time as they spend Googling, many do not know how to form cogent search queries.

We tend to call students of this generation “digital natives.” I would assert that they may be more properly called “digital consumers.” And, we tend to blame them for their lack of skills when, in reality, we–their teachers–are the culprits.

One of the roles that educators at all levels need to embrace is that of a guide to the appropriate uses of technology for learning. Social networking tools such as blogs and wikis have tremendous potential for engaging students in the learning process if they are applied thoughtfully and evaluated rigorously. We should be teaching and reinforcing good research skills every day in every classroom, including instruction on how to compose search queries and where to look for reliable sources. (Check this web site from CollegeDegree.com for 25 sites for reliable, researched facts.) We should be working digital content creation–digital photography, digital video, podcasts, etc.–into our lessons on a regular basis. And we should be good models to our students, using technology in our own teaching and learning processes.

According to a recent editorial from the Washington Post–A School That’s Too High on Gizmos–the answer may be yes. Patrick Walsh, reviewing the situation at T. C. Williams High School in Alexandria, VA, found that the school’s propensity to buy every latest tech toy and to force the teachers to use them is reducing moral among staff and even causing students to wonder whether or not technology is a useful tool. School administrators seem to thrive on headlines made by the acquisition of the latest and greatest technology, and that “technolust” appears to be driving educational decisions usually left up to classroom teachers.

Clearly, this situation has been brought about by a deep misunderstanding on the part of the school administration about what constitutes good teaching. Gadgets do not produce good teaching. In fact, they may have just the opposite effect if they are not employed properly. Providing tools that teachers need–and ask for–is critical to the success of any school. Case in point–The Denali Borough School District, headquartered in Healy, AK, has a very successful one to one laptop program. There are several factors that are critical to its success. They began by moving to a standards-based assessment system that essentially provided every student with an individualized academic program. They brought teachers in on the decision making process and provided (and continue to provide, in the fifth year of the one to one program) a half day of professional development per week during the academic year. They provide tech support that is oriented toward the needs of educators and not the needs of an IT department. And, they know when to ask their students to close their laptops.

The folks at T. C. Williams seem to have it backwards. They buy the technology and then try to figure out how to use it. Successful programs–and there are many–decide how technology can help them teach and then find ways to acquire it. There’s a huge difference between those two approaches.