Kids at the Forum
I've been dealing with a pressing issue that I want to dump into this blog. A few weeks ago I was remotely monitoring a student downloading music (a big no no) when I saw them pop up a site called 'Xanga.' For my fellow ostriches Xanga is on online forum that markets to teenagers. I watched this student start to go through pages belonging to our junior high girls. Virtually every one of them had a picture, name, and a partial address. Some had cell phone number, and one even had a scan of their state ID card (definately not one of our gifted students.) When I looked into this I found hundreds of websites telling stories of predators using these things to find kids. I was shocked at both the enormity of the problem as well as my own ignorance. My question is this: How do we separate the legitimacy of things such as hybrid courses, discussion boards, and this blog with the issues of safety?
Next week I'm teaching a course in internet safety. I've done it many time before dealing with pornography and identity theft, but this time I will be adding communication. I guess I'll have to take my picture and profile down. What's good for the goose definately isn't good for the goslets. Here's a great resource link if you have kids:
http://www.childsafetyfaq.com/
Hybrid learning - The second coming
After reading through several articles about Hybrid Learning I came across one that really caught my eye. It did so because it had the best list of 'reasons to move toward hybrid learning' that I had ever seen. I never thought about Hybrid classes being so writing intensive that they are defacto writing courses. I also never thought about them being the solution to the divide between juvenile electronic communication and business electronic communication. It definately makes me want to rethink my plans to do pure online courses and evaluate the economics of doing hybrids instead. This is one that is worth reading.
http://courses.durhamtech.edu/tlc/www/html/Special_Feature/hybridclasses.htm
Maybe we should look around for a better educational model.
I was looking for an article on a distance education high school in Finland when I came across this piece. The gest of the article is a comparison between the educational advancements of two European Union (EU) countries: Finland and Italy. Since the EU formed a cooperative aimed at increasing technology in education called the e-education forum is has been trying to bring about a balance among member countries. The problem is that no implementation guidelines were ever set; thus each country was free to pursue the problem of educational technology on its own. Italy, who had previously been well known for having the best schools in Europe throughout most of the 60's and 70's, chose a very different approach to that of Finland. Here is an excerpt:
For example, the development of global connection and distance learning are primary objectives for the Finnish, who strive to offer the same possibilities in communication and learning to the inhabitants of rural areas or residents of foreign countries. The Italians, on the other hand, give priority to updating infrastructures and the teaching staff to new technologies.
The Italian approach sounds eerily similar to that of the United States. Too much bureaucracy and concern for antiquated approaches. The Finns simply threw out preconceived notions of curriculum and based their standards on the country's economic reality. The article is very interesting. Here's the link:
http://www.e.finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=24566
Twelve Important Questions to Answer Before You Offer a Web Based Curriculum
Since I am in the process of building a distance education I thought this article from the Online Journal of Distance Education Administration was appropriate. I think the most interesting thing is that the article was published in the summer of 2001 which was the height of the "Oh my God online education will ruin our colleges scare. Since not all of the sections are extremely relevant today I'll discuss only a few. Rather than a running commentary I will list the twelve questions with discussion.
Will the Web curriculum offered be congruent with the institution’s mission and strategy?Do you have administrative support?Are there institutional obstacles to adopting a Web curriculum?Are the students ready to handle the self discipline required? This question still plagues us today. I've read conflicting studies about the drop rate on distance ed courses but I know that it is twice as high in undergraduate courses as compared to graduate. How will you handle intellectual property issues?I wonder if this is actually an issue any more?How will you compensate instructors for offering or administering Web courses?Since theoretically you could have a very small class or a huge class the traditional measures of what constitutes a course no longer apply. I wonder how universities handle this now?Do you have clear, well-defined criteria for selecting the classes to be offered through the Web?What facilities or capabilities are available to assist in the preparation and delivery of course materials?What methods will be used to deliver class content?How will student progress be assessed?The author specifically discusses the paranoia associated with "It is difficult if not impossible to reliably ascertain a participant’s identity when communicating over the Internet."Do your students have the skills necessary to use the Web and participate in class?Today the question is "Do the students have a computer with high speed internet access." I think schools and universities have done a moderately good job of preparing most students for the web.Where will the class materials be maintained?You can read the whole article at: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/summer42/mcalister42.html
What the heck is a Wiki?
Since enrolling in this course my ego has taken a considerable beating. In my daily life I am considered the king geek. Any question in the realm of technology is mere child's play. In this course I am somewhat of a lesser geek, possibly a serf-geek or peon-geek. As I listen to my peers I hear words such as Avatar and Wiki. I feel like a cobol programmer at a .net users group (geek humor.) To educate myself I googled "What the heck is a Wiki." The websites found ranged anywhere from a theoretical physics display to an online encyclopedia. I did find one site that explained it rather well. It had examples and actual code available for download. For the rest of you simple-geeks here is the definition of a wiki along with the URL to actually see one:
'Wiki' is a composition system; it's a discussion medium; it's a repository; it's a mail system; it's a tool for collaboration; it's a cult. Really, we don't know quite what it is, but it's a fun way of communicating asynchronously across the network.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
Should we strive to become High-Tech Campuses?
I wonder if it makes sense for every educational institution to strive to achieve the High-tech status mentioned in chapter 2 of the Ko and Rossen book. I'm beginning to believe that focusing on good online pedagogy and student management skills is more important in the beginning than trying to buy the latest and greatest software. The "if you build it they will come" theory has been very ineffective in my career. I think that we rate too many programs based on their technology and not their teaching. Don't get me wrong. I do believe in consistent Learning Management Systems. Students need a comfortable familiar environment to learn in. My issue comes with the integration of high bandwidth technologies such as streaming media. A poor quality video of an instructor lecturing in front of a whiteboard defeats the spirit of good andragogy. Multisession interactive video chats are extremely difficult to implement, but they do have a nice 'wow' factor when the administration sees it at a conference. The question is will anyone be willing to go through the pain to use it. Most instructors are already taxed. I am attaching a link to a study that discusses this point. You may have to be patient as the site seems to go up and down quite a bit.
http://technologysource.org/article/technological_minimalism_in_distance_education/
National Tech Plan and "e-learning?"
I was reading through a blog on the national education technology plan and wanted to post an excerpt here. The national plan basically has a very vague reference to distance education (e-learning, which is a very poor choice of terminology in light of all the systems out there that proclaim themselves as 'e-learning suites." ) Here is a pretty interesting point of view.
"Supporting e-Learning" - Are we really thinking that e-Learning is going to provide meaningful educational experiences for kids? I take on-line grad courses in order to efficiently get through my degree. I have all of the independent learning skills necessary to manage that situation. Does your typical kid? I think there is a place for this but there is a very small percentage of kids who have the situation necessary to meaningfully learn in this way. (ie- AP Mandarin Chineese class for which one instructor exists in a 500-mile radius) Take a second to think of three of your most meaningful educational experiences. Could they have been easily encapsulated into an e-learning experience? Is the teacher stupid!
You can view the whole article here:
http://edtechnot.blogspot.com/2005/10/national-ed-tech-plan-action-steps.html
Chapter 2: Classifying Distance Ed courses?
In reading through the online teaching sections I was intrigued by the classifications of low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech. I wonder if any institution is purely one of the other. Between the students, teaching staff, and technology group you may find yourself in three different places. In my case we are a high-tech institution with low-tech teachers and a mid-tech student body.
There are a lot of arguments as to how this can happen. Most people blame it on the teachers. The general consensus is that older teachers are technophobes unwilling to try new technologies. I'll attach link to a an article discussing this point of view. It comes from the Edtechnot.com website which tends to be the dissenting voice in terms of every educational policy unleashed on the world.
http://www.edtechnot.com/notarticle1201.html
Am I a Pragmatic?
In my graduate studies I have offically discovered that I am a pragmatic, which doesn't sound like a very nice thing to be . I decided to look into the whole movement toward pragmatism so I went to my old friend google and typed in "Am I a pragmatic." This led to a rather strange assortment of sites such as "The Ubiquitous Wookie"(
http://www.theubiquitouswookiee.com/) and "Spamroll.com" which I won't provide a link to because it has way too many references to the Kama Sutra. The dictionary officially defines a pragmatic as:
pragmatic
A
adjective
1
matter-of-fact, pragmatic,
pragmaticalconcerned with practical matters; "a matter-of-fact (or pragmatic) approach to the problem"; "a matter-of-fact account of the trip"
2
hardheaded,
hard-nosed,
practical, pragmatic
guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory; "a hardheaded appraisal of our position"; "a hard-nosed labor leader"; "completely practical in his approach to business"; "not ideology but pragmatic politics"
3
pragmatic,
pragmaticalof or concerning the theory of pragmatism.
Either I am completely lost as to what it means to be a pragmatist or this dictionary needs to be updated.
Great text creations...
I was at a conference taking a class on designing online courses and came across a couple of links that I had never used. If you are looking for a great place to get very cool text in formats that are not webenabled these are the sites. I've found this very useful in places that I want to post an e-mail that I don't want scraped from the website. It also creates text in scaleable .png files that are free and can be used anywhere. Here are the links:
http://www.flamingtext.comhttp://www.cooltext.comhttp://www.coolarchive.com
I was hoping we would finally get a national technology test.
I was reading MSNBC and saw a note about a new test to evaluate technology literacy in high school students. Apparently this thing is created and administered by the same folk who gave us such classic hits as the SAT, SATII, and Online writing evaluator. I would love to take this thing and see what kind of score I could make. It couldn't be any worse than my SAT's.
I'll attach the MSNBC link, but since these things tend to vanish the test is called The ICT Literacy Assessment.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11150273/
