Category: constructivism

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Five on Five: A Dialogue on Professional Development

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a podcast about technology professional development. The interviewer was Matt Vilano, editor at THE Journal. Matt said afterwards that it went so well that it might become an article, and sure enough, it has!

Five on Five: A Dialogue on Profession Development

A quintet of educators gathers to sound off on what works and what doesn’t in the ongoing mission to train teachers to use technology in classroom instruction.

Sylvia the cartoon versionThanks Matt for turning an audio interview with 5 people on the phone into a great article! Plus, they did caricatures of us — kinda cool.

If you are an auditory learner try this:

Five on Five: Professional Development Podcast

Thanks also to the other podsters – Kristin Hokanson, Jim Gates, Bob Keegan and Cathy Groller. It was so much fun we kept talking after the time was up!

Sylvia

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Creativity vs. creating

A really big craneThere is a vast difference between being creative and creating something.

  • You can write a creative report about bridge building, or design a bridge that holds weight.
  • You can make a creative video about careers in programming, or write a computer program.
  • You can build a creative website with links to sites about solar heating, or construct a working model of a solar panel.
  • You can blog creatively about saving the environment, or you can start a movement to do it.

Building a real bridge or writing a computer program or constructing a solar panel or committing time to a cause is constructing something real. It is a different educational experience than reporting about something. Both are valuable learning experiences. Both should be present in a well-rounded education.

However, when we talk about Web 2.0, the focus is often on information gathering, sharing and presenting. This short-sighted focus on information and reporting misses the most crucial part of learning — constructing. It is an incomplete picture of what we want students to learn and be able to do.

Life is not a report.

Sylvia

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Save the date in 2008 – Constructivist Celebration at NECC

Constructivist Celebration logoMark your calendars – the Second Annual Constructivist Celebration at NECC will take place Sunday June 29, 2008 in San Antonio.

Not a lot of details yet, but the Constructivist Consortium member companies (Generation YES, LCSI, Tech4Learning, Inspiration, Fablevision, and SchoolKit) will host a day of learning and playing with creative software with other like-minded educators. I wrote about the first Constructivist Celebration last June and we are still hearing from attendees about what a great experience it was!

If you are already planning and budgeting for your NECC 2008 travel, be sure to be there for the all-day Sunday event. We’ll wrap up before the NECC opening reception, so you won’t miss a thing!

To find out more, keep an eye on this blog (subscribe) or go to the Constructivist Consortium website and signup to get notified of events by email.

See you in San Antonio!

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OLPC XO – Top Ten Checklist for G1G1 Reviews

Many recipients of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Give One, Get One (G1G1) program in the US and Canada are starting to receive their XO laptops. This means people are starting to join forums and write about their experiences. That’s all terrific, but it’s important to remember that the intended 3rd world audience is very different than the lives of most of the G1G1 users. Here’s my public service attempt to create a reminder checklist for potential XO reviewers in the first world.

After the checklist, please enjoy my nomination for The Worst XO Review Ever…

G1G1 XO Top Ten Pre-Review Checklist

1. You aren’t the customer. Remember who this is made for. It’s not you, or even the child you hand it to to “try out.” Check the OLPC Wiki for some of the reports from the field. Try to remember that you and most likely your child have pre-conceived notions and advantages that you don’t realize. You are like a fish trying to ignore water.

2. Keep the stage of the project in mind. Are you used to being on the bleeding edge? Do you download alpha applications and help the developers track bugs? Do you “get under the hood” of your operating system or do any programming? Have you ever participated in an open source community or even edited Wikipedia? If that’s not your typical MO, take a second look before you complain about bugs, features that haven’t been implemented, or features that you think are essential. It’s going to crash, it’s going to have bugs, and you will probably have to do some detective work to figure things out, including how to keep it up to date. Having to go to terminal mode is not a failure of the design; for best results, think of it like a new adventure.

3. It’s not a “cheap” version of your laptop. Low cost was a design driver for the XO, but not the only one. Cheap is expensive if the laptop breaks in harsh conditions.

4. The collaboration features will seem broken and lackluster. It’s like playing volleyball by yourself – don’t be surprised if the ball doesn’t jump back over the net by itself. It doesn’t mean your ball is broken or the game of volleyball is poorly designed. The answer is that it’s not really volleyball without the rest of the team. In your case, the XO may seem as useful as half a zipper without a local community of users.

5. The operating system (OS) is young. The Sugar OS is a custom design that has different goals than Mac, Windows, or even Linux. Sugar was created to support a collaborative, constructive educational environment AND 3rd world conditions AND unique hardware. Decisions were made that may seem odd to you, but potentially make a lot of sense in that context. The OS will evolve. See this Tom Hoffman post for more details.

6. Your in-home wireless network with a fat pipe Internet connection is an anomaly. Let’s not start whining that you can’t stream movies.

7. Your customer support is not a priority. OLPC created the G1G1 opportunity for a limited time with no plans to go into the business of shipping to and supporting individual American customers. If you want great tracking and toll-free support phone lines, call Amazon. It was clear from the G1G1 website that these computers came with NO TECH SUPPORT. I don’t want OLPC to waste their money hiring people to track packages, I would rather that money went to improve delivery to kids in the developing world. Of course you should get what you paid for. But look, if I pledge my local PBS station and get a coffee cup, I don’t expect perfect shipping and tracking either. You got your tax deduction and a cool invention. Enjoy them.

8. Your child is not the intended audience either. Giving the XO to your child and watching them struggle through the interface and applications does not “prove” that the laptop was poorly designed or that the constructivist philosophy of learning is a failure. The XO was built for children in a group, using it day in and day out at home and school, hopefully with adults around who can help guide them in educational pursuits. The concept of “neighborhood” is not a metaphor. Imagine kids sitting next to you, looking at what you do and saying, “hey, that’s cool, how did you do that?” The primary collaboration happens around the computer, not through the computer. It also happens because the use is expected and ubiquitous, not something squeezed in for 15 minutes on a Thursday night between homework, ballet and soccer practice. Your child’s XO experience will likely be lonely and frustrating. However, I predict a handful of kids will take to it like a duck to water. If you have one of these, say hello to your future programmer.

9. The mesh network is trying to do things you don’t need. The innovative mesh networking allows the XO computers to collaborate even when there is no Internet connection, or to share a single connection with others. In your home, it’s primarily going to suck your battery dry. As I used to say a lot when I was a programmer, “it’s a feature, not a bug!”

10. Last but not least – you and 150,000 other people did an amazing, generous thing and should be congratulated. The G1G1 program sent 150,000 laptops to homes in the US and Canada. People paid double to get an untested invention with no promise of any kind of support. As a direct result of this, 150,000 more children around the world got an XO laptop. My checklist may seem overly negative, but it’s only because I’m reacting to some early reports and anticipating others. The conversation around the XO is enhanced by all of our participation, but I hope people give it a fair shake and remember the true purpose of the XO. It’s going to take some time and some pain. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction. I hope some of you get inspired to get into the guts of the thing and have some of the fun I used to have in the 70’s building computer kits and programming in octal. It’s the best!

And now, for your enjoyment, the worst XO review ever…

This review from The Economist, One Clunky Laptop Per Child would be laughable if it weren’t being read by “a global audience of senior business, political and financial decision-makers.” Surrounded by ads for first class travel, the article predictably complains about the difficulty of installing Flash to watch YouTube videos and not getting minute by minute shipping status on the package.

The “keys are too small” and don’t feel right. After using it an entire week, the writer experienced “occasional crashes.” And horror of horrors, “A discreet message sometimes flashes when the system boots up, warning of some sort of data-check error.”

The fact that XO has generated competition from other computer manufacturers who have suddenly woken up to the low cost laptop market is listed as a problem. And even stranger, the “hubris” of OLPC developers is mentioned. I guess OLPC developers aren’t supposed to be proud of their innovation or defend their decisions. What silliness.

 

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Blending models of technology professional development

This is the third part of a series of blog posts inspired by the book, Meaningful Learning Using Technology: What Educators Need to Know And Do by Elizabeth Alexander Ashburn (Editor), Robert E. Floden (Editor) (Amazon link) and specifically a chapter Fostering Meaningful Teaching and Learning with Technology: Characteristics of Effective Professional Development written by Yong Zhao, Kenneth Frank, and Nicole Ellefson of Michigan State University Michigan State University (MSU).

  • Part 1 was about the book in general and the 4 key factors found in effective technology professional development.
  • Part 2 was a more detailed exploration of the 4 factors and specifics about the findings related to the GenYES model.

This third post explores why these models are excellent examples of technology professional development and the lessons that can be learned from them.

The researchers for this book chapter identified “four large-scale efforts that were shown to be effective in affecting teachers’ use of technology.” These are:

1. The Project-Based Learning Multimedia Model (PBL+MM)
2. The Galileo Education Network Association (GENA)
3. Project Information Technology (PIT)
4. The Generation Y Model (previous name of the GenYES model)

These four models represent some of the best professional development models for technology use in K-12 classrooms. They also have some elements that can be studied, adapted, and used by anyone. These are all complex models with many elements, so I apologize in advance if I’ve shortchanged any of the descriptions. I invite corrections and additions.

The Project-Based Learning Multimedia Model (PBL+MM). Also known as Challenge 2000, this model focused on specific professional development that helped teachers use technology tools with students to create multimedia projects in core content classes. It also had a strong peer-based community for the teachers and taught teachers skills needed to successfully teach project-based classes. Book available through ASCD.

More information: Unfortunately most of these sites are no longer in operation.  PBL+MM website. SRI evaluation. Exemplary rating by USDOE Expert Panel of Educational Technology.

The Galileo Education Network Association (GENA). This is a project out of Alberta, Canada. From their site: “Galileo is about teaching for deep understanding. Galileo supports teachers to design inquiry-based projects in which students use the digital technologies of their time in creative and thoughtful ways.”

More information: GENA website.

Project Information Technology (PIT). This project was conducted in the Netherlands in the early 1990’s. Teachers were grouped into areas of expertise and met six times a year to work on common projects. Findings showed that teachers were most influenced in their use of technology by their peers. I couldn’t find much online about this project besides the homepage of the lead researcher, Dr. Betty Collis.

The Generation Y Model. This model uses students as trainers and support systems for teachers. Students and teachers plan and create technology projects for the teacher to use in their classroom. The model uses specific curriculum for the students that is also project-based and models collaboration techniques for students.

This model was recently renamed the GenYES model (since Gen Y children have grown up past K-12 age) and is the model that I’m most familiar with!

More information: GenYES website. NWREL and other independent evaluations. Exemplary rating by USDOE Expert Panel of Educational Technology.

Similarities and differences
You can immediately see similarities in these models:

  • Emphasis on project-based learning and constructivist pedagogy
  • Teaching teachers pedagogy AND technology at the same time
  • Establishing a community that was valuable for the teachers as they practiced new skills
  • Focus on student learning and student created projects
  • Emphasis on open-ended technology tools that foster creativity and student choice. These models do not train teachers to use “drill & practice” or test-prep software with students.
  • Little “tool” training
  • Technology strongly connected to curriculum and teaching needs.
  • Intensive time commitment – none of these are “hit and run” trainings. All involved long term support for teachers in the classroom or very close to the classroom. Teachers didn’t have to wait around to ask questions or consult with colleagues or experts.

Differences

  • Where the training/support takes place – Gen Y and GENA works with individual teachers, PIT and PBL+MM had larger meetings and trainings.
  • Community building – Gen Y establishes students as participants in the support community, while others relied on meetings. These days I would think that building online community would be a key component.
  • Who did the training/support – in general, GENA provided visiting mentors for extended periods, while PBL+MM relies on peer teachers and peer collaborations. Gen Y relies on student/teachers partnerships mediated with virtual coaches.

Recognition by US DOE
It’s also interesting that two of these models (the US based ones) were both named as the only exemplary models of educational technology by the US Department of Education’s Expert Panel in Educational Technology in 2001. This panel was convened to determine “what works” in educational technology, and they selected 134 models to explore in depth. Only two of these models were named exemplary, the highest rating: Generation Y and Challenge 2000. Both these models were also part of the Technology Innovation Challenge Grant program in the late 1990’s.

Using these models
Schools, districts and service centers looking at these models may wonder if they can be implemented and what it costs. Do you have to hire Generation YES to have an effective student-led support system for teachers? Do you have to hire GENA if you want teachers to design inquiry-based projects for students? Of course not. No one owns the idea of kids helping out, or project-based learning. All the research from these projects is available on the web and in books like this one. You can design your own program tomorrow, and maybe someday somebody will be writing about your model!

What schools may decide to pay for is materials, training, and support that organizations like Generation YES and GENA can provide. It’s hard enough to implement innovative programs that tackle big issues like technology integration combined with project-based learning AND invent it yourself.

Summary
By combining these exemplary models, you can provide teachers with expertise, peer coaching, and student support. Create multiple ways to support teachers, rather than multiple technologies that confuse teachers. Teachers could get support in their classroom from students, in informal, local events with peers, and in more formal trainings with experts.

It’s easy to see how a technology professional development program could strive to implement the similar aspects of these programs. It’s not as typical that a district or regional center will implement a blend of professional development designed to balance out the strengths and weaknesses of any one professional development model.

I work in many schools where teachers come to trainings exhausted after a week of serial trainings in one technology after another with no bridge between them. This can only serve to convince teachers that technology is simply piling on, instead of providing a coordinated effort to build 24/7 support for teachers.

By providing teachers with a blend of support, community, and opportunities that tie together philosophically, they can learn and use technology tools that work for them and their curriculum with confidence.

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G1G1 – Give one, get one, change the world

OLPC XOOne Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the organization behind the global project to put laptops in children’s hands has launched a “give one, get one” (G1G1) program that will allow residents of the U.S. and Canada to purchase two laptops for $399.

G1G1 website – Takes credit card or PayPal

I’ve written previously about the OLPC and what it can mean for education. This is an opportunity to be part of that mission.

One laptop will be sent to the buyer and a child in the developing world will receive the second machine. G1G1 will offer the laptops for just two weeks, starting today, November 12. Delivery is not guranteed by the holidays, as originally promised, but the website suggests ordering ASAP as these orders will be filled first.

$200 of your donation is tax-deductible (the $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will receive.)

For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access. (This alone is worth $350!)

The terms and conditions offer an additional insight into OLPC – this is not a “product”, instead, the purchase will be an entry into the worldwide community of OLPC users.

“Neither OLPC Foundation nor One Laptop per Child, Inc. has service facilities, a help desk or maintenance personnel in the United States or Canada. Although we believe you will love your XO laptop, you should understand that it is not a commercially available product and, if you want help using it, you will have to seek it from friends, family, and bloggers. One goal of the G1G1 initiative is to create an informal network of XO laptop users in the developed world, who will provide feedback about the utility of the XO laptop as an educational tool for children, participate in the worldwide effort to create open-source educational applications for the XO laptop, and serve as a resource for those in the developing world who seek to optimize the value of the XO laptop as an educational tool. A fee based tech support service will be available to all who desire it. We urge participants in the G1G1 initiative to think of themselves as members of an international educational movement rather than as “customers.”

I just ordered one – and I’m looking forward to opening the box and becoming part of an international educational movement with the potential of changing the world.

Seems pretty reasonable for that!

Sylvia

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One Laptop Per Child (XO) – Report from India pilot site

OLPC site in IndiaAt the entrance, there was a black dog taking a rest. Beside the dog was Rajiv, in first standard, working on his XO while it was charging, plugged to the outlet on the wall. At the foot of the wall, on a long mat, there were some XOs, being charged.

On the other side of the door, sitting on long, thin mats on the floor, there was a small group of girls and boys working on eToys. Some were trying out all the sample projects while others were making their own. Among them were Gayatri and Sarasvati, two girls, in third standard, who usually go around the classroom helping others.

So starts a long diary entry on the One Laptop Per Child XOs in classroom(OLPC) blog from Khairat school, one of the OLPC test sites in India, covering September 26 – October 13, 2007. The report includes copious details about how the pilot implementation is going at the school, including the teacher preparation, parent and community reaction, and lots of anecdotes that provide a well-rounded story.

Almost immediately, the laptops start to create a different kind of classroom, one where the teacher is still the leader, but students naturally collaborate while learning.

Although the teacher conducts the activities and is the leader and most knowledgeable one in the room, there reigns an atmosphere of independent work and independent grouping and consultations. The smaller ones are natural scouts and keep on exploring the laptops on their own, and when they find something interesting or need some help, they go to others to show them their findings or be helped out.

OLPC studentsParents and the community pitch in and help, and the teacher starts to teach differently too, using project-based teaching to unify the curriculum. The teacher says that his relationship with the children is closer, in the sense that they are exploring the XO laptop together.

The diary is well worth reading, not just as a chronicle of what is happening in one pilot site, but a verification that these machines could indeed change lives, and change the world.

Sylvia

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Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students

Another K12Online 2007 Conference session goes live today – Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students

For many teachers, Web 2.0 tools offer exciting opportunities for students to express themselves and take command of technology that stretches the mind and reaches outside school walls. For some teachers, these tools are like trying to take a drink from a fire hose – endlessly expanding into a bewildering array of choices.

It’s a daunting task to figure out all the options with Web 2.0 tools and choose the “best” one to introduce to students. But why should you have all the fun!? Share your Learning Adventure 2.0 with your students and you will all benefit from the experience.

Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students is available both as a video and audio only podcast on the K12Online 2007 conference site.

 

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Happy Birthday Logo!

The Wired Science blog this month featured Forward 40: What Became of the LOGO Programming Language?

The author relates his own personal experiences as a youth being able to program an Apple IIe.

As I remember it, LOGO was a triangular turtle that roamed across the monochrome screen of an Apple II in my first grade classroom. Wherever he went, a line of ink would follow him — it came from a pen that was tied to his tail.

My digital friend simultaneously gave me an intuition for geometry and how to think like a computer programmer.

Seymour Papert, Cynthia Solomon, Wally Feurzeig and others invented Logo in 1967. In contrast to many software packages and Web 2.0 tools these days, the Logo language was deliberately designed for learning. Logo gives students powerful experiences with math, not by drilling them, but by offering them control over an object called a turtle. The turtle, either on the computer screen or an actual robot on the floor, could be programmed to draw lines completely controllable by simple commands.

Logo was designed to be body syntonic – or related to what the learner already understands about their own body. It allows the learner to take something they are already familiar with (their own body and how it moves) and add new knowledge of geometry to that established base. By controlling the turtle with simple commands to go forward, turn right or left, and draw, the learner has an intuitive connection with the turtle. If you’ve ever seen a kid program in Logo, you can see that they feel this connection, and the youngest ones tend to get up and dance with the turtle.

This is no accident, but a deliberate design for the Logo programming language. I’m proud to say that I’ve met Dr. Papert and spoken to him several times. I’ve met Cynthia Solomon too. This year I met Wally Feurtzig at EuroLogo 2007. Meeting people like this makes me feel like a part of history. Dr. Papert was a colleague of Jean Piaget, after being forced out of his native South Africa as university student for his association with Nelson Mandela, and whose ideas were key to the current 1:1 laptop movement and the One Laptop per Child global initiative. That I know someone like this is amazing to me.

But back to Logo and the Wired article…

I would type FORWARD 50 and the turtle would move forward. When I gave the command RIGHT 90, he would turn sharply to the right. If I prefaced those two commands with REPEAT 4 and surrounded them with brackets, the turtle would draw a square.

I was learning, but my experiences didn’t feel like a lesson. It was fun!

While I sat at my desk one day, two of my classmates figured out how to overwrite the entire screen, which seemed kinda naughty at the time. They giggled, did it again, then giggled some more. From curious children, hackers were born.

I was desperate to know how they did it. Eventually, they told me. Their method made sense: Tell the turtle to repeatedly move forward a very long distance and then turn very slightly.

The next deliberate design element embedded in Logo is the idea that it supports a classroom that is collaborative and full of co-learners and co-teachers. The learning is in control of the students, who each have a different idea of what they want to do. They can rely on themselves, on feedback from the computer, or on each other to figure out how to make the next step, but it’s under their control.

When the author of this article writes about his aha moment, “Their method made sense” it meant that he was learning something because he needed and wanted to know it. The learning was situated in a meaningful experience under his control, when and where he was ready. Teachers call it “the teachable moment” and hope they are around to help a student when that happens. But what if the classroom is full of co-teachers who are ready to help a classmate with that teachable moment. Imagine the learning network ready to go in every classroom!

Stager.org Dreamtime Logo Project

The Logo programming language embodies an educational philosophy called constructionism. The idea is that knowledge is constructed based on the learner’s previous experiences, and the best way to make that happen is to actually construct something and share it with others.

This doesn’t have to be a physical thing like an art project, but can be a computer program. Seymour Papert once compared students programming animated snakes to how the same students worked on soap sculpture art projects.

They were using this high-tech and actively computational material as an expressive medium; the content came from their imaginations as freely as what the others expressed in soap. But where a knife was used to shape the soap, mathematics was used here to shape the behavior of the snake and physics to figure out its structure. (Situating Constructionism, with Idit Harel)

Towards the end of the Wired article, author Aaron Rowe wonders where Logo went and asks for readers to contribute their memories. The comments are worth reading — there are many memories carried into adulthood by people who found programming interesting and personally rewarding.

So –what happened to Logo? It’s still around. The language exists in many forms, open source, public domain, and commercial, and is still taught in many schools around the world. It may be rare in the U.S., but it’s alive and well in other countries. Along with it goes the educational philosophy of giving students interesting problems to solve and powerful tools to use rather than trying to stuff them with “content” or “information.” The hope is that this will create students who can problem-solve, create, and learn how to learn.

Many teachers who taught Logo took their experiences with the empowering nature of programming and turned those ideas into something else. Dennis Harper, who founded Generation YES was a Logo teacher and author of the book, Logo: Theory and Practice. These lessons live on in the GenYES and TechYES models where students are at the center of their own learning.

And teachers still teach it, it’s not dead! Gary Stager has a whole section of his website devoted to Logo resources and runs workshops worldwide for teachers. He tells me that he gets thousands of views a month on the page devoted to how to build a virtual pet in Logo, and regular emails from very young web browsers asking him how they too can build their own pets. Kids want to learn!

Virtual pet home

New versions of Logo are again getting some publicity, from Scratch to Starlogo TNG to robotics. These programming languages are being rediscovered by a new generation of teachers, and hopefully students looking for ways to express themselves using the computer. If only we actually thought learning to use this most powerful learning tool was important!