Relearning Learning-Applying the Long Tail to Learning

From the MIT World website:
In a digitally connected, rapidly evolving world, we must transcend the traditional Cartesian models of learning that prescribe “pouring knowledge into somebody’s head,” says John Seely Brown. We learn through our interactions with others and the world, he says, and there’s no more perfect medium for enabling this than an increasingly open and organized World Wide Web.

Relearning Learning–Applying the Long Tail to Learning



While the wired world may be flat, it now also features “spikes,” interactive communities organized around a wealth of subjects. For kids growing up in a digital world, these unique web resources are becoming central to popular culture, notes Brown. Now, educators must begin to incorporate the features of mash-ups and remixes in learning, to stimulate “creative tinkering and the play of imagination.”

With the avid participation of online users, the distinction between producers and consumers blurs. In the same way, says Brown, knowledge ‘production’ must flow more from ‘amateurs’ – the students, life-long learners, and professionals learning new skills. Brown describes amateur astronomers who observe the sky 24/7, supplementing the work of professionals in critical ways. A website devoted to Boccaccio’s Decameron welcomes both scholars and students, opening up the world of professional humanities research to all.

The challenge of 21st century education will be leveraging the abundant resources of the web – this very long tail of interests – into a “circle of knowledge-building and sharing.” Perhaps, Brown proposes, the formal curriculum of schools will encompass both a minimal core “that gets at the essence of critical thinking,” paired with “passion-based learning,” where kids connect to niche communities on the web, deeply exploring certain subjects. Brown envisions education becoming “an act of re-creation and productive inquiry,” that will form the basis for a new culture of learning.

There are many ideas here that I agree with:

  • deeply exploring subjects instead of the “mile wide, inch thick” curriculum currently popular in the U.S. that seeks to “cover content” rather than inspire students
  • exploring the idea of the “long tail” with enthusiasm for the talents and contributions of amateurs and veterans alike, instead of protecting the kingdom of experts who have control of information, or worse, advocating some kind of “noble savage” ideal that only amateurs have valuable ideas.
  • creative tinkering as a valid learning style instead of the vaunted “scientific method” that seems to exist only in school
  • emphasis on creation and production as a critical part of learning, instead of viewing students as passive recipients of knowledge

It’s a long video, but give it a shot. There is a timeline at the bottom of the page so you can fast forward past the introductions if you like. Enjoy!

Sylvia

Students as Substitutes

Eighth grade math teacher Bob Brems was unhappy with inconsistent results and reports from substitutes about student misbehavior. Then he had a brainstorm – turn over the teaching reins to his students in his absence.

In this Education World article, Brems describes his preparation process and results:

I have witnessed a handful of benefits from using students as teachers:

  • Students are more alert and on task when another student is leading the class.
  • Student interest is piqued by the change in approach.
  • Some students benefit from instruction or review led by a classmate. The difference in presentation of the concept helps them better understand the material.
  • The student-as-teacher usually displays a level of understanding of the concepts that is greater than the understanding displayed during a regular class. “I don’t want to look like an idiot in front of everyone!” one student explained.
  • Students often are better behaved when the class returns to the regular format. When questioned about that, students-as-teachers often expressed empathy with a teacher in front of a class. They related how frustrating it was to repeat the same thing several times, asking: “Why don’t they listen?”

So, is this something you might try in your own classroom? Are your students ready? Do you think the subs would go along? Will your administration allow it?

Sylvia

Happy Birthday Wikipedia!

Wikipedia is seven years of old today. While Wikipedia may be a controversial topic for educators, no one can say that it hasn’t changed the face of the web.

For educators, the rise of Wikipedia reinforces the importance of information literacy. Some schools ban while some have students contribute to Wikipedia and defend their words in public. Who is right?

Wikipedia challenges the idea that the textbook (or the teacher) is the ultimate source of facts. For some teachers this is terrifying, or represents sloppy standards and lazy research.

For other teachers it is reinforcement of lessons they’ve been teaching for years. Students need to know how to research multiple sources, learn how to evaluate conflicting information and opinions, and integrate these into their own understanding.

The discussion pages attached to each Wikipedia entry are equally instructive. They are alternately a celebration of a consensual community process, as conflicting but equally rational viewpoints are battled out in public — or bullying, in-crowd harangues that make you want to take a long hot shower. However you feel about it, the fact that Wikipedia’s projects span over 250 languages, with 9.4 million articles, 1.5 million images, and 10.3 million registered users is pretty amazing. The power of the global village is just starting to be felt.

The most popular Wikipedia pages shows a crazy mix of pop culture, video games, celebrities, notorious historical figures, and sex. By the way, Wikipedia does not censor for sexual content, but strives for objectivity in articles and definitions. Seriously, don’t click on the “sex” article with anyone looking over your shoulder. But the question for educators is always how to balance safety with authentic experiences — to pre-chew content for students or let them investigate the messy real world and learn to make good decisions for themselves.

We may not have final answers for these questions now. What we do know is that in just a few short years, K-12 students will not remember a world without Wikipedia or Google. We owe it to them to keep trying to wrap our heads around this brave new world.

Extreme social networking

This just in: the first Personal Genome Service.

spit kit
Spit kit

No longer will you have to rely on Shirley McLaine to find out that you have an Egyptian princess or a Russian nobleman in your past. You can find out for sure and maybe they’ll come pay you a visit. 6 degrees of separation? No longer is it just a party game ending in Kevin Bacon, it’s going to be on the web, searchable, representing the web of humanity via the latest web 2.0 technology. You’ll have cousins showing up by RSS in your genome/blog reader.

The process begins, disgustingly enough, with spit. You purchase a $999 “spit kit” and you supply the requisite DNA. The company, 23andMe, tests your saliva and posts the results on their site, where you can use “…our interactive tools to shed new light on your distant ancestors, your close family and most of all, yourself.

OK – I’m on Twitter (smartinez), Facebook, and Linked In. Probably a bunch more I’m forgetting right now. Apparently I’m a 2.0 kinda gal and I’m liking all the connections. But these pale in comparison to the possibilities of being connected by luck of the gene. As they say, you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. Seems like a link too far, but maybe that’s just old geezer talk. Still, I’m not springing for the thousand dollars yet…

Welcome to the Brave New World! (and Happy Thanksgiving!)

Sylvia

Photo credit: Guy Kawasaki

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

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

K12 Online 2007 Conference – comfy slipper learning

Flickr photo - slippersLike going to educational conferences? I do. Meeting new and old friends, learning cool things, and being inspired is revitalizing. But it’s not something I want to do every day! Airplanes, leaving home, work piling up, big crowds, and jet lag can make you wonder if it’s all worth it.So here comes some web 2.0 savvy educators with a great idea. Can’t we have it all? Can’t we share, collaborate, and be inspired without the TSA being involved? Can I participate in a way that’s easy for me, comfortable for me, and convenient for me? Oh, and did I mention… FREE?

Yup, and it starts next week. The K12 Online Conference about 21st Century teaching and learning will run over the next three weeks. But really, you are in charge. You can look at the keynotes and sessions where and when you want. You can watch videos or listen to audio. You can download them as podcasts. This is an online conference, but it isn’t about online learning. It’s about using technology – web 2.0, software, and other tools to enhance teaching and learning.

What happens during the next three weeks is that the sessions are slowly unveiled, one at a time, and there are online discussions scheduled at different times over the course of the whole conference. Some of the conversation times may be convenient for you, some may not, but somewhere, someone around the world will be thinking… “hey, they thought of me!”

Plus there will be places to comment on the presentations in a blog format – if you want to. That’s what it’s all about. You could replay your favorite session twelve times — if you want to. You can explore last year’s sessions — they are still up there on the website. You could wait until December to do this — if you want to. You can download something and share it at a staff meeting — if you want to.

But only for the next three weeks will you be able to participate with educators from around the globe talking about teaching and learning with technology in real-time sessions — if you want to.

We all like to be challenged and inspired, but we all like to put on our comfy slippers too. Now we get both.

k12online logoThe 2007 K12 Online Conference about 21st Century teaching and learning is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, 2007, and will include a preconference keynote and fireside chat by David Warlick during the week of October 8. The conference theme is Playing with Boundaries.

Check out the website, cruise around and look at the teasers for all the different sessions. The sessions run the gamut of different grade levels, classroom ideas and staff development and from practical how-tos to more philosophical things. I guarantee there will be something you will like.

Download a printable flyer and send it to a friend (or two, or ten) K12online flyer (PDF). Be brave, like Cathy Nelson of TechnoTuesday and demo it for your colleagues! Next week I’ll post more the conference and about my sessions coming the week of Oct 22-26. I blogged about my “teasers” here if you can’t wait 😉

“See” you there – Sylvia

Update – Added links to all my sessions:

Wiki with supporting resources, research, and how I made these presentations!

Flickr photo: Winston thinks my new slippers are very tasty.

Halo 3 shines harsh light on games in education

Halo 3 was released this week. For those of you who don’t play video games or have kids who play them, this was a big event. Actually, that’s an understatement, it was THE event of the year for gamers. In 24 hours, the sales of Halo 3 topped 170 million dollars in the US alone. Projections for lifetime sales of this game are 700 million US dollars.

Halo 3 screenshotOK, so that’s a lot of money and game players. What does this have to do with educational games?

Putting aside any discussion of the merits of games in education, these Halo 3 sales figures shine the harsh light of reality on games developed for schools. Here are the facts:

Halo 3 Facts (sources: LA Times, Slave to the Game site, and other sites)

  • $170 million in one day sales at an average of $70 per game translates to 2.5 million games sold in one day
  • $700 million estimated revenue translates to an anticipated 10 million games sold worldwide
  • $30 million spent on the development of the game; artists, programmers, designers, testers, and others
  • $30 million spent on marketing and promotion
  • Halo 3 is the result of 3 years of effort by 300 artists and programmers

School Facts (US data – 2003/04 National Center for Education Statistics) (I’m using US public schools data because private school data is not collected as often and international data is not tabulated the same way.)

  • 3 million American public school teachers
  • 48 million public school students
  • 96,000 public school buildings

This means…

  • In one week, more people will purchase a copy of Halo 3 than there are teachers in the United States.
  • Every public school in the U.S. would have to purchase 100 copies of a game to match the sales of Halo 3
  • There will be one Halo 3 game purchased for every 5 students, or about 3 games per class (US kindergarten to high school.)

I know what you are thinking–every game can’t be Halo 3! You are making wild estimates! Surely there is room for developers and publishers to create games that are educational!

But here’s the reality. Let’s make the wildly optimistic estimate that 10% of schools will purchase any one educational game. This completely ignores the fact that a single game will likely not meet the needs of both elementary and secondary schools, satisfy state standards, or actually appeal to all children.

Let’s be really optimistic and toss in private schools too. That raises the number of US school buildings (potential customers) to around 125,000. If 10% of all US schools purchase the same game, your estimated sales are 12,500 games. Say you make a game that is so good you can charge $100 each. That gives you projected sales of $1.2 million.

A million dollars! That’s a lot of money, right Dr. Evil?

Well, not in the world of gaming.

A game development budget can start at a million dollars. For top-tier games, $3 million dollars is a low budget. Most marketing experts believe that in order to sell the game you need to spend at least as much for marketing as you invest in developing the game. Incredibly, marketing to schools is actually expensive compared to reaching a hard core gamer. In schools, you can’t count on the word of mouth or the intense interest that gamers have for their games. Producing and selling a game that will, at best, sell 10,000 units just doesn’t make economic sense. You’d be better off putting your development team to work on something more lucrative.

So, is this hopeless?
Are educational games doomed? No, of course not. But it does imply that educational games will not be developed or marketed the same way as other video games.

Could someone donate the money? Sure, a charity, the government, or some unknown benefactor could decide to put a couple of million dollars into this effort. Don’t forget, after you make a game, you have to make people aware that it exists. That costs money too. Knowing how slowly technology is adopted in schools, they had better have a high tolerance for pain.

The good news is that when you realize that following the well-trod path of traditional game publishing won’t work, it frees you up to concentrate on what will. Liberated from constraints of the market, someone might come up something innovative that will blow everyone away.

Think you’ve got what it takes to make the Halo 3 of educational games? The MacArthur Foundation has announced a 2 million dollar competition to find emerging leaders, communicators, and innovators shaping the field of digital media and learning. This is part of their 50 million dollar, 5 year initiative to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

The deadline is October 15, 2007. Go for it!

Sylvia

Technology Success Story

We are so proud!

Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy in the San Juan School District (Sacramento, California) is featured in the Sacramento Bee as a technology success story. Jonas Salk is a double-duty Generation YES school, using both the GenYES and TechYES programs. We’ve watched the amazing work their GenYES students have been doing to support teacher use of technology and how their TechYES students have stepped up to mentoring their peers in tech literacy to receive TechYES certifications.

The story, Technology reboots student interest: Test scores show a 33-point jump for Jonas Salk chronicles the turnaround of Jonas Salk from a campus struggling with high teacher turnover and low student achievement, to one where both students and teachers are eager to show up every day. For them, technology was the key. And guess what, test scores improved as a result.

She doesn’t read aloud in class, and she doesn’t read at home. Yet here she sits, working through her lines in a newscast at Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy.

Replaying footage of the March installment of “JSTV” — once broadcast to 600 students — is bittersweet for technology teacher Jamal Hicks. It’s painful for an educator to watch the girl, in seventh grade then, fumble her way through the cue cards, knowing that her reading ability was somewhere around the third-grade level.

But she has returned to his media class for another year. Something about the camera makes her want to read. No matter how hard it might be.

“It is empowering,” Hicks says of the technology being used in his classroom. “I look at this (newscast), and I tell her, ‘You’re my hero.’ “

But it’s not just about technology. A big part of the philosophy in the renewal of Jonas Salk was to trust students and give them responsibility for their own learning and the improvement of education for all. Incorporating GenYES into that vision means that Salk GenYES students are responsible for working with teachers so that technology benefits every classroom, regardless of the teacher’s level of comfort with technology. Trusting students to solve authentic problems and participate in the learning community means that teachers have more help to integrate technology in meaningful ways, and in turn, all students are empowered and engaged in learning.

“We believed in (the students), and they started to believe in themselves,” says Principal Jamey Schrey.

Jamal Hicks is the TechYES and GenYES coordinator at Jonas Salk. The No Child Left Behind Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) grant funded the GenYES program for Salk. By using GenYES, a structured model of student support for teachers using technology, Salk can report solid data back to the state to show success.

Jamal says, “GenYES has been vital to the success at Jonas Salk. Empowering the students through technology has really worked by giving the students an important reason to learn technology and to stick with it. Many of them are used to avoiding work when they find it difficult. But because they are responsible for teaching teachers about technology, they don’t want to give up. It instills high expectations and gives them satisfaction when they finish. This carries into their approach to other classes and their schoolwork.”

Congratulations to Jamal, the students and staff at Jonas Salk for all your hard work getting some well-deserved attention and respect!

Nonconformist students – allies in educational technology use

Yesterday I posted about the new NSBA report on teen and tween use of online networks for talking about education and creating content. Today, I’d like to review a really interesting part of the report that has gotten less attention – nonconformist students and their use of technology.

Nonconformists — students who step outside of online safety and behavior rules — are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors and skills that indicate leadership among their peers. About one in five (22 percent) of all students surveyed, and about one in three teens (31 percent), are nonconformists, students who report breaking one or more online safety or behavior rules, such as using inappropriate language, posting inappropriate pictures, sharing personal information with strangers or pretending to be someone they are not.

No surprise here, it’s probably the non-conformist teachers who are also the heaviest users of technology too!

Nonconformists are significantly heavier users of social networking sites than other students, participating in every single type of social networking activity surveyed (28 in all) significantly more frequently than other students both at home and at school — which likely means that they break school rules to do so. For example, 50 percent of non conformists are producers and 38 percent are editors of online content, compared to just 21 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of other students.

These students are more in touch with other people in every way except in person –their own classmates, other friends, teachers, and even their own parents.

These students seem to have an extraordinary set of traditional and 21st century skills, including communication, creativity, collaboration and leadership skills and technology proficiency. Yet they are significantly more likely than other students to have lower grades, which they report as “a mix of Bs and Cs,”or lower, than other students. However, previous research with both parents and children has shown that enhanced Internet access is associated with improvements in grades and school attitudes, including a 2003 survey by Grunwald Associates LLC.

These findings suggest that schools need to find ways to engage nonconformists in more creative activities for academic learning. These students talents are being ignored, when in fact they are:

  • Traditional influentials (students who recommend products frequently and keep up with the latest brands)
  • Networkers (students with unusually large networks of online friends)
  • Organizers (students who organize a lot of group events using their handhelds)
  • Recruiters (students who get a disproportionately large number of other students to visit their favorite sites)
  • Promoters (students who tell their peers about new sites and features online)

So, are these kids your allies or enemies?
These students could be the key to successful school-wide use of technology, providing both expertise and the networking ability to create wider acceptance among their peers. By providing them with a role, graduated responsibility, and an understanding of what the goals are for educational technology, they could be a primary asset, an advance team, and a force for change.

Download the NSBA reportCreating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking (PDF)