In the news – Page 5 – Sylvia Libow Martinez

August 11, 2010May 15, 2017

‘Research dispels common ed-tech myths’

Contrary to popular opinion, newer teachers aren’t any more likely to use technology in their lessons than veteran teachers, and a lack of access to technology does not appear to be the main reason why teachers do not use it: These are among the common perceptions about education technology that new research from Walden University’s Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership appears to dispel.

Research dispels common ed-tech myths – read it at eSchoolNews.com

I’ve found this to be true in the schools we work with. A teacher who has experience with a project-based classroom has a real edge in adapting and adopting technology. These teachers seem to have more of the “chops” necessary for a tech-infused classroom — juggling lots of things going on at once, managing the seeming chaos while still keeping things on track, and dealing with inevitable setbacks and distractions. And often, it’s the veteran teachers with these skills.

Another finding that could surprise some people is that a lack of access to technology doesn’t appear to be the main reason why teachers don’t use technology in their instruction. Only 29 percent of the teachers who said they used specific technology devices less than once a week in their classrooms cited lack of access as the primary reason, while 49 percent said the devices in question weren’t necessary for their lessons.

Again, this rings true to me. I’m not one to point fingers at teachers and say that just because they aren’t using technology, they are not doing their jobs. Sure I’ve met tech-resistant teachers. But I’ve also seen too many times where technology was purchased on a whim by someone enamored by some feature or marketing claim, without input from anyone. I’ve seen lots of closets full of “stuff” that can’t connect to the network, or other fatal flaws that weren’t noticed until too late. Teachers who resist such antics are being professional, not resistant.

As I’ve said before, “You can’t buy change. It’s a process, not a purchase. The right shopping list won’t change education.” (in Let me save you $6,162.48) “Stuff” doesn’t matter as much as if the technology is purchased with a coherent plan. And the plan has to have teacher input and ownership. It even works better when there is student input and ownership as well.

The comments on the article are insightful as well, including bringing up the question – what do you mean by “technology”? This is a subject I’ve addressed before as well, Educational Technology Doesn’t Work?

Does anyone expect that a new gradebook program will inspire a teacher to bring student-centered technology into the classroom? Even using their term “instructional tool” seems pretty loose. Is transferring overhead slides to PowerPoint using a technology as an instructional tool?

This study should be reviewed by all district and school tech committees to see if these “myths” and assumptions have fed into any part of the tech plan.

Sylvia
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August 8, 2010May 8, 2017

So-called ‘Digital Natives’ not media savvy… so now what?

Ok, so maybe we are ready to accept the fact that “digital natives” doesn’t really mean anything. The New York Times recently ran an article So-Called ‘Digital Natives’ Not Media Savvy, New Study Shows, to which I COULD respond “nyah, nyah, told you so” – because I wrote about this 3 years ago in Digital natives/immigrants – how much do we love this slogan?

But no, I’ll refrain. (I’m assuming you can’t see me doing a tiny little superiority dance in front of my computer as I write this.)

So what does need to happen once we stop labeling kids and start treating them as individuals who show up with all sorts of different experiences, interests, and needs? How do we take students from where they are and introduce opportunities for deeper learning?

Here’s one idea:

“The Glitch project, by Betsy diSalvo and Amy Bruckman, deals directly with one of these consumer/producer dichotomies: African-American teen men are among the most game-playing demographics in American society, yet they’re among the least represented in computer science programs. Being interested in playing the technology doesn’t equate with interest or facility in making the technology. Betsy’s great insight is that learning to be game-testers is a terrific bridge from game-player to game-maker. In a sense, Betsy is teaching her students exactly the issue of information literacy discussed in the NYTimes piece below — it’s about having a critical eye about the technology. So, to all those teachers worried about being made obsolete by digital natives, rest easy. You have a LOT to teach them.” – Mark Guzdial, from his Computing Education Blog

It’s like I said in my previous post – “If we walk away from our responsibility to teach them about appropriate, academic uses of technology, it’s our fault when silly, or worse, inappropriate uses of technology fill that vacuum.”

Creating labels like native and immigrant only solidify boundaries and create implied adversaries. It’s simply the wrong mental picture for a collaborative learning environment where teachers and students are all lifelong learners.

Sylvia

August 6, 2010

The moms are all right

The publisher of Parenting magazine and BlogHer.com just surveyed 1,032 moms on the effect of technology on parenting behavior. The study will be published in September, but you can download a PDF Executive Summary of the survey now.

From the press release:
Parenting and BlogHer found that the majority of moms surveyed have a very positive view of technology’s role in fostering communication and connections within their families:

87% agree that understanding new technology is important to stay connected with their children.
70% feel that technology can provide great ways for families to spend time together.
83% care about new technology because of the benefits it brings to their everyday lives.

These moms do see threats to their children…from both the Internet and television, but they don’t believe those fears have been realized: Only 5% report believing that their children have ever been engaged in addictive online behavior like excessive gaming, only 4% believe their kids have viewed pornography online, and less than 1% believe their kids have participated in cyber-bullying, sexting or inappropriate online communication with adults.

“The results of this survey were very encouraging,” said Nancy Hallberg, chief strategy officer of The Parenting Group. “Today’s moms are not fearful of technology and its growing role in their family’s lives – they view it not only as a tool to connect with other moms, but as a way to communicate with their children and teach them responsible ways to interact online.”

Link to a PDF – An Executive Summary of the survey.

The study will appear in the September issue of Parenting magazine, on Parenting.com, and on BlogHer.com.

——

This appears to be all that’s online right now – but the Executive Summary PDF has some interesting tidbits. It clearly shows that these moms feel the benefits of technology outweigh the risks by creating new ways for them to communicate and model appropriate social connections with their children.

In other words – the moms are all right.

Might be an interesting topic for some back to school tech planning. For example, are we overestimating parental fear about online risks and other perceived negative effects of technology? Do we really know what they think these days? It could have changed drastically in the past few years as more and more parents find out that Facebook means stronger family and social connections. What does it mean now and in the future to policies and tech plans if our parents views are changing so quickly? Maybe schools should poll their own parents and ask some of these questions.

Sylvia

July 25, 2010

Tinkering and creativity

In my Tinkering talk at ISTE (slides coming soon!), I shared the French word for tinkering which is “bricolage”. It’s a great word because it doesn’t just mean tinkering, it also carries a connotation of playfulness, art, and using found objects. Those French certainly have a way with words!

I especially like how Sherry Turkle, the famous educational researcher explained bricolage. “The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next.”

This week, Newsweek magazine gives us, The Creativity Crisis. “For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong—and how we can fix it.” This article tackles the contradiction between America’s “standards-obsessed schools,” what we know about how children learn, and businesses who say that creativity is the number one attribute they need in new employees.

This perception of a different kind of problem solving, not the one taught in school with rigid steps and “right answers” – but one of playful invention, with room for serendipity, and respect for reflection seems to me to be at the heart of creativity. Because creativity is only meaningful in the act of CREATION – it’s not a feeling, or a mindset, or an outcome. But it CAN be taught, contrary to conventional wisdom, it’s not an inborn talent that you are either born with or not.

It’s about playful invention, and I believe that the notion of bricolage captures that perfectly, and is especially appropriate when talking about children.

Sylvia

July 23, 2010

Do you sleep with your cell phone? Pew Study on Millennials

Generations, like people, have personalities, and Millennials — the American teens and twenty-somethings who are making the passage into adulthood at the start of a new millennium — have begun to forge theirs: confident, self-expressive, liberal, upbeat and open to change.

They are more ethnically and racially diverse than older adults. They’re less religious, less likely to have served in the military, and are on track to become the most educated generation in American history.

Their entry into careers and first jobs has been badly set back by the Great Recession, but they are more upbeat than their elders about their own economic futures as well as about the overall state of the nation.

from The Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. – Pew Research Center

The latest Pew Study on “Millennials” (people born after 1980) is part of a Pew Research Center series of reports exploring the behaviors, values and opinions of the teens and twenty-somethings that make up the Millennial Generation.

These youth say that “technology” is the defining characteristic of their generation. And it’s not just use of gadgets, it’s the social aspect of how technology shapes their lives.

The obvious question is: How has school responded to this demographic shift?

Take the quiz: How Millennial Are You?

Sylvia

June 24, 2010May 8, 2017

ISTE opening keynote – global issue networks

The final countdown to ISTE 2010, Denver, Colorado (June 27-30) has begun! Thousands of exhibitors and attendees will descend on Denver this weekend to learn about the newest applications, strategies, and issues surrounding technology education. The conference formally kicks off with the opening keynote Sunday night, June 27, at 5:45. This year’s opening keynote speaker is the former vice-president of the World Bank, Jean-Francois Rischard.

Wondering what he’s going to talk about and what the World Bank has to do with education?

Mr. Rischard is the author of High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, a book that identifies urgent global issues and proposes better, alternative methodologies for developing solutions. According to Mr. Rischard, the effectiveness of any solution to a global problem hinges on technological innovation and student action. The presentation will conclude with a description of four kinds of strategic curriculum changes that will enable educators to help prepare students for these increasingly relevant challenges.

Many of Mr. Rischard’s solutions are centered on what are called Global Issue Networks. These networks vary in implementation, but one commonality is a focus on “user” driven solutions to problems; sort of Governance 2.0. Technological acumen and information literacy are going to be increasingly valued skills as the way we solve problems evolves in our inter-connected world.

See you there!

The Generation YES team – Sylvia, Dennis, Megan & Steve

P.S. We’ll be in booth 855 during the conference, along with students from local schools who will show what they are doing to improve technology integration in their schools. They will also be printing out business cards for anyone who leaves theirs at home! Come by and say hi!

June 17, 2010May 12, 2017

The war on children’s playgrounds

“Children rise to risk,” says Joan Almon, executive director of the U.S. Alliance for Childhood. “Give them some genuine risk and they quickly learn what their limits are, and then they expand their limits.” The problem is: If kids never encounter even tiny risks, they never develop that thing we call common sense.

via The war on children’s playgrounds – Children – Salon.com

Children rise to all kinds of challenges when they risk failure, make mistakes and figure out how to rise above them. It’s the same intellectually as physically, If students are not taking risks intellectually, they will never push the limit, and they will develop the habit of complacency. The special thing about technology, and especially about creativity tools, is that they allow children to take intellectual risks with ideas, through multiple media and approaches that they can control and master.

June 16, 2010May 8, 2017

Update on Maine Learning Technology Initiative

The post Students raising funds and technology awareness in Maine got a lot of comments and interest on this blog. Here’s an update from one of the participants:

First of all, our students are committed to this project! All of our students in Wells, Maine, had to get out of bed and to the school bus by 5:15 AM for the 3 hour bus ride to Orono. They all had planned their presentations with their teachers and then practiced for 2 weeks. Once at the University, they all attended the opening session, then walked quickly across campus to a variety of classrooms and within 10 minutes they were on stage, confident and presenting to students and teachers from around the state.

Hope we see more from these motivated students!

Sylvia

June 15, 2010

Reality check – is panic over technology overblown?

“NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.

So too with electronic technologies. PowerPoint, we’re told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans.

But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.”

via Op-Ed Contributor – Mind Over Mass Media – NYTimes.com.

June 11, 2010

Let me save you $6,162.48

This morning in the Washington Post, an article critical of educational technology tore into the heart of the matter – the relationship between schools hoping that there is some new magic wand that will improve student achievement and the capacity of sales-driven companies to invent expensive “solutions.”

Focusing mainly on interactive whiteboards, the article quotes teachers and researchers who point out that they are little more than glorified chalkboards, and one student who says exactly that.

“There is hardly any research that will show clearly that any of these machines will improve academic achievement,” said Larry Cuban, education professor emeritus at Stanford University. “But the value of novelty, that’s highly prized in American society, period. And one way schools can say they are “innovative” is to pick up the latest device.”

“Or, as 18-year-old Benjamin Marple put it: “I feel they are as useful as a chalkboard.”

The end of the article leaves you with a sobering vignette – the advent of the next wave, the multi-touch table.

“One recent morning, an amiable corporate salesman in a dark suit wheeled into a Maryland classroom the latest high-tech device — a $6,500 table with an interactive touch screen that allows students to collaboratively count, do puzzles and play other instructional games. “We had a first run and boom! They sold out,” Joe Piazza said in his presentation to administrators at Parkside High School on the Eastern Shore. “It was kind of like the iPad.”

In the cinder-block classroom, a few kindergartners sat around the fancy table, working a digital puzzle as blips and canned applause encouraged them. The school officials seemed pleased.

“So,” the district’s technology director asked Piazza, “do we just call you for pricing?”

So, as promised, here’s a shopping list that will provide you with EVERYTHING a multi-touch table does. I’ll even spring for the high quality “classroom” versions.

1 Kindergarten Table – $169.99
Deluxe Wooden Classoom Tangrams – $18.95 (go crazy, buy two) $37.90
Classroom Coloring books – $3.74
Finger paints (classroom set) – $19.90
MathBlaster on eBay – $5.99

I’ll even spot you $100 to go get a collection of maps, human body visuals, and other stuff to lay on the table so students can point at them. (Actually, if you really are bargain hunting, you can get a lot of this stuff for free on the Internet. Cha-ching!)

Oh, and don’t forget the canned applause when students do things “correctly” – priceless

Total cost – $337.52

These tables cost around $6,500. So there, tada! I’ve saved you $6,162.48

But as I’ve said before, “You can’t buy change. It’s a process, not a purchase. The right shopping list won’t change education.” That quote got picked up in an article by Bill Ferriter for Teacher Magazine “Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards.”

So do yourself (and the kids) a favor – save $6,162.48 today, and in a few short years you’ll be able to say, “I told you so.” when the articles about “tables don’t teach” start appearing.

As the kids say — ur welcome.

Sylvia
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