ukuBuza: to ask

End of this blog

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:58:00 +0000

I'm switching to Wordpress. Ukubuza is now officially laid to rest. All of the postings from here have been transferred to my new blog: innovating education.

Sorry for the hassle, but please go there from now on. If you're subscribed to this blog's RSS, please now subscribe to: http://feeds.feedburner.com/innovatingeducation.

You can also subscribe to the new blog via email.

Thank you.

How to stem the Matthew Effect in education

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:31:00 +0000

How to stem the Matthew Effect in education is a piece I wrote about a presentation given by Dr Luis Crouch at the Integrated Education Programme (IEP) conference (in February).

The “Matthew Effect” (a term coined by Keith Stanovich, a psychologist who has done extensive research on reading) denotes processes whereby inequality is created or maintained. In literacy terms, learners at the end of grade one who can read well begin a pattern of outperforming those learners who cannot read well. With time, the gap widens. Learners who score poorly in literacy from the beginning will go on to fall behind in all other subject areas. The same applies to numeracy.

Dr Crouch shared his thoughts on how to stem this trend in education.

Notes from the Integrated Education Program (IEP) Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:03:00 +0000

A little late, but below are my notes from the Integrated Education Program (IEP) Conference in Pretoria (6-7 February 2008).

Overall notes

The Integrated Education Program (2004-08) aimed to improve the quality of primary education by supporting programmes in teacher education, as well as school management and governance, in selected districts in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and the Northern Cape. The program was funded by USAID (approx. R155m) and implemented in partnership with the South African Department of Education. Overall goal: to improve learner performance in literacy and numeracy (in gr 3), and mathematics and science (in gr 6) in participating schools (the poorest of the poor in SA).

As a result of the program the average improvement in learner performance was 5%. This shows just how difficult it is to raise the average grade.

The director general in the Department of Education, Duncan Hindle, said that we need to:

Shift resources from the FET to GET phases, especially Foundation Phase.
Raise expectations amongst parents and society at large of the high levels of teaching that they should expect for their children, of what the service levels should be. He visited a school where at 11am on a Friday all of the teachers had left for the weekend. When he asked the parents if they were concerned about this, they didn't realise that this was not normal practice.

General comments from speakers and the audience:

A culture of assessment has not taken root amongst teachers. Not enough regular assessments, e.g. testing, and recording of results.
Language of instruction (LOI): Despite the language policy, there is confusion in the some schools as to whether they should teach in the local language or in English. Some of the schools said that the LOI for gr 3 was isiXhosa, but when the learners were given survey instruments in isiXhosa they could barely understand the documents. The learners managed to answer the English instruments. There is a need to clarify the implementation of the LOI policy.
Teachers have to be held accountable for performance.
At the same time, they must be given solid training and support materials.
It is crucial to develop literacy skills in the Foundation Phase for cognitive development. This requires reading and extended or complex writing, which is more than a paragraph, ideally a page of writing.

Statistical analysis in SA Education

Dr Luis Crouch. See How to stem the Matthew Effect in education. Additional notes below.

Suggestion for improving education in SA:

Make schools divulge their results. Universal external assessment might help.
Ensure that schools understand what their expected grade achievement is.
Popularise good teachers: those that arrive on time, that cover the curriculum, etc.
He gave an example of a school in the EC where the teachers vote democratically on what they'll teach that week. Can't run a school system like that.

Mid-90s, almost no public statistical analysis by Apartheid government. Since then, explosion of stats, but how much have we learned? Further, most academics, NGOs and education departments are slow to take up and act on the sound research findings that have been produced in post-94 SA, .

Learner drop-out is something to consider. But a much bigger problem is whether those in school are actually learning anything. The average child in SA learns less than 97% of European kids.

Effect of socioeconomic status (SES): Within the group of low parental wealth there is a big discrepency in reading scores. The poor get highly variable levels of education.

To run a good school, need:

Principal who is pedagogical leader and good manager.
Teachers that follow curriculum.
Learners that are disciplined.
Accountability.

IEP learner achievement results

Ms. Carla Pereira, JET Education Services

Findings
Gr 3: Literacy
Overall improvement in project schools over control groups (using very basic descriptive statistics), though not a huge improvement.

Gr 6: Science
Sometimes in project schools and control schools the grades actually dropped over the course of the studies.

Performance by skills
She confirmed that literacy intervention has an impact on mathematics and science skills that have narrative components. If a learner can't read, he/she can't understand maths and science concepts that require reading.

IEP impact study

Eric Schollar provided a qualitative review of the impact of the IEP and also lessons learned about the actual implementation of the program, which are relevant to any large-scale educational intervention.

(Gain refers to the difference between the control and project groups for the pre-, mid- and post-tests.) The percentages given below represent the gain made by the one group relative to the other, not the actual test results. The summary of the IEP impact is as follows (in terms of gain):

Literacy (gr 3): +4%
Numeracy (gr 3): +11.3%
Mathematics (gr 6): -0.1%
Natural Sciences (gr 6): +2.7%

Gain for gr 6 is not significant, but is very strongly concentrated at gr 3 level. Overall, the average gain (gr 3 & 6) is +4.5%. Schools in KZN made the most impressive gains.

Distribution of impact
Of the test groups (127 schools), the distribution of impact (i.e. greater than 4%) of the IEP was as follows:

Positive impact: 45.7%
No impact: 26.8%
Negative impact: 27.6%

So for a program such as IEP, which cost R155m, more than half of participating schools were either unchanged or left in a worse position by the program. It is hard to understand how this happens, but apparently this distribution is about average for large-scale educational interventions. The reason is that some schools are so dysfunctional that more resources provided (e.g. through the IEP) make no positive difference whatsoever. External organisations simply cannot impose managerial authority on those schools. Basically, only the school can save itself!

Analysis of the impact
Schools that made the highest mean gains did so as follows:

Literacy: +35%
Numeracy: +24%
Mathematics: +12%
Natural Sciences: +18%

In other words, in some schools the project group improved the literacy scores by 35% relative to the control group.
Schools with the lowest mean gains:

Literacy: -18%
Numeracy: -9%
Mathematics: -10%
Natural Sciences: -25%

Why was impact concentrated in KZN?
Only in KZN were all scores increased at post-test. Why? The following reasons were offered, all of which are relevant to any educational intervention:

In KZN the learner workbooks were supplied to all schools. Assessment resource banks (ARB) were provided in all participating provinces but in KZN they were accompanied by common assessments (supported by the DoE).
In KZN information from the external evaluation was regularly supplied and performance targets set for schools.
In KZN detailed monitoring instruments were used.

Overall insights
The overall insights and lessons learned for educational interventions are as follows:

Teachers are very strongly in favour of the classroom-level support they have enjoyed through the IEP. Many of them are still uncertain of the practical application of the planning and methodological principles of the OBE curriculum in classrooms. Independent service provider (ISP) field workers are popular partly because they can demonstrate these aspects in real situations. (This insight dispels the commonly held notion that teachers don't want outsiders coming into their classrooms and helping them to do their jobs.)
Mr Schollar felt that one of the main causes of learner performance improvements is the provision of a syllabus supported by learner workbooks, together with common assessment tools.
Systemic, rather than localised, assessment is vital for the SA educational system. Mr Schollar believes that one of the most important steps taken by the DoE since 1994 is to begin to implement across-the-board assessments. In some instances, local assessments pass learners to the next grade while those same learners fail national assessments.
Because many teachers are "confused about OBE", IEP training in this regard is one of the most highly valued elements of the program. Quality of outcome was mainly due to the materials supporting classroom teaching.
Teachers very strongly favour the provision of project materials that provide guidance to classroom planning, activity and assessment. Mr Firoz Patel, Deputy Director-General, DoE, who presented later, even proposed that the support materials provide minute-by-minute guidance on how to implement the NCS in the context of the OBE philosophy.

Closing remarks

Dr Nick Taylor, CEO, Jet Education Services

Teachers perceive OBE to be something completely different to their previous understanding of teaching. So they feel that they can't teach OBE until they've been trained and developed to do so. But OBE is not something magical. They are still meant to be imparting knowledge. Need to move beyond dependency culture on training.
Secondly, need to follow text books It's all in there, just follow the book.
Because of poor teachers, learners are being socialised into a mentality of low expectations, low grades and low performance. The learners don't know that they should be pushing themselves harder, that they can achieve more.

The need for critical research skills

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 11:16:00 +0000

We often hear educators complain that when their learners use the internet to find information for projects they simply copy and paste from the first reference that comes up on Google.

Vicki Davis, a teacher in the US, posted an interesting blog entry about this:

If students take the "first thing they come to" to determine their opinion, then we are sorely at the mercy of Google's algorithms and the determination of webmasters who desire to be heard. Understanding how to search, how to validate sources, and even how to use deep web resources is an essential part of being literate.

Citing multiple sources is also essential for the critical researcher. The blog post describes what needs to be done in schools to teach these skills, as well as the barriers to curriculum change that make this a challenge. Some interesting comments from other teachers are also posted.

I support her argument: that "the ability to form one's opinion and validate sources is the key" for digitally enabled youth. These qualities form part of communication and analytical skills in the 21st century.

YouTube’s OK for scholars, non-profits and the queen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:03:00 +0000

In YouTube’s OK for scholars, non-profits and the queen (Thought Leader) I give examples of academia, international organisations and monarchs using YouTube to share content and engage their constituents.

For these serious groups to use a site hitherto largely reserved for pop culture is interesting. It signifies a shift towards richer visual media, and is part of a broader shift towards a more participatory culture.

Fan fiction: Improving youth literacy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 18:17:00 +0000

I wrote Fan fiction: Improving youth literacy to introduce fan fiction and a study that showed it as a legitimate way for youth to improve their literacy skills. The article appears on Thought Leader.

Using MXit to learn

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:15:00 +0000

Using MXit to learn is a short piece I wrote for Thought Leader that highlights potential and real uses of MXit in the learning process, based on much-needed research. I'm excited about the potential this tool offers for learning in South Africa, but also aware that all the associated risks still need to be carefully managed.

Education in an emerging participatory culture

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 10:06:00 +0000

A paper co-authored by Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, considers the proliferation of online content creation and networking activities by teens in the USA.

Jenkins’ paper explains that most of these teens are involved in participatory cultures:

A participatory culture is a culture with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations, and some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices. A participatory culture is also one in which members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they care what other people think about what they have created)."
A growing body of scholarship suggests potential benefits of these forms of participatory culture, including opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural expression, the development of skills valued in the modern workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship. Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.
The new skills include:

Play — the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving.
Performance — the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery.
Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
Multitasking — the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.
Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information.
Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

A central goal of this report is to shift the focus of the conversation about the digital divide from questions of technological access to those of opportunities to participate and to develop the cultural competencies and social skills needed for full involvement. Schools as institutions have been slow to react to the emergence of this new participatory culture; the greatest opportunity for change is currently found in afterschool programs and informal learning communities. Fostering such social skills and cultural competencies requires a more systemic approach to media education in the United States.

Question: is this relevant to youth and educators in developing countries? Can the same appropriation of technology be expected of youth in South Africa? Is there an equal need for cultural competencies and social skills needed there? And can these activities, which are clearly engaging for young people, be used as a vehicle for other forms of learning?

I believe the answers to be yes more than no. At the Shuttleworth Foundation, the focus area Education in an emerging participatory culture will frame all projects and research of the C&A theme.

Online social networks and teen safety

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:03:00 +0000

While on the point of online social networks and teen safety, Pete Reilly, President of the New York Association of Computers and Technology in Education (NYSCATE), has written an article that uses various and contrasting statistics to help teachers (and parents) evaluate the risks. This quote is interesting:

The question is, “Are we going to take a “zero risk” approach to using technology and the tools of the Web?”

We don’t take a “zero risk” approach with our sports programs where the chance of injury, paralysis, and, in rare cases, death, is always present. We don’t take that approach with field trips where students travel to museums and historical sites in locations where they might be touched by crime. We don’t take that approach with recess on our playgrounds, or transporting our kids to and from school.

I like this. There is no perfectly safe place in the world for young people. Of course there are measures that teachers and parents can take to make the internet experience somewhat safer for learners, but in the end they are the ones who need to be savvy enough to recognise danger signals and respond appropriately.

Online social networks and a teen's suicide

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:01:00 +0000

Last year Megan Meier, a 13-year-old from Missouri, committed suicide after an online relationship went sour. Megan thought she was dating a likable 16-year-old boy named Josh who she met on MySpace. After a month, Josh turned on her by sending cruel and abusive emails. It turns out that "Josh" was actually the 47-year-old mother -- Lori Drew -- of one of Megan's ex-friends. Lori was avenging her daughter, who Megan had apparently spurned in the past.

The press have predictably dined out on the story, which has provided ammunition for those opposed to the dangers, and even evils, of online social networking. danah boyd's post about this tragic event is interesting and mitigates somewhat against the media hype: Overprotective parenting and bullying: Who is to blame for the suicide of Megan Meier?

It's true that mediating technology reduces social consequences -- e.g. being punched by someone who you insult -- because it takes away the immediacy of physical, real-time interaction. (This is not new. Good old-fashioned letters do the same. They shift time and space. But today's mediating technologies are different because of persistence, searchability, replicability and invisible audiences.) So, does this reduction in social consequence mean that it's easier to be rude and cruel in cyberspace? Another one of danah boyd's posts -- Musing about online social norms -- provides some insight into answering this question.

What happened to Megan was the result of a deceiving, abusive, bullying adult. We should not blame the technology. Further, online activities usually mirror offline ones, e.g. if you are a vulnerable teenager offline, you'll probably be one online. This looks like the case with Megan. While education about online activities and how to navigate this brave new world might not have saved Megan, it cannot be a bad thing and we should continue to educate young people about life in mediated publics. In this space certain social consequences are limited, but others are exaggerated due to the fact that what you say sticks around, it is searchable, it is replicable and it can be read by unintended audiences. Lori Drew was found out, after all.

Nokia study predicts rise of 'circular entertainment'

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:08:00 +0000

A new study from Nokia and The Future Laboratory predicts that by 2012, a quarter of all entertainment will be "circular", that is created, edited, and shared within peer groups rather than being generated by traditional media. The bulk of the study was based on interviews with trend-setting consumers from 17 countries about their digital behaviors and lifestyles.

Mark Selby, Vice President, Multimedia, Nokia, said: "The trends we are seeing show us that people will have a genuine desire not only to create and share their own content, but also to remix it, mash it up and pass it on within their peer groups - a form of collaborative social media." The term circular is based on the movement of content: it is created, shared with friends/family, gets edited/remixed and then shared on or returned again.

As Tim Leberecht of CNet says, one has to take these vendor-funded studies with a pinch of salt. He makes an interesting point about the study: that the distinction between traditional and "circular" entertainment is becoming increasingly difficult to define. But still, for what it is worth, the tech early adopters in these countries are living in and establishing a participatory culture.

I wonder, since the data is based on the actions of early-adopters, how much of this applies to South Africa (SA)? If the prediction is five years out, is it any more for SA? And if yes, how many more years? Only two of the 17 countries are traditionally comparable to SA: Brazil and India. Reading about the survey findings there didn't help to answer these questions, but it does make for interesting reading.

Workshop: Blogging in the classroom

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:10:00 +0000

ICT4Champions is a Google group concerned with the use of web 2.0 in South African schools. Today Maggie Verster, founder of the group, lead a workshop on blogging in the classroom. It was attended by 10 educators, all from private schools, who were shown how to create and customise a class blog using Edublogs. I attended to meet Maggie and the others in the group and to pick their brains on the state of Web 2.0 in our schools. The bottom line: basic use of ICTs, let alone for connected, creative, collaborative web 2.0 activities, is limited and problematic in South African schools. According to the attendees of the workshop, reasons for this include:

Lack of physical infrastructure: PCs, printers, etc.
No or slow connectivity, due to the prohibitively high cost of bandwidth.
Lack of support from school principals and management.
Lack of ICT literacy of educators.
Educators' fear that their learners know more than they do about technology (which they usually do).
Time pressure on educators to work through the curriculum, leaving no time to learn how to blog and get blogging with their learners. Educators simply don't have enough time in the day.
Overworked educators who resist taking on "just another thing."

The attendees asked for:

More workshops such as this one. They appreciate practical “starter” lessons from someone who's done research and knows which software, technologies and sites to use.
Educator guides for referencing and citing content.

Compared to public schools, private schools usually have fairly good ICT facilities, supportive management and a willingness to send educators on training courses. Right now in private and public schools there are champion educators and principals who implement web 2.0 in their classrooms. Their learners blog, create digital stories and participate in social networks. The educators themselves are active members of communities of practice, such as the Maths Literacy one in South Africa. But these cases are very very very rare. There is much work to be done to change this!

Image by Maggie Verster

Interview with danah boyd, social networking expert

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:53:00 +0000

In an interview with danah boyd, she speaks about the impact of social networking on society and education.

Key points:

We live in a changing world, with new technologies and social media that allow people to easily connect, communicate, create and share content.
These changes are reshifting and reshaping public life as we know it. Our lives today, which consist in large part digitally, are more persistent, searchable, replicable and visible (in public spaces we don't always anticipate).
We socialise young people into public life (what to wear, how to behave, who to stay away from, etc.) but we also need to socialise young people into these new mediated public spaces.

Impact on education:

We need to primarily educate on how to deal with constantly evolving and emerging technologies (above teaching about the technology or even with the technology itself). (Of course it can be argued that the best way to teach the primary goal is through playing with current technology.)
We need to teach critical thinking skills and new media literacies.
She is working on a teachers guide to Wikipedia (out next US summer, June/July 2008) that can be used to teach critical thinking skills around Wikipedia, and is happy for someone in Cape Town to localise the guide to the South African curriculum.
Social networking is here to stay, but it might not be as Facebook or MySpace. As a concept it will be integrated into other technologies and media, e.g. your cellphone.

Teaching critical thinking in History class

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 14:04:00 +0000

Next year a new matric History syllabus will be taught in South African schools. For the first time ever, Grade 12 learners will learn about apartheid.

But what is equally significant is the departure in teaching approach from rote learning of historical facts to discussion and open debate.

According to a Sunday Times article, the revised content aims "to make history more inclusive, representing different points of view" and that it encourages learners "to make up their own minds about the past." In the article, historian Professor Nigel Worden from UCT says: "I'm a huge fan of this curriculum. It's not just the new content but also the way it encourages skills of inquiry."

This is very encouraging! By asking questions and holding the facts up to group discussion, learners develop analytical skills such as inquiry and critical thinking. And presenting their arguments for or against, whether in written or oral form, develops communication skills.

Image by Georg via Flickr (CC)

Mother-tongue education (part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:09:00 +0000

(I am currently researching and developing a position on mother-tongue education in South Africa for the Shuttleworth Foundation. This is the first in a series of posts on this topic.)

The Western Cape Education Department's (WCED) Language Transformation Plan will promote six years of mother-tongue-based bilingual education, where practicable. Currently only grades 1-3 receive mother-tongue bilingual education. A pilot project is underway with 16 schools in the province where certain subjects are being taught in isiXhosa. The WCED claims positive results thus far: isiXhosa learners are far more lively in class, their academic performance is improving, and learner and educator self-esteem is growing.

I met with Prof Zubeida Desai, Dean of Education at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), who has been directly involved in a similar project, called Loitasa. Her views are as follows:

There is no doubt that mother-tongue bilingual education is a good thing. It allows learners to develop cognitive skills because they can focus on the subject being taught without having to struggle with language issues.
In Norway, learners are taught in Norwegian, but learn English as a subject. Most Norwegian learners speak relatively good English. The same goes for Holland.The key is that English is taught in an engaging way and for communication purposes.
In SA, we have learners who are taught in English from grades 4-12 and yet many leave school as very poor English speakers.

Essentially, Zubeida believes that English is crucial for living and working in the world today. Mother-tongue education should not be about doing away with English. Rather, for learners, it should allow learning in a language that is familiar, while at the same time learning English as a subject in an effective and engaging manner.

Image by Crivins via Flickr (CC)

Engaging problem learners through digital storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:16:00 +0000

Engaging problem learners through digital storytelling is a short piece I wrote for Thought Leader on how digital storytelling is proven to engage learners in the classroom. This is particularly relevant for South Africa where educators are increasingly dealing with unruly and violent learners.

Informal (m)learning: youth and camera phones

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:03:00 +0000

My world through my camera phone describes a project about a group of teenagers from San Francisco and Pretoria who used camera phones to document aspects of their lives, post the material online and to engage each other around that. Every week I would meet with the group in San Francisco to discuss that week's tasks, which were related to capturing and conveying aspects of their individual culture: their family roots, the food they eat, the music they like, their community, etc. While much more research is needed, the project demonstrated that mobile phones and blogging, supported by in-person group discussions, are useful tools to foster cross-cultural awareness.

The project began to answer questions such as:

How do youth socially and communicatively interact with their mobile phones?
How can mobile phones be used to document their lives?
And in a world of global communications, can this mobile device be a conduit for increased cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity?

Image taken with a camera phone by Ben Dunning, 14 (CC)

Beginning to define the C&A skills theme

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:36:00 +0000

The Foundation has five core themes, one of which is communication and analytical (C&A) skills development. This is a very broad theme that needs to be defined and focused, something that I'll be doing over the coming months. As a starter Helen King, the Shuttleworth Foundation's Principal Advisor, pointed out the following regarding this theme:

The Foundation seeks to promote the development of C&A skills of school learners. Where possible, technology should be used in skills development.
The focus for the Foundation is not on the bright learners who will have access to good maths and science educators and go on to become mathematicians, scientists, engineers, etc. It is concerned with the vast majority of learners who are currently being failed by the system because they receive inadequate maths and science teaching. Reasons for this include there not being enough educators in these subject areas and not enough text books for learning.
While most of these learners won't pursue careers in maths or science, they nevertheless need C&A skills to be productive members of society.
The question then is: how can learners effectively be taught C&A skills in schools in ways that can fall outside of the maths and science classroom, and in the context of a developing country in the 21st century?

The Shuttleworth Foundation 101

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:13:00 +0000

After a full week at the Shuttleworth Foundation (SF) I've got a better sense of its overall goals and the space in which it operates.

The SF's primary focus is on formal education in schools (all grade levels). Informal learning is also relevant if it contributes to the formal learning outcomes.
The SF operates in South Africa (SA), but with the hope that any applicable educational software, models and projects developed will be used internationally.
Many schools in SA face dire challenges: not enough educators, too many learners per class, lack of electricity, corrupt and defunct school feeding schemes, learners in grade 7 who still can't read or write, overworked and overstressed educators, no or limited bandwidth. But while these harsh realities exist, there are many schools that have adequate facilities for learning. The SF works on certain assumptions: the school has a computer lab with internet connectivity, learners are literate, educators have (at least) basic ICT skills.
The SF searches for “quantum leap” solutions that will have a large-scale impact on education in SA and beyond. As an organisation, it is small and agile enough to focus on innovative approaches to education.
The SF is committed to all things “open”: open-source software, open content and creative commons licensing.

High school education delivered via the web

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:55:00 +0000

A project in the Philippines aims to digitise the entire high school curriculum as an alternative to taking it in the normal classroom setting. Some of the online modules have been piloted in four designated e-learning centres located in public schools or designated Telof (Telecommunications Office) government calling offices.

"The e-learning modules are ideally targeted at high school drop-outs or out-of-school youths who wish to finish and get a high school diploma, especially those who feel they are too old to go to school," said one of the project's commissioners.

Research into the efficacy of this approach would be very interesting and, if positive, have far-reaching implications for other countries wanting to foster life-long learning.

Source: Inquirer.net

Technology, maths and professional teacher development

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:00:00 +0000

I had lunch with Dr Jeremy Roschelle, a Director at the Center for Technology in Learning, SRI International, Palo Alto, CA. For over 60 years SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute, has produced world-class research and been a major player in the growth of Silicon Valley and the computer revolution. (The mouse was invented at SRI International.) The main points of our discussion is below.

Previously I blogged about a presentation that Jeremy gave on the effectiveness of technology in the classroom, when scaled up. In the study that Jeremy led, SimCalc -- an interactive software-based curriculum that teaches graphing technologies and concepts of proportionality to 7th grade learners -- was implemented in 48 classes in Texas. The learners in those classes showed a significant improvement in performance compared to 47 control classes. Today Jeremy again reiterated the importance of a holistic approach to implementing technology enhanced learning, which includes having good software that is aligned with the curriculum, and comprehensive educator training on that software.

Jeremy also spoke about the importance of having educators that are adaptive and strategic in their teaching approaches. Being flexible means that an educator can present a concept in a way that is different to that given in the text book, but that might build on examples given by the learners in a class. To develop these skills of adaptation and flexibility, educators can be trained in practices of argumentation. This sort of professional teacher development should be coupled with training in software used in the classroom, e.g. like for SimCalc. Of course, domain knowledge -- knowing maths very well -- is still crucial. It's no good having a wonderfully flexible educator who can't remember key formulas.

School testing is currently very good at separating out those with subject aptitudes from those without. For example, a maths test is an easy way to discern the top 5 and bottom 5 learners in a class. Typically the top learners receive further boosting and go on to become very strong in maths, while those at the bottom tend to stay there. The current education testing system will need revising if the goal is to improve grades overall, not not just for top learners. In the SimCalc study, Jeremy created specific metrics to measure the impact of that particular software.

The dual role of maths means that on the one hand it comprises numbers and formulas and on the other hand it requires analysis and logic for number manipulation. This duality is collapsed by the current way of teaching maths. There is a need to separate this out again, but not too far. Jeremy says that you can't ignore the numbers and formulas aspect of maths by trying to make it a subject that is applicable to everyday life in every way, because much of mathematics proper is simply very domain specific.

As a parting shot he spoke about two projects that he is involved in: Group Scribbles and G1:1.

Discussion with Prof Daniel Schwartz

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 01:41:00 +0000

Today I met with Prof Daniel Schwartz of Stanford University's School of Education to talk about ways to improve school maths and science skills using technology. The meeting was in preparation for my new role as Communications & Analytical Skills Development Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation (SF). Our discussion covered much ground across a number of topics. The key points were as follows:

When asked What tools exist that help to improve maths and science skills, which teach analytical skills that learners can apply to the whole of their lives?, Dan answered, “I don't know.” That doesn't mean there aren't good approaches and software that fit this bill, but that on the whole, we're not there yet. As he explained, the task is big and complicated and no one solution stands out as a clear winner. Much research and exploration still need to be done.

Teachers
Teachers are stressed, overworked and underpaid. This isn't just a South African phenomenon, but a global issue. Any tool to improve maths and science must make teachers' jobs easier, not harder. Dan said that many worthy curricula, projects and teaching approaches are great at teaching a subject, but they rely on either really good teachers or very excited/animated/energetic teachers. Approaches such as exploratory inquiry are valuable for learners, but require a lot of work on the part of teachers. Is it realistic to expect that from all teachers across the board?

Role of a foundation
An important question for the SF is whether its goal is to raise the median score of all school learners in maths and science, or to facilitate the surfacing of bright kids who'll become mathematicians and scientists? Each goal requires different approaches. For large-scale change, any solution must be aligned with the national or provincial curriculum. It also mustn't rely on champion teachers. It must work for your average teacher in an average classroom setting.

Creating buzz
An important aspect of improving maths and science skills is to simply create interest in these subjects among learners. The SF already does this through its Hip2b² initiative. Some educational projects don't “move the needle” for widespread change. They might only work in a particular context, such as one school, and with the help of a lot of outside support, but they raise awareness, create interest, show what's possible. They become a beacon, attracting interest and generating energy for similar projects. Eventually enough momentum is generated.

Video
Dan suggested that the use of video in education has much potential, and has hitherto not been fully explored. Educational videos are good for getting across the facts, but actually getting learners to create video – using, e.g. iMovie, Windows MovieMaker or KiNO – not only mitigates against the risk of passive consumption of information, but actively engages youth. I have seen this in digital storytelling workshops, how learners who would normally not be interested in school work are suddenly engaged by the process of digital media creation. This has been formally proven by the WestEd study of Streetside Stories. While video doesn't teach reasoning, it can teach scientific inquiry. For this reason it is probably better suited to developing science than maths skills. “The key,” says Dan, “is to have a driving question for the creation of videos, e.g. Why does the moon rotate around the earth?” This anchors the learners, focussing their efforts. Unchecked, these efforts might only develop creativity (nothing wrong with that, but we need to keep coming back to maths and science skills). Lastly, developing video falls squarely within the realm of communications skills, which the SF wants to develop. Based on this and the work done in the last year on the Digital Hero Book Project, digital media production will be strongly considered in the Communications & Analytical Skills Development focus area.

Teachable agents
One of Dan's research areas is software-based teachable agents (TA), based on the premise that one learns by teaching. Learners teach their TA and then assess its knowledge by asking it questions or by getting it to solve problems. “The TA uses artificial intelligence techniques to generate answers based on what it was taught. Depending on the TA’s answer, students can revise their agents’ knowledge (and their own). TAs do not replace real students. But, they do provide unique opportunities to optimize learning-by-teaching interactions.” (from the to-be-published Pedagogical Agents for Learning by Teaching: Teachable Agents.) More on this here soon.

Already, interesting software, approaches and off-the-shelf curricula, available as proprietary or open content, exist. But there is room to continue work in this space. It's important to first define a target audience, its demographic and the intended educational goal – moving the needle or pushing the boundaries through focussed research – as part of developing a strategy for communications and analytical skills development in South Africa.