Educational Technology

kita kan tetap harus berusaha u mengikuti perkembangan dunia (Web-Based Learning)

2010-04-22T23:09:00.001-07:00

Phillip Rekdale; "Web-Based Learning sebagai hobi menarik, tetapi karena ada banyak masalah termasuk akses, teknik, mahalnya membuat bahan yang "betul bermutu" (formative development perlu banyak waktu), 'isolasi sosial', dan banyak isu pedagogi, mutu pendidikannya dibanding pembelajaran di kelas adalah sangat rendah."

Phillip Rekdale; - Re: Diana Ariani:
"Lagipula kita kan tetap harus berusaha u mengikuti perkembangan dunia"

Di semua negara maju mutu pendidikan berdasar pendidikan yang bermutu di sekolah, di kelas biasa, bukan dari teknologi tertentu. Teknologi hanya sebagai beberapa macam alat yang dapat digunakan untuk membantu mendukung pembelajarannya, dan hanya dipakai sesuai kebutuhan. Kuncinya adalah metodologi dan kemampuan guru untuk megelola pembelajaran. Tetapi yang aneh, kita ingin mengembangkan beberapa macam teknologi yang tidak sesuai dengan keadaan atau infrastruktur kita, maupun yang paling mahal untuk diimplementasikan. Padahal metodologi dan teknologi tepat guna yang adalah fondasinya pendidikan bermutu adalah gratis, belum dilaksanakan di kebanyakan sekolah di sini, jadi kita belum serius untuk ikut "perkembangan dunia".

Itu betul aneh bahwa kita memilih strategi yang dapat sangat menguntungkan industri teknologi dan komunikasi kita, tetapi kelihatannya paling tidak tepat guna untuk Indonesia karena sekarang ada "1 komputer untuk 2.000 siswa", teknologinya adalah sangat mahal dan paling sulit untuk dilaksanan di negara di mana anggaran untuk perawatan sekolah saja tidak cukup. Apalagi kemampuannya untuk meningkatkan kreativitis pelajar, yang paling penting sekarang, adalah sangat rendah.

Kalau membaca artikel "Pendidikan pada era informasi adalah pendidikan berbasis teknologi komunikasi dan informasi" (Pustekkom) kita dapat melihat bahwa banyak orang adalah pesimis mengenai e-learning:

"Ada yang optimis dan banyak yang pesimis. Ada yang menemukan ironi bahwa “there is no learning in e-learning” (Bonk, 2004). Marilah kita lihat salah satu hasil kajian yang terkait dengan hal tersebut. Curtis J. Bonk, professor di Indiana University yang telah melakukan berbagai penelitian tentang e-learning sejak 2001,salah satunya dalam laporan bertajuk “Online Teaching in an Online World” mencatat bahwa kini semakin banyak instruktur, guru dan professor yang mempelajari dan menerapkan online teaching." Ref: Pustekkom Indonesia

Kalau ada "banyak yang pesimis" di negara maju saja, mengapa kita mikirin? Re: "semakin banyak instruktur, guru dan professor yang mempelajari dan menerapkan online teaching" - Karena makin banyak mempunyai fasilitas untuk mencoba sekarng, dan karena mutu pendidikan di sekolah mereka sudah baik, mengapa tidak? Tetapi kita sudah ketinggalan jauh, kita tidak dapat menghabiskan waktu dan anggaran untuk sesuatu yang belum terbukti. Maupun penulisnya lupa sebut sebabnya mutu pendidikan di negara maju tinggi sekarang adalah karena pembelajaran di sekolah sudah bebasis-pembelajaran kontekstual dengan teknologi tepat guna dan gurunya mampu mengelola pembelajarannya secara efektif.

Lagipula kita kan tetap harus berusaha u mengikuti perkembangan dunia

2010-04-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

Phillip Rekdale; - Re: Diana Ariani:
"Lagipula kita kan tetap harus berusaha u mengikuti perkembangan dunia"

Apakah Teknologi Pendidikan itu

2009-11-22T20:04:00.000-08:00

by:Uwes A. Chaeruman |

Berikut, adalah definisi teknologi pendidikan/pembelajaran berdasarkan beberapa definisi dari tahun ke tahun sampai yang terkini.

Comission on Instructional Technology, 1970:

A systematic way of designing, implementing, and evaluating the total process of of learning and teaching in terms of specific objectives, based on research in human learning and communication and employing a combination of human and non human resources to bring about more effective instruction.

Suatu cara yang sistematis dalam mendesain, melaksanakan, dan mengevaluasi proses keseluruhan dari belajar dan pembelajaran dalam bentuk tujuan pembelajaran yang spesifik, berdasarkan penelitian dalam teori belajar dan komunikasi pada manusia dan menggunakan kombinasi sumber-sumber belajar dari manusia maupun non-manusia untuk membuat pembelajaran lebih efektif.

Jadi, menrut konsep ini tujuan utama teknologi pembelajaran adalah membuat agar suatu pembelajaran lebih efektif. Bagaimana hal itu dilakukan? Dengan cara mendesain, melaksanakan dan mengevaluasi secara sistematis berdasarkan teori komunikasi dan belajar tentunya, serta memanfaatkan segala sumber baik yang bersifat manusia maupun non-manusia. dengan demikian, sejak tahun 1970an, sudah ada pandangan bahwa manusia (dalam hal ini guru) bukanlah satu-satunya sumber belajar.

AECT (1972):

Educational tehcnology is a field involved in the facilitation of human learning through the systematic identification, development, organization and utilization of full range of learning resources and through the management of these process.

Teknologi pendidikan adalah satu bidang/disiplin dalam memfasilitasi belajar manusia melalui identifikasi, pengembangan, pengeorgnasiasian dan pemanfaatan secara sistematis seluruh sumber belajar dan melalui pengelolaan proses kesemuanya itu.

Serupa tapi tak sama, bukan? Berdasarkan pengertian ini, jelas dikatakan bahwa teknologi pendidikan adalah suatu disiplin ilmu yang memfokuskan diri dalam upaya memfasilitasi belajar pada manusia. Jadi obyek formal teknologi pendidikan menurut pengertian ini adalah bagaimana memfasilitasi belajar. Dengan cara apa? Melalui identifikasi, pengembangan, pengeorgnasiasian dan pemanfaatan secara sistematis seluruh sumber belajar. Disamping itu, melalui pengelolaan yang baik dan tepat terhadap proses daripada pengembangan, pengeorgnasiasian dan pemanfaatan secara sistematis seluruh sumber belajar tersebut.

AECT (1977):

Teknologi Pendidikan adalah proses kompleks yang terintegrasi meliputi orang, prosedur, gagasan, sarana dan organisasi untuk menganalisis masalah dan merancang, melaksanakan, menilai dan mengelola pemecahan masalah dalam segala aspek belajar manusia.

Ini adalah definisi yang paling “ribet” menurut saya. Tapi, sudah jelas menurut pengertian ini bahwa obyek formal teknologi pendidilkan adalah memecahkan masalah belajar manusia. Dilakukan dengan cara menganalisis maslah terlebih dahulu, baru kemudian melaksanakan, menilai dan mengelola pemecahan masalah tersebut.

AECT (1994):

Teknologi Instruksional adalah teori dan praktek dalam mendesain, mengembangkan, memanfaatkan, mengelola, dan menilai proses-proses maupun sumber-sumber belajar.

Definisi ini lebih operasional dari pada rumusan tahun 1977 yang menurut saya terlalu rumit. Definisi ini menegaskan adanya lima domain (kawasan) teknologi pembelajaran, yaitu kawasan desain, kawasan pengembangan, kawasan pemanfaatan, kawasan pengelolaan, dan kawasan penilaian baik untuk proses maupun sumber belajar. Seorang teknolog pembelajaran bisa saja memfokuskan bidang garapannya dalam salah satu kawasan tersebut.

Tom Cutchall (1999)

Instructional technology is the research in and application of behavioral science and learning theories and the use of a systems approach to analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate and manage the use of technology to assist in the solving of learning or performance problems. (source: http://www.arches.uga.edu/~cutshall/tomitdef.html)

Definisi menurut Cutchal ini sama seperti definisi AECT 1994. Dia menekankan bahwa teknologi pembelajaran merupakan penelitian dan aplikasi ilmu prilaku dan teori belajar dengan menggunakan pendekatan sistem untuk melakukan analisis, desain, pengembangan, implementasi, evaluasi dan pengelolaan penggunaan teknologi untuk membantu memecahkan masalah belajar dan kinerja. Tujuan utamanya adalah pemanfaatan teknologi (soft-technology maupun hard-technology) untuk membantu memecahkan masalah belajar dan kinerja manusia.

AECT (2004):

Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources.

Ini adalah definisi terbaru yang menyatakan bahwa teknologi pendidikan adalah studi dan praktek etis dalam upaya memfasilitasi pembelajaran dan meningkatkan kinerja dengan cara menciptakan, menggunakan/memanfaatkan, dan mengelola proses dan sumber-sumber teknologi yang tepat. Jelas, tujuan utamanya masih tetap untuk memfasilitasi pembelajaran (agar efektif, efisien dan menarik/joyfull) dan meningkatkan kinerja.

Berdasarkan definisi-definisi diatas dapat disimpulkan bahwa:
• teknologi pembelajaran / teknologi pendidikan adalah suatu disiplin/bidang (field of study)
• istilah teknologi pembelajaran dipakai bergantian dengan istilah teknologi pendidikan
• tujuan utama teknologi pembelajaran adalah (1) untuk memecahkan masalah belajar atau memfasilitasi pembelajaran; dan (2) untuk meningkatkan kinerja;
• dalam mewujudkan tersebut menggunakan pendekatan sistemi (pendekatan yag holistik/komprehensif, bukan pendekatan yang bersifat parsial);
• kawasan teknologi pembelajaran dapat meliputi kegiatan yang berkaitan dengan analisis, desain, pengembangan, pemanfaatan, pengelolaan, implementasi dan evaluasi baik proses-proses maupun sumber-sumber belajar.
• teknologi pembelajaran tidak hanya bergerak di persekolahan tapi juga dalam semua aktifitas manusia (seperti perusahaan, keluarga, organisasi masyarakat, dll) sejauh berkaitan dengan upaya memcahkan masalah belajar dan peningkatan kinerja.
• yang dimaksud dengan teknologi disini adalah teknologi dalam arti yang luas, bukan hanya teknologi fisik (hardtech), tapi juga teknologi lunak (softtech)

Potensi Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi dalam Peningkatan Mutu Pembelajaran di Kelas

2009-04-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

19/02/2007
Potensi Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi dalam Peningkatan Mutu Pembelajaran di Kelas

Oleh: Prof. Dr. H. Mohamad Surya*

Perkembangan teknologi informasi dan komunikasi (TIK) telah memberikan pengaruh terhadap dunia pendidikan khususnya dalam proses pembelajaran. Menurut Rosenberg (2001), dengan berkembangnya penggunaan TIK ada lima pergeseran dalam proses pembelajaran yaitu: (1) dari pelatihan ke penampilan, (2) dari ruang kelas ke di mana dan kapan saja, (3) dari kertas ke ?on line? atau saluran, (4) fasilitas fisik ke fasilitas jaringan kerja, (5) dari waktu siklus ke waktu nyata. Komunikasi sebagai media pendidikan dilakukan dengan menggunakan media-media komunikasi seperti telepon, komputer, internet, e-mail, dsb. Interaksi antara guru dan siswa tidak hanya dilakukan melalui hubungan tatap muka tetapi juga dilakukan dengan menggunakan media-media tersebut.

Guru dapat memberikan layanan tanpa harus berhadapan langsung dengan siswa. Demikian pula siswa dapat memperoleh informasi dalam lingkup yang luas dari berbagai sumber melalui cyber space atau ruang maya dengan menggunakan komputer atau internet. Hal yang paling mutakhir adalah berkembangnya apa yang disebut ?cyber teaching? atau pengajaran maya, yaitu proses pengajaran yang dilakukan dengan menggunakan internet. Istilah lain yang makin poluper saat ini ialah e-learning yaitu satu model pembelajaran dengan menggunakan media teknologi komunikasi dan informasi khususnya internet.

Menurut Rosenberg (2001; 28), e-learning merupakan satu penggunaan teknologi internet dalam penyampaian pembelajaran dalam jangkauan luas yang belandaskan tiga kriteria yaitu: (1) e-learning merupakan jaringan dengan kemampuan untuk memperbaharui, menyimpan, mendistribusi dan membagi materi ajar atau informasi, (2) pengiriman sampai ke pengguna terakhir melalui komputer dengan menggunakan teknologi internet yang standar, (3) memfokuskan pada pandangan yang paling luas tentang pembelajaran di balik paradigma pembelajaran tradisional. Saat ini e-learning telah berkembang dalam berbagai model pembelajaran yang berbasis TIK seperti: CBT (Computer Based Training), CBI (Computer Based Instruction), Distance Learning, Distance Education, CLE (Cybernetic Learning Environment), Desktop Videoconferencing, ILS (Integrated Learning Syatem), LCC (Learner-Cemterted Classroom), Teleconferencing, WBT (Web-Based Training), dsb.

Ilmu Teknologi Pendidikan

2009-04-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

Ilmu Teknologi Pendidikan

Teknologi Pendidikan dapat digunakan, tetapi hanya akan betul bermanfaat setelah Ilmu Teknologi Pendidikan dan cara menggunakan teknologi di bidang pendidikan sudah dipaham oleh manajemen pendidikan kita maupun guru.

Implementasi teknologi di bidang pendidikan perlu diintegrasikan ke dalam perencanaan (master plan) terhadap semua aspek pengembangan pendidikan secara seimbang (bukan secara proyek). Sering pengumuman yang muncul di media mengenai teknologi di arena pendidikan kelihatannya kurang menilaikan penelitian dan pengalaman di dunia pendidikan. Kasus-kasus teknologi dan pendidikan tertentu kelihatannya juga diankat sebagai solusi umum.

Memang kita wajib untuk mencari solusi yang kreatif, tetapi kita juga wajib untuk belajar dari pengalaman-pengalaman yang ada di dunia supaya kita tidak hanya mengulangkan kegagalan negara lain.

New Roles for Educators

2009-03-12T02:31:00.001-07:00

New Roles for Educators

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Electronic School

by Margaret Johnson

February 4, 2000

Amid the flurry of end-of-decade/end-of-century reflections, those of us who are passionate about the promise of technology tools for communication and information access in schools are also taking our collective pulse to assess where we are and where we need to go. All of us have juggled issues of pedagogy, deployment and distribution of resources, professional development, student safety, ethics and a wide variety of local community concerns as we plugged our schools into the information age. Some of us have by necessity been largely consumed by the hunt for resources, devoting considerable time and creativity to funding these tools we envision transforming our classrooms. A few of us have been drawn out of the classroom to help schools and school districts cope with these concerns and tasks, while others "walk the talk" creating models of student use in our classrooms and providing practical evidence that digital tools can make a difference.

What is most striking in all of this activity is the variety of new or evolving roles that have emerged in the process. We strive to acquire digital tools in order to empower students to accept new roles in their own learning and to expand their possibilities for collaboration and construction of knowledge. Isn’t it logical that the same holds true for the teachers of these students? Though teachers have always been learners, instructional designers and entrepreneurs, technology tools have added new twists to these traditional roles, providing many new opportunities for leadership and for teachers to also become "producers of knowledge."

Teachers as Learners

John Cotton Dana, an important figure in the public library movement at the end of the nineteenth century, proclaimed, "Who dares to teach, must never cease to learn." An ongoing procession of new software and hardware tools as well as a flood of web-based resources presents a considerable challenge for educators to catch up and keep up simultaneously. When new learning on brain functioning, multiple intelligences, language processing, assessment, and other relevant topics are added to the mix, getting up-to-speed seems a daunting task. The good news is that much of the new learning for educators can be highly synergistic; to practice using digital tools for information access, organization and processing, teachers can focus on epistemology, pedagogy or subject area content with equal ease. The wide proliferation of online tutorials as well as both free and for fee web-based professional development courses, including on-line degree programs, has allowed teachers to take charge of their own learning. As "netizens" of the Information Age, our biggest challenge is learning to manage "TMI," Bernie Dodge’s shorthand term for too much information, or Jamie McKenzie’s "Information Overload." Customized "portal" websites, on-line and print summarized literature reviews, professional organizations (state level and local CUE groups — Computer Using Educators), and both formal and informal peer mentoring are helping many educators meet their own learning needs. Another obvious benefit; teachers who model effective learning behaviors send a powerful message to their students about the value of learning and gain credibility as co-learners.

A number of recent grant programs (including Goals 2000 and Technology Literacy Challenge Fund grants) have been heavily skewed to fund robust professional development projects. New NCATE (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) standards for prospective teachers and changes in recertification for veteran teachers are other important indicators that life-long learning is an absolute requirement for all educators. Some are tempted to bemoan the "burden" that ever growing ongoing learning requirements place on already overloaded teachers, but the real challenge is for our school systems to shift to practices that value and support ongoing teacher learning. Technology may help to some extent. In the January 2000 issue of Electronic School, Don Tapscott notes that, "Off-loading of repetitive or mundane tasks to computers helps get maximum value from increasingly scarce teaching dollars." No amount of automation, however, can offset the need for additional planning time for educators. In 1995 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a comparison of teaching time in the U.S. and fifteen other Western countries. The OECD report concluded that U.S. teachers spend more time teaching and have less preparation time for classes than teachers in other countries who are allotted more time for lesson preparation, in-service training and staff meetings during their school days.

Teachers as Producers of Knowledge

Technology is also empowering teachers as instructional designers, authors, and presenters. The ease of publishing on the web has provided a new outlet for those teachers who have always enjoyed creating original instructional materials and for those dissatisfied with predigested pre-synthesized textbooks. That these materials are now accessible to a vast audience beyond the classroom and that they can provide one-click links to relevant supporting research and documentation has proven to be a powerful lure for the authors among us. Dale Mann, from the Department of Organization and Leadership at Columbia Teachers College claims that "curiosity, a need for productivity, and professional pride" provide greater impetus for teachers to embrace technology than formal professional development programs. Indeed, the proliferation of teacher created "WebQuests," problem-based lessons (PBL) and thematic units on the web is an indication of the accessibility of web publishing for ever-growing numbers of educators; that many of these web-based activities are something more than just teacher-provided content, but rather are designed to be springboards for student inquiry, posing questions or scenarios for students to solve is an encouraging sign. As the body of web-based curriculum materials grows, hyperlinked "collections" are being assembled and indexed by grade level, discipline/topic, national and state standards, and other identifiers. Benchmarks of quality are emerging; guidelines such as NCREL’s Indicators of Engaged Learning and Bernie Dodge’s "Taskonomy" are providing scaffolds to help teacher/authors improve the designs of their web-based lessons.

Without much digging, it is easy to find teacher-designed materials on the web. From Kathy Schrock’s high-profile (and now commercially supported) site to collected lessons created through University course-work and school district curriculum development projects to independent materials posted on free web-hosting services such as Yahoo-Geocities or xoom.com, educators are actively embracing the web venue and modeling constructivism.

Teachers as Entrepreneurs

Pick up almost any issue of the many K-12 technology publications or even K-12 publications that are not focused strictly on technology, and you will very likely read about teachers who have not only designed and facilitated a compelling technology-based classroom project, but who also located the funds to acquire the tools their students needed. Those of us who have gone "digging for dollars" to fund digital tools can’t begin to estimate the number of digital cameras or scanners that have been acquired through "mini-grants" from local businesses or Parent-Teacher Organizations. When funds are limited, many school districts turn to targeted internal "Requests for Proposals" to place equipment/provide professional development opportunities to those who demonstrate the greatest motivation and readiness to put scarce resources to the best use. States have also turned to competitive grants to roll out some funding. Though it is clear that such competitive practices, if employed as the main strategy for technology implementation in a system, can be divisive and counter-productive in providing equitable access to technology for all students, the availability of seed money to fund innovation and promising projects has provided unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurial educators. Many of the teacher/grant awardees have become mentors and leaders within their schools and districts.

The entrepreneurial spirit has extended beyond grant seeking. Technology-based student businesses have sprouted as authentic responses to problem-based learning scenarios. At Palos East Elementary School in Palos Heights, Illinois, for example, fifth graders were inspired by a real school problem, a lack of printers to accompany classroom computers. Mrs. Deb Balayti’s students decided to form a classroom business to earn money to acquire the needed equipment. The project was a huge success and the student business an instant "local legend." Each year since 1996-97, Mrs. Balayti’s students have formed a technology-based school business, producing and selling products to the many visitors to Palos East during American Education Week. Thanks to scheduled "Mom’s Day," "Dad’s Day," and "Grandparent’s Day" each year, hundreds of adults become customers and clients for the fifth grade entrepreneurs. Products have varied; students have taken digital pictures of grandparents and their grandchildren (set in front of a colorful student-designed backdrop) and designed and filled orders for customized gift labels and stationery. This business is significant in the technology life of the school; in three years, students have raised a grand total of nearly $9,000. Although the financial gain is impressive, Mrs. Balayti reports that the student learning that occurs as students brainstorm, strategize, plan, organize and implement their business is even more exciting. Math skills, writing skills and interpersonal skills are all strengthened. Multiple intelligences are needed and showcased. Students analyze building needs and wants, research products, interview vendors, and conduct rigorous "cost-benefit" analyses in making their purchasing decisions. The criteria they establish to guide their purchasing decisions and the exhaustive questions they pose to vendors provide clear evidence of strategic higher order thinking.

As school leaders recognize the potential of the intellectual capital represented by talented and creative educators, school districts are becoming entrepreneurial, generating significant revenue by marketing original curriculum materials produced by their staff members. The great demand for professional development facilitators/presenters has also spurred creative arrangements resulting in full-time educators becoming part-time consultants, often with encouragement and support from their administrators who welcome any shared revenue or expertise exchanges that may result from these consulting activities. Teacher-created web-based materials may also be ripe for marketing. Carol Simpson, from the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas and an author and speaker on copyright and ethics issues for schools and libraries, states, "New technologies of instructional delivery, such as web-based and video instruction, will bring ownership of intellectual property to light in schools. Schools that once only consumed intellectual property will now discover that they own it and will want to convert it into a revenue stream." Ms. Simpson continues, "Teachers who once would have created and freely shared instructional materials in print format will recognize that they have contributed to a valuable commodity (electronic course materials) and may resist ‘work for hire’ rules or at least bargain for some compensation."

In Summary

While recent K-12 publications have devoted many column inches to describing the "best" uses for technology in our classrooms or to exposing ill-advised practices, many creative teachers, students and school systems are busy determining for themselves the usefulness of digital tools. When access and opportunity converge, the users themselves (whether adults or children) will determine the ultimate utility of any resource. In the book, The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet, Freeman Dyson discusses how scientists in various disciplines display different attitudes toward their tools, affecting dynamics of professional collaboration and innovation in their fields. Although Dyson was reflecting on the field of gravitational tomography, his observations aptly describe the manner in which some educators are proactively finding new instructional uses for technology, "The style of the work…is opportunistic, unorganized, spontaneous. Nobody planned it and nobody administered it from the top. A new tool became available…and a number of bright people grabbed hold of it for a variety of purposes…The style of the work is dominated by two factors, local enthusiasm and the internet." Many of the same technology tools that are revolutionizing science and research are now available to and facilitating new roles for both adult and young learners as well as providing new opportunities for all learners to reap intellectual, creative and financial rewards.

Notes:

All quotes (except the Freeman Dyson quote in the final paragraph) are from "Thinking About the Future," Electronic School. January 2000. Pgs. 16-23, 47. The article is also available online at http://www.electronic-school.com/2000/01/0100f1part1.html

Trends at a Glance

2009-03-12T01:59:00.000-07:00

by The Milken Exchange

Trends at a Glance

States are establishing technology standards for students. If the standards are to have an impact, reliable assessments must be developed and implemented. Thirty-six states have established student standards for technology and nine other states are developing such standards. Of those 36 states, 22 have integrated them into their overall standards for the basic academic areas; six states have established standards for technology that are separate from the basic academic areas; and eight states have taken a dual approach. Many states have only recently established these standards, so few are fully assessing them. The Milken Exchange recently commissioned a longitudinal study in West Virginia. Results indicated that 11 percent of the academic gains in mathematics and reading for fifth graders in 1995 were directly attributable to technology interventions. A subsequent analysis by the Milken Exchange found technology to be a cost-effective method to improve student learning when compared to class size reduction (Mann, 1999).

Schools are beginning to use learning technology, but most use it to automate learning rather than to bring students unique learning opportunities never before possible. "It is the more elective and less college preparatory-oriented parts of the high school curriculum where the newer and more creative uses of computers are being found, rather than in the more standards-constrained academic subjects." (Teaching, Learning and Computing: A National Survey of Schools and Teachers, Henry Becker, 1999).

Teachers are getting trained, but classes often do not relate to teaching and learning. "Teachers are being asked to learn new methods of teaching, while at the same time they are facing the greater challenges of rapidly increasing technological changes and greater diversity in the classroom...[ yet,] relatively few teachers (20 percent) reported feeling very well prepared to integrate educational technology into classroom instruction." (U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, January 1999).

Significant funds are being invested in schools, especially those with disadvantaged youth, yet a digital divide based on demographics exists between schools. More than $5 billion is invested annually in learning technology, representing federal, state, and local funds. Yet, from 1994 through 1998, schools with low numbers of minority students were three times more likely to have Internet access in classroom settings than schools with high numbers of minority students. Similarly, high-income schools were twice as likely to have Internet access in classrooms as low-income schools (National Center for Education Statistics, 1998). This trend, combined with the widening wage gap between information technology industries and the total private sector, suggests that the digital divide in the United States is not going away.

Instructional design

2008-04-16T03:16:00.000-07:00

Instructional design

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Instructional Design is the practice of arranging media (communication technology) and content to help learners and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively. The process consists broadly of determining the current state of learner understanding, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some media-based "intervention" to assist in the transition. Ideally the process is informed by pedagogically tested theories of learning and may take place in student-only, teacher-led or community-based settings. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed.
As a field, Instructional Design is historically and traditionally rooted in cognitive and behavioural psychology. However, because it is not a regulated field, and therefore not well understood, the term 'instructional design' has been co-opted by or confused with a variety of other ideologically-based and / or professional fields. Instructional Design, for example, is not Graphic Design although graphic design (from a cognitive perspective) could play an important role in Instructional Design. Preparing instructional text by E. Misanchuk, and publications by James Hartley are useful in informing the distinction between Instructional Design and Graphic Design.
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Cognitive load theory and the design of instruction
3 Learning Design
4 Instructional design models
5 Influential researchers and theorists
6 See also
7 External links
8 References
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[edit] History
Much of the foundation of the field of instructional design was laid in World War II, when the U.S. military faced the need to rapidly train large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks, from field-stripping a carbine to navigating across the ocean to building a bomber. Drawing on the research and theories of B.F. Skinner on operant conditioning, training programs focused on observable behaviors. Tasks were broken down into subtasks, and each subtask treated as a separate learning goal. Training was designed to reward correct performance and remediate incorrect performance. Mastery was assumed to be possible for every learner, given enough repetition and feedback. After the war, the success of the wartime training model was replicated in business and industrial training, and to a lesser extent in the primary and secondary classroom. [1]
In 1955 Benjamin Bloom published an influential taxonomy of what he termed the three domains of learning: Cognitive (what we know or think), Psychomotor (what we do, physically) and Affective (what we feel, or what attitudes we have). These taxonomies still influence the design of instruction. [2]
During the latter half of the 20th century, learning theories began to be influenced by the growth of digital computers.
In the 1970s, many Instructional design theorists began to adopt an "information-processing" approach to the design of instruction. David Merrill for instance developed Component Display Theory (CDT). Component Display Theory concentrates on the means of presenting instructional materials (presentation techniques)[3].
Later in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s cognitive load theory began to find empirical support for a variety of presentation techniques [4].

[edit] Cognitive load theory and the design of instruction
Cognitive load theory developed out of several empirical studies of learners as they interacted with instructional materials [5]. It is emblematic of the historical roots of cognitive psychology in Instructional Design. Sweller and his associates began to measure the effects of working memory load and found that the format of instructional materials has a direct effect on the performance of the learners using those materials [6] [7] [8]
While the media debates of the 1990s focused on the influences of media on learning, cognitive load effects were being documented in several journals. These effects it seems were based on the design of instructional materials, as opposed to the media being used. Finally Mayer [9] asked the Instructional Design community to reassess this media debate, to refocus their attention on what was most important – learning.
By the late 1990s, Sweller and his associates had discovered several learning effects related to cognitive load and the design of instructional materials (e.g. the Split attention effect, redundancy effect, and the worked example effect). Later, other researchers like Richard Mayer began to attribute other learning effects to cognitive load [9]. Mayer and his associates soon developed a Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning [10] [11] [12]
In the past decade, Cognitive load theory has begun to be internationally accepted [13] and begun to revolutionize how Instructional Designers view instruction. Recently, Human performance experts have even taken notice of cognitive load and begun to promote this theory base as the Science of Instruction, with Instructional Designers as the practitioners of this field [14]. Finally Clark, Nguyen and Sweller [15] published an important text describing how Instructional Designers can promote efficient learning using evidence based guidelines of Cognitive load theory.

[edit] Learning Design
The IMS Learning Design [16]specification supports the use of a wide range of pedagogies in online learning. Rather than attempting to capture the specifics of many pedagogies, it does this by providing a generic and flexible language. This language is designed to enable many different pedagogies to be expressed. The approach has the advantage over alternatives in that only one set of learning design and runtime tools then need to be implemented in order to support the desired wide range of pedagogies. The language was originally developed at the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL), after extensive examination and comparison of a wide range of pedagogical approaches and their associated learning activities, and several iterations of the developing language to obtain a good balance between generality and pedagogic expressiveness.
A criticism of Learning Design theory is that learning is an outcome. While instructional theory Instructional Design focuses on outcomes, while properly accounting for a multi-variate context that can only be predictive, it acknowledges that (given the variabilities in human capability) a guarantee of reliable learning outcomes is improbable. We can only design instruction. We cannot design learning (an outcome). Automotive engineers can design a car that, under specific conditions, will achieve 50 miles per gallon. These engineers cannot guarantee that drivers of the cars they design will (or have the capability to) operate these vehicles according to the specific conditions prescribed. The former is the metaphor for Instructional Design. The latter is the metaphor for Learning Design.

[edit] Instructional design models
Perhaps the most common model used for creating instructional materials is the ADDIE Model. This acronym stands for the 5 phases contained in the model:
Analyze - analyze learner characteristics, task to be learned, etc.
Design - develop learning objectives, choose an instructional approach
Develop - create instructional or training materials
Implement - deliver or distribute the instructional materials
Evaluate - make sure the materials achieved the desired goals
Most of the current instructional design models are variations of the ADDIE model. A sometimes utilized adaptation to this model is in a practice known as rapid prototyping.
But even Rapid Prototyping is considered a somewhat simplistic type of model. At the heart of Instructional Design is the analysis phase. After you thoroughly conduct the analysis--you can then choose a model based on your findings. That is the area where most people get snagged--they simply do not do a thorough enough analysis. (Part of Article By Chris Bressi on LinkedIn)
Proponents suggest that through an iterative process the verification of the design documents saves time and money by catching problems while they are still easy to fix. This approach is not novel to the design of instruction, but appears in many design-related domains including software design, architecture, transportation planning, product development, message design, user experience design, etc.[17] [18]
Some other useful models of instructional design include: the Dick/Carey Model, the Smith/Ragan Model, the Morrison/Ross/Kemp Model.
Instructional theories also play an important role in the design of instructional materials. Theories such as behaviorism, constructivism, social learning and cognitivism help shape and define the outcome of instructional materials.

[edit] Influential researchers and theorists
Lev Vygotsky - Learning as a social activity - 1930s
B.F. Skinner - Radical Behaviorism, Program Teaching - late 1930s-
Benjamin Bloom - Taxonomies of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains - 1955
R.F. Mager - ABCD model for instructional objectives - 1962
Jean Piaget - Cognitive development - 1960s
Seymour Papert - Constructionism, LOGO - 1970s
Robert M. Gagné - Nine Events of Instruction - 1970s
Jerome Bruner - Constructivism
Dick, W. & Carey, L. "The Systematic Design of Instruction" - 1978
Michael Simonson - Instructional Systems and Design via Distance Education - 1980s
M. David Merrill and Charles Reigeluth - Elaboration Theory / Component Display Theory / PEAnets - 1980s
Robert Heinich, Michael Molenda, James Russell - Instructional Media and the new technologies of instruction 3rd ed. - Educational Technology - 1989
Roger Schank - Constructivist simulations - 1990s
David Jonassen - Cognitivist problem-solving strategies - 1990s
Ruth Clark - Theories on instructional design and technical training - 1990s
Charles Graham and Curtis Bonk - Blended learning - 2000s

[edit] See also
Since instructional design deals with creating useful instruction and instructional materials, there are many other areas that are related to the field of instructional design.
assessment
Confidence-Based Learning
DACUM
educational animation
educational psychology
educational technology
e-learning
electronic portfolio
evaluation
instructional technology
instructional theory
learning object
learning science
m-learning
Multimedia learning
online education
instructional design coordinator
Storyboarding
training
interdisciplinary teaching
rapid prototyping
Lesson study

[edit] External links

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject.Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.
American Society for Training & Development (ASTD)
International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI)
Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT)
Instructional Design - An overview of Instructional Design
ISD Handbook
International Journal for Instructional Technology and Distance Learning

Progressive Teaching of Mathematics with Tablet Technology

2008-04-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Progressive Teaching of Mathematics with Tablet Technology

Birgit LochUniversity of Southern Queensland, Australialochb@usq.edu.au
Diane DonovanUniversity of Queensland, Australiadmd@maths.uq.edu.au

Abstract
We investigate a multimodal approach to lecture presentation built on tablet technology. This innovative approach presents a framework which provides organizational structure to the lecture and facilitates incorporation of additional detail through electronic ink. Diagrams, solutions and concept maps are developed spontaneously in real time, thus engaging and promoting student directed learning, through a creative, interactive and dynamic process. Our study analyzes benefits and drawbacks of this approach, through evaluation of instructor experiences and student feedback for three undergraduate mathematics courses held over three consecutive semesters.
Keywords: Tablet, undergraduate, multimodal, electronic ink
Introduction
Non-interactive computer technologies, such as PowerPoint slides, are standard tools used in modern lectures, yet, if slides are prepared entirely before delivery, we must question the effectiveness of these methods for the cognition of mathematical concepts. Such formats limit flexibility and encourage passive learning, and do not engage students since lectures cannot be adjusted based on audience reaction.
In response to this perceived problem the authors have investigated a multimodal approach to lecture presentation built on tablet technology. This new technology promotes a dynamic and interactive learning environment which fully engages students.
This paper reports on results of a study into teaching tertiary undergraduate mathematics using tablet technology and presents an analysis of students’ responses to this multimodal approach. Data has been acquired from students taking three different mathematics courses in three consecutive semesters; two of these courses were first year classes and one a second year class.
Lecturers’ experiences of this technology are discussed and implementation issues including benefits and difficulties are analyzed. Benefits of tablet technology can include high quality output, enhancing the ability to store and cross reference all presented material. Electronic ink notes can readily be posted on a website, providing easy access for on campus and distance students. Problem solving techniques can be demonstrated and cognition is enhanced by reading, listening, writing and thinking during a lecture.
Related work
Students need to learn mathematical symbols as well as mathematical explanation (Lowerison et al., 2006; Townsley, 2002); they need careful step by step instruction on how to work through a problem and how to present a solution in clear and precise, mathematical language (Loch, 2005). Consequently, real time delivery of problems and their solutions is an important aspect of any mathematics lecture.
The usefulness of electronic ink for lecture delivery has been discussed in a number of educational research papers. While some authors use a Tablet PC (Simon et al., 2003), others describe experiences with considerably cheaper graphics tablets (Loch, 2005; Loomes et al., 2002). Software packages have been written to perform certain tasks, many of which are tailored for distance education.
One example is Classroom Presenter, developed by Simon et al. (2003) in collaboration with Microsoft Research. Classroom Presenter is used widely in the US tertiary teaching sector, and is available for free download from the authors’ website. PowerPoint presentations are delivered in Classroom Presenter, which offers the potential to add space for live handwritten material. Classroom Presenter was first tested for computer science courses, then taken up by other disciplines such as engineering (Anderson et al., 2005). Its distinguishing feature is the use of the projector as an extended desktop, where the computer screen displays an instructor version of the presentation, including slide overview and personal comments which may differ from the projected image.
Recent releases of MS PowerPoint offer a pen mode, which allows adding ink to a slide during presentation. This feature can only be used to its full potential if a Tablet PC with Windows XP Tablet Edition is available, or if at least the latest version of MS Office is installed, since handwritten material may be lost during slide transition otherwise. However, as Microsoft Equation Editor is sometimes awkward to handle, PowerPoint presentations using electronic ink are more useful for courses which do not involve many typed mathematical formulae.
While it is clear that the concept of using electronic ink for lecture delivery is not new, our approach differs from previous approaches because it is compatible with mathematical typesetting in a natural way and is more suitable for demonstrating mathematical formulae than PowerPoint based ink approaches.
Background and Implementation
The Department of Mathematics at the University of Queensland developed lecture workbooks for all first and some second year courses (see Donovan (2000) for example). These workbooks contain background material, but also include blank boxes for addition, during lectures, of proofs, worked examples and student comments. The workbooks are written in LaTeX, a mathematical typesetting language, and offered as high-quality PDF files for download.
Apart from its portability, an advantage of the PDF format is that it can be used for dynamic lecture presentations, run in Adobe Acrobat Standard and allows for the adding of comments, which may be typed, pasted as images, imported from a file or written as electronic ink anywhere on a page. These comments can be saved separate or merged with the original document.
During a lecture, the PDF file can be projected on the screen, giving organizational structure to the lecture and a framework which supports subsequent discussions. Missing as well as extra detail can be added with electronic ink. Solutions to problems may be developed spontaneously in real time thus promoting student directed learning and creating an interactive and dynamic learning process which fully engages students.
Environment
In our study, we experimented with tablet technology and the PDF workbook for teaching three different courses over three consecutive semesters, all offered to on campus students only. Two of these courses are first year courses, and one a second year course. Details are as follows:
Course 1 – semester 2, 2004 – Calculus and Linear Algebra I – taken by about 320 Engineering and Science students.
Course 2 – semester 1, 2005 – Calculus and Linear Algebra II – taken by about 600 Engineering and Science students.
Course 3 – semester 2, 2005 – Discrete Mathematics – taken by about 120 IT, Science and Electrical Engineering students.
While for courses 1 and 2 a graphics tablet was used, a Tablet PC was available for course 3. Course 1 was taught completely by one of the authors, while the other author taught the linear algebra component of course 2, as well as the logic and proof sections of course 3. The remainder of course 2 and 3 was taught by different lecturers, using traditional printed overhead slides.
Feedback and results
Towards the end of the semester, students in all three courses were asked to fill out a survey form. Some of the questions were the same for all three courses, while others were tailored to the specific situation. The contexts and results are presented as follows; an overview of answer distribution for similar questions can be found in Table 1.

Question
Course 1
Course 2
Course 3
I prefer if lecturer writes on computer
80%
12%
24%
I prefer if lecturer writes on OHP
3%
60%
42%
Writing during lectures helps my understanding
89%
65%
95%
I cannot read lecturer’s writing
12%
38%
11%
I can decipher/it is easy to read
79%
30%
71%Table 1: Distribution of answers for similar questions for all three courses
In the first week of the semester, lectures in course 1 were presented with Acrobat Reader on the computer, with additional/missing material written on OHP (overhead projector). Due to too little projection space, the OHP was difficult to see. Computer-only projection, and writing with the graphics tablet, was introduced from week 2. No major technical problems occurred from this point onwards. Out of 65 students who responded, about 85% said they preferred writing in the workbook during lectures to receiving a complete workbook. Nearly 89% thought that writing helped their understanding. Asked if they preferred if the lecturer wrote on the computer, 80% agreed, while 3% responded that they preferred lecture presentation with an OHP. More than three quarters (79%) responded that they could decipher the lecturer’s writing. The completed lecture material, with all additions, was made available on the course website shortly after each lecture. Furthermore, 92% responded that they were in favour of computer-generated lecture notes being available on the website. About 46% said they knew students who “never go to lectures because the material is on the web” (see also Loch (2005)).
The linear algebra component of course 2 was taught entirely with an A3 size graphics tablet. This tablet was more difficult to handle (and carry) than a smaller tablet used in course 1 (A6 size) and the lecturer encountered a number of technical difficulties with the software. While all materials were available on the web, annotated notes from lectures were not. Out of 160 students, 65% agreed that additional comments, written during lectures enhanced their understanding of the course material. Only 30% of students said they could read the lecturer’s writing easily. Keeping in mind that students had a direct comparison with OHP from the calculus component, 12% preferred writing on the computer as mode of presentation while 60% preferred OHP.
Course 3 was taught with a Tablet PC. Although some technical problems occurred, they were quickly fixed and did not eat into lecture time. Base lecture notes, but not annotations, were made available on the web. Out of 38 student responses, 95% agreed that examples written during lectures enhanced their understanding. 71% said they could read the lecturer’s writing easily, and 42% thought the lecturer appeared to be comfortable with the technology. A surprisingly large number of students responded that they prefer the blackboard as mode of presentation (31%), up from 2% in course 2, while 24% said they prefer writing on the PC and 42% writing on the OHP.
A focus group of two students both enrolled in course 2 and 3 were interviewed to establish why students’ perception of tablet technology had changed from course 2 to 3. They responded that the graphics tablet in course 2 was too big and difficult to handle and they preferred the Tablet PC, but acknowledged that the differences in technologies were not related to course material. The lecturer was more confident with the technology in course 3, and set up time was shorter. The writing on the Tablet PC in course 3 was easier to read and understand, while the graphics tablet in course 2 created a distraction. The focus group said that “everyone was frustrated” in course 2. This was not the case in course 3. However, the two students found that from the side of the lecture theatre it was difficult to read the OHP projection of the calculus component in course 2. Somehow, material seemed to be covered more quickly with the tablet, and the lecture appeared more organized compared to OHP. Asked if they thought that tablet technology is just another teaching tool or if it improved their learning, they agreed with the latter responding that material presented on Tablet PC was easier to understand compared to that presented on OHP.
Discussion
After trialing tablet technology together with lecture workbooks for three semesters, we believe that - despite initial set backs - this technology is a useful tool for the modern mathematics lecture. It combines computer-generated slides and activities with handwriting to emphasize key concepts or to facilitate modifying a path to a problem solution in response to student questions. Students can actively contribute to the lecture and may find their question or answer recorded on the lecture slide. Students appreciate that the lecture material is given to them in the form of the workbook, which provides writing space and organization of the material in one location.
Survey results and student comments suggest that the lecturer’s competency and dexterity with the tablet is a key factor in the successful teaching with this tool. Any benefits of tablet technology such as being able to refer back to previous material, keeping an exact high quality copy of lecture material and being able to post on a website were outweighed by technical issues in course 2. As stated by Anderson et al. (2005), “a risk inherent in using new technology in the classroom is that the technology becomes a distraction rather than a complement”. The enormous size of the graphics tablet used in course 2 was one of the reasons contributing to frustration in students and lecturer.
While the Tablet PC is more versatile, easier to use (writing takes place on the screen and requires less hand-eye coordination) and allows additional features, the use of the graphics tablet was very well received in course 1.
Writing on a graphics tablet/Tablet PC is not difficult. In fact, Anderson et al. (2005) address legibility, layout, colour and contrast, periodically cleaning up a slide, pacing and space for inking and student note-taking. This advice would apply equivalently to writing on overhead slides.
The seriousness of technical problems and reliability of the equipment are major factors impacting on the successful use of tablet technology. In course 1, OHP technology together with computer projection appeared to be useless due to a lack of projection space, while this problem did not exist in courses 2 and 3. Students were able to directly compare tablet and OHP based teaching in course 2, and preferred the more familiar (and reliable) overhead approach. Their attitude was very negative towards tablet technology as they thought it was wasting valuable teaching time. This was clearly reflected in survey responses. Interestingly this attitude improved as the lecturer’s competency with the technology improved.
Students were able to download lecture material with electronic ink notes in course 1, which made the handwriting feature important as they were not told that full typed solutions existed.
Conclusion
The current study investigates an alternate multimodal approach built on tablet technology and electronic ink. This innovative approach proposes a framework compatible to mathematical typesetting which supports subsequent discussions and provides organizational structure to the lecture. Additional detail is incorporated through technologies, such as electronic ink. Diagrams, concept maps and solutions are developed spontaneously in real time thus promoting student directed learning and creating an interactive and dynamic learning process which fully engages students. As the material is developed spontaneously it ensures a flexible process, building on student’s abilities. Tablet technology facilitates backtracking, the redefinition of ideas, the refinement of solutions and the investigation of alternate paths. It allows for the conceptualization and comprehensive understanding of complex mathematical ideas. Students are not overwhelmed by impenetrable solutions but may interact with the development process.
References
Anderson, R., Anderson, R., McDowell, L. and Simon, B. (2005). “Use of classroom presenter in engineering courses”, 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education conference, October 19-22, Indianapolis, IN.
Donovan, D. (2000). “Interactive discrete mathematics” in Proc. of the Fourth Biennial International Conference of the Engineering Mathematics and Applications Conference EMAC 2000, The Institute of Engineers, RMIT Melbourne, 131-133.
Loch, B. (2005). “Tablet Technology in First Year Calculus and Linear Algebra Teaching”, in Proc. of the Fifth Southern Hemisphere Conference on Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics Teaching and Learning (Kingfisher Delta’05), 231-237.
Loomes, M., Shafarenko, A., and Loomes, M. (2002). “Teaching mathematical explanation through audiographic technology”, Computers & Education, vol.38, 137-149.
Lowerison, G., Sclater, J., Schmid, R.F., and Abrami, P.C. (2006). “Student perceived effectiveness of computer technology use in post-secondary classrooms”, Computers&Education, in press.
Simon, B., Anderson, R., and Wolfman, S. (2003). “Activating computer architecture with Classroom Presenter”, WCAE2003.
Townsley, L. (2002). “Multimedia Classes: Can there ever be too much technology?” in Proc. of the Vienna International Symposium on Integrating Technology into Mathematics Education, Vienna, Austria.

e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) Vol. 9 No. 2
© University of Southern Queensland

TNT- IDS: Showcasing an Educational Informatics Project Development Guide Prototype

2008-04-16T03:11:00.000-07:00

TNT- IDS: Showcasing an Educational Informatics Project Development Guide Prototype

Ann M. Shortridge, Ed. D.University of Oklahoma, Schusterman Center, United Statesann-shortridge@ouhsc.edu
Toby De LoghtUniversity of Antwerp, Belgiumtoby.deloght@ua.ac.be
Benay Dara-Abrams, Ph. D.University of San Francisco and BrainJolt, United States benay@dara-abrams.com

Abstract:
Today many organizations and University systems are adopting policies that require their professional staff or faculty to create technology-based educational opportunities. However, these individuals often lack the theoretical background to engage in such endeavors. Therefore, the primary goal of this paper is to showcase the most recent stage of an online research-based educational informatics project development guide prototype. This paper highlights our newly propagated knowledge base and many of the principles that determine quality levels within instructional products. These principles are common to a variety of learning environments including academic courseware, consumer health informatics applications and just-in-time training modules.
Introduction
Few practical multi-dimensional educational informatics project development guides exist that are based upon applicable related research evidence (Schwier, 2001; Wiske, Sick & Wirsig, 2001; Shortridge & De Loght, T, 2004). Therefore, several members of an ongoing international collaboration began developing the prototype described in this paper in June of 2004. This collaboration has focused on innovative action research and development projects in e-learning, faculty development and change management for the past three years.
We began showcasing our prototype when we presented the background theory for its user interface in a paper at the ED-MEDIA 2005 Conference in Montreal. Our unique Entry Point Framework user interface was based upon Howard Gardner’s (1983) seminal work, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences and various mechanisms for fostering online communities of professional practice.
Gardner delineated eight specific human intelligences: Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Musical, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Spatial, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist (Gardner 1983; 1993). Further, Gardner proposed that individuals possess multiple intelligences rather than one single intelligence with which they process information and solve problems (Gardner 1983; 1993; 1999). We have integrated these various intelligences into our user interface Entry Points. The focus of this paper is to describe the content within our knowledge base as it relates to each of these Entry Points.
Background Motivation for Our Knowledge Base
In the late 1980’s a growing body of literature began to emerge that assigned poor quality ratings to technology-based instruction. In response to this a number of researchers began to look for possible causes and solutions. We drew upon this body of research in order to provide our users with research-based guidelines and tools. A brief description of the some of the findings from several of the studies that we believed were significant is as follows.
In 1996, McNeil sought to develop a practitioner-validated list of competencies to guide individuals as they authored technology-based education and identified ten critical skills. Seven of these skills were specific to instructional design processes while only three were technical in nature. Further, in 2000, Mioduser, et al conducted a seminal study that reviewed the quality of online instruction and concluded that it is usually poorly designed. Of the 486 educational products sampled in this study, 52.5% left students with few options other than rote memorization whereas, only 4.6% provided opportunities for creation and invention and 5.0% provided students with opportunities for to solve real problems (Mioduser, Nachmias, Lahav and Oren, 2000, p. 63). This led us to conclude that the authors of these products either did not possess the competencies outlined by McNeil and/or that they ran into constraints and limitations when attempting to implement them. Continuing to search the literature we found that in 2001, Gibbs et al, sought to establish a matrix that could be used to accurately evaluate the quality of multi-media e-courseware. This study indicated that 16 significant evaluation guidelines ought to be included within this type of matrix. Of these guidelines, five were specific to usability, three were specific to instructional design, and three were related to the accuracy and timeliness of content and the credibility of the sources from which it is drawn. The other five guidelines directly related to what types of media elements (such as graphics, animation, and so on) need to be incorporated into such materials.
In regards to the type of media elements that need to be included in quality educational materials a number of another studies and theory-based overviews have been published. For example, in 1993, Laurillard described a conversational framework that could guide productive discussions/interactions between students and teachers that included a media analysis. Laurillard’s conversational framework is made up of 12 steps of discourse responsibility that set the stage for students to engage in high level cognitive activities (such as problem solving). Laurillard’s media analysis evaluated how and to what extent a particular media could support such activities. In some cases, Laurillard’s ideas also strongly suggested that particular media could actually become a virtual teacher. The media that received the highest scores in her evaluation were tutorial systems, simulations, micro-worlds, electronic collaboration or teamwork tools, and multi-media and audio resources.
Further, in 1994, Lloyd Rieber prepared an insightful guide for how to effectively design or choose and incorporate various types of visualizations in instructional materials. In his book, Computer, Graphics & Learning, Rieber proposed that Gagnes’s events of instruction support five applications of graphics to teach that lie within the cognitive-constructivist continuum: “cosmetic, motivation, attention-gaining, presentation and practice” (p. 45). Further, he asserted that cosmetic and motivational graphics impact the affective domain while attention gaining, presentation and practice graphics impact the cognitive domains. Additionally, effective cognitive domain graphics gain and focus student attention selectively. I.e., effective attention-gaining and presentation graphics help students to filter out external distractions, but should not be a source of distraction or cognitive overload themselves. (Cognitive overload happens when too much information is presented all at once.) Effective practice graphics support students in higher-level cognitive processes such as the integration of new information into prior knowledge. Further, Reiber highlighted that the function of a graphic may be arbitrary or that it may be used to create a realistic representation or an analogy. Representational graphics depict reality or a simplified version of it. Arbitrary graphics can be graphs or charts, etc. or may depict a mental model of a system or scientific phenomena.
In addition, in 2003 Clark and Mayer re-released the findings of a number of experimental studies that indicated the impact of various media on student learning outcomes. Mayer also conducted studies on the psychological effect of omitting extraneous text and personalizing tone. These studies indicated that materials that were presented in a concise and informal manner resulted in higher learning outcomes for students.
Further, our review of the literature also revealed that there are three other major constructs pertinent to development of high quality technology-based instruction: (a) social context, (b) social presence, and (c) learner control. Interestingly, however, instead of standing alone, each of these constructs supports interactions between teachers and students. Social context and social presence are both integral parts of teacher-student and student-student interaction, whereas learner control influences whether or not these interactions will ever take place. Successful technology-based instruction that encourages high levels of interaction will provide students with social context, social presence, and learner control (Hill, 2002; Rotter, 1989).
Overview of the TNT-IDS Prototype Knowledge Base
The TNT-IDS Knowledge Base includes research-based guidelines such as: why and how to develop concise content, the impact of conversational tone, why and how to use graphics and other types of visualizations, how to use worked examples and/or practice exercises to model and teach knowledge transfer and problem solving techniques and how to manage discussion forums.
Shown in Figure 1, our user interface accommodates individuals by engaging them in these topics in multiple ways through the Entry Point Framework.

Figure 1: Educational Project Development Guide Framework
The Entry Point Framework offers seven points of entry into a learning experience, which activate a combination of the eight different intelligences (Gardner 1999):
The Narrative Entry Point invites people into a learning experience through relating a story in the Learning Theory & Instructional Strategies and Index & Keyword Search, Glossary sections of our prototype. (The Index & Keyword Search, Glossary allows faculty to search for specific topics when they try to link different topics together, moving beyond available structures.)
The Quantitative Entry Point provides an introduction through measuring, counting, listing, or determining statistical attributes in the Project Building Block section of our prototype.
The Logical Entry Point offers the opportunity to understand relationships among different factors by applying deductive reasoning in the in the Project Building Block section of our prototype.
The Aesthetic Entry point engages the senses through an examination and discussion of the visual and aesthetic properties of concepts in various sections of our prototype, including Best Practices, Learning Theory & Instructional Strategies and Tips & Checklists.
The Experiential (“Hands-On”) Entry Point allows learners to construct their own experiments with physical materials or through computer simulations in the Using Technology for Learning and Web Design & Tools sections of our prototype. As many organizations and institutions use an LMS (Blackboard or WebCT, etc.), the Using Technology for Learning section engages users by offering a number of roadmaps to effectively use the technologies available in an LMS. These approaches demonstrate how instructional strategies can be implemented technically. The Web Design & Tools section also offers contains tips for how to resolve the limitations of LMS systems.
The Existential/Foundational Entry Point allows individuals to consider a subject based on its fundamental characteristics and underlying principles in the Literature section of our prototype. The Literature section offers overviews of relevant literature, giving educational product authors a jump-start and providing them with guidance as they further explore their interests.
The Interpersonal/Collaborative Entry Point engages learners in interactive, cooperative, and collaborative projects with others, or alternately in situations in which they can debate or argue with each other in the Discussion Forum areas of our prototype. The discussion forums extend the reach of the existing prototype. Using the Interpersonal Entry Point, they provide a safe environment to launch new and creative ideas and to obtain advice from participating colleagues as they implement their projects (Kahn 2005).
Highlights of Knowledge Base in the TNT-IDS Prototype & Related Entry Points
Figures 2 – 8 show several screen shots that illustrate how our knowledge base activates a particular intelligence via a specific Entry Point to elaborate on specific topics and teach and model specific techniques for our users.
Figure 2 is a screen shot of one of steps in Project Building Blocks. For the Project Building Blocks section of our knowledge base we chose a generic instructional design model (ADDIE – Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) that is also tightly linked to project management to engage users through the Quantitative Entry Point and Logical Entry Points. Our goal was to provide a structured approach for dividing large projects into small manageable chunks by posing a basic set of reflection and design questions for our users to ask themselves.

Figure 2: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Project Building Block Steps
Figure 3 is screen shot that was taken from the Learning Theory/Instructional Materials section of our knowledge base. This topic discusses why and how concise content supports learning in technology-based courseware. This topic also models how graphics can be used to highlight key concepts in text-based instructional materials. Users click on a link and a graphic of the Inverted Pyramid Writing Style pops up.
Most people interested in building innovative courses are not in the field of education. Thus when they are attempting to base their courses/projects on a particular theoretical approach they often lack and cannot find practical ways to implement them. We built the Learning Theory & Instructional Strategies by asking people in the field to describe how they developed their courses/projects. As we documented how these individuals had built their courses/projects we made the theory behind transparent. This section engages users through the Narrative Entry Point.

Figure 3: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Concise Content Development Overview
Figure 4 includes screen shots from two different sections within our knowledge base. Taken from the Learning Theory/Instructional Materials the first topic provides a snap shot of a number of studies that discusses the impact of visualization techniques on learning outcomes. Taken from the Best Practices section the second topic illustrates for our users an exemplary example of how animations can be used to teach invisible scientific phenomena. Users view a static graphic and text-based explanation of the technique and can then navigate to the real course from which the example was taken and view the animation in real time. The example from Best Practices engages users through the Aesthetic Entry Point.

Figure 4: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Visualization Overview & Animation Technique
Figure 5 is a screen shot that was taken from the Tips/Check Lists section of our knowledge base. Two topics were taken from this section: the first provides our users with important insights regarding the importance of color blindness when designing or choosing graphics, the second discusses how font selection can be used to further influence the structure and tone of text. These two examples from the Tips/Check List section also engage users through the Aesthetic Entry Point. However, the Tips & Checklists section was designed to engage users through the Logical Entry Point; it contains both tools for planning and practical guidelines.

Figure 5: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Color Blindness Guidelines and Font Usage
Figure 6 is yet another screen shot that was taken from the Learning Theory/Instructional Materials section of our knowledge base. This topic illustrates different options that users can choose when converting a course from a traditional face-to-face format into a technology-based learning environment. There are two sub-sections provided under this topic: choosing a re-design option and addressing new expectations. Again links to real examples are included so that our users can see high quality worked examples of each option. This example from Best Practices engages users through the Aesthetic Entry Point.

Figure 6: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Worked Examples for User Design Options

Figure 7 is yet another screen shot that was taken from the Learning Theory/Instructional Materials and Best Practices sections of our knowledge base. Taken from the Learning Theory/Instructional Materials the first topic describes the benefits and potential of using instructional games and simulations. Taken from the Best Practices section the second topic illustrates this technique for our users by providing links to real examples so that our users can see high quality worked examples of each option. This example from Best Practices also engages users through the Aesthetic Entry Point.

Figure 7: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Games/Simulation Overview & Best Practice Examples
Figure 8 is another screen shot that was taken from the Tips/Check Lists section of our knowledge base. This section provides our users with basic online moderating skills and important insights on how to structure and manage discussion forums. Well-structured discussion forums provide social context and help students establish social presence. Higher levels of social presence increase student interest and participation. Social context enables students to perceive virtual spaces, such as discussion forums as a real places; social presence enables students to present themselves or take on a role that will be perceived by other participants as real.

Figure 8: Screen Shot of TNT IDS Prototype Discussion Forum Insights
Future Directions
Building and sustaining the knowledge base within an educational informatics project development guide requires ongoing support and fine-tuning to maintain the currency and applicability of the knowledge provided. Therefore, the authors are in the process of defining specific approaches, initiatives and instruments to support this effort. The TNT-IDS prototype is currently published on the Web within the University of Oklahoma’s WebCT and the University of Antwerp’s Blackboard learning management systems. WebCT and Blackboard both secure the prototype and its content through password-protected access and affords the authors access from independent locations so that each site can be managed. Required electronic tools are also available, including instant messaging and e-mail. Interested parties may explore the TNT-IDS Prototype by go to: https://webct.ouhsc.edu/webct/public/home.pl
User ID = tntproto; password = 2005.
References
Clark, R. C. & Mayer, R. E. (2003). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Davis, J. (1996). The MUSE Book and Guide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College.
De Loght, T., Dara-Abrams, B. & Shortridge, A. M. (2005). The online water cooler: Inviting faculty into professional development through the entry point framework. In Kommers P. & Richards G. (Eds.), ED-MEDIA 2005: World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (pp 2622-2627). Charlottesville VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Gardner, H. (1983/1993). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. NY: Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (1999). The Disciplined Mind: What all students should understand. NY: Simon and Schuster.
Gibbs, W., Graves, P. & Bernas R. (2001). Evaluation guidelines for multimedia courseware. Journal of Research On Technology in Education, 34 (1), 2 -17.
Hill, J. R. (2002). Strategies and techniques for community building in web- based learning environments. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 14(1), 67-86.
Kahn, T. (2005). Designing Virtual Communities for Creativity and Learning. The George Lucas Educational Foundation, Retrieved March 10, 2005, from, http://www.edutopia.org/php/print.php?id=Art_483&template=printarticle.php.
Laurillard, D. (1993). Rethinking university teaching: A framework for the effective use of educational technology. London and New York: Routledge.
McNeil, S. (1996). A practitioner validated list of competencies needed for courseware authoring. In B. Robin, J. Price, J. Willis, & D. Willis (Eds.), Technology and Teacher Education Annual 1996 (pp. 338-343). Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Mioduser, D., Nachmias, R., Lahav, O. & Oren, A. (2000). Web-based learning environments: Current pedagogical and Technological State. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33(1), 55-76.
Rieber, L. P. (1994). Computers, Graphics & Learning. Dubuque, Iowa: Brown & Benchmark.
Schwier, R. (2001). Catalysts Emphases and Elements of Virtual Learning Communities: Implications for Research and Practice. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 2 (1), 5-18.
Shortridge, A. M. & De Loght, T. Quality e-Education: Project management & content development strategies. In Nall J. & Robson R. (Eds.), E-Learn 2004: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate Government, Healthcare, & Higher Education, ( pp 202-207). Charlottesville VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Rotter, J. (1989). Internal versus external control of reinforcement. American Psychologist, 45(4), 489-493.
Wiske, S. M., Sick, M., & Wirsig, S. (2001). New technologies to support teaching for understanding. International Journal of Educational Research, 35, 483-50.

e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) Vol. 9 No. 2
© University of Southern Queensland

Simulating a Mass Election in the Classroom”

2008-04-16T03:06:00.000-07:00

Simulating a Mass Election in the Classroom”

Dr. Andrew Biro
Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada
andrew.biro@acadiau.ca

Abstract
This article discusses the use of election simulation software in a course on American Government taught by the author in the Fall of 2004. The use of a computer-mediated election simulation allows for the experiential learning of certain features of mass elections in general, and US presidential elections in particular, that could not be done with “live” or smaller-scale electoral simulations. While the limitations of the technology do entail some precautions, overall the use of the simulation software proved to be a valuable pedagogical exercise.
Introduction
Teaching an American Government course at a small Canadian university, I wanted to use an election simulation that would teach students about the peculiarities of American elections, and American presidential elections in particular, with the complexities introduced by the electoral college system. Considerable evidence exists that simulations can be valuable exercises in political science courses. (Endersby and Webber, 1995; Kathlene and Choate, 1999; Pappas and Peadon, 2004; Princen and Stayaert, 2003; Smith and Boyer, 1996; Taylor, 2003) Simulations are valuable because they provide experiential learning (frequently characterized by participants as “realistic” or “authentic” experiences of political life) that contrast with more traditional lecture formats. (Endersby and Webber, 1995) On the other hand, however, it should be clear that simulations in and of themselves are not necessarily realistic or authentic, nor are all the lessons learned from the simulation universally generalizable to the “real world” outside the classroom.
For example, in most election simulations designed for classroom use, the dynamics are necessarily those of a relatively small-scale electoral contest. i While valuable lessons about elections are no doubt learned by the participants, it is far from clear that all of these lessons can be applied to the understanding of elections taking place on a larger scale. In order to see the qualitative differences that emerge in mass scale elections, students need to travel – at least virtually – beyond the bounds of a face-to-face community. More specifically, in teaching American Government (particularly outside the United States), there is a need to teach students how the electoral college system makes American presidential elections – with resources focused on a few hotly contested states – unlike elections in which candidates seek a majority from an undifferentiated electorate.
In order to address these issues, I decided to use a freely available presidential election simulation software – making some changes so that it could be used as a class, rather than individual exercise – to simulate the final month of a presidential election campaign. This allowed students to learn first-hand about the effects of the electoral college system, as well as some of the features of mass elections more generally (a geographically dispersed electorate, capital-intensive campaigning), which could not be easily reproduced using smaller-scale, “live” electoral simulations.
Simulation Software
The election was run using the Election Day (version 3.02) election simulation software, developed by John Gastil, which is described as “a semi-realistic simulation based on actual campaign laws, census data, public opinion surveys, voting patterns, and historical campaign environments.”ii In the simulation undertaken in this class, players controlled a fictitious candidate in a simulated contemporary US presidential election.iii
In this simulation, the main tasks for the candidates are to set a budget and schedule for each week of the campaign. The simulation provides players with a wealth of data (information on population, racial make-up, median income and education level, and party identification, are provided by city and state; public opinion data on each of 15 campaign issues is also provided for each state. Candidate’s organizational strength in each state is also rated (1-100), and can vary throughout the campaign, being strengthened, for example, by a candidate visit.) Planning the campaign thus requires a number of decisions: how much to spend, when to spend, and on what, where to travel to, what to do there, what issues to focus on, constructive versus negative campaign messages, how much energy to invest in particular events (more high-energy events will require the candidate to take more frequent rest days), and so on. And making effective decisions requires both research into the underlying data, and strategic thinking about the campaign as it evolves.
Once the data for each candidate’s weekly budget and schedule is entered, the simulation proceeds through the week, reporting on the results of scheduled events, and also providing unscheduled events, such as endorsement offers or news stories, to which the candidates must respond. Then, at the end of the week, the simulation processes all the new information, and provides updated candidate polling data, in the form of a red vs. blue national electoral map familiar to observers of American politics (see figure 1), with electoral vote tallies for each candidate.
Figure 1: Map of end of week election simulation results

Running the Simulation in a Class
Such a detailed and complex simulation can be a valuable learning tool. Inevitably there will be quibbles about the realism of certain features of the simulation (as well as, in this case, some stability issues – relatively frequent software crashes – which seem at least in part to be a function of developing a complex simulation with limited programming resources). Nevertheless, computer information-processing capacity allows a level of detail that provides players a sense of the scope of decision-making involved in planning and executing a presidential campaign. Unlike classroom simulations where local students are the electoral constituency, a computer simulation allows players to appreciate the increased complexity that comes with a national-scale campaign: managing a large budget, juggling voluminous voter data, appealing to a geographically dispersed constituency, and so on. Just as highly staffed and funded campaigns might test different campaign strategies and messages (via focus groups or polling), a computer simulation also allows users to test different electoral strategies (running the simulation multiple times with different choices). Because of the element of randomness built into the simulation, there is – again, realistically – no guarantee that strategies that users test on their own will yield the same results with the “real” campaign in the classroom.
One immediate problem with using this software package (and several others that were examined prior to the course) in a classroom setting, however, is that it is designed for use by only a small number of “players.” The simulation’s realism (its reliance on historical voter data) also means that for presidential elections, third (or fourth or fifth) players control candidates with little chance of electoral success. While experiencing the obstacles to third-party success might be a useful lesson in itself, running a campaign with no chance of winning may also lead to disillusionment and disengagement.
Both the large volume of data that can be assimilated in this simulation and the reality of two-party dominance in the American system thus pointed toward dividing the class into two large teams (one Democrat, one Republican). While most students in the class had some previous experience with working on small group projects, few had experienced working on a project with such a large group (18 students on each team). This presented challenges both for the students (who had to coordinate the activities of a large number of people) and for the instructor (who had to devise techniques to discourage “free riders” – see below).
At the start of the simulation, one entire class period (75 minutes) was devoted to having the two teams caucus for the first time. During this time, the teams divided themselves into smaller groups, each with specific responsibilities (i.e. budget, scheduling, planning events). The following week, the campaign began. Just before each class meeting devoted to the simulation (one per week for five weeks), each team had to submit their candidate’s weekly budget and travel schedule. I entered this data into the program on my computer. Then, in class, with the program running and projected onto a screen for all to see, we went through the week’s events. Teams had to respond on the spot to unscheduled events as they occurred. After class, I posted the updated data on a course website, which students then could download and use to plot out their strategy for the next week.
Dividing the class into large teams allowed students to divide up the research (exploring the data and testing different strategies), and thus to get a handle on an amount of data that would be unmanageable for a single individual. But they also quickly learned that plotting an overall campaign strategy required the coordination of individuals’ research efforts: event planners had to know where events were going to take place, travel schedulers had to know which states the campaign was targeting, and so on. In order to be successful, students had to work individually, in small groups, and in larger teams.
In discussing their electoral simulation (which similarly divided students into campaign teams), Pappas and Peaden note the familiar problem of free riders: “simulations allow for varying degrees of participation so it is difficult to ensure that all group members are pulling their weight.” (2004: 862) Given the size of the groups in this case, there was some danger that a significant number of students would act as free riders, and that a few students would do all or most of the work. Accordingly, I used two techniques to attempt to maintain broad student involvement. First, in addition to their team’s goal of winning the presidential election, each student was given an individual goal to achieve. These goals were of three types. Some students were assigned a congressional or state-wide race in addition to their role on the national campaign. In this case, their goal was to try to get the candidate to visit, and more generally to try to ensure victory (preferably by a wide margin), in their particular city or state. Other students were each assigned an interest group supporting the candidate: their goal was to try to maximize the exposure of a particular issue, and to ensure that the candidate did not moderate his/her stance on this issue. A final group of students were prospective appointees for particular cabinet positions. Their goal was to maximize the exposure of two or three issues related to their portfolio, and also to refuse tied endorsement offers from related groups, so as not to jeopardize their capacity to act once in office. In having differing – and sometimes conflicting – individual goals, the aim was both to develop a mechanism to penalize free riders,iv and also to give students a sense of the conflictual dynamics that are inherent to a large-scale campaign (or indeed any large-scale organization), and which are structural rather than personality conflicts.
The second technique for maintaining broad involvement was that students individually had to submit regular reports discussing the progress of the campaign (both the team’s campaign and progress towards their individual goal): three “interim” reports (after weeks two, three, and four), and one final report after the conclusion of the campaign. The reports were intended to be short (150 words for the interim reports, 300-400 words for the final report), and the interim reports were graded only on a pass/fail basis, to keep the marking load to a manageable level. But students generally seemed to take these assignments relatively seriously, and often exceeded the recommended length. Kathlene and Choate note that in their simulations, “grades are based predominantly on the ingenuity, creativity and quality of the written assignments. The exceptional students generally rise to the occasion.” (1999: 71) In this case, grades were based largely on completing written assignments, and only the final report was graded in terms of quality. Nevertheless, interest in the simulation was sufficiently high that a number of students produced high quality reports, with a few also providing the sorts of extra touches (i.e. submitting reports on personalized campaign letterhead) found by Kathlene and Choate (1999: 71-2).
Simulation Results
At the end of the term, a survey of students was done to assess the results of the simulation. An online (instead of in class) survey was chosen in order to preserve anonymity (respondents were asked, however, to identify which team they were on and their gender). Unfortunately, the medium, combined with the timing (end of term), produced a relatively low response rate (n=15). The data from this survey, however, was supplemented with data from anonymous course evaluations (n=33), a class devoted to “debriefing” at the conclusion of the campaign, and my observations of, and conversations with, various individual students during and after the simulation.
A number of students in the course evaluations listed the simulation as a highlight of the course. Colleagues also reported that discussion of the simulation was spilling over into other courses. In both the course evaluations and the online survey, a few students suggested more time should have been devoted to the simulation. Only one student (in the course evaluation) suggested that too much time was devoted to the simulation. All students who completed the online survey agreed that the simulation should be repeated in future offerings of the course (the question was not asked in the overall course evaluation).
Teams and smaller groups met or communicated frequently outside of class time. Interestingly, in spite of a campus environment that emphasizes technological connectivity, survey respondents reported relying more heavily on face-to-face meetings than on electronic or phone communication (mean = 4.14/5 vs. 3.67/5). On the other hand, both teams developed websites where campaign information was posted, and one team went so far as to have the website password protected.
While most students did participate actively in the simulation, some participated more intensively than others. On average, survey respondents reported spending 9 hours outside of class time working on the simulation (simulation participation and the written reports were worth a total 15% of the final mark). While it seems likely that students responding to the survey were those more heavily involved in the simulation, it is worth noting that, for the question “On a scale of 1 – 5 [1 = much less; 5 = much more], how much time did you spend working on the simulation compared to other members of your team?” the mean response was 3.6. And while a few students complained of free riders on their team, one survey respondent felt the problem was not free riders, but the development of party elites: “there were a bunch of people on each team who really overshadowed the others simply with loud statements and false promises of success. "Trust me, trust me" they cried, and they were trusted without positive result.”
One of the reasons for using a simulation was as a means of inducing class participation and to engage students in experiential learning. The desire to increase class participation, however, also had to be balanced against other outcomes. The incentive for winning the simulated election was fairly modest: one percent of the student’s final grade in the course. In part this was because I was wary of producing a dynamic of “extraordinarily intense” competition (Kathlene and Choate 1999: 72) that might spill over into the rest of the class’s activities. As well, the software appeared to provide a fairly high degree of randomized results (so that greater effort or smarter strategy would not necessarily guarantee winning the election).
As it turned out, the decisive turn in the campaign happened in week 3 (of 5 weeks), when a close race turned into a strong, across the board, lead for the Democratic candidate. There was no immediately obvious reason for this shift in party fortunes, which the Republicans overwhelmingly explained as a software glitch. Democrats, on the other hand, felt that at least part of the reason was their campaign strategy, so even this simulation “flaw” provided the means for a discussion of the operation of ideology in interpreting political events. In any case, once it became clear that the contest was effectively over (or that careful strategizing was less important than random computer variables), the intensity of student participation ebbed. Thus, while the survey respondents indicated that having to write reports was more influential than having individual goals in getting students to participate in the simulation (mean = 3.87/5 vs. 3.2/5), at least some participants may have been even more strongly motivated by competitiveness, or a desire not to be responsible for letting down their team members.
What did the students learn from this exercise? Table 1 shows the results of three survey questions, which asked respondents for their perceptions of specific learning outcomes. The average results for all three were closer to “very much” (5/5) than “very little” (1/5) – good, but not spectacular, results. On the other hand, a number of students commented that the simulation gave them an understanding of the electoral college system, and why presidential races are typically focused on a handful of battleground states, in a way that they thought reading a text or listening to a lecture would not have. In this sense, the idea of a simulation as a social science “laboratory” that provides “a deeper understanding of institutions, their successes and failures” (Smith and Boyer 1996, 690) seems to have been confirmed.
Table 1: Survey of student learning outcomes (n=15)
“How much do you think you learned from the simulation exercise about…”
Mean (1 = very little, 5 = very much)
The US electoral system
3.53
Election campaigns
3.87
Working in large groups
3.53
Lessons Learned: The benefits and drawbacks of the computer-simulated campaign
One of the main benefits of a computer-simulated campaign is that it provides the capacity to simulate a large (i.e. national) scale election. The most obvious benefit of this in an American Government course is that it allows students to experience first-hand the complexities and peculiarities of the electoral college system. Simulating a presidential (as opposed to local or state-wide) election thus allows students to understand the importance of “swing” or “battleground” states, and why resources in presidential contests are often highly geographically focused. Another benefit, which may be specific to teachers of American government outside of the United States, is that the Presidential race provides a more familiar frame of reference for students. The option of simulating, for example, a state-wide race that uses live local issues (Pappas and Peaden, 2004), is not available to teachers and students of American Government courses outside of the United States.
But another, perhaps more subtle, benefit of a computer simulation, is that it may more realistically simulate the experience of a mass election campaign, which is in its essence a mediated affair. “Live” election simulations, by contrast, necessarily rely on a relatively small electorate, whom candidates and campaign workers deal with on a face-to-face basis. Thus it is more difficult in a live simulation, for example, to demonstrate the importance of access to financial resources: an important factor in large-scale electoral contests. In Pappas and Peaden’s simulation, for example, a survey of the student electorate showed that voting choice was most strongly affected by candidate speeches and debates, rather than mediated campaign messages (commercials, campaign literature, posters, and press releases). In mass elections, however, it is not just that voters impressions of the candidates are largely inflected by media messages, but also that saturation advertising and news coverage may affect voters’ impressions of a candidate at an unconscious level. For obvious reasons, the media environment of a contemporary presidential campaign (particularly in intensely contested battleground states) – and hence the importance of a well-funded campaign – is impossible to simulate in a classroom.
Finally, it should be noted that the setting in which this simulation was conducted may make it more difficult to reproduce elsewhere. The simulation was conducted at a relatively small school (3700 students) in a small town. Most students live on or close to campus, and many of the students in the class already knew each other at the beginning of the term. This undoubtedly made the coordination of large group meetings much easier than it would be, for example, at a large university in a metropolitan setting. Such obstacles of scale could be overcome, but would probably necessitate devoting a larger amount of class time to the simulation.
The other local peculiarity that made running the simulation here easier is a university-wide compulsory laptop leasing program (the “Acadia Advantage”). This ensured that all students had a common computing platform, as well as institutionally embedded and relatively extensive tech support. Thus it was relatively easy to ensure that all students were able to load and run the software on their own computers, which was crucial for ensuring that all students participate in the simulation, and (if comments in the software’s user forum are any guide) is not something to be taken for granted.
More generally, there are a number of requirements for the software to be used for this simulation. Along with technical features – stability, user-friendliness – the software also should deliver the “realism” or “authenticity” that students expect of experiential learning. Election Day delivers better on some of these dimensions than others, although it is also worth noting that there are plans to upgrade this particular software, and as computer-mediated teaching becomes more common, other similar packages are likely to be developed.
If it is feasible, however, running such a simulation can be a worthwhile experience. It has the potential to engage students in a way that teaches them about the peculiarities of the American presidential election system, as well as the impact of scale on electoral processes and campaign strategies and dynamics. Given the contemporary state of communication technology, role of the media in society, and nature of mass democracy (in the United States and elsewhere), it arguably provides students with a more realistic experience of contemporary elections.
References:
Endersby, James W, and David J. Webber. 1995. “Iron Triangle Simulation: A role-playing game for undergraduates in Congress, interest groups, and public policy classes.” PS, Political Science & Politics. 28, 3 (Sept.): 520-522.
Kathlene, Lyn, and Judd Choate. 1999. “Running for elected office: A ten-week political campaign simulation for upper-division courses.” PS, Political Science and Politics. 32, 1 (Mar.): 69-76.
Pappas, Christine, and Charles Peaden. 2004. “Running for Your Grade: A Six-Week Senatorial Campaign Simulation.” PS, Political Science and Politics. 37, 3 (Sept.): 859-863
Princen, Thomas, and Karl Steyaert, “Water Trade: What Should the World Trade Organization Do?” In Encountering Global Environmental Politics: Teaching, Learning, and Empowering Knowledge, ed. Michael Maniates. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
Smith, Elizabeth T., and Mark A. Boyer. 1996. "Designing In-Class Simulations." PS, Political Science and Politics. 29, 4 (Dec.): 690-94.
Taylor, Peter. 2003. “Nonstandard Lessons from the “Tragedy of the Commons.”” In Encountering Global Environmental Politics: Teaching, Learning, and Empowering Knowledge, ed. Michael Maniates. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
i For examples, see Pappas and Peadon (1999), which relies on a debate open to the campus community, and Kathlene and Choate (2004), in which a large introductory political science class constitutes the electorate.
ii For more information on the simulation, see the Election Day website: http://www.election-day.info/ (accessed June 28, 2005). This phrase appears to have disappeared from the current site (accessed Dec. 6, 2005), which states that “the game lacks realism in a few respects, but that will improve.…” The realism of the simulation is discussed further, below.
iii The software also allows for lower-scale elections (state-wide and local), and the use of selected actual historic candidates.
iv Although the penalty was not particularly significant: achieving their individual goals was worth one percent of the final course grade.

e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology (e-JIST) Vol. 9 No. 2
© University of Southern Queensland

Looking for Critical Thinking in Online Threaded Discussions

2008-04-16T03:03:00.000-07:00

Looking for Critical Thinking in Online Threaded Discussions

Paula San Millan MaurinoFarmingdale State Universitypmaurino@optonline.net

Abstract
Threaded discussion forums have been a popular topic for the past few years in distance education research and studied as a factor in student participation, satisfaction, learning outcomes, social presence and interaction. Only recently has it been considered as a potential vehicle for the development of critical thinking skills and deep learning. Thirty-seven current studies on critical inquiry, deep learning, presence and interaction in distance education were synthesized. The studies were compared for findings about participation quality, participation quantity, critical thinking skills and deep learning, and recommendations. The synthesis revealed that current literature touts the potential for development of deep learning and critical thinking skills through online threaded discussions. For the most part, however, research does not show this happening at a high level or to any great extent. Confounding the issue is the fact that current research is predominated by examination of education and graduate level online classes and is mainly focused on student perceptions and outcomes. This is at odds with the profile of today’s “typical” distance education student. The need for more instructor involvement and effort is indicated in much of the research, but bulk of the research has focused on students and not teachers.
Introduction
Learning through discussions or conversations is a fundamental part of teaching and learning, particularly in higher education. New communication technologies enable discussions to be held online as well as in the classroom. These discussions may form a component of a totally online distance education class or be used as a supplement to a traditional face-to-face class. The discussions can be synchronous, with participants “talking” at the same time, or asynchronous, where communication turnaround can be delayed by hours or days.
Online threaded discussions provide students with access to the forum twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Students can thus participate whenever they have the time and desire and at their own pace. This online “talk” can be more thoughtful since it offers the chance for reflection. Students have time to read each other's contributions and to think carefully about their own contributions. Messages can be composed and revised as needed and this writing may encourage discipline and rigor in thinking and communicating.
The characteristics of anonymity may also serve to promote enhanced and more intensive discussion. Students can concentrate on the content of the message instead of the presenter and may be more open and honest about themselves. They may divulge information that is more personal and revealing which will, in turn, encourage others to do the same.
On the other hand, threaded discussions are written discussions and lack the affordances of oral conversation. Some students feel that these discussions are just a series of messages and there is no sense of community. The lack of facial expressions and voice make the process less human. The fact that there are no nonverbal clues to guide them can also lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. Asynchronous discussions may lack the speed, the spark and energy of a face-to-face conversation and hinder the development of dynamic and interactive discussion [1]. Fewer teacher prompts online and the “out of sight, out of mind” adage may serve to increase student procrastination. Further, multiple simultaneous threads can be confusing to follow and to respond to. Some students may overpost and others suffer from “communication anxiety”. They feel detached and are not sure who is really out there, when to expect a response and what kind of a response it will be [2].
Discussion
Threaded discussion forums have been a popular topic for the past few years in distance education research and studied as a factor in student participation, satisfaction, learning outcomes, social presence and interaction. Only recently has it been considered as a potential vehicle for the development of critical thinking skills and deep learning. In an effort to determine the efficacy of threaded online discussions in this regard, thirty-seven current research studies were analyzed and synthesized. The volume of research within these areas in recent years is substantial. In an effort to condense and summarize the research, a chart was constructed. The chart is shown at the end of this section of the paper. The research studies are listed alphabetically by author followed by date of the study. The next column indicates whether the study was conducted with a graduate, undergraduate, professional or high school level group. The purpose of the study as stated in the journal article is shown next, followed by the methodology used. The next column indicates whether the class was totally online or if just the discussions were online as a part of a face-to-face class. The last column contains the major findings of the study.
Of the thirty-seven studies reviewed, nineteen studies evaluated classes at the graduate level and eleven at the undergraduate level. Although this paper deals with college level distance education courses, several other studies were included because they were cited frequently within other studies and considered valuable literature. Of these seven, two were on a high school level and five were on a professional level.
The majority of studies were performed with education classes. Of the thirty studies involving college classes, thirteen were education classes. Five were business related classes and four were computer related classes. The other classes varied across discipline.
The majority of the education classes were at the graduate level. Only one undergraduate education class was researched. It is assumed that this is because education professionals are more interested in distance education research than researchers in other disciplines and they have access to education classes and students as subjects. Why so many researchers have chosen graduate level instead of undergraduate level education classes is not known. The predominance of graduate level classes for research, however, is at variance with the current statistical profile and demographics of current distance education students. The changing nature and demographics of the distance education student are discussed later in this paper.
As stated previously, studies were selected for review if the article indicated that the purpose of the research was to investigate critical inquiry, deep learning, presence, and interaction. The methodology varied and a number of studies used triangulation. Content analysis of class transcripts, discussion threads, or listservs was a popular method. These archived records have only been available for research the last five or ten years and as a result, are a popular newer method of data collection and analysis. It was used to some extent in 22 of the 37 studies. This content analysis was generally performed in an effort to analyze student responses. These student responses were then often categorized for quantity or quality. Some studies ranked student responses using a scale or taxonomy such as Bloom’s Taxonomy, Biggs’ SOLO Taxonomy, or Garrison’s Four Cognitive Processing Categories.
Another common research design was to compare student conversations online with face-to-face classes. Seven studies followed this methodology. Student interviews and questionnaires were also popular, frequently in addition to other methods. Of the 37 studies, fifteen interviewed or questioned students.
2.1 Research Findings
Kreijns, Kirschner, and Jochems in a 2002 study stated that there is a concomitant body of research that reports low participation rates, varying degrees of disappointing collaboration, low learning performance and quality of learning in distance education [3]. The analysis of these 37 studies supports some of these findings.
2.2 Participation Quantity
Some studies did report low participation rates [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]. Other studies specifically studied “lurkers” or low participants [4] [11] [12], but found that these “lurkers” do learn by observing others. Hung and Nichoni in a 2002 study further stated that lurking is a necessary step in getting familiar with a particular culture [12]. A 2002 study by Picciano found that there was no difference in learning outcomes for low, moderate and high participants [10].
Chen and Zimitat in a 2004 study found that online classes had more participation than in-class discussions [13], but the more common finding was widely varying degrees of participation by students in the same class [14] [10]. Hara, Bonk, and Angeli in a 1998 study reported that online participation by students was limited to the mandatory number required by the instructor [15].
2.3 Participation Quality
Online discussions were described as less personal than face-to-face discussions [16], perfunctory [5], less interactive and lacking in speed, spontaneity and energy [5] [17] [1]. However, some studies reported more honest reflective discussion online [18] [14] [15] [17] [19]. Online participation was described as good for information exchange [20] [21], but not for creative problem exploration and idea generation [22].
Other studies reported that threaded discussions do not encourage team building or group processes [8] [23]. Some online environments culturally condition students to agree with each other and challenging each others ideas in discussion is considered a personal affront. There is little social discord [24] [25] [26]. Vonderwell in a 2002 study found that students claimed to all have similar ideas and thus there was nothing to really talk about [16].
2.4 Critical Thinking Skills and Deep Learning
Chen and Zimitat in a 2004 study reported that deeper understanding was shown in face-to-face classes than online classes [27]. On the other hand, similar amounts of critical thinking were found in face-to-face and online classes by Newman et al. in 1997 [22]. Hara, Bonk and Angeli in 1998 did find cognitively deep, lengthy postings with peer references, but still noted that students posted only the required number of postings and that comments were highly dependent on the directions of the discussion starter [15]. Heckman and Annabi in 2002 stated that based on their work, online discussions can generate cognitive levels equal to a face-to-face discussion [28].
When critical inquiry or deep learning was categorized in hierarchical levels, most messages or responses were ranked at the lower cognitive levels [1] [20] [21].
2.5 Literature Recommendations
Despite the difficulties cited above, most of the studies stated that online discussions have the potential for the development and fostering of critical thinking skills and deep learning. However, overwhelming it was stated that this was not yet happening at a high level or to a great extent.
Recommendations and suggestions to improve critical thinking skills development and deep learning included combining online discussions with other activities such as collaborative group work [26], case studies [26], production of tangible products [8], and problem and project based learning activities [19]. Other recommendations included developing more appropriate teaching and social presence [29] [24].
Mentioned most often as needed for improving deep learning in online discussions was better instructor efforts [30] [5] [6] [26] [18] [31] [1] [32]. Along these same lines, setting of clearer goals for discussion topics was frequently mentioned [14] [33]. Problems relating to a lack of clear goals or shared purpose for discussion was discussed in a number of studies [34] [35] [20] [14].
Most researchers placed responsibility for social interaction squarely on the back of instructors. It is up to the instructor to create a sense of online community and make a space for social interaction to take place [36]. This space must foster intimacy, openness and connectedness. The teacher then must direct online discussions, influence the discussion by entering new topics, share new material and redirect conversational patterns as necessary [3].
It was stated that an interactive teaching style is the best pedagogical approach to Internet-based learning [37] [30] and the type of questions the instructor asks are extremely important. The questions must be interesting as well as probing and prodding. They must elicit self explanations from the learner, critical clarification and refinement [38].
Instructors are also responsible, according to the literature, for providing the scaffolding that allows students to advance from passive to deep learning. Teachers are the content experts and must guide and assist students in their quest for knowledge. They must diagnose misconceptions, inject knowledge from diverse sources, and respond to technical concerns [39]. On the other hand, there are researchers that recommend a “guide on the side” approach with a laissez faire approach to moderating student discussions. There is some conflict between these two approaches and disagreement about whether the teacher in an online class should be a facilitator or a content provider. Further disagreement exists about which of the two approaches is more student centered.
It is interesting to note that although better instructor efforts were mentioned frequently, there were not many studies that actually interviewed or focused on instructors. Mortera-Gutierrez in a 2002 study conducted three unstructured interviews with three instructors and found that the pragmatic approach of the instructor affects class interaction, skills, and strategies [40]. In 2003, Trollip and Blignaut categorized instructor postings and classified them as affective, administrative, other, corrective, informative and Socratic [32]. Li, in a 2003 study, interviewed one teacher to learn of problems of first time online students [9].
2.6 Other Factors
Some of the studies did not take place in entirely online classes. Students taking a blended class where they have some face-to-face meetings with the instructor and other students may not require the same level of social and teacher presence online. Students in these blended classes may have more time to devote to developing in-depth conversations since less time is needed for developing social connections. Also, the face-to-face discussions may stimulate idea generation for later online discussions. These opportunities are not available for students taking classes that are totally online.
Three of the studies also used synchronous discussions. Synchronous and asynchronous conversations have their own advantages and disadvantages and are not comparable in many ways. As mentioned with the blended classes above, students in classes with synchronous discussions may not have the same needs for development of teacher and student presence.
Lastly, some of the studies did mention that other factors affect critical thinking. Bullen in a 1998 study and LaPointe in a 2003 study mentioned the importance of learner characteristics [25] [41]. Guzdial et al. in 2002 and and Rourke et al. in 1999 discussed the influence of discipline and culture [6] [24]. Students enrolled in technical disciplines are accustomed to a more didactic lecture approach and are not accustomed to discussing controversial or ethical issues. These students have been taught correct procedures and how apply them, not how to discuss these procedures.
In summary, perhaps the most consistent finding was that deep learning does NOT happen spontaneously [41] and that when it does happen; it is difficult to measure [43].
2.7 The Changing Distance Education Student
The original target group of distance education was adults with occupational, social and family commitments wanting to improve and update professional knowledge. Distance education has traditionally been interwoven with adult learning theory and lifelong learning. In 1991, Verduin and Clark described distance education as a form of adult education traditionally offered through extension units of colleges and universities, offering a choice of time and location, and designed for adults with the adult learning traits of self direction and internal motivation [44]. The typical online student has been generally described as over 25, employed, a caretaker, who has already completed some higher education. These learner demographics may have been true in the past, but are no longer valid.
The National Center for Education states that online enrollment now spans all age groups. As of December 31, 1999, 65% of l8 year olds had enrolled in an online course. It was also reported that 57% of traditional undergraduates aged 19 to 23 have been enrolled in an online course. These students are taking online classes at the same time as face-to-face classes. Online classes are not replacing face-to-face classes, they are being offered as supplements or alternatives within traditional college certificate and degree programs. Combining distance education with traditional degree programs is becoming a dominant theme [44].
The National Center for Education also reported that over one-half of the increase in distance education classes from 1997-8 to 2000-01 was attributable to public two year colleges. This is particularly impressive, since general enrollment in four year colleges has been outpacing enrollment in two year colleges [45].
Schools granting associate degrees had the largest number of students taking at least one online course, representing about half of all the students studying online. Strong increases were predicted by all classes of schools offering associate degrees [45].
Fourteen years ago, Verduin and Clark described three major types of programs for adult learning and distance education: adult basic education for acquiring basic skills needed to function in a changing, increasingly technology based society; career education; and leisure and enrichment education [46]. The nature of online education has changed as well as the typical (if there is a typical) online student. A more common online student today may well be a young, full time associate degree student taking college courses online as well as in the classroom.

Schools Get a Helping Handheld

2008-04-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

Schools Get a Helping Handheld

by :Katie Dean

Pencils, protractors, compasses, folders ... add handheld devices to the list of school supplies that some believe are essential for today's classroom.
Instead of lugging a laptop to class or trooping to the computer lab, students at Consolidated High School District 230 in Orland Park, Ill., are carrying their computer in the palms of their hand.
And after a semester of successfully incorporating the devices into class lessons, the school district plans to expand the program next year.
"This is going to be the dominant technology that students use at school," said Darrell Walery, director of technology for the district.
The district's three high schools rolled out 2,200 Palm IIIxe handhelds this fall in what is believed to be the largest experiment of its kind in public schools.
"A lot of technology-rich programs center around one grade level, one teacher or one ability," Walery said. "We have teachers from all different subject areas in the program."
Andrew Lech, a freshman at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School, uses the Palm in nearly all of his courses.
Lech writes essays in English class on the handheld and skips the trip to the school media center. He keeps track of his homework and instantly averages his grades on the device. "I don't like writing in my assignment notebook," he said. "(The Palm) is more interactive. It's a lot better."
Instead of lugging around a dictionary for Spanish class, he uses a translation application for the Palm. In his honors algebra class, he uses the device as a graphing calculator.
The sophomore biology classes taught by Laurie Ritchey at Carl Sandburg High School use the Palms to instantly graph data during lab experiments.
To measure dissolved oxygen in a pond, students plugged in a probe to the handhelds and dropped the probe in the water. The Palm then recorded and graphed the data.
The portability of the device was essential. "Normally you can't be rolling a computer out to a pond," Ritchey said.
In another project, students use the devices to predict and analyze their "ecological footprint," a measure of the resources each person uses.
To do the experiment, students recorded "a massive amount of data" on the device including information about their homes, cars, food, recycling and the number of cotton clothes they wear.
A lesson on mitosis incorporated the Palm as well. Students used a sketchpad program to draw the different stages of mitosis, which then became animated when the student finished.
Ritchey was one of 65 volunteer teachers who spent a week last summer learning to use the Palms. She admitted that incorporating the device into the classroom has been time-consuming. But the payoffs have been worth it, she said.
"You're teaching the same things but it's a more innovative way of teaching," she said. "The kids are more enthused."
Walery said the district decided to introduce a large number of Palms all at once because otherwise, "it's hard to tell how (a small number of) results transfer to different situations," Walery said.
Participating teachers meet once a week to learn new applications for the devices and to compare notes.
Students in the program can buy a Palm for $225, lease one for $75, or only use the device while at school.
The staff discovered that kids who only used the tool at school did not get as much value from them.
"The kids didn't get used to them as fast," Ritchey said. "They didn't make as much progress as fast as those who own them."
As a result, certain classes next year will require students to buy or lease a Palm. Financial aid will be available to those who cannot afford the devices.
One proponent of handhelds in school was thrilled to hear that the district is embracing the technology.
"A low-powered computer in your hand is more educationally beneficial than a high-powered Pentium III computer down the hall," said Elliot Soloway, a University of Michigan professor who has developed applications for the Palm.
"Every school can afford to provide every child with a $100 computational tool," he said. "It's simply a matter of priorities."
William Rukeyser, coordinator of Learning in the Real World -- a critic of the widespread adoption of technology in education -- admitted that "it looks like one of the better thought-out experiments" he has seen.
But he added a few cautionary notes as well; namely, that schools should not be so gung-ho about technology that they end up "trying to fit an educational challenge into a technological box" to the point where the technology becomes a burden.
Rukeyser also expressed concern that the new tool could be an economic barrier to some.
"People should be really careful about further exacerbating these social inequalities," he said.
And there are practical concerns, too.
"Even as the cost of handhelds has dropped significantly, there's still going to be loss. If a student drove over his notebook, it probably wouldn't be damaged the same way a Palm Pilot would be," he said. "That (loss) doesn't happen to a notebook that costs a buck nineteen.

Privacy Policy for edutech-05.blogspot.com

2008-04-12T05:40:00.000-07:00

Privacy Policy for edutech-05.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at yuditekpend@gmail.com. At edutech-05.blogspot.com, the privacy of our visitors is of extreme importance to us. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by edutech-05.blogspot.com and how it is used. Log FilesLike many other Web sites, edutech-05.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable. Cookies and Web Beacons edutech-05.blogspot.com does use cookies to store information about visitors preferences, record user-specific information on which pages the user access or visit, customize Web page content based on visitors browser type or other information that the visitor sends via their browser. Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. Our advertising partners include Google Adsense, . These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on edutech-05.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see. edutech-05.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers. You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. edutech-05.blogspot.com's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites. If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

high tech high school

2008-04-12T05:19:00.000-07:00

Ballard High is going high tech this semester. Students in Joe Kelly's ninth grade Language Arts class will be provided with Handspring Visor Deluxe handheld computers and educational software to use at school and at home. Other teachers supporting the program include Amy Holmes, Dina McArdle, Mollie Hackett, and Cassie Chinn.
Students will use the Visors to take notes in class, track homework assignments, create outlines and write reports, share information, and record their grades. They can also read novels and news, use an electronic dictionary and thesaurus, and study for tests.
The project has been made possible by the joint efforts of PDA Verticals and Handspring Inc., which donated half of the computers for the program, as well as education-related Palm OS developers, and The Ballard High School Foundation.
"The Ballard High program is an excellent example of how educators and organizations like PDA Verticals are integrating handheld computers into rich opportunities for students and teachers alike," stated Susan Yost, Education Markets Manager for Handspring. "Handspring is excited about supporting dynamic classrooms that are embracing technology."
The Plan: A Handheld in Every Student's Hand
Dr. Engle, Ballard High Principal, anticipates that students using the computers will develop stronger organizational skills, improve academic achievement, and gain valuable proficiency with technology. "I am committed to making technology available to all students," said Dr. Engle. "We need to introduce technology into education early and integrate it into the daily lives of students." The pilot project is intended to generate data for a grant at the district level, then statewide.
Dr. Engle envisions having kiosks on campus for students to upload completed assignments, download new homework, and retrieve current information from a variety of sources. The infrastructure could then be replaced with wireless networks that take advantage of wireless Springboard modules available for the Visor.
Terry Bergeson, Superintendent of Public Instruction, recently stated that efforts like this "...are tremendous on a number of important levels. Students who become proficient with technology have a substantial advantage upon entering the working world."
Seattle Area Company Helps Realize the Vision
Dr. Engle selected Seattle area company PDA Verticals to supply the Ballard High handhelds and software because of its expertise with education and technology, industry relationships, and innovative customization process. It is the only company that provides handhelds customized with pre-loaded software selected by the user. Typically, users must purchase the device and software separately and install the software.
Students and educators at Ballard High will use the pdaED.com website to share experiences in online discussion forums and publish assignments produced using their handhelds. You can track the progress of the project, participate in lively discussions, and learn more about handhelds in education on the website. PDA Verticals is also helping teachers develop a curriculum that integrates the devices into all aspects of learning. Staff members will help train students.
"We are excited to be involved in a project to improve academic achievement." Said Chad Roberts, CEO of PDA Verticals. "The students participating will be gaining life skills that will give them the confidence and ability to compete in today's high tech world."
The Ballard High collection of educational software will be available on customized, pre-loaded handheld computers for sale on pdaED.com in March 2001. Parents, students, and educators in the US and Canada can select and configure handheld computers, which will be shipped ready-to-use.
The Ballard High software package includes QuizApp by PDA Verticals, Thesaurus by DDH Software, Four.Zero by HandMark, powerOne Graph by Infinity Software, BDicty Gold by Beiks, and Teacher's PET by Coffee Pot Software.
For More Information
Email me when more information about the Ballard High School Handspring Visor project becomes available.Type your email address in the box and click Submit.

Email me when more information about Ballard High School customized handheld computers and software packages are available from pdaED.com. Type your email address in the box and click Submit

C.T. IN “THE LAND OF PLENTY

2008-03-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

C.T. IN “THE LAND OF PLENTY”

I was fortunate to visit three international schools in South-East Asia to observe, discuss and reflect on the development of Information and Communication Technology in those institutions, as part of the Minolta/Don Le Prou study award for 2000. Given that such schools could be expected to have the personnel, the financial support and a largely computer literate student population three focus questions were identified on which to base the study:

1. How do these schools organise and deliver I.C.T. programmes to their students?
2. What issues, problems or dilemmas are they faced with?
3. What issues are relevant to the New Zealand situation and what can we learn from them?

SCHOOL ONE

The International School Manila (I.S.M.), founded in 1920, is a private, non-profit, co-educational facility. I.S.M. is organised into three distinct schools – Elementary, Middle and High School. Each school has its own administration, teaching and support staff and its own principal directly responsible to a school superintendent who in turn is responsible to a ten member Board of Trustees. The roll of the school is just over 1800.

While, from a New Zealand perspective, this school has vast, almost extravagant resources (nearly one computer to two students), an understanding of issues confronting the school is helpful.

The school’s plan for resource development illustrates that, regardless of comprehensive resourcing, there is never quite enough. In the case of I.S.M. the provision of personal laptops for all pupils and teaching staff is the next level. However, this move has not yet found universal acceptance from all school decision makers and I believe is some way off.

Curriculum integration of information technology is complicated. Progress in this area is helped by generous resourcing but also depends on staff skill and, more importantly, on the match between curriculum requirements and software applicability. If information technology is to result in improved learning outcomes for students, software needs to be provided with this in mind. Students can readily be taught how to use technology. The important question then is how this skill is harnessed to bring about improvements in mastering learning outcomes.

Staff development is recognised by I.S.M. as a major issue, as it is in all schools. However, one wonders whether their stated aim of spending at least fifty percent of their staff development budget on technology is feasible. The key question is how many ‘priorities’ a school can address at one time.

The use of technology to improve communication throughout the school and with parents is exciting. However, much is to be done to make this work efficiently and effectively. For example, the principal received a large number of e-mails, few of which seemed necessary. There is much work to be done in defining what information goes where and for what purpose. The use of e-mail to communicate with parents is an excellent idea. Teachers use e-mail to send home class newsletters and to follow up issues such as homework or student behaviour with particular parents. This appears to work well.

Overall International School Manila illustrates two major points. It is exciting what excellent resources and enthusiastic staff can accomplish. On the other hand it is also clear that major issues such as resourcing, staff development and communication pitfalls remain.

SCHOOL TWO

The Singapore International School changed its name to the United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) in 1975. The United World College movement has nine schools around the world. The movement aims to promote international understanding and to make education relevant to the global needs of the modern world. UWCSEA has a roll of over 2000 students.

Once again, by New Zealand standards, this school is extremely well resourced with the emphasis now on developing effective programmes using these resources. Expansion is under way with e-mail facilities, the development of a website and classroom networking. The I.C.T. programme in this school appears to focus almost exclusively on computer technology.

Curriculum integration is seen as very important. The approach is to teach basic I.C.T. skills in lower year levels and secondly to utilise software that enhances curriculum outcomes while reinforcing and expanding on information technology skills.

Staff development is largely seen as a personal responsibility supported by school organization funding. The approach to staff in-service was summed up in the following quote from a principal:
“Teachers don’t have to come (to I.T. training sessions) but they do have to know”.

In other words to be a teacher in an International school one is expected to have a reasonable level of computer literacy.

SCHOOL THREE

The Singapore American School (SAS) was established to provide an “American” education for children of United States’ citizens residing in Singapore. The curriculum and teaching systems are American. All administrators (principals and deputy principals) are American and the majority of teachers are also from the U.S.A. although they also employ some Australian and New Zealand teachers. SAS has a total roll of 2,700 students

The resources at this school are extraordinary. With technology there is clearly enough equipment, software, skilled personnel and available space to do whatever is seen as necessary.

The school has a seemingly relaxed approach to this issue because information technology is part of the overall educational environment. This is not because I.C.T. is unimportant but rather because the important place of I.C.T. is well established, resourced and organised. In many ways this is an ideal arrangement.

The recognition of I.C.T. in this school, as in others I visited, revolves very much around computers. No one would preclude other forms of technology as useful in learning but computer education and the use of computers for education are paramount in information technology programmes in all three schools visited.

NEW ZEALAND ISSUES

No definitive answers are given nor, during the course of this study, were any seen. Rather this is an attempt to add to the debate by raising questions that could be seen as difficult or even controversial.

1. Resourcing
“To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer.” Anonymous

It is acknowledged that the international schools visited during the course of this investigation are relatively large, wealthy and have a highly computer literate student group. However, it is clear that if schools in New Zealand are to address information technology seriously the issue of resourcing needs examination. Although schools are working hard to address I.C.T., with some Government support, I believe the following questions are important for us to consider:
· Do schools have enough hardware to give students regular access to computers?
· Do schools have appropriate software that builds I.C.T. skills while enhancing learning outcomes in our seven essential learning areas?
· Have schools got co-ordinators to oversee the introduction of I.C.T. policies?
· Do classroom teachers have access to specialist teachers with responsibility for software selection and use, classroom teacher up-skilling and classroom programme integration?
· Do schools have staff who can ensure appropriate purchasing is done, the best use is made of equipment and technical difficulties are resolved?
· Do school facilities have designated teaching spaces provided for I.C.T. rather than cribbing classroom or storage space?
· Are schools able to budget for equipment replacement programmes (on a 3 – 5 year basis)?

The progress that is made in I.C.T. depends on the allocation of funding, which in turn depends on the priority given to I.C.T. by Government and school based leaders. The cost is high and it is interesting that some people are already questioning the value of computers in primary schools, given the money, time and expertise they require.

It could be argued that much of this concern stems from a clash between the old and new priorities. Schools have traditionally invested large sums of money in areas such as physical education and the arts. The building of halls, auditoriums, swimming pools and other sports facilities is to be applauded. Perhaps now we have a new area to recognise. I believe this needs to develop on a national basis rather than relying on, what one might call, piecemeal local initiatives, laudable as they may well be.

2. Professional Development
“We have the hardware, we have the software, what we now need is the peopleware.”
I.T. Co-ordinator, Manila.

The professional development of staff is a crucial area and this is recognised in all the schools I visited as well as in New Zealand. The questions that need addressing are:
· What is the balance between personal teacher responsibility for up-skilling and school provision of training programmes? This needs to be a partnership with schools providing opportunity for learning and teachers accepting the responsibility for knowing.
· When can professional development be undertaken? One international school runs courses after school, in the weekends and during holidays. In New Zealand professional development release from class teaching is common. A further question is how much time should be devoted to professional development during class time and how often can a primary teacher be absent from class before the class programme suffers?
· How many professional development “priorities” can teachers cope with at any one time? Teaching is obviously complex, time intensive and personally demanding. Ideally national priorities should be set and achieved before others are introduced. Otherwise schools could be in danger of doing all things superficially.

3. Communication
Developments in communication using computers are tremendously exciting. Internet use in schools is established and growing. Intranets are being established as classroom networking is put in place. As schools increase electronic communication, policies will be required regarding access to, storage of, and manipulation of information. Privacy issues will need to be addressed.

The sheer volume of material being exchanged is also likely to escalate. How this is dealt with needs to be examined. Once again school policies will need to outline what information is required, by whom and for what purpose.

4. Curriculum Integration
All three schools visited are addressing this issue. The basic skills of computer use are taught early. Students are also taught the advantages of computers as a tool to achieve their goals, i.e. the ability of a computer to store, retrieve and manipulate information. Students are then helped to use computers to enhance curriculum outcomes. However, to do this requires access to hardware, appropriate software and a planned and co-ordinated approach organised over years. All of this requires resources as pointed out in number 1 above.

However, the issue of access to appropriate software is one that needs addressing. I believe this probably limits the successful use of computers in New Zealand more than any other factor. Perhaps an organization such as Learning Media should be sourcing and distributing relevant curriculum specific software to schools in the same manner as they provide print material for language programmes.

5. Information and communication technology and equity
“Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.”
Bertrand Russell

I believe access to computers and computer-enhanced learning is a major issue. If access to information technology is not equitably distributed there is a potential learning gap more severe than the literacy and numeracy gap that is currently causing concern. Given that access to knowledge is a major source of influence in society and the role of computers in knowledge acquisition, it seems crucial that students in our schools have the opportunity to be computer confident at an early age. Limited access to I.C.T. has the potential to lead to an increasing “power gap” in society.

There is an argument that computers are only part of an information and communication technology programme. This may be correct but computers are certainly the major part. Another argument is that computers are ‘only a tool’ to aid learning. I venture to suggest computers are not only a tool, rather they are ‘the tool’ to aid learning.

Of course computers cannot teach everything, and they will never replace skilled teachers. However, information technology is only beginning to impact on our school programmes. Information technology is about computers in the same way reading is about books. It is accepted that access to books is necessary for learning success. In a similar light I predict access to I.C.T. equipment will become necessary for learning success in the future. If we are not careful, access to I.C.T. resources will be the equity issue of the future, if it is not already.

Conclusion
During the course of this investigation I spent time with the staff and students in three amazing schools. To everyone involved, teachers or learners, I extend my appreciation and thanks. I was fortunate to be reminded that as educators we live and work in the exciting global business of education.

Thanks are also due to Minolta N.Z., New Zealand Principals’ Federation and the Board of Trustees and staff of Manurewa Central School. Without their support this project would not have been possible. It is also timely to remind colleagues of the opportunity presented by the Minolta/Don Le Prou Award. This is an opportunity to go places, see things and reflect on worlds far removed from our own.

The above comments are much abbreviated from a report written for N.Z.P.F. Full copies may be obtained from the author or downloaded from www.mancent.school.nz

Correspondence concerning this article is welcome and should be addressed to the author at Manurewa Central School, ph (09) 266-8782, fax (09) 266-5488, e-mail principal@mancent.school.nz Copyright © NZPF 2003

Efforts to implement KBK “2004 The Competency Based Curriculum”, Considering the Past Failed Curricu

2008-03-18T07:09:00.000-07:00

Efforts to implement KBK “2004 The Competency Based Curriculum”, Considering the Past Failed Curricu

Republika
In spite of the fact that (current KBK) is the result of upgraded curriculum from the previous one, KBK is estimated to suit the objectives of building a whole dimension for human needs. Indonesian educational system which had been using 1994 curriculum could be said as a failure. This is due to the non - conducive learning environment. Moreover the system does not suit to the Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) which is a collection of theories on child development.
In spite of the fact that (current KBK) is the result of upgraded curriculum from the previous one, KBK is estimated to suit the objectives of building a whole dimension for human needs. Indonesian educational system which had been using 1994 curriculum could be said as a failure. This is due to the non - conducive learning environment. Moreover the system does not suit to the Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) which is a collection of theories on child development.

It was Ratna Megawangi, Phd who pointed out the failure (of the curriculum) in a discussion at Bandung, a few days ago. The discussion was organized by Simpul Pendidikan with 2004 Curriculum Pro-Contra: Is there an opportunity for Holistic Learning? as the theme. The meeting was attended by representatives from Simpul Pendidikan’s school members and college students who concerned about the education development.

Ratna said the system could kill student’s learning motivation to the point that they would feel bored in class. This Executive Director of Indonesian Heritage Foundation (IHF) made an example, since grade 1 until grade 12, even until college years, students were forced to sit quietly, to listen to teachers, and to take notes, without any interactive dialog between teachers and students.

Especially “multilog” in particular which was a dialog between teachers and students, students to others, students and themselves in order to have a deep thought and to reflect the courses. “It is not surprising that the generation produced is a generation who is not critical, just like a robot,” she said.

She predicted the curriculum was too heavy; therefore, it could only be absorbed by the 15 percent of the most intelligent from students enrolled. The fact that there was a rank system in elementary school could make students have low self esteems. This reality could affect mental development of the students. It is really different from developed countries, like America and Japan; the students do not get any rank until they are on third grades.

The curriculum implementation, according to her, probably could be one of the main causes of a high number of students discontinuing their education. Taking the data from Bappenas, from 15 million students who enter first grade, only half of them could reach grade 6. In addition, Ratna added, the failure of our educational system was because it did not match the concept of holistic education, which was, the concept that involved and develop every aspects of human potential in a holistic way.

In other words, the learning process should be able to shape a human as a whole who is skillful in facing the challenging and fast pace changes. And also has a spiritual conscience that he is a part of the whole.

It was a bit different from Ratna, The Head of Moral, Religion, and Social Science from Pusat Kurikulum Balitbang, Dr. Hermana Soemantri, M.A considers the mistakes of education were not only at the curriculum system that was used. There were other factors, such as, the existing teachers’ qualities. “As long as there are no competent teachers, any curriculums which are used will give the same result, there will be no transformation on students’ qualities,” he said.
How do we solve it? Ratna said that a nation’s life in global era currently also needs high competencies. The higher the competency level of a nation, the higher the nation’s ability level to solve any problems in their life. Indonesian, she mentioned, could not be separated from any developments and changes
According to her, in development and its continuous changes, there were needs for improvement on national education system. It was concluded in the seminar, that the Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK) “2004 Competency Based Curriculum” could answer the existing development demands. It was considered as a good momentum to reform the educational system which suits the demands of 21st century, particularly in preparing students to be able to adapt with the fast paced environment, creative, and always have strong motivations to keep on learning.
Ratna admitted, KBK is the curriculum which relatively new, it is the revision of the previous curriculum. The KBK concept, according to her, is suitable to the objective of building each dimension of human’s needs.
Just like Hermana Soemantrie stated, this revised curriculum, is based on policies which are stated in government regulations. For instance, UUD 1945, and its alteration, TAP MPR year 1999 on GBHN, UU No 20/2003 on National Education System, UU No.22/1999 on Regional Government as well as PP No.25/2000 on Government Authority and Province Authority as Autonomic Area.
KBK makes all of the students democratically and justifiably to have knowledge, skills, and manners. KBK is also focus on students, it means, he mentioned, the implementation is custom made for students’ development stages through an active, creative, effective, and pleasant learning process. The continuing and comprehensive estimation could be very important in order to reach the accomplishments.
All of the learning experienced should be designed continuously from Kindergarten until college years. The approach that is used, Hermana mentioned, focuses on the diverse needs of the students and should integrates various disciplines. The accomplishments of this learning process demand partnerships on responsibilities from students, teachers, schools, and religious school, parents, universities, enterprises and industries, and also communities.
Besides, he also brought up; the standard competency was organized by the head quarters and its implementation was modified based on the needs and the capability of each region, schools, and religious schools. This standard, he added, could be the based of diversification curriculum which could be founded by each educational institution, region’s potential, students, students and also match with international standard.
KBK success, according to Ratna, needs paradigm changes from each education implementer. Consequently, in its implementation it is necessary to apply the new learning methods which are proven to improve the learning experience qualities and teaching methods in classes. For instances, student active learning, cooperative learning, and inquiry-based learning, or integrated learning methods.
As Herman stated, Ratna also indicated that in order to improve the learning qualities, and teaching methods, trainings for teachers to improve the effectiveness of KBK concepts in classes were important. She acknowledged that it is necessary to improve Manajemen Berbasis Sekolah (MBS)/ “School Based Management” program, therefore, schools could have authorities to make decisions. “Decisions could be in a scope of optimizing the existing resources management, education’s quality improvement, and teachers’ competencies improvement which are based on the team work with the community.
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Answering Educational Challenges
Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK) “Competency Based Curriculum” was applied in many schools. The KBK experiments were done in many regions. Even though, Sekretaris Ditjen Pendidikan Dasar and Menengah (Dikdasmen) Depdiknas, Sungkowo Mudjiamanu admitted, that the KBK tryouts had not be done collectively. There are still schools that have not implemented the KBK. “This is done through phases, and it could not be forced,” he said, “at least, not until the next three years” .

There are schools that are not ready for KBK, due to teachers’ competencies. Due to the fact that in applying KBK, Sungkowo stated, teachers must be capable to choose topics which are already prepared in syllabus. In the syllabus, usually, it is selected which competency that students could get. In addition, a teacher must be able to change the teaching methodology. Contrary to the past, for instance, by not using “one man show” (teaching methodology). “This is tough” he said.

For this purpose, trainings were created for teachers. It was organized since 2002, by Badan Penelitian and Pengembangan (Balitbang) Depdiknas, as well as, the directorates in Primary and Secondary Education.

KBK development- as described before by Kepala Pusat Kurikulum, Balitbang, Depdiknas, Siskandar – is meant to answer the education challenges. This curriculum is giving standard competencies nationally; syllabus organization was elected by each region or school. The competency could just be the foundation nationally.

Sylabus organization are expected to be done by the teachers at school, couple of teachers are included in MGMP (Musyawarah Guru Mata Pelajaran) or dinas pendidikan kabupaten. This is a way to form the operations of the competency and its basic material as the foundation for each teacher to plan, to implement, to manage the learning activities. The syllabus contains competency and elaboration (descriptions and detail) course material, learning experience, evaluation, and time allocation.

KBK gives standard competencies for a certain education levels. For example, if a student passed grade 6th, minimally, he/she should be capable to make sentences in a simple language. Therefore, if a child attends educational for certain years, it was expected that (he/she) understands the lessons according to education level that (he/she) attended.

In KBK, he said, the learning process should be completed. In other words, children are expected to understand the courses that were given. In addition, in KBK deducted class hours took place compared to the previous curriculum. This was meant to increase the teaching and learning process. With the less restricted time, it was expected students could understand the courses given.

The Future Teachers

2008-03-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

The Future Teachers

by: Isjoni

Our nation, and our public needs capable teachers to boost our educational image and status which already gives bad impression, just like unruly threads. Even on how to start, when, and not only who started but also from where we have to start.

If, each one of us realizes, has concerns, and wants to share, we have to start to gather up, therefore, our education as we stated above, and could be anticipated. For that reason, we need to get a single perception, a single step, and a single objective on how to lift up that “buried log”, in order to have a qualified education program, and it is also expected to increase the image level of our education which is still in the lowest level in Asia.

One thing that is still be in our focus point is “to plan the future teachers”. The Future Teacher is a teacher whose capabilities, and skill to create learning process optimally, in addition to, his/ her sensitivity in reading the century’s sign, and own wide scope of intellectual levels, and progressive thinking, and should never satisfied with their knowledge.

An ideal future teacher qualities for many every one, is a;

1. Planner
Means, a teacher should have his/her own established personal working program, this working program which is not only a periodic program, i.e., preparing a set of students learning documents, such as Semester Program, a course program in a whole, LKS,etc. But also, a teacher should plan on how the learning process could be applied successfully, and of course on how to implement the plan, everything should be well planned.

2. Innovator,
Means that he/ she has a drive to make innovations which is related to learning process pattern, including teaching method, learning resource medias, and evaluation tools and system, and any other nurturing effects. A teacher, who, individually or by team work is capable to change the old patterns, which is so far do not give maximum result, and transforms it into more a maximum results.

3. Motivator,
Means that a future teacher posses a motivation to continually learn and learn, and consequently gives motivation to his/her students to learn and keep on learning as their teacher exemplified.

4. Capable personal,
Means that a teacher is expected to own knowledge, capabilities, and skills and also a stable manners and resources so that he/she is capable enough to manage an effective learning process.

5. Developer,
Means a teacher needs to develop himself / herself, and accordingly spread his/ her abilities and skills for his/ her students and for everyone. A future teacher should be thirsty for skills, and act sensitively toward IPTEKS (Natural Science and Technology) development, for example, being literate and skillful using computer, internet, and any other multimedia learning process models.

Therefore, a future teacher should act as a facilitator; protector, guides, and has a proper figure ( discipline, loyal, responsible, creative, serve the students according to school’s vision and mission) is motivated to provide meaningful learning process by renovating the learning experience based on students’ skills and focus in order to create an intellectually conducive class physically and socially; knowledgeable on material, class, and technology; has the “The Habits for Highly Effective People” and “Quantum Teaching” characters in addition to humanistic approach towards students; A teacher should have an ability to use computer, teaching language and teaching psychology to be applied in a class proportionally. Apply the reward schemes and human disciplines toward other teachers and employees.

A future teacher should posses an ability to develop students capability through understandings, activities, and learning resources in accordance to the century development by developing life survival skill, therefore, students not only could posses independent, adaptable, and cooperative, but also competitive qualities to face challenges, and everyday needs. (A future teacher should be) effectively, presenting motivations, self confidence, and ability to be independent and cooperative. On the other hands, a future teacher should grow and develop disciplines, responsibilities, and own moral ethics, and high concern, and to nurture students autodidact abilities, and giving rewards and appreciation towards students so they could be proud of their school and respect other people’s opinion and achievements. It is also necessary to nurture humble characters in order not to be over motivated and become hubris. ( Teachers should) get trainings on how to think critically, learning process strategy, time management and how to control emotions, hence, students IQ and EQ can be equally compatible.

In addition, a future teacher should possess optimal basic skills for his/her specialization, also his/ her performance in and outside of the class should not be in any doubt. Consequently, a future teacher should be proud of his/ her professions, and should be loyal to his/her professional ethic codes.

Therefore, to be a future teacher, specializations are needed, and perhaps it could not be separated from their heart and that they choose being a teacher as his/her main and first choice. Weternik gives a phrase rouping or “the calling”. The rouping could be the basic for every teacher to call themselves “THE FUTURE TEACHER”. Hopefully.

I am isjoni agrees if the manuscript that I sent could be published and used in Pendidikan Network Homepage and I guarantee that this manuscript is authorized by me and is official ( no copyright).

Utilize Museum as Learning Resources

2008-03-18T06:53:00.001-07:00

Utilize Museum as Learning Resources

Iwan Hermawan, S.Pd., M.Pd

“If a nation is a family that lives in their traditional house, then a museum could be considered as a family album. In that album all of the family members’ photographs are well kept and organized from each period of time and each generation. The photographs could be viewed and not only visited the past, since time is not only parted as the past dimension, but also part of today and tomorrow morning. A photograph is a time to look intently and taking the time to know the story of each photograph, not only by occasions but also the meaning behind of those occasions. The significations of the whole identities, in and outside of the cities. The photographs at the end of the days are not only considered as objects anymore” (HU Pikiran Rakyat, 22 February 2001)
This description shows that museum does not only function as an institution that collects and exhibits objects which are related to historical development of human life and their environment, but also an institution that has a duty to train and to develop nation’s cultural value that is useful to strengthen a nation’s personality and identity, reinforce faith and obedience towards God, and increase self respect and nationality pride.
In fact, nowadays many people in society, including education society, only sees museum functions as a place to keep and maintain historical objects and monument to decorate cities. Consequently, many people are not so enthusiastic to spend time to go to museum because they think museums are conventional and not prestigious, nonetheless if all level of societies take the time to enjoy and to try to understand the meaning behind each objects displayed in museum, there will be a transformation of the historical value from previous generation to the existing generation.
In education field, museum could not be separated from its existence, since it could answer many questions that rise from the learning experience particularly in human, cultural, and environment historical development.
Museum as learning resources
As an institution that keeps, maintains and displays many everlasting pieces of works, and human’s production, museum is learning resources for education society, through out the artifacts that are exhibited, the visitors are able to learn so many things that are relevant to values, concerns, and humanities.
Observation activity by students in museums is stepping-stones to come up with some thought and new ideas, due to this activity student are triggered to use all of their abilities with optimal critical thinking. Students critical thinking according to Takai and Connor (1998) includes: a. Comparing and Contrasting (ability to recognize similarity and differences of any observed objects)b. Identifying and Classifying (ability to identify and to classify objects from identified groups)c. Describing (ability to give description of observed objects written and orally) d. Predicting (ability to predict the next cycle of an observed object)e. Summarizing (ability to summarize information from the museum briefly and accurately).
Critical thinking ability could not just appear by itself without any sufficient amount of guidance and supervisions from teachers. Some efforts could be done by teachers in growing the ability to think critically through visiting museum activities, such as:a. During the learning activities in class for a certain material, teachers could invite, assign, and advice students to visit museum to find the facts from the explanation in the textbooks and their evidences which are found in museum. This activity ideally should involve students, not in a big numbers, to make it easier for the teachers and museum guides to guide students observing museum collections.
b. Giving introductions in advanced to students before the visit to the museum, especially with material, which would be observed. This occasion should be done in order to enable students to increase their interest of knowing and proofing what has been informed by the teacher or museum guides.
c. Providing supporting tools for students learning experience in a format of LKS (student’s workbooks), which their material structured as brief and resourceful as possible to increase students’ critical thinking on the observed objects.
d. During the visit, the teacher and the museum guides should be within students’ reach in order to give guidance and giving a brief discussion with students regarding to the observed objects.
e. After the visits, students are assigned to give reports on conclusion from any material that is informed through out the visits, and the results must be discussed in the class.
f. At the end of the activity, the teacher should evaluate the visit as a parameter of its accomplishment.
Other efforts that could be performed by the teachers during the museum visits, the museum developer (curator) also need to do various efforts with the intention that those visitors, especially the education society, should get maximal results in their museum visit activities. Some efforts that could be done by the museum developer in order to utilize museum as a learning resources, are:
a. Providing a brief information panel on room separation and segregation of the collections that are exhibited in front of the museum entrance, therefore, visitors could gain the whole concept of museum exhibits as they enter the museum entrance door, as a result even if the visitor just enter one of the rooms, he/she would not loose “the story” of the exhibitions.
b. Providing informational panels presented completely and attractively as the enhancement for the exhibition collections and their dioramas.
c. Providing various supporting facilities for educational activities, such as leaflet, brochure, guidance books, film, micro film, slide and students’ workbook (LKS), therefore, visitors could learn the exhibits easily.
d. In relevance to LKS (students’ workbook) in particular, it is necessary to design various museum LKS that fit students needs based on students’ ages and they have to be able to increase students’ critical thinking according to their own level.
e. Museum needs to organize several interesting games that are able to increase students’ understandings of objects that are exhibited.
The importance of cooperation between School and Museum Developer
As it was mentioned above that optimal museum utilization could be reached if the introductions from the material or the objects exhibited are given before visiting the museum Throughout the pre-visit exploration activity, it is expected that student are able to grasp various relevant information from objects exhibited according to what has been expected. Moreover, the teachers could give guidance during the visit; they need to cooperate with the curators in order to get complete information on museum and its exhibited collections.
On the other hand, curators could design various educational programs in the museum and its supporting facilities, it is important to cooperate with education society thus the educational program and its supporting, such as, LKS, could fit the requirement of school curriculum. Other than that, between one museum to another which are still located at the same city it is also important to coordinate a team work to produce museum guides books jointly which will be distributed to education society, especially schools, hence when students are going to visit museums, it will be easier for teachers to select which museum will be visited in accordance to curriculum prerequisite at the time.
At last, utilizing museum as learning resources is expected to increase our education quality and its museum existence and not only a decoration or city monument, hopefully…
I, Iwan Hermawan, S.Pd., M.Pd agrees if this resources sent and listed and used in the Educational Homepage Network, and I guarantee this manuscript is my own work and under my own authorization (no copyright)

School of Electrotechnics and Informatics

2008-03-18T06:32:00.000-07:00

A Bridge between Engineering and Mathematics
Budi Rahardjo
School of Electrotechnics and Informatics
Institut Teknologi Bandung
2007
br@paume.itb.ac.id

We live in an exciting time in which business is done through electronic means. Electronic business, transactions, and communications are now part of our daily lives. We do not go to physical bank anymore but go to ATM machines. We, at least in Indonesia, use our cellular phones everyday. We feel insecure if we left our cellular phones at home. Some say that we become too dependent on electronic devices. All of this is possible due to the technology development in computers and telecommunication.
One key aspect of electronic business acceptance is security. Confidentiality, privacy, integrity, and availability are aspects of security that must be guaranteed in electronic business transactions.
Encryption is one means to provide security. Encryption depends heavily on math. Encryption algorithms such as RSA or ECC are basically mathematical equations.
These encryption algorithms must be implemented in software or hardware. This task falls upon the shoulder of engineers, be that software engineers or hardware engineers. Thus, engineers must understand the mathematics behind them and how to implement them in software or hardware.
Implementing encryption, which is basically math equations, in software or hardware is not straight forward. There is a limited resource in hardware implementation. Small and portable electronic devices have limited memory and CPU cycle. Computing the equations must be done in real-time if the solution is going to be implemented in real applications. We do not want to wait for five minutes in an ATM booth for the machine to finish its encryption process. The time it takes to process the data should be acceptable.
When an electronic engineer creates a circuit, be that analog or digital circuit, she actually creates a set of mathematical equations. In digital circuit, the mathematical equation is “simpler” but they have a large number of such equations. For example, a chip may have two million variables. The scale of the problem what makes it difficult to solve, even with the help of computers.
Engineers may have strong foundation in mathematics. They may even have interest in it, but many times we hear complain that math is not taught properly in engineering classes. The materials taught in these classes are boring and too abstracts for engineering students. The result is a hate towards mathematics.
A bridge between engineering and mathematics must be built.
There have been many examples of digital heroes who got interested in engineering because they read books on certain topics, including mathematics. These books inspire them to become engineers and develop products that make our live better.
Mixing engineers and mathematicians in various occasions would be another example of such a bridge. This effort should not be limited to formal occassions only, but to include informal settings.
Let us develop such bridges

A Brief History of Instructional Design

2008-03-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

A Brief History of Instructional Design

Douglas Leigh

As a formal discipline, Instructional Systems Design has been a long time in the making. The early contributions of thinkers such as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato regarding the cognitive basis of learning and memory was later expanded by the 13th century philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas who discussed the perception of teachings in terms of free will. Four hundred years later, John Locke advanced Aristotle's notion of human's initial state of mental blankness by proposing that almost all reason and knowledge must be gained from experience. Then, at the turn of the 20th century John Dewey presented several tenets of the philosophy of education which promoted the idea that learning occurs best when married with doing, rather than rote regurgitation of facts.
As the 1920's approached, a behaviorist approach to educational psychology became increasingly predominant. Thorndike's theory of connectionism represents the original stimulus-response (S-R) model of behavioral psychology, and was expanded on some twenty years later by Hull in his exposition of drive reduction – a motivational model of behavior which emphasizes learner's wants, attention, and activities. With the Industrial Revolution came an increased attention to productivity, and educational behaviorists during the 1920's such as Sidney Pressey applied mechanized technology to increase the efficiency of the learning process. Though their initial incarnation did not see much use after the Depression, many of the lessons learned research into these teaching machines regarding the delivery of standardized instruction contributed to the instructional media research & development movement of World War II.
The advent of the Second World War presented a tremendous instructional dilemma: the rapid training of hundreds of thousands of military personnel. Ralph Tyler's work a decade before WWII indicated that objectives were most useful to instructional developers if written in terms of desired learner behaviors. Armed with this knowledge and the experience of creating standardize methods of instructional delivery using teaching machines, military researchers developed a bevy of training films and other mediated materials for instructional purposes. In part, the United States' heavy investment in training and R&D was credited with the country's victory in the war. With the economic boom that followed, federal dollars followed researcher's desire to better flesh out the underpinnings of learning, cognition, and instruction.
The 1950's are characterized by a shift away from the uninformed application of instructional technology to the formulation of theoretical models of learning. The publication of B. F. Skinner's The Science of Learning and the Art of Teaching in 1954 canonized the basic behaviorist principles of S-R, feedback, and reinforcement. As the key element of his theory of operant conditioning, the reinforcement of desired learner responses was also incorporated into Skinner's implementations of programmed instruction. Considered by many the progenitor of contemporary instructional design, programmed instruction emphasizes the formulation of behavioral objectives, breaking instructional content into small units and rewarding correct responses early and often.
Another substantial instructional theorist of the 1950's was Benjamin Bloom. His 1956 taxonomy of intellectual behaviors provided instructors a means by which to decide how to impart instructional content to learners most effectively. Advocating a mastery approach to learning, Bloom endorsed instructional techniques that varied both instruction and time according to learner requirements. While this approach provided instructional developers a means by which to match subject matter and instructional methods, Bloom's taxonomy was not in and of itself capable of satisfying the desire of large organizations to relate resources and processes to the performances of individuals. To achieve this researchers in the military's Air Research and Development Command borrowed from Ludwig von Bertalanffy's General Systems Theory of biological interactions to integrate the operations of a wide range of departments, such as training, intelligence, and staffing. Combined with the Bloom's Taxonomy, the systems approach to instructional and organizational development allowed planners and policy-makers to match the content and delivery of instruction in a fashion which considered both super- and sub-systems (the organization as a whole, as well as groups and individuals within the organization). These advances of Skinner, Bloom and von Bertalanffy were usually employed to develop instruction in what was only assumed to be an effective an efficient manner. The formalization of a standardized design process still had yet to be devised.
Again it was a crisis that spurred the next evolution of instructional technology – a shift away from an emphasis in the development of instructional programs to one which focused on the design of entire curriculum. Again the crisis was a war, but this time the war was a political one. In 1957 the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite and began the "space race". America was taken by surprise and the government was forced to reevaluate the education system and its shortcomings. Science and math programs were the first to be targeted, and the government employed experts in these fields to bring the content up to date.
In 1962 Robert Glaser synthesized the work of previous researchers and introduced the concept of "instructional design", submitting a model which links learner analysis to the design and development of instruction. Interestingly, Glaser's contribution to the current field of instructional systems is not so much in the advancement of his model, but in work concerning Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI), an approach whereby the results of a learner's placement test are used to plan learner-specific instruction.
At the same time Glaser was developing his theories of instructional design and IPI, Robert Mager published his treatise on the construction of performance objectives. Mager suggested that an objective should describe in measurable terms who an objective targets, the behavior they will have exhibited, the conditions or limitations under which they must carry out this behavior, and the criteria against which their behavior will be gauged.
As early as 1962 when he published "Military Training and Principles of Learning" Robert Gagné demonstrated a concern for the different levels of learning. His differentiation of psychomotor skills, verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, and attitudes provides a companion to Bloom's six cognitive domains of learning. Later, Gagné extended his thinking to include nine instructional events that detail the conditions necessary for learning to occur. These events have long since been used for the basis for the design of instruction and the selection of appropriate media.
The mediation of instruction entered the computer age in the 1960's when Patrick Suppes conducted his initial investigations into computer-assisted instruction (CAI) at Stanford University. Developed through a systematic analysis of curriculum, Suppes' CAI provided learner feedback, branching, and response tracking – aspects were later incorporated into the PLATO system in the 1970's and continue guide the development of today's instructional software.
By the late 1960's America was again in crisis. Not only was the country involved in another war, but the nation's schools were unable to elicit the achievement from learners it anticipated. Grant Venn argued that since only 19% of first graders complete a bachelor or arts degree, that the current educational system is only serving the advantaged minority of schoolchildren. To counter this trend Robert Morgan proposed to conduct an experiment with an "organic curriculum" which would to incorporate into the educational system the best instructional practices identified through research. Accepted in 1967 the proposal by the US Office of Education, the project was dubbed "Educational Systems for the 1970's", or ES'70. Morgan engaged an array of experts in the field of learning, cognition, and instructional design to contribute to the project and carried out multiple experiments in a variety of settings. Of these was Leslie Briggs, who had demonstrated that an instructionally designed course could yield up to 2:1 increase over conventionally designed courses in terms of achievement, reduction in variance, and reduction of time-to-completion – this effect was four times that of the control group which received no training. In 1970, Morgan partnered with the Florida Research and Development Advisory Board to conduct a nation-wide educational reform project in South Korea. Faced with the task of increasing the achievement of learners while at the same time reducing the cost of schooling from $41.27 per student per year Morgan applied some of the same techniques as had been piloted in the ES'70 project and achieved striking results: an increase in student achievement, a more efficient organization of instructors and course content, an increased teacher to student ratio, a reduction in salary cost, and a reduction in yearly per student cost by $9.80.
Around this time Roger Kaufman developed a problem-solving framework for educational strategic planning which provided practitioners a means by which to demonstrate value-added not only for the learner, but the school system and society as a whole. This framework provided the basis for the Organizational Elements Model (OEM), a needs assessment model which specifies results to be achieved at societal, organizational, and individual performance levels. By rigorously defining needs as gaps in results Kaufman emphasized that performance improvement interventions can not demonstrate return-on-investment unless those interventions were derived from the requirements of these three primary clients and beneficiaries of organizational action. This approach to needs assessment and strategic planning has since been used across the world as the foundation for planning, evaluation, and continuous improvement in military, business, and educational settings.
A variety of models for instructional system design proliferated the late 1970's and early 80's: Gagné and Briggs, Branson, Dick and Carey, and Atkins, to name a few. One possible reason for this phenomenon deals with the establishment of formal education and training departments within both public and private organizations. Faced with the computerized technologies of the times, these organizations require a means by which to quickly develop appropriate methods by which to educate internal employees in the new business practices ushered into existence by the Information Age. Another explanation is that businesses, especially consulting organizations, are becoming increasingly required to demonstrate value-added not only to their organization, but to the clients they serve. The evaluation and continuous improvement components of contemporary models of ISD make far strides from the early develop-and-implement models of the middle of the century in this aspect.
In the 1990's a dual focus on technology and performance improvement has developed. For example, in his 1988 essay "Why the Schools Can't Improve: The Upper Limit Hypothesis" Robert Branson offers an argument for systemic school reform, suggesting that schools are operating at near peak efficiency and must be redesigned from the top down using technological interventions. Later in that year Branson was contracted by the Florida Department of Education (DOE) to analyze it's various programs and plan a system-wide technology-based educational reform initiative for Florida called Schoolyear 2000. Over the next several years Branson's team developed and piloted multiple computerized instructional technologies, as well as models of the interaction between the internal operations of the school system and the experiences and knowledge of students, parents, and teachers.
Developments in performance improvement outside ISD during the 1990's such as Quality Management (QM), Organizational Engineering, and Change Management have required that instructional designers look outside their profession to demonstrate the utility of their practice. Introduced earlier by Deming, QM has swept public and private organizations alike in the 90's. Whereas initially thought of in terms of "quality control" or "zero defects", quality practices have evolved into tools for organizational continuous improvement. Similarly, instructional designers in the 90's often work alongside authorities in the field of organizational engineering. Characterized by a concern for an organization's culture and interaction between groups, organizational engineering seeks to improve organizations through the identification of relationships between an organization's vision, mission, goals, methods and personnel. Similarly, change management has become a business in and of itself, with leaders such as Darly Conner and Joel Barker pioneering methods for and models of organizational change.
The advent of new media, such as the Internet and hypermedia, has brought about not only technological innovations, but also coupled these with new ways of approaching learning and instruction. As opposed to the behavioralist perspective that emphasizes learning objectives, the constructivist approach holds that learners construct their understanding of reality from interpretations of their experiences. Theorists such as Thomas Duffy and Seymour Papert suggest that constructivism provides a model whereby socio-cultural and cognitive issues regarding the design of learning environments can be supported by computer tools. This philosophy has been applied to such computerized technologies as online help systems and programming language LOGO.
In the future, instructional designers are likely to choose one of two paths: specialist or generalist. In the prior path, designers will focus on one aspect of learning or instruction and act as consultants or subject matter experts, whether internal or external to the organization. The other approach is one more aligned with managerial activities. Since the field is becoming too broad for most designers to work with authority in all matters, this option allows practitioners to oversee the development of instructional projects, rather than narrow their efforts exclusively on assessment, analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation or continuous improvement.
References
Boling, E. (1996). Instructional Technology Foundations I: Historical Timelines Project Page [Online]. Available: http://education.indiana.edu/~istcore/r511/datelist.html [1998, June 7].
Kearsley, G. (1994). Learning & Instruction: The TIP Database [Online]. Available: http://www.lincoln.ac.nz/educ/tip/1.htm [1998, June 7].
Reiser, R. A. (1987). Instructional Technology: A History. In R. M. Gagné (ed.), Instructional Technology: Foundations (pp. 11 - 40). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Shrock, S. A. (No date). A Brief History of Instructional Development [Online].Available: http://uttc-med.utb.edu/6320/chapters/summary_ch2.html [1998, June 7].

2008-03-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Internet: Between Good and Evil

Irfana Steviano www.e-dukasi.net

The Internet is a wasteful technology. Do you realize what useless things it does nowadays?. Do you know what is the fastest growing Internet industry? If your answer is pornography, then you probably use the Internet for this: first is users who uses the Internet primarily to support daily activities, office work, and surfing porn sites on their free time. Secondly is users who uses the Internet primarily to surf on porn sites, to support daily activities and office work after they had finished surfing porn sites. Thirdly is users who uses the Internet primarily to support daily activities, office work, and already had enough about porn and wish to ends it. Internet pornography is a new wave of business. However it has become an industry with multi billions of dollars in annual revenue. The development of Internet pornography was followed by rapid changes in technology. Pornography industries began to used Internet as their new business media because of the Internet features it is easy to build, has a mass effect, and easy to access any where and any time. In the beginning Internet was merely used to transfer data among computers and for research purpose. The development was begin in 1962 at MIT. After long researches and experiments, Internet was first introduces to public in 1991 by the formation of Internet society. The term for Internet was then published in 1995 by The Federal Networking Council (FNC). Web 2.0 was the latest technology that Internet used nowadays, it was used to build social networking community sites. You can easily find most of the sites are offering friends networkings systems such as; Friendster, Facebook, My Space, and Tagged. The same systems was used by pornography industries to offer their new develop features; online dating. �In the adult world the [site] with the most friends wins.� said Mark Tiara (president of United Adult Sites) 1. While Internet Pornography has become an income generator for the industries, the Internet also has made tremendous revolution in learning. Internet also helps to build better education. Many students were using Internet as their way to get information, help their research, broadened their knowledge and help the special needs students with e-learning systems.

WildTech Learning

2008-03-14T05:10:00.000-07:00

WildTech Learning

by Eric Christianson

The residents of North Pend Oreille County have reason to be very proud of the technology students at Selkirk High School. Selkirk Technology students have been working closely this year as one of the 57 school districts associated with the Wilderness Technology Alliance, which partnership has offered unparalleled opportunities to the Selkirk students. Of the 57 schools involved in the program, 16 schools will be allowed to send 4 students each to a free week long technology training this summer on Mt. Rainier. Of those 16 lucky schools, one school has been given the honor to send an additional crew of Tech students to help facilitate that technology camp: Of the 57 schools involved, Selkirk earned the honor! What have the students been doing to earn this honor?
Computer classes. The students are teaching a night class one day a week for the local community. We offer the full gambit of computer instruction, covering everything from hardware, setup, office, webpage design, or any other aspect of computer that any of the students know. The class has been well attended and has proven to be an excellent fundraiser for the Tech Club. Further, there has been such terrific feedback from the adults attending regarding how well the students perform in conducting the course that, regardless of it's huge financial impact for the club, is a terrific school/community event that fosters a better appreciation of the students and their skills.
Networking. The students completely rewired the Jr./Sr. High School complex to accommodate a new computer network system installed this year. This project included running the new wires, disposing of the old system, installing RJ-45 ends, and making the entire system compatible with the new fiber optic cable and new switches, hubs, and servers. Rumor has it that a few students even tried their hand at fusion-splicing the fiber optic cable. While the Ione Primary and Lillian Bailey schools had the wiring professionally installed, the Selkirk students installed the network and brought the machines online in all three schools in the district. One can only imagine how many thousands of dollars the students saved the taxpayers with their ambitious program of volunteerism.
Webpages. The students are beginning to pursue a webpage design service for the local community. The club intends to create webpages at free or reduced cost if they have a strong community interest, or intend to charge slightly under market for other web pages. The students have been working with Macromedia software and now have such expertise that they feel comfortable taking it to the community and showing off their creations. For this purpose, Macromedia has donated thousands of dollars of software to the district (thank you Macromedia!). We have freshmen students making hundreds of dollars in their spare time producing webpages at home, which sure beats mowing lawns for spending money.
Refurbishing. When businesses upgrade their computer systems, the WTA acts as a vehicle to distribute their old computer equipment to school districts. So far this year, the WTA has provided approximately 70 Pentium based computers to Selkirk, which the technology students have refurbished and placed into service throughout the school district. Now, the students are hoping to begin placing refurbished systems to low income families in the community at ridiculously low prices.
Troubleshooting. The students provide computer repair and troubleshooting services throughout the district to keep the current computers running. This volunteer service relieves the district of having to pay a computer technician. The students also typically make themselves available to assist members of the community who call with computer issues, providing a valuable community service.
Student-teaching-student. The Selkirk model is based on students passing on their knowledge to the next generation of students. In April, we will begin a Junior High Technology class to bring these skills to the next level of students. A group of approximately 5 high school Techies will basically teach the junior high class, under the supervision of a teacher. The goal of the class will be to teach the junior high students how to refurbish computers, many of which computers may then be sold to the community. Under this model, everybody wins!
Certifications. Selkirk has up to 10 students, primarily freshmen and sophomore, who hope to sit for the A+ Certification examination this spring. The A+ Certification is basically a "computer technician" certification, with which the students could start right out of high school at approximately $35,000 per year. Additionally, three tech students are taking the beginning courses for the Cisco Certification through Riverside High School through teleconferencing equipment. With the Cisco Certification, people are currently starting at approximately $60,000 per year. Obviously, the hard work these students are putting in should pay off in the future.
Rock Climbing. While it might seem unrelated, these same students comprise the majority of students who have developed the Selkirk Outdoor Club. This combination of outdoor education and technology is what the WTA was founded on, and Selkirk is not only the state model for the technology portion of the program, but Selkirk is basically writing the book for the outdoor programs for the other districts. In early March these students traveled to Spokane to give rock-climbing lessons to a group of students from Rogers High School. It was beautiful to see the level of professionalism shown by such a young group of students as they safely taught inner-city youth how to trust and support each other.
Those are the projects currently under way and of which the community should be proud. These projects are primarily student driven and student maintained, following the extremely successful principle of students-teaching-students. The most effective method of teaching these students has been to merely get out of the way and quit trying to impede the students by sharing the teacher's limited knowledge, which allows the students to grow at a much faster pace. This model is gaining national attention. Currently there are two national magazines developing features on the WTA and prominently looking at the Selkirk students. The Spokesman Review has shown an interest in developing a feature story on the Selkirk tech students. Ford Motor Company is talking to the WTA about the idea of bringing this model to the Detroit schools. In April, the director of the WTA will be the keynote speaker at a U.S. Department of Education conference speaking to as many as 5000 principals from throughout the nation. Much of his speech will center on the educational model that the Selkirk students have perfected and the tremendous achievement created in this tiny school in the middle of the woods.
While there are many tech students providing tremendous value to the program, there are a few whose efforts have been far above any expectations. If you happen to see John Beacham, Daniel Dafoe, David Fairbairn, Joseph Kinney, Brandt March, Denny McDonald, John Mott, or Ray Starkey on the street, tell them "thank you" for their selfless volunteerism and professionalism. If you happen to see Principal Larry Reed on the street, tell him "thank you" for providing an atmosphere and the encouragement to make all of this possible. North Pend Oreille County should be proud!
About the Author:
Eric is currently teaching technology for the Selkirk School District in the northeast corner of the state of Washington. He has developed an outdoor program that corresponds with the technology program, and has the same students actively involved in both. Eric's background includes nine successful years as an active attorney, three years primarily in Juvenile Court. After years attempting to help children caught up on the criminal justice system, it became Eric Christianson's mission in life to get involved with youth before they reach that stage and try to prevent the negative cycle from beginning. You can contact Eric at emc@selkirk.k12.wa.us.
About WildTech:
WildTech is a student-based technology enterprise currently consisting of 51 schools in Washington State (and growing). It was created in partnership with the Wilderness Technology Alliance, OSPI (Washington's State Education Agency), Macromedia, Microsoft, and others. Our nonprofit mission is to provide project-based learning opportunities for high school students that teach real-world job skills while "bridging the digital divide" in their local communities. The latter provides key character, community service, and citizenship skills to students. Experienced students return to actually teach the technology class. This removes generally slower learning adults from having to keep up with improvements in technology, and places them into the role of facilitating the creation of self-sustaining technology "Enterprise" in their schools.
Copyright April 2001 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.http://www.newhorizons.org/E-mail:info@newhorizons.org

Students Develop IT Projects that Deliver Service

2008-03-14T05:04:00.000-07:00

Students Develop IT Projects that Deliver Service

by John Willinsky

This course isn't about technology-it's about management!", declared a student, with an exasperated but knowing voice in the classroom debate on the upcoming years' learning outcomes for Information Technology Management (ITM) course which a high school teacher was holding with her students. The student had come to recognize that learning how to manage technology is the key to ITM, and that management is not about some individual who sits in the corner office, but rather about individual and shared responsibility for getting the job done. The story also illustrates the collaboration of student and teacher that goes on in an ITM course, where learning outcomes are met through the identification of personal, group and "client" objectives, realized through a project-driven approach to studying information technology or computer studies for grades 10-12.
The defining characteristic of the ITM program is the M, for management. The students are learning to apply their skills to helping others in the school and community with new technologies, providing this service through collaborative projects that enable the students to learn and practice project management strategies commonly used in a knowledge economy. The students gain course credit through the provision of technical support, training, software development, and communication of IT issues and opportunities, making the school's IT environment a better place for both learning and information management, while they examine the social issues surrounding information technology, whether involving privacy, piracy, access, or gender. They come to see managing technology as, above all, a service which they can provide to others, a service through which they learn more about people and work-processes than just technology. Providing technology services and participating in collaborative projects enables the students and teachers, as well as people in the community, to realize the potential of technology for learning, creating, sharing, and connecting.
What does it mean to learn through service to others? The ITM program is designed to provide students with authentic problem-solving experiences, engaging with different communities of experts as they seek answers to technology challenges encountered while supporting users who need assistance with new technologies. It places the students in collaborative learning situations that develop their sense of accountability and responsibility. They are learning about the nature of work in today's new economy, a workplace fueled by the development of new technologies, where business success is determined not by the ability to "build a better mousetrap", but by exemplary service delivery to the customer or client. In British Columbia the services which students provide as part of the ITM program has been recognized as a valid form of accredited "work experience" required for graduation.
What do the students actually do in an ITM course. Well, in terms of the projects the student might take on, we can offer this example sent to us by Laurane Parris who teaches the program in a B.C. school. She writes that, "with this emphasis on helping people manage, ITM students offer services ranging from providing on-the-spot relief to such calls as 'Help, the printer's jammed!' or 'How do I send e- mail?' They also get deeply involved in more complex, longer term projects such as:
Building a school home page that will go up this year on the Web.
Creating animations in 3-D to run on the hall monitors displaying school/community events.
Participating in the planning, configuring and installation of a LAN at the nearby elementary school.
Developing a hypercard stack on peer counselors to guide students.
Implementing a FirstClass Server as the school's e-mail system and bulletin board. Assembling a demonstration computer in a clear plastic case.
Implementing a web server to create and maintain web pages for nonprofit groups in the community.
Planning a web radio station for the broadcasting class to run.
Establishing a production center for desktop publishing and multimedia presentations in the school.
Laurane points out that service involves the sharing of expertise. Every student in the class must teach, starting with one-to-one and working toward full-scale PowerPoint presentations to an audience of unfamiliar adults. Students teach each other technical skills. They also teach the teachers. They give in-school workshops on the software used for grading and she has told us, "by the end of term students who know ReMark are chased down hallways by desperate teachers." The students have also taught workshops to teachers on CorelDraw and have provided district Internet training where they were responsible for working with the librarian to train up to 1400 students and 100 teachers on how to use the Internet.
And judging by the comments of the grade 10 student who led the CorelDraw workshop, it was an exhilarating experience. "It was about November. Miss Jones just handed me this CorelDraw booklet and said learn the program," the student told us, "I'd never used it before, never touched it. So, 'learn it because in 2 months you've got to teach a seminar on it to teachers,' and I was just like, 'I can't do this,' you know. And then when I came out of it, I taught the whole thing, and...no negative comments came back...Oh, it was a total, a total great achievement."
One important aspect in ITM is its ability to draw students with an affinity for technology away from the screen and into sharing their expertise with others, developing a whole new set of skills and a sense of accomplishment for them. This social aspect of working with people also proves to have an appeal for those students who have not traditionally been drawn to computer courses, such as young women. One young woman in the grade 10 class explained it this way: "As I got into Information Technology Management, it seemed to be more girls, actually, and I think it is, I don't know why, but it seems to be that the boys seemed to be more attracted to it for some reason, and that's why I was surprised that it seemed to be more girls, maybe because of the independence thing. But I think that over the next few years its going to get more equal between, that's for sure."
When it came to describing what she liked about the program, she told us about the responsibility, independence and sense of completeness to the work she did. "I think learning more about how to develop your own type of program which you're interested in ... like, I did for the Counseling Centre that was the most positive thing, because I had to do the whole thing all together, instead of just learning about one thing one day and then changing to another one. So that was the most positive thing for me." The Information Technology Management program was initiated in 1994 by Knowledge Architecture Inc. a Vancouver company that was established by an educator and IT industry professional to make a distinct social and technological contribution within Canada's telecommunications, information and education infrastructure. In a very short period, the company worked with teachers and industry people to develop one of the first project-learning programs. Students are currently taking ITM courses in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia.
In the first year of program delivery, ITM was offered as a traditional paper-based curriculum of learning outcomes and assessment activities that was delivered by staff mentors who had experience in the IT industry and who visited the schools to provide ongoing teacher and student support on how to provide a professional level of service to the school and community. This support for the ITM program is now delivered through a Web-based learning resource known as Studio A, which provides a workspace for each ITM student. Studio A forms a password-protected intranet within the ITM classroom for teachers and students, as well as a larger intranet among all of the ITM students in Canada and the US.
The student's personalized workspace has at its center a project book which provides the student with the templates, tables and informational links needed for planning projects in close collaboration with other students. The project book encourages students to achieve a high degree of accountability to both the "client" and the teacher. The student also has a set of electronic project tools they can access from their workspace to assist them with projects such as making presentations or web pages or collaborating electronically. They also have an electronic portfolio for placing materials to be evaluated by the teacher or for showing to prospective employers.
We have learned from other service learning projects how critical it is to have students reflect on what has been accomplished through their projects and where they can grow. To support this process, the student's project book includes a skills matrix for students to set goals and review progress in light of the course's goals and assignments which also forms part of the project book. The student can also reach out through the project book to a wide variety of telementors who have joined the ITM program to provide online help with technical and service questions, as well as career advice.
After working in their project books, students can also take a stroll through the Studio A neighborhood which offers ITM students and teachers a chance to check out what others in the program are up to in the Student Showcase, visit the Cafe' for up the minute news and a chance to exchange opinions, seek or offer help, make conversation, use the ThinkTank for evaluating issues and policies in essays or reports, or look up Just-in-Time-Learning to help them build the know-how in Information Technology they need for projects.
While ITM students are provided with a fully supported workspace on the Web, the ITM teacher has not been forgotten. The teacher also has a personalized project book in Studio A which serves as a management tool for the ITM class. Teachers can publish the course outline and requirements in all of the students' project books. They are able to track the students' projects, and evaluate and comment on the work that students place in their portfolio. They can use their project book to review the class's progress with students and parents. The Just-in-Time Learning section has a special section on professional development for the teacher which helps with how to teach in an ITM program based on teachers' experience with the program, as well as introducing teachers and students to professional methods used in service delivery of the IT industry.
After three years of developing the Information Technology Management program and building Studio A to support it, we now seek to expand this model of a web-supported collaborative environment to other subject areas that could thrive in a project environment. Whether in business education classes providing marketing support to local businesses, communications classes doing brochures for community groups, a drama class putting on a play series, there's no limit to the projects and services students can get involved in. The Studio A website is now being developed to support collaborative learning across a much wider range of subject areas, so that students can have greater opportunities to acquire skills and experiences, as well as the pride that comes of providing a welcomed services to others, that will serve them a lifetime.
To give the final word to Laurane who has been teaching in the ITM program over the last three years, she manages to capture the excitement and challenge of traveling along the new learning highway: "Experience has convinced me that helping 'clients' with real problems, teaching people about web pages, or just being there on a help-desk is the most powerful motivator in the world, for students. Mind you, the other side of that is that being recognized as an expert can be pretty heady stuff at 16 or 17. And part of your role as teacher is going to be helping students cope with these new roles and responsibilities."
About the Author
John Willinsky is the 1997-98 Wm. Allen Chair in Education at Seattle University where he is working on questions of education and technology, while on leave from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is also a consultant to Familyware International that has licensed Studio A and the ITM Program to form part of the Family Central Website. To contact him:
John WillinskySchool of EducationSeattle UniversitySeattle, WA 98122-4460206-287-9056 (0) 206-287-2053 (F)
willinsk@unixg.ubc.ca
Copyright © January 1998
New Horizons for Learning,
all rights reserved.http://www.newhorizons.org E-mail: info@newhorizons.org

National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers: Preparing Teachers to Use Technology

2008-03-14T04:56:00.000-07:00

National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers: Preparing Teachers to Use Technologyedited

by M. G. KellyISTE, 2002

A pivotal new professional development book aimed at preparing teachers on effective uses of technology in education is now available from the International Society for Technology In Education (ISTE). National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers�Preparing Teachers to Use Technology provides a vital resource for preservice and inservice teacher training across grade levels and content areas.
According to M.G. (Peggy) Kelly, EdD, National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers�Preparing Teachers to Use Technology editor and document development director, cutbacks in education funding have created a huge demand for effective teacher training resources. "Teachers today often face classrooms of students more technologically literate than they are," she notes. "Preparing Teachers to Use Technology provides essential teacher training information about integrating technology into a classroom setting using effective teaching practices. This book provides teacher educators and staff developers the skills and information needed to prepare productive 21st century teachers." Dr. Kelly adds that the new book is also a valuable resource to help schools and universities meet new guidelines for teacher training and professional development mandated by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
This nearly 400-page book, the first to comprehensively outline models for standards-based integration of technology for teacher education, was created by consensus. Writing teams of teachers and teacher educators from around the country collaborated to develop teacher preparation standards, assessments, and conditions that facilitate the use of technology to support student learning. According to Lajeane Thomas, PhD, director of the ISTE NETS Project, "This book provides an exemplary resource for integration of technology with curriculum in teacher education programs. Teacher educators facilitate their students' effective use of technology through the NETS for Teachers, accessing peer-reviewed lesson plans, models, strategies, and demonstrations of technology infusion."
National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers�Preparing Teachers to Use Technology includes:
32 demonstration lessons covering math, science, social studies, and language arts in early childhood, elementary, middle school, and secondary programs;
8 demonstration lessons for foundations courses; and
separate chapters devoted to model strategies, assessment, student teaching/internships, first-year teaching, and staff development.
New Horizons for Learninghttp://www.newhorizons.org