Friday 28 September 2012

Court support anon challenge to cyberbullying




A 15-year-old girl from Nova Scotia brought a defamation case against someone who created a fake Facebook profile that sexualized her image. She wanted to bring the case anonymously to protect herself from further damage.
The lower courts rejected her claim, but the Supreme Court of Canada upheld her right to pursue it anonymously.

This case gets to the heart of a dilemma of social media. What protections exist--in reality, as well as in theory?
In this case, the Court said that children should have a layer of protection that would likely not be there for adults. Justice Abella said that it was "logical to infer that children can suffer harm through cyberbullying, given the psychological toxicity of the phenomenon."

 The decision drew on reports of a quarter million cases of cyberbullying a month in Canadian schools, indicating, presumably, that this scope of problem makes it a legitimate topic of the attention of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Justice Abella said that “Studies have confirmed that allowing the names of child victims and other identifying information to appear in the media can exacerbate trauma, complicate recovery, discourage future disclosures and inhibit co-operation with authorities."

Not included in this case was a factor that complicates these issues for school officials. If the alleged defamatory content has been posted by another student in the same school, but from a home computer, what is the responsibility of the school to act, and what might such actions be.

 However, defamatory words aimed at another student are not necessarily the most damaging on Facebook. Often it is what the individual says about himself/herself, directly or indirectly, that causes the most blowback. And what is the ability of the school to make students aware of the dangers, when some teachers themselves seem unaware of the dangers of stepping over student/teacher boundaries.

Read a report on the decision at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/top-court-defends-girls-anonymity-in-cyberbullying-case/article4571365/?cmpid=rss1

 

Tuesday 25 September 2012

A Short History of DL in British Columbia

By Larry Kuehn
Distributed Learning (DL) is the official name in BC of a range of types of education where the teacher and student are not in direct, face-to-face learning situation.  It is defined in legislation:
" Distributed Learning is a method of instruction that relies primarily on indirect communication between students and teachers, including internet or other electronic-based delivery, teleconferencing or correspondence."

The reference to "correspondence" links to the history of the development of distance learning within the public schools of BC.  For nearly a century students have been able to take courses through the mail, reading materials, doing assignments, mailing them in and having them marked and returned.

The model was decentralized in the 1980s, with the development of nine regional distance education schools located in different regions of the province.  This provided more opportunities for some personal contact between teacher and students.  A story of a teacher who once a year visited a family on a lighthouse in a remote area of the coast reflected the concept.

In 1993 the Nechako school district in northern BC got permission to run an online program they called "e-bus."  It offered courses and gave computers and Internet connections to families who signed their children up for courses.  This was really a home schooling program initially in which the teachers were considered as consultants to the parents as teachers.

Students from around the province signed up for these programs--creating a concern to the regional distance education schools that they were going to lose their base of students.  The regional schools got permission to create programs and offered them along with the mail programs.

Other districts wanted to get into the game as well, seeing that districts with programs were able to attract students and funding, and were able to move to what was seen as a cutting edge of the future of education.  In 1998, the ministry approved eighteen districts to offer programs that included electronic tools that allowed for more interaction between students and teachers than correspondence programs.  A cap of 2200 students was put in place for what was considered a pilot program, with districts being given a quota of the number they could register.

The BC Liberal government elected in 2001 opened up the system for any school district that wanted to offer a program.  This was initiated with little planning or setting of a framework to determine the quality or operation of these programs.  The Deputy Minister of the day felt that the market would determine the value of programs rather than having a plan and framework--the issues would be worked out on the fly.
Nearly every school district felt it had to have a program so they did not lose students and funding to districts across the province.

This led to a number issues that had to be addressed as the problems became obvious:

*School districts competed with "incentives" to families who would sign up.  Computers, internet costs, learning resources, recreational programs, digital cameras--some parents would shop around to find the best incentives to decide which program to join.  The ministry had to bring in regulations saying that incentives could not be offered.  This reduced the amount of open competition, but some programs still found ways of bending the rules.

*The ministry had to ensure that what they were paying for was not home schooling, with the parent taking all the responsibility for teaching and assessing.  Parents have the right to home school, but with only limited access to resources from school districts.  If the province is paying for the school experience, the student program and assessment must be the responsibility of a teacher.

*Some parents were using funding to purchase religious resources and were giving their children assignment based on religious work.  The BC public schools are secular and religious material and assignments are not allowed.

The lack of planning the development of DL has led to a decade of practices arising that bring a responsive policy, the policy has unexpected consequences or administrators find a new way of taking advantage of the system, and that is followed by another policy to fix the problem.

The "official history" of DL suggests that these problems were all dealt with in 2006 when Bill 33 was passed (see reference to Learnnow B.C.):

"Bill 33 and the revised School Act levelled the playing field, eliminated unnecessary rules, set common definitions and terminology, substantiated accountability processes, and put standards in place for quality."

The approach to gaining some control of the situation was to create a standard contract between the ministry and the school district.  This outlined a new set of rules and provided the discipline that a district would lose the right to have a DL school if they did not follow the contract. (See References for access to a copy of the standard contract).

Further articles in this series will look at other key issues:

Funding policies--at the core of many of the issues in DL
Audits of programs--another element of the funding and accountability issues
Quality standards--what do they mean, how are they assessed
Course development--what, who, standards, ownership
Role of the DL teacher
Working conditions of DL teachers
Professional development for DL teachers
Governance and services--LearnnowBC, the Virtual School Society  and the District 73 Business Company
BC Dogwood graduation certificates for international students

References: 

Learnnow B.C., "History of Distributed Learning."  Downloaded from www.learnnowbc.ca/information/what_is_dl/History_of_DL.aspx on September 24, 2012

Ministry of Education, Distributed Learning Contract 2011 version.  Downloaded from www.bced.gov.bc.ca/dist_learning/docs/dist_learn_agmt.pdf on September 24, 2012

Monday 17 September 2012

Virtual School Research MOOC


So what's a MOOC?  It's a new "in" thing in technology.  It stands for Massive Online Open Course.

MOOCs have grown out of universities offering  their courses on the web to anyone who wants to work on the course, without the necessity of being registered with an education institution, or getting credits for the course.  MIT, Stanford and a number of universities are making courses available on this open basis, with no limits to the number of students who can take the course--as long as they accept that they won't be getting course credits.

I have signed up for a four-week MOOC on virtual school research, organized by Michael Barbour, an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University in Michigan.  He is the academic who has probably done the most work on tracking developments in K-12 online learning in Canada.  He has produced an annual report on online education for iNACOL, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.

Information about iNACOL can be found at their web site http://www.inacol.org/

Barbour's most recent report, "State of the Nation: K-12 Online Learning in Canada," can be found at http://www.inacol.org/research/bookstore/detail.php?id=32

The MOOC has "assignments" and various "badges" that you can earn, basically self-evaluation of work that you carry out.  As an example, the assignment that goes with the first entry in the MOOC is to post in your blog on one of these topics:

1.  Select five K-12 online and/or blended learning programs and describe them using one of more of the various classifications and descriptors above.
OR

2.  Make a case for one of the current classification structures or propose a classification of your own that includes aspects of more than one of the definitions/classifications projects described above.

This MOOC is particularly relevant at this point to some of my work as a member of the BC Teachers' Federation Research Department.  I am working on a project with a group of BC Distributed Learning teachers, looking at many of the issues that face our DL programs and the people who teach in them.

In the MOOC's introductory lecture (both video and print elements), Barbour talks about the many different definitions that have been used to describe virtual education, primarily focusing on the many versions in the U.S.  Some of the diversity and confusion, Barbour reports, could be intentional:

"It should be noted that some scholars have suggested that these ever expanding definitions and classifications of K-12 online learning have been done for political reasons to show higher than actual growth within the field (in many instances by those who have made outrageous predictions about the scope of K-12 online learning in the coming years)."

I'm not going to do either of the suggested blog posts.  Rather, I will write one that describes as succinctly as possible the Distributed Learning structure in British Columbia. I will post the writing that I do for the MOOC on the edu-digicritic blog as the project goes on.

If you are interested in joining the MOOC, you can find it at http://virtualschoolmooc.wikispaces.com/.

It is free and open.

 

 

 

Thursday 13 September 2012

"Amusing, puzzling and horrifying?"


 

"Amusing, puzzling and horrifying."  That's how Erika Shaker describes a "Roundup" column that I write for Our Schools, Our Selves, a Canadian education journal published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The column consists of short items, many related to technology.  This is the first of posts from that Our Schools Roundup column.

Replace teachers with computers

That is the recipe for the future of education as seen by Rupert Murdoch.  Not content with promoting a lack of ethics in his newspapers, he wants to undermine education as well.  "The digital age opens up a tremendous opportunity in education," he told the Times of London.

Murdoch's solution to education--"with the aid of technology, schools could use only the finest teachers in every course...and make them available to every child." 

This was his plan in purchasing Wireless Generation, which makes teaching assistance and student data software.  His move into education came just as the wiretapping of the sad and the famous came to light and he had to abandon News of the World.  He threatened to do the same to education.

Wireless Generation had a $27million no-bid contract with education in New York State.  After the light shone on the wiretapping, the state returned the contract saying it was incomplete because it didn't deal with the "responsibility issues  involving the parent company."

********

Twitter terrorist teacher

A Mexican teacher was held in jail for passing on a message to her brother-in-law about a potential terrorist attack at a school near Vera Cruz.  The relative retweeted the message.  Both were picked up for  causing mass hysteria and dozens of car accidents.   Another 30 tweeters are under investigation.

Maybe they heard about Murdoch taking over education and panicked.

*******

Tweet that university application

The University of Iowa School of Management lets students use the 140-characters of Twitter to submit an admission application.  The Columbia University Business School is more generous--it allows 200-character answer to "What is your post MBA professional goal?"

Of course, the applicant can always include a link to their blog or web site if they can interest the admissions officer to go beyond the tweet.

***********

Not while on your bike

The Chicago city council has adopted an ordinance "barring bicyclists from using their cellphones to text message or talk on the phone without  a hands-free device."  The council was told there had been 1600 crashes and five people killed during the year in phone-related crashes.

In a hearing, one presenter said "I've actually seen people riding and texting with both hands."

 

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Email killed the faculty club


One day on the UBC campus some time ago, I noticed that the UBC Faculty Club was no more.  It had become a restaurant, listed in a Google search as “UBC’s former faculty club restaurant.” 
I commented to a faculty member that the elitism of a faculty club had finally done it in.  I recalled that the big student sit-in at UBC in the 60s had targeted the faculty club, not the administration building.  And SFU’s equivalent Diamond Club had always had a more egalitarian sense because it accepted any member of the campus community—as long as they could afford it.
Not so, I was told by a faculty member.  It wasn’t elitism.  It was email that killed the faculty club.
One of the functions of the faculty club had been for faculty members to meet others to talk about the work they were doing or to share information about some departmental intrigue.  No more.  Those functions can be carried out by email, without even having to come on campus.
I checked on the history of the faculty club—isn’t Google amazing—and discovered that it filed for bankruptcy in 1994.  That matched the time that email would have become ubiquitous on university campuses.
Isolation—space and technology
I thought about this when I read an oped in the September 11Vancouver Sun by the architect Bing Thom and some colleagues.  The headline on the piece read “Use design to end isolation in vertical suburbs.” 
I had never thought about those highrise condos in quite that way before—vertical suburbs that have a similar lack of connection to other suburbs.  In fact, they may be even more isolated than suburbs where kids playing outside and parent meetings at school provide chances of getting to know neighbours more than does the occasional sharing of an elevator, with everyone looking at the floor or the indicator of progress.
Here is what Thom and associates had to say about the reciprocal role of technology and the design of space:
“In the past, a great deal of our social interactions and engagements were facilitated by various civic institutions. Technology is radically changing how these institutions function: universities offer courses online and libraries and museums are digitizing their collections. While how information is stored and distributed in these institutions has drastically changed, the need to connect people with ideas and each other is more important now than ever before. These institutions need to continue to re-imagine their roles as they change from being content providers to centres of human connectivity, community, and potential.
“Architecture and planning at their worst exacerbate isolation by design, however, their thoughtful and engaging incarnations can help break down cultural walls and span social chasms.”
This is the real challenge of social design in an age of digital connectivity.


Monday 10 September 2012

Every tool shapes the task...and the brain



Never accept the frequent claim about technology that “it’s only a tool.” Lots of evidence makes it clear, as Ursula Franklin says, that ”every tool shapes the task.” Recent research goes further and points to tools shaping not just the task, but our brains as well.

In the face of this evidence, what is a teacher to do in working with students who live in a media-intense life outside of the classroom?

And what is a school system to do about creating an environment within the school: should the school be integrated with the external environment? or should the school be a cloister that provides space for personal recognition and reflection, free from digital distraction.

These are dilemmas that face teachers and schools in the rapidly shifting environment: questions of immersion or cloister as the strategy for schools.

The tool, the task and the brain

Probably the most famous phrase ever spoken by a Canadian is MarshallMcLuhan’s “the medium is the message.” It captured in a simple phrase a theory about social and cultural change.

The general public impression was that McLuhan was a promoter of the kinds of changes that he saw taking place in the move from print to audio-visual media, including TV. In fact, according to a recent biography by Douglas Coupland, he was actually lamenting what he saw happening.

Coupland begins the biography with a quote from McLuhan that is not so well known:

“The next medium, whatever it is—it may be the extension of consciousness—will include television as its content, not as its environment, and will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolence mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopaedic function and flip it into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”
(McLuhan, 1962)

Read the rest of this article at



Originally published in Our Schools, Our Selves, the education journal of the Canadian Centre from Policy Alternatives




Sunday 9 September 2012

Corporate Control of Education--the Pearson case


One of the ironies of ICT is the duality of control.  The promise is that the digital revolution creates a kind of freedom where everyone can have their voice heard.  On the other hand, the reality is a movement toward corporate monopolies that control the tools and sometimes the content.

Google is an obvious example.  This blog is on software from Google and stored in its cloud.  On the other hand, all the content of the blog feeds into the system Google uses to target ads to me, the way that Google earns the money to offer this free platform.

Pearson is the leading example of applying the technology in education in ways that place a frame around education.  This UK based corporation is creating a vertical integration of its products, most of which are technology-related.

Pearson provides content.  Pearson publishes textbooks, the area they started from in the education field.  These can be hard copy or e-book versions.  They are building lessons for the new standard curriculum being developed in the U.S.  They provide "multimedia assets" and educational software.

Pearson keeps track of how students deal with the content.  Pearson are big guys in the field of student information systems--the software used by schools and governments to keep track of information about attendance, grades, report cards, behavior, Individual Education Programs and other aspects of keeping data on students. 

Pearson provides tests on the content.  Contracts with several states for standardized tests give Pearson a competitive advantage because they piggyback test questions.

Pearson determines who is eligible to teach.  A contract with New York state has turned over to Pearson certification decisions based on tests of candidates and videotaped lessons taught as a student teacher.

Pearson runs schools.  Pearson bought Connections Education, a private company that runs online public schools in 21 states.

Pearson, of course, does not hold a monopoly in all these areas...yet. 

Researcher Donald Gutstein has produced a report that explains Pearson's corporate strategy.  Rather than building all these areas themselves, they buy out the work of others such as Charter School company Connections Education and AAL, the company that created the software for BC's student information system (BCeSIS).

In some cases, Pearson is buying the product.  In others, it is really buying the customers, abandoning the product they buy and getting clients to move to a competing Pearson product.

Gutstein's report on Pearson can be found at bctf.ca/uploadedFiles/Public/Issues/Privatization/PearsonGutsteinReport.pdf

Welcome to edu-digicritic


Welcome to edu-digicritic

Thinking about the role of technology in education–information and communications technology, specifically–presents lots of ambiguities and unknowns.

Certainly there are enthusiasts who see ICT as creating a positive revolution in education. Others think we need to pay attention because the digital has become the environment of our students and we have to understand and use it if we are to serve them well.

On another side are those who are fearful of what we are moving into as a society, with criticisms like those of Neil Postman when he wrote “Amusing ourselves to death.”

I can find much to support in each of those positions. When I started to write a dissertation on technology in education several years ago, I discovered (after far too long) that I couldn’t come down on any one position to build an argument and support it, so I changed my topic.

Now I want to come back to the issues that face us around technology in education. I hope that the form of a blog, with its call and response format, will allow for engaging discussions and once in a while some conclusions.

My posts to the blog will take two forms. Some will be short items about things that I run across and want to tell others about and to comment on. Others will be longer items that make an argument about an issue.

Thanks for reading this far. I hope you will come back or subscribe and take part in the discussion.
Larry