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.

 

 

 

"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."

 

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.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/design+isolation+vertical+suburbs/7222676/story.html#ixzz26B3GDInZ

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

http://bit.ly/PkPW0h

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

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