The Law of Increasing Returns

When talking about the first term having an ‘authentic Classroom 2.0′ environment for our Project Based Learning initiative, there are 2 main areas that I focus upon.

The first, is the hardware/software environment – the physical facets that allow students interact with in order to ‘deliver’ their solutions and the second is the relationship that is re-engineered between teacher and learner that is emerging – a social obvservation and it’s impact.

To focus on the social, you have to consider the prior-relationships between teacher and student that have been forged out of the school ’system’, the explicit rules and implicit culture that has developed . For students this is a two year exposure but for teacher, it is often decades of applied practice and meta cognition. The teacher, being the authority, dominates the student to one degree or another. So while some teachers do form positive relationships with students, this may not be the case when considering the ‘whole school’ experience that the student has over time.

Schools are of course far more ‘liberal’ than a few decades ago, and most have abandoned a heavy handed authoritarian culture, but never the less, unlike a University student or kids and teachers have an uneasy tenure for at least 4 years. Some teachers have an almost un-shiftable method of delivery (which over the last decade has mandated that students use some ‘ICT’ in their learning) and some are more progressive and to some degree are open to the idea that Web2.0 does offer some great new avenues to explore. But the exploration of these requires some degree of professional development.

Historically, PD is delivered in school in a very formal manner. A pupil free day perhaps, or attending a course for a day. Always a short sharp exposure, at the end of which the teacher is left to their own devices. Teachers who are intrinsically motivated to learn about something new – be that tech or non tech – usually do so regardless of the school allocated opportunity.

So delivering change of methodology by the teacher is prone to ‘crookness’. Teachers often see PD as an ‘event in time’. If this ‘event’ requires them to find additional time during their day, then often they don’t take up the opportunity, as they are already busy with class preparation, delivery, 5 period days, extra-curricula activity etc.,

When do teachers make changes to their teaching? – when the syllabus changes and mandates it. If they don’t change, then they cannot do their job effectively. This requires updates to exisiting resources, changes to the documented program/unit of work. It is a formal and accountable process. There is no avoiding it, the syllabus changes, so the teacher needs to change their delivery.

In Australia, our syllabus’ seem to add more and more content. At a time when educators are advocating ‘just in time learning’, a key premise of Project Based Learning, our syllabus’ are still centered around ‘just in case’ learning.

For a school, or teacher to seriously consider developing a Classroom 2.0 teaching and learning strategy then they need to be aware of two major issues that cannot be ignored, nor underestimated.

1) The nature of the teacher and student working relationship completely new and extraordinary. Both are going to be uneasy about this and unsure of boundaries.

2) The law of increasing returns in terms of the growth of technology use has not been explained or discussed with teachers or students. The alarming reality of how often they will need to ‘update’ their thinking, skills and methods. The speed at which this happens now is alarming to say the least.

At the end of 2007 I gave a short PD lecture to staff about the idea of students being ‘participants’ in the read/write web, and that ICT is more than a powerpoint, publisher leaflet or word doco. Most of what I said then has underlying long term truth, but the examples I cited have by and large been superseded. Superseded either as a result of yet more Web2.0 ‘beta’ applications, or that the EduBogger faithful, have found even more ways and methods to deliver even more innovation. Case in point … I saw a Twitter post about Derek Robertson using Nintendo DS in primary school. Immediately I could think of ways we might use that as a vector for learning.

Kurzweil describes ‘This is the nature of exponential growth. Although technology grows in the exponential domain, we humans live in a linear world. So technological trends are not noticed as small levels of technological power are doubled. Then seemingly out of nowhere, a technology explodes into view. For example, when the Internet went from 20,000 to 80,000 nodes over a two year period during the 1980s, this progress remained hidden from the general public. A decade later, when it went from 20 million to 80 million nodes in the same amount of time, the impact was rather conspicuous. (the law of accelerated growth)

So while I am an advocate of Classroom 2.0 – and I can see the learning that is happening in our project – there have been some major social barriers to overcome. Students are more used to change on demand. Conditioning by the system often makes new demands, and they respond to them. Teachers are not used to this SHIFT, the environment has changed, but the syllabus hasn’t. They are not used to having thier ‘curriculum’, methods of delivery and skills challenged. PD is, as Kurzweil suggests, a linear growth, done at a speed and level that they measure by their previous exposure and experiences. This is a major challenge to the new Classroom 2.0 relationship.

The danger looming on my horizon is that the students, who are to one degree of another ‘digitally native’ number 160, the staff a mere 16. The collective ’skills’ that students aquire in learning how to use Web2.0 far outstrip the teacher’s ability to synthasise them.

Initially students expect to be spoon fed information and given explicit tasks. This comes from out embedded ‘just in case’ learning system. The teacher expects to hand out this knowledge at a measured pace, using tools and techniques they have practiced for years. In PBL neither of the expectations are going to be viable. The teacher has to step back and become a facilitator and ‘on demand’ resource … answering questions and giving direction from 160 points of view. The student needs to take more responsibility for their learning, something which they are ill prepared. Their time has always been managed for them, and the outcomes are explict and clear. They are not used to working with others – and often people they don’t have any empathy with. They have no idea how to read a rubric and then decide what approach is going to yield the best results and they certainly are not used to defending their ideas and research.

In simple terms, if a teacher has used ICT to pose a question, and the student answers it by looking up the ‘fact’ in Wikipedia, and now this is no longer viable, then Houston, we have a problem.

Whether attempting a PBL environment, or simply adopting more Web2.0 methods of learning and delivery, the social change is going to be massive in the early days.

What I am now seeing, is that the students have adapted better to the SHIFT than teachers in terms of hardware/software use. However they need the guidance of teachers to point them to use the right tools for the task at hand. This is problematic, as teachers have limited exposure or PD to draw upon to suggest how to do this. Blogs being used, when a Wiki would be better – but how to design an effective Wiki structure. Emailing documents in a group, when Zoho or Google Docs would do it better … and the major issue, how to give 1 to 1 feedback when students are rapidly using more and more Web2.0 tools. Observation is only one assessment strategy, students need far more personalised feedback – as we have a wider range of ‘delivery’ mechanisms being employed by students.

We are also having to consider how to evaluate new products – how good is a podcast? – how effective is the design being realised in Teen Second Life? – how do we measure who is doing the work in a group? – how can we encourage effort, what value is creativity etc.,

There are massive considerations for a school or teacher who wishes to engage in Classroom 2.0. To me the social SHIFT is far more problematic than the infrastructure needs. The challenge is how to give teachers effective, continuous support in order to allow them to add value to the student. We have to ask questions that they can’t Google, and move away from generalised, simplistic ICT use in schools.

As a school, we have delivered the environment, the PBL model and students are loving it … but as we look to 6 months time, the law of acceleration says that teachers need to have access to ‘on demand’ PD. This is the US, I believe is addressed by having an Educational Technologist on hand … but at our school, we have 3 ICT teachers, so need to mentor and develop the ‘on demand’ skills for a the rest of the staff. We need to empower them at a speed and level that has not been attempted. Giving up a habit of a lifetime is never easy, and not everyone is personally interested in IT, but when in a Classroom 2.0 environment, it comes with the territory – if you want to be seen by the students as someone who can add value at a 1 to 1 level.

This then I see as the second wave of challenge. How to add value to teachers to empower them to drive students further.

iTouch Update

Just ordered a few iPod Touch’s to trail in school. A few kids have them already and so far no reason to cause any concern. I am wondering if having a Touch is something that kids can use in the same way they carry around a calculator. My thinking is that in order to go 1-to-1, perhaps we don’t need to go 1-to-1 desktop or laptops. I am wondering if students will see the Touch as a device that adds to their general classroom learning activity.

I am planning on testing them out in Science classes after easter, and get student/teacher feedback as to whether having the internet in your pocket adds any value. I still don’t like the price! – I want to trial Sony PSPs, but seem Sony AU has no Educational agenda right now, so hard to find if there is a co-op opportunity there or not.

I am struggling to find a junior high school teacher who is willing to put the time into developing a unit of work in which we can use PSPs as a wireless device. I’d like to buy 30 of them for a class set and run a paper-PSP Project Based Learning Unit of work in conjunction with Gav (the PBL force at PMHS). I haven’t given up just yet on the idea.

Teaching Programming using Web2.0

Term 2 approaches, and I have to teach programming to year 10 (15/16 year olds). Flat classroom methods previously used a 5 week burst of Logo with an assessment item and then the survivors of that worked through a Visual Basic tutorial and built a simple game. I hate VB, I can do VB6, but really can’t get excited about VB.Net. Somewhere along the way .net introduced and stuffed about with the syntax. I find that the ‘auto pilot’ in .net is more confusing to new learners than a help. In 2005/6 it was a nightmare term. Some kids got lost in Logo and so the whole VB thing threw them out even further.

In my class, I’ve now split the group into 6 distinct working groups. This has worked well in their current topic, although the lower end groups (low or sporadic effort, not intellect) dislike it as they have no ’smark’ kid to leech off. For these kids I’ve been giving them some scaffolded worksheets to use (old school). They dislike that and know the key to get back into using the web apps is down to them participating as required.

It is a mistake to assume all kids are ‘digital learners’. Social ’schooliness’ conditioning in early years of high school is embedded in some kids learning patterns. They can use technology, but are so used to being spoon fed information and linear tasks that it is too much of a culture shock to pull the rug out from under them. For these kids, Web2.0 learning methods work as a reward or ‘carrot’. They still need familiar worksheets and linear tasks.

Paul Curtis from the Napa Foundation told me last year that in order to promote critical thinking and problem solving using Project Based Learning, it works best if it is a whole school approach. This is now evident in our year 9 cohort. But my year 10 class is experiencing Classroom 2.0 in isolation to the rest of their studies – so it is unrealistic to expect them to relinquish the learning styles that they exerience in 90% of their day. I say this as a lesson learned to anyone getting into Classroom 2.0 as an individual, not as part of a whole school initiative. Don’t expect all the kids, no matter how much they love ‘gadgets’ to jump right into line.

So to programming …

I’ve opted to use Alice (www.alice.org) as a programming environment for part of their project. This replaces the terminally slow and labour intensive MS Logo. Last year we did a few weeks using Scratch, but was not an immediate success, so have looked for an alternative. I will use a series of Lecture notes which I host up at Slideshare.net.

In the first instance I am going to use Ruby – a nice simple, but powerful language. It works natively in Terminal on Max OSX, or as a free PC download. BUT I am going to lecture and use the online version of Ruby. It has a nice flash based terminal window, and a short 15 minute tutorial. It is a much easier entry to programming.

In IST, we are teaching general programming concepts, terminology and application … to me MSLogo is too boring, unless you are using a turtle (Beebot), and VB is way to annoying for newbies. It has a nightmare interface, nasty dialog and a habit of confusing kids as to where their program actually went. The desktop experience does not give any instant gratification.

In addition to this entry, I am then going to use Chris Pine’s excellent tutorial. I love the literacy that he uses, it is welcoming and not at all ‘elite nerd’. It will allow the advanced (future SDD students in the HSC) to get to grips with key concepts such as Arrays, but allow even the low end students to create simple programs to calculate maths problems. For much of the time, students can use the online version in class, and there are links in Chris’ tutorial to download the application on XP/OSX from home. Who wants to download VB.NET Express at home if you’re 15!

I am going to then set a series of problems which they can solve using Ruby. I have a rubric which will show the students the level of attainment that they are working at. In order to keep with the online collaboration, I will require them to produce any theory work using their blogs (we had a term off Blogging in favour of group Wikis’) and will be giving Twiddla a spin during class lectures.

Twiddla is not perfect, but is quick. It allows mutli-user collaboration. I am using specifically to post up text notes which I will ask students to complete as I run through the lecture. Students can complete them as we move through the presentations. I aim to target the slackers to ask them to write up the notes, and to allow the more advanced to propose code snippets, which the others can use to test. If/when Twiddla improve the shared web browsing aspect, I think it will have a lot more to offer.

Right now, its a good cut down application, I like it’s speed. It’s a bit ‘Fisher Price’ when it comes to screen design, but then again, it does not come with the costs associated with Adobe Connect (great app, silly pricing model).

They will also need to produce some video tutorials on their use of Alice and Ruby.

The main aim of all my Classroom 2.0 work is to make it involving and inclusive. To accommodate the various preferences my kids have in the way they like to use technology to learn. Even though its Classroom 2.0 – variety remains the spice of life.

If anyone has classes using Alice or Ruby I would love to hear from you, and perhaps find some mentor/collaboration partners starting in about 4 weeks, running for a further 10 weeks. In the mean time, I’m creating the resources (which I’ll share) for this unit of work.

Sony PSPs in the classrooom.

A student told me today how a teacher often allowed the students to play games in her class – once they had completed their worksheet. I assume this is to keep them quiet until the rest of the class has finished the ‘worksheet’.

At the beginning of the school term, I had about 120 PSPs (student owned) hooked onto a wireless network. Of course this experiment was purely to see how they worked, and yes, the kids took the opportunity to play networked games in the plaza. I didn’t see too much harm in that either to be honest. But it was just an experiment in connectivity and to see just how many of these things ‘came out’.

I read that Sony in the UK has launched a PSP in Education project …

“[The PSP] takes all the open formats that we need to provide for an Internet-based delivery medium – so in other words, if you want pictures, if you want videos, if you want wireless access to the Internet, this will give it.”

The PSP in Education presentation highlighted how the handheld could be used in the classroom to download RSS and listen to audio files, such as poems, plays and foreign language recordings.”

Initially, I thought that teacher would not like the idea of a PSP in class – its a toy. But then again, it seems game play is welcome when it suits.

I do like the PSP. And if you don’t put a game in it, then it isn’t a games console. There are some great arguments that game play has a place in the classroom, and indeed I tire of explaining endlessly that Skoolaborate is not a game. Work is needed to integrate both effectively into our Jurrasic Curriculum, but sooner or later it will happen – but when?

INTEGRATING THE PSP WITHOUT GETTING HURT.

The PSP to me seems like a great classroom learning tool. It is almost as easy to hook up to WiFi as a Mac. It does read RSS, it will play music, it will show video. Kids move about the text editing at alarming speed, some seem to go faster on this than they do at the adult sized keyboard. They are also built for kid to hold, shock proof, drop proof and versatile. They are also SMALL and so I don’t need another 30 kilo trolley at a gazillion dollars to move them about.

They are also CHEAP, relative to the iPodTouch. So if I get a set of 30 PSPs at a cost of about AU$7,500, I am getting a class online at a fraction of the normal $30k classroom investment. Mico-computing is BACK.

All we need is to take an gun to Nellie the Curriculum Elephant and come up with creative ways to use them.

S H I F T – T I M E

Enter Web2.0. We could simply convert existing worksheets – yes I know, not very adventurous. We could put them into Scribd and give the students the URL.

So in Scribd, we can place existing documents on the desks of all the kids in the class NOT on the wipeboard (all classrooms) or projectors (some classrooms). The kids can still read the content/questions and work to solve them. They can ALSO jump out of the text book and use the internet for wider research. A lot of power in small hands. Students can use them at home, in the school yard etc., They can use them in groups, they can take them anywhere!

SHIFT : Teacher saves document on Scribd and not on a flash drive. How hard is that?

So without getting Utopian, there is an immediate educational setting for the PSP as a wireless device to display information to students.

Now lets imagine the teacher Googles the term ‘hyperlink’. They can link their class document to a set of resources that they KNOW they want the students to use (slight issue : how well can the teacher research online). So I guess that is an intermediate step. If we went to a savvy user - then they could use RSS feeds to being content to students – which is better than them looking, and looking …. and looking.

I’m interested in finding out if anyone has got PSPs in their classrooms, what they are doing with them etc., drop me a line.

I am also interested in developing come PSP driven content and projects for students … again, drop me a line.

At $250 each, all we really have to do to see them in class is SHIFT our thinking a) that they are not just for games and b) that we can migrate exisiting classroom content to digital without doing much at all, save SHIFT our thinking.

Heart of the Problem

Photocopiers are in essence a scanner, largely operated by someone else. The yellow sheets are the order for student sets of prints. I suspect that if you are not a Web2.0 driven teacher, then this is a very comforting and normal photo. Of course if you are in a hurry then you use the small copier, but essentially, work is scanned and printed. It is then distributed to students.

A staff room printer is pretty much the same deal. Teachers copy, paste and create vast amounts of worksheets. Word is your friend. Why do they do this? Perhaps because the PC is attached to a printer which churns out familiar paper. It may be the nice warm toner smell, but I think it is more to do with familiarity. The ICT Literate teacher therefore produces and document, prints it and hands it out.

Before the internet arrived in the staff room, the photocopier was head of production, when handwritten or ‘black line masters’ we used – largely to produce the exact same product. So what has changed in the last decade? Perhaps only that teachers have greater access to PCs and staffroom printers.

Hogging the printer, producing a class set is frowned upon. So a master is made and then taken down to the print room, a yellow order filled out and the set are printed and handed out.

My thoughts have turned to the life span and long term value of the issued copy. It can be a worksheet – handed out, completed, handed back and marked and handed back. Occasionally, direct one to one comments are made to students. Students on the whole see that as the end of the matter. It was important at the time, but now it is over it gets stuck in the backpack. How long does it live on? Is it an effective literacy tool that the student can use later?

Learning to use the scanner however is a complex thing in many teacher’s opinion. You have to interact with it. You could scan the document and put it online, but that is not normal. The accepted process is just as I’ve said above … the end product is paper based. Always paper based.

But a photocopier is a scanner. Most network copiers, with a little IT thought it can file documents in a known location on the LAN. Students could find it and use it.

But that is not what copiers are supposed to do, so we don’t do that. It now how technology is supposed to be used.

A staff room scanner is simple too.

Insert paper, press the scan button and then you have a file. Okay, here’s the rub – the file format is different -yes I know scary isn’t it. It is not an Office document but a JPEG -what’s that?

Surely scanning a document and then printing it is a better idea?

You won’t need to scan it next year (if you are one of those who like to revist a well trodden annual cycle). But instead of that, the cycle of print/copy/issue/complete/mark/hand back is preferable.

Its good to know from a teachers point of view that no matter how non-IT you are, you can still issue documents on mass via the copier.

A STUDENT PERSPECTIVE

I interviewed a group of senior students about what paperwork they had on them. They said that they received on average about 80 sheets of paper a week. A mixture of tasks, worksheets and come reference matter. Given the amount of syllabus material teachers must get through, then handing out reference notes is again, a known, accepted method of delivery of information.

I asked them how much of that material they read. Honestly, they said they speed read it and look for phrases from questions. This could end up in a literacy debate about literacy – so I’ll omit that for now. How much did they remember (ouch, read/recite) and how much they can use to build new applied knowledge (blank looks). Eventually they suggested that they took notice or used about 60% of it. They said that not all of it is relevant (to the question/task), so they don’t bother with it.

Next I asked how many of the sheets they have kept since starting year 12. They said about 40%. The paper they keep is usually reference material or exam practice – the rest are worksheets that have no long term value to carry around.

COSTINGS

80 sheets a week over a year works out at about $320.00 worth of charge-back to the KLA per student. We have 8 KLAs ($2560 per year). So a HSC course consumes about $5120.00 worth of paper resources per student at charge back rates. This is based on time/labour/materials/depreciated assets at $0.10 a sheet.

Lets assume that the costs are as low as possible, $0.01 a sheet. Now consider that an EeePC from ASUS is currently $499 RRP and that an iPodTouch 8gig is $399.00. This seems on par with even the most skeptical mathematics.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

If teachers adopted a new method of delivery – digitally – which I can’t think ultimately takes the school any less time to actually produce (teacher/photocopy technician) – then we could deliver this information via courseware (Moodle) or one of the many Web2.0 service offering digital paper storage (iPaper).

This requires a SHIFT in thinking. We could justify the issue every senior student with a ‘digital device’ – WiFi enabled, digital storage and playback of multimedia delivery – which has many more features than paper (read it/fold it/scrunch it). If they then want a hard copy, then can print it out using a low volume printer. The costs of the photocopier are slashed. We could reduce consumption and cost – the photocopy tech is re-named a scanning technician. The role is merely shifted. Work is placed online, not on a shelf for collection. Students have 1 to 1 access to it 24/7.

There are significant benefits to students having digital resources, not least the fact that 100% of the information issued thoughout the course is available 100% of the time. They cannot loose it, and months later can refer back to it. I am sure there are plenty more ways to use it – and I haven’t even started at making documents hyper – I’m sticking to existing behaviour observation.

In summary my point is that if schools shift their thinking, adjust the way they fund ‘knowledge transfer’ then it the cost is absorbed. The problem is that the teacher may have to give up their love affair with the mass photocopier.