February 2005 Newsletter

Volume 9 Issue 1  February 2005

Education in the 21st Century

 Welcome to the dinner party of a lifetime! 

Part 3

Mark Treadwell

 Occasionally in history events conspire together to bring about fundamental change across an entire social landscape.  We are presently witnessing one such event; the complete rebuilding of what we understand education to be.  The transition to the second education paradigm is changing education forever, and those countries which recognise this opportunity and have the social and political willpower to make the transition will dominate the knowledge economies of the 21st century.  The choice is quite stark: realise the opportunity, invest in it and reap the rewards or pretend that nothing is happening, that change is too difficult and become trapped in an education never-never land and watch as social, economic and knowledge potential withers and dies.  Countries must choose to make the transition and do so knowingly and with a sense of purpose and commitment.  Choosing to do nothing is a choice.

Chapter 5:  Dessert

In order to deliver this rich information and communication environment it is necessary for every classroom to have access to infrastructure software, application software, curriculum based software as well as an effective hardware and cabling infrastructure.

Infrastructure Software & Standards: a brief list of the essential infrastructure software tools and standards that schools now require can be quite overwhelming.

·         Nationally delivered (not necessarily free) high speed filtered internet service within an educational VPN environment that function within Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees.

·         Published standards for Infrastructure hardware (cabling/routers et all)

·         Published Interoperability standards (such as the Schools Interoperability Framework)

·         Student Management System (SMS) software (including truancy management)

·         Assessment software

·         Remotely hosted (ASP) internet/intranet/extranet/Knowledge NET©  

·         Library and resource software

·         Web based browser: Mozilla, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Netscape . . .

·         Access to Digital learning Objects (DLO’s) via the intranet/Knowledge NET©

The necessity for schools to have access to high speed internet is now beyond doubt. High-speed Broadband Internet access must be both available and affordable for learning institutions, homes and mobile environments.  Broadband/ High-speed access is defined as being greater than 0.5Mb/sec (guaranteed).  To meet these requirements high-speed coverage will be achieved via a combination of satellite, DSL, cable and wireless.  Where necessary this will require the unbundling of monopolistic telecommunication providers via government intervention. To deliver this there are some infrastructural requirements such as

1. Authentication should be managed by the centralised Ministry/Department of Education via an LDAP authentication server which provides access to recognised services via a single password and username.  Services that could be supplied in this manner include access to a school’s Knowledge Net management and assessment software, ministry/department of education information, libraries of Digital Learning Objects bought under licence for teacher access . . . .

2. The Quality of Service (QoS) provided by all recognised suppliers must meet quality standards set by the ministry/department of education.  These "quality of service standards" should be published and made publicly available so that any software developed meets the required standards for interoperability. It may be that auditing of this will be necessary.

3. Schools will all be part of a Virtual Private Network (VPN), allowing filtered and controlled Internet access and a safe, secure (firewalled) environment where every user can be tracked, if and when necessary.  The Virtual Private Network environment will allow for free exchange of information and material (including rich data transmission), from any point to any other point within that environment,.  The Virtual Private Network will be governed by standards set by the Ministry/Department of Education.

What is more, these tools must function under interoperability standards so that data only needs to be entered once into one of these software platforms (usually this will be the Student Management System) and this software exports a “flat data file” to the web that allows the other packages to update their data sets from.  

It is also important that the interface that teachers interact with for each of these packages is intuitive, web based and available 24/7.  Authentication, providing levels of access to each of these tools, should be via a single userID and password or alternatively via biometric (fingerprint/Iris scanning, facial recognition . . .) analysis which will provide a portal gateway to all necessary resources and tools that the user requires.

In order to accomplish this it is necessary for the Ministry/Department of Education to initiate interoperability and authentication processes within their country/state/county.

On top of this it is necessary that each of the competing software products in each of the various areas described allow the dataset accompanying each learner to move with them through their lifelong learning process.  At present almost every country suffers from a scenario where numerous pieces of data are collected regarding a students academic progress, competency capability, health, social welfare, sporting capability . . . . .  but very rarely is that data interrogated and made full use of.  Often the transition from primary/elementary school through to junior high/college/high school sees almost no data whatsoever accompanying the child to the new institution. The new institution starts the teaching and learning processes “flying blind” with almost no knowledge of the capability of the students that they are working with and they set about systematically re-collecting new data over several years in order to recreate the dataset to a point where it once again provides useful and reliable information on student capability. This is a nonsense!

With the technology we have available right now each student should have a complete dataset follow them through their compulsory education and then be given to that student t host on their own intranet/Knowledge NET ©  when they complete their compulsory sector. It will be then up to that student as to how that dataset is used from then on.

Application Software: As well as infrastructure software there is also application software. Unfortunately much of the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) focus has been on atomistically teaching discrete elements of office software products rather than the overarching systemic architecture and teaching students to effectively query “help” menus and provide them with lifelong learning skills enabling them to adapt to continually iterating software applications.  The role of office products such as Microsoft Office is reducing steadily and will continue to do so as open source products improved their capability and quality, but there is another threat to present dominance of “office software” in education.

The second element contributing to the reduction in the use of proprietary office software products is the capability for publishing to the Internet from WYSIWYG editing tools embedded in intranets/Knowledge NET's ©.  With the application of XML capability within these WYSIWYG editing tools these tools will be able to carry out almost all the processes that publishing, spreadsheet, database and presentation tools are presently used for.  We expect this XML capability to begin to become available within the next 12-18 months and to be established in the next 3-4 years in this product range. 

Computer Hardware: Infrastructure development has been discussed already but schools were also need to investigate how to conclude the "last mile" along with deciding which hardware tools (laptops, desktops, tablets, PDAs, digital whiteboards . . . . ) will best deliver and allow the manipulation of these rich information and communication toolsets as well as the application software packages.

The computer/laptop: For some time now schools have been experimenting with the use of wireless networks and now with the establishment of 56 Mb per second wireless LANs using the 802.11g standard [http://www.teachers.work.co.nz/archive_June_2004.htm] we believe that the best combination for schools for "last mile" delivery is the use of category 6 (for new installations) to individual buildings and then wireless distribution within the building.  The main reason for the wireless application is a pedagogical one.  Having students "tied" to pieces of cable surrounding the periphery of the room or having cables suspended from ceilings to each individual desktop or laptop (the result of which is teachers swimming around in a  room of electronic kelp!) results in many students  facing away from the teacher and/or each other.

To remove cables completely we need not only a wireless LAN but also lightweight laptop computers that are low-powered and have a battery life of 4-5 hours.  Centrino low-power chip based laptops meet this specification and can be housed in a simple docking station so that once they are placed back in the docking station the batteries are automatically being charged.

The potential for tablet-based computing is considerable.  However, at the moment this technology is too slow for many classroom applications.  We believe that within the next 2-3 years this issue will be resolved and the tablet-based computing will become a realistic option. The potential advantages of the tablet are considerable and are based around the present frustration of having to input data via a keyboard. Tablet technology allows for data to be inputted in a variety of ways including handwritten script to text technology, voice to text technology, as well as the traditional text inputting via the keyboard. These technologies have come a long way in the past few years and we expect this improvement to continue.

The other major issue regarding laptop technology is whether or not every student requires one.  As laptop technology has become more reliable as a tool they become a more realistic option for some situations.  However, for most situations we do not recommend that each student has their own laptop.  There are three main reasons for this recommendation.

·         Even low-power Centrino based laptop computers are quite heavy for young (year 0-8) students to be carrying around with them all day.  There is an optimal ergonomic balance between screen size and practicality of use.  Reducing the screen size reduces the practicality of using computer technology and as a result making the laptops smaller and lighter compromises this requirement.

·         Teachers are not technical experts and we do not wish to have their time consumed with managing the laptops that the students carry around with them.  The focus must be on teaching and learning not on the technology and anything that gets in the way of this focus needs to be eliminated.  Having 25 laptops in the classroom is simply asking for technical trouble!

·         One of the emerging essential competencies is working together in groups, managing relationships and identification of roles within groups.  Individualising the learning process by having each student being required to have their own laptop computer moves learning away from this essential competency and as such this situation should be avoided.

These three considerations leave us with the opinion that requiring each individual student to have their own laptop technology is detrimental to the overall teaching and learning outcomes that are being focused on.  Schools could mount a reasonable argument for senior secondary/college students having their own portable laptop technology but for junior students the negatives seem to considerably outweigh the positives (and there is a considerable number of positive aspects).

The solution we are recommending is that each classroom is provided with one low-power Centrino chip based laptop computer for each 4-5 students in the classroom.  These are stored in a docking station ensuring that they are being powered up when not being used.  With this solution the laptop computers are completely wireless and can be used by groups of students effectively and efficiently within the classroom environment.  There is still an issue of managing this technology and ensuring that teachers do not become the default classroom technician and this issue needs to be addressed.

As students move more and more towards the inquiry learning process and they store increasing amounts of their work online in their web based intranet/Knowledge NET© it is no longer necessary for each student to have their own individual laptops as all their information is stored on the web rather than on the hard drives of the machines that they use.  Even the students web based bookmarks are stored in their Knowledge NET© ensuring that whatever computer they use they will have access to all their personal resources and research tools.  We have now reached the A³ point; where their schoolwork, personal information and research tools are available to Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime.

With the price difference between laptop technology and desktop technology falling dramatically and the performance of laptop technology equating to that of the desktop we see little advantage in purchasing desktop technology at this point in time.  The other associated issue is securing your laptop technology so that it cannot leave the room without you knowing about it!  There are a range of security devices that can be purchased at a reasonable cost to mitigate the possibility of theft.

Display Technology: The pedagogy underpinning this technology decision area is formed around the premise that teachers are required to be the "sage on the stage" for a reasonable amount of time as this teaching style is very efficient in transmitting information and conceptual ideas/frameworks across the large number of students in a small amount of time.  It needs to be used in balance with being "the guide on the side" but being the sage is not something teachers should be embarrassed about doing but it should not feature any more than 25-30% of total time in the classroom.

As information is increasingly found in electronic formats it becomes more and more necessary for the teacher to be able to use these integrate multi-media resources within their presentations of ideas and concepts.  In order to achieve this several technologies are worthy of discussion.  The use of multimedia projectors has increased dramatically over the past few years for the point now when they are an essential piece of classroom equipment replacing the overhead projector as the tool of choice for teachers.  Costs have reduced considerably, display technology has improved dramatically and multimedia projectors are now an essential piece of classroom technology for both the teacher and students to use as presenters and for the teacher and for students to be able to view multimedia presentations within the classroom.

Plasma and LCD screens may have their place small classroom is that cost factors and the sheer scalability of the size of multimedia presentations using a multimedia projector virtually eliminate these options for the foreseeable future.

Augmenting the use of multimedia projector technology has been the rise of "smart whiteboard" technology.  Smart whiteboards are electronic whiteboard devices that allow the demonstrator/teacher (this demonstrator may also be the student), to operate software package directly from the whiteboard, add anecdotal notes to the presentation, interact with other smart whiteboards in other schools anywhere in the world and store the modified presentation in an animated format either on the local hard drive or on the intranet/Knowledge NET© .

This technology is expensive but we expect prices fall considerably as more competition comes into the market and sales volume increases significantly.  It is not essential technology but it is very powerful technology that allows the presenter to fully interact with the software simply, using their finger as a mouse and this provides the user to add anecdotes to the original information. Storing the resultant combination as a JPEG image, a video clip or an animated presentation means that the enhanced digital content can be stored in the Knowledge NET environment simply and easily.

Another technology that is entering the market place is the "portable interactive tablet", not to be confused with the tablet laptop technology.  The interactive tablet is generally the size of the screen part of your laptop computer and uses Bluetooth technology allowing either the teacher or the student to "write" on the plastic screen of the tablet and have whatever is written down appear on the screen/smart whiteboard via the multimedia projector.  The drawback of this technology is that as you are using a plastic pen on a plastic screen you have to look at that the screen at the front of the room to see what you are writing and to make sure you are writing in the correct location.  Most students seem to adapt to this reasonably easily while the teacher may take a bit longer!

The interactive tablet can be a very effective tool with younger students who may not be able to reach the height of the smart whiteboard.  We have also found this to be a significant technology with secondary/college students who are less keen to be seen in front of the room providing answers, ideas and content whereas there are quite comfortable add their thoughts via the interactive tablet while staying in their seats.  At present the interactive tablet technology is about 20 percent of the price of the smart whiteboard technology.  At one-third the cost of tablet laptop technology they are not cheap but they do have a wide range of applications.
 

Chapter 6:  Cheese & Port

Assessment has been the focal point of much of the professional development carried out over last 25 years and we have learnt much from this.  One of the unfortunate consequences of this focus on assessment is the "paper war" that has resulted.  In order to make the assessment process manageable and more meaningful for both the teacher and the learner two fundamental adaptations need to be adopted into the assessment repertoire:

1.      The use of electronic assessment is starting to become a viable and pedagogically acceptable part of the assessment process (more detail below).

2.      Assessment needs to be a partnership between the students metacognitive reflections, via electronic portfolio on their own learning in partnership with a teacher assessing the submitted work from the students in all three language formats (oral, visual and written).

1. There are a variety of assessment tools available, some which are very rigorous and have the possibility of providing considerable and informative data about student understanding [www.asttle.org.nz as an example] while other assessment tools provide very limited feedback on what students understand.  It is imperative that we mitigate the effects of and limit the number of standardised testing as much as is possible.

As electronic assessment tools become more rigorous and provide data that is useful to both the teacher and the student, then an interesting opportunity unveils itself.  If the assessment package demonstrates to the students that there is remediation work required in a particular area then, in combination with the knowledge NET© the assessment package could point the student to a series of remediation activities.  The remediation activities would be built "on-the-fly" from the library of Digital Learning Objects (DLO’s) embedded in the knowledge NET© to meet the individual needs of that particular learner as indicated by the assessment package.  This process is in its infancy but there are pilot projects being proposed that could considerably reduce the assessment "paper war" that teachers are presently engaged in.  It is important to note here that this requires very sophisticated software in order to assess understanding and not trivial memorisation.

One of the other challenges that we have as teachers in this new environment is to develop a cognitive processing taxonomy that is simple to apply and takes into account an environment where we can now teach for understanding and do so much more effectively. A taxonomy developed in the 1970s and 80s by two Australian academics: John Biggs and Kevin Collis which "categorises mental activity by quantity and quality attributes of the activities required by students or by the observable products of student work" (assessment tools for teaching and learning technical report #43; August 2004) may provide just such a taxonomy.

The focus of this assessment schema to was on the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO). The AsTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and learning) assessment and reporting team in New Zealand has used the SOLO cognitive processing taxonomy in order to ensure effective coverage of both surface knowledge and deep, relational/understanding.  Interestingly the AsTTle team discovered in their research that

"the majority of year 11 students defined studying or learning with surface strategies or methods (i.e.,, revision, re-reading, and reviewing of the year’s work) and strongly agreed that learning involved building up knowledge by getting facts and information. In contrast, teachers preferred a deep view of learning, usually focused on academic, cognitive development, while at the same time, emphasising surface methods of teaching in order to prepare students for high-stakes qualification examinations or assessments (Brown: Teachers Conceptions of Assessment." [Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand].

In other words how teachers thought they taught and the way in which they desired to teach was at odds with how they actually taught and this appeared to be due to the fact that they would sacrifice their deeply held philosophical views on education in order to be seen as being successful in getting students successfully through “high-stakes” qualification examinations or assessments.

The SOLO cognitive processing taxonomy is very effective in its simplicity and we would suggest strongly that in order to provide a framework for delivering an assessment schema this replaces the Blooms or modified Blooms taxonomy currently used by many teachers.  There are some issues with the Blooms taxonomy, which we will not address at this point in time, and the SOLO cognitive processing taxonomy seems to address these issues as well as simplifying our understanding of teaching for learning.  As mentioned earlier surface teaching addresses knowledge whereas deep teaching addresses relationships and interconnectedness (understanding). 

1. Teachers can teach/assess a knowledge element that can be described as uni-structural; where one particular knowledge element is taught or assessed such as

"The sun is approximately 150 million km distant from the earth. Approximately how far distant from the earth is the sun?"

2. A question that is knowledge-based can also be multi-structural, having more than one knowledge element within its composition such as

"The result of the earth being 150 million km distant from the sun is that the amount of heat that this provides the earth allows water to exist in three different physical states and that the dominant state that water is found in on earth is liquid. How many different states is water found on the earth and which is the most dominant of these? “

Questions that we would characterise as deep can be based around single; 1-1 relationships (relational) or multiple relationships; 1-many (extended abstract). 

3. An example of relational understanding or a relational question may be:

"One benefit to human beings of the earth being 150 million km distant from the sun is that water exists primarily in its liquid form, which is essential for life as we know it.  If the sun was 200million km distant from the sun and water did not exist in liquid form on earth, hypothetically what would be one adaptation or innovation be that humans could have to make to continue to live on earth?"

4. An example of the multi-relationship (1-many) extended abstract question may be:

"Design a life form, complete with basic life systems, which could exist on a planet where water did not exist in its liquid form."

We can summarise this taxonomy in the table below

There are significant benefits of this simple but extensible cognitive processing taxonomy.  The AsTTle team and use this in combination with some very clever software to develop a powerful assessment tool that can guide both teachers in their teaching practice and learners in their learning processes.

2. One area that is providing considerable insight into student understanding is the use of electronic portfolios.  For some time now portfolios have featured as a collation of samples of student work, often with no set format or purpose.  This random sample of work tells us nothing about student progress and little about student knowledge and almost nothing about what they understand or are capable of describing.

One of the most significant and empowering assessment tools is student insight into their own learning.  The capability of students to metacognitively reflect on their own learning processes is generally not something that occurs spontaneously, but rather something that students have to be awakened to, taught skills in and then it needs to be accompanied with a thinking culture that is pervasive throughout the entire school. This includes a complete new set of terminology and questioning strategies that students can used to interrogate and also described their own learning. 

Students need more than a single thinking tool in order to carry out metacognitive analysis of their own thinking (see chapter 2), they need to understand that own thinking processes, their own particular preferences when it comes to learning styles and have the language set allows them to described what is happening in their own minds on modern cognitive understandings [http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/education/rescon/ocnef/CWSE_26_1_02lores.pdf!]

Electronic portfolios have the capability to reflect this metacognitive process back to their teachers, their peers and their parents/caregivers.  The ability to use e-portfolios within intranets/Knowledge NET’s © [http://ww.knowledge-networks.co.nz] to capture this reflected process provides invaluable information to not only the learner but also to the teacher who is assisting the learner in their learning journey.  A well crafted electronic portfolio will contain a set of tools that encourages the student to reflect precisely and concisely on their learning, using the language they have been taught. This allows them to learn from their own reflections and insights and fine tune their own learning processes in conjunction with teacher input.  This process will be augmented, through a conferencing process with the teacher, using the teachers experience in interpreting student reflections and together these two insights provide an overall insight into how to improve the learning strategies and effectively remove any impediments to successful understanding.

The above statement is at best “noble” and of good intent but it is only possible with “buy-in” from the students. This requires a considerable degree of engagement as discussed in the introduction.

Historically teachers have dominated the assessment process but in this new model it is a partnership between the teacher and the student as the student increasingly takes ownership of their own learning.  This is an essential aspect of becoming a lifelong learner.

Chapter 7:  The Guest List:

Involvement of the entire learning community is critical for any successful institutionalised social process.  In the past education was perceived as being the domain of the educated with the remainder of the community unable to listen to the conversation let alone eat at the same table. Even as we extend the concept of school to become a 24/7 process and where large amounts of the resource is available electronically, schools are one of the last vestiges of community for many first world countries. They bring a diverse range of people together under the one united purpose. 

For this reason it is critical to involve the extended community in the learning process.  Software such as the Knowledge NET©  contains a range of tools that allow even the most "busy" of communities to have direct and effective communication with their local school.  The capability of parents/caregivers to communicate directly with their children's teachers can assist in overcoming the fact that many busy parents/caregivers simply do not, perceive they do not have, or do not prioritise their time appropriately sufficiently to have much contact with the school their children attend. Parents and caregivers can find it difficult to attend meetings and information sessions with their children’s teachers and the administrators of their local school to find how they can best support their own children through their learning processes.  These new technologies are opening up new communication channels ad new opportunities for discourse.

There are other less obvious advantages of involving the community in the schooling/learning process.  We have already identified the fact that any successful society requires a large percentage of the community to be involved in lifelong learning processes in order to:

·         be critically literate in order to make societal based decisions that will improve the social wellbeing of all strata of that society,

·         make informed decisions at an individual level in an knowledge based society and

·         develop or adapt new products and services to fuel the economy. 

The "experts" in the lifelong learning process are, or should be teachers and for this reason we expect that they will become an increasingly valued resource within their communities.  Lifelong learning requires each community member to appreciate teaching and learning processes, have an awareness of their own learning capabilities as well as the capability to use online information and communication tools which allow lifelong learning to become a practical reality in their lives.  This in itself is a teaching and learning process and schools can become "lifelong learning hubs" for their communities, providing training in the area of lifelong learning which presents an opportunity for schools to take on a much higher profile in their communities.  This can be particularly true of smaller communities.

As schooling becomes increasingly autonomous and local content becomes an increasingly important feature, it is imperative that communities have some input into what this local content could and should become.  The teaching community within a school will always have a degree of autonomy in what is taught within their institution as they are the teaching and learning experts but there is a degree of communication required with the community in order that school reflects their community within their teaching program.

Chapter 8:  An After Dinner Mint:

So there you have it!

What happens next depends on you, not “people in powerful positions”; you can change the way you teach tomorrow; you can open up possibilities that have never existed before for your students or you can choose to do nothing. What you do next does matter and you can make a difference. Having a sense of purpose in life is critical; it gives our lives meaning and makes the best possible use of gifts, talents and the passion we have been given. Fulfilling our purpose is a wonderful experience and the vocation and the profession of teaching is the most admirable of all as it allows the full expression of our talents and gifts and invests them in lives that will hopefully go on and make further differences that improve the lives of others we will never meet. 

As teachers we plant seeds and often we never get to see what blossoms but we, as teachers, remember our teachers and for good reason; they changed our lives and you will do likewise for those in your care; just how much difference you make depends on how you see their futures. Yes teaching is a challenging vocation and profession, that is why our best and brightest; our most passionate, should teach.

Comments and suggestions to

Mark Treadwell

Teachers@work.co.nz

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