More than 'Add-On': Technology as a Teaching and Learning Tool

Editor's Notes

• #3: -so, learning how to teach something that we are only just learning ourselves can be the daunting challenges that we face—-the goals for today are threefold:-to discover recent trends in education technology---get the ‘big picture’ of what is going on and try to to make some sense of it---but to keep focused on what we want to pick out of the array of tools available—-to discuss some of the benefits of using tech and the challenges of it---one of the biggest challenges is the variety of tools available, which, ironically, is also one of the benefits---more tools means more opportunities to engage students, more specialization and more customizability---the new watchword is ‘learner-centred’---technology is enabling teaching to become more learner centred and more learner-driven than ever before-match one tool with one thing you want your students to learn---think about learning goals and then to think about which tool might best work to meet that need----why do we do it this way? There are really three important reasons for starting with learning goals and then moving on to the technological tools-----Thinking about learning goals first means that the priority becomes the needs of the learner---seeing teaching from the learners’ perspective and appealing to their needs and goals—-second reason is that we can be easily overwhelmed with the choices and this provides a way of focusing our efforts on the specifics----and last of all, beginning with learning goals rather than starting with the technology means that the tools become the means to the end rather than the end in themselves---we want to avoid superficiality, since I think ultimately learners will see through any efforts that are just meant to entertain them----learners want to have value added, they want teachers to offer them something they can’t get online---they don’t want to just be entertained----- Flexibility and customization are the name of the gameSome startling stats…. Facebook claims more than half a billion active users, 200 million of which currently access it through their mobile devices. Collectively, they spend about 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook. Twitter claims about 65 million “tweets” were posted per day last year.
• #5: -so, first point concerns getting to know some of the trends and influences-----one thing that we can do is look back at previous tech revolutions and think about how these changed the way that things were done---one way to think about this is the ‘Add-on’ approach-so, for example, in the early days of film,a common practise was to set up a film camera in the audience while a theatrical performance was taking place---simply taking what was already done and transferring it to the new technological medium of film----so, immediately it accomplished the job---it enabled the function of viewing a performance to be effectively transferred to a film medium----but how many of us today still view performances that have been filmed? Yes-we still do, opera in particular is well suited to the medium---but intimate plays with complex characters are not as well suited to being filmed and simply tranferred from the stage to the screen---S-, over time, people learned that costumes, makeup, settings and backdrops, and sets, all needed to be done differently in order to truly take advantage of the features of film---film made lots of things possible that had been completely impossible with a stage performance----intimate close-ups, sweeping landscapes and action scenes, and playing around with time and the order of scenes were a lot easier with film---of course, sound had to catch up to make the experience more realistic, but it came—-so, eventually things changed, but first people had to begin by transferring what they already knew---into the new medium, before they could really appreciate the nature of the changes---
• #6: -antoehtr example of this ‘add-on’ approach is the QWERTY keyboard---makes absolutely no sense---The QWERTY design is based on a layout created by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1873-for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to Remington in the same year, when it first appeared in typewriters.--It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, ‘Add-on’ approach-the only reason it persists is because it is so widespread that the costs of changing it outweigh the benefits of sticking with it---so, through thick and thin, the technological choice persists and it shapes a lot of what we do with keyboards today---remains to be seen if the keyboard itself may disappear eventually with the advent of the touchscreen----the point is that how we do things is not determined by the technology itself---the keyboard could be organized a completely different, and more sensible way, however the use of the technology, and the method of its adoption has created a persistent way of doing things.-what are the lessons of these two examples---the revolution of film and the QWERTY keyboard?
• #7: -well, for one thing, it shows us that some things are sticky----it takes time to appreciate the potential of new technology-----and, perhaps most importantly, How we do things determines the technology we use…
• #9: -what is the technology of reading?---making sense of the meaning of symbols on a page is the technology of reading….what matters is the activity, not the tool---very hard to answer questions like: which technology will work for X…first you have to know X. -so, clearly things have changed, technology is moving forward, it is challenging us to be creative and to rethink how we do things, but we also know that things are sticky and some things will remain and persist---a lot is determined by how we do things----so, assuming that how we do things matters---then, what is really changing about how we do things and how might these trends be impact teaching and learning?-let’s look at and discuss some recent trends---
• #11: --learners are existing in an environment with immediate (‘just-in-time’) information and connectivity, -particularly from smaller, more portable devices like tablets and smart phones (Goral).-- In course delivery, in addition to the web, course materials are becoming more customized and focused for the student and educator, and learners expect to be informed on an ongoing basis-rss feeds, email and text notification systems, and messaging are becoming more important as devices shrinkBenefits & challenges: immediacy of information can be a benefit---’teachable moments’ happen when student relate what they’ve discovered in class to something that happened to them online----immediacy of information can also be a challenge---have to stay ahead of learners in terms of information---can be problems in information and digital literacy-feeling that we have to be available all the time---putting brackets around availability and creating etiquette and rules around that is important
• #12: -growth of multimedia--Benefits & challenges---reaching more learning styles, more engaging presentations, & the ability to explore a topic using a variety of different media, --compare what goes on in video, podcast, online, etc.-challenges---hard to master, editing video, video production, where to post it, how to use it, etc.-time---synchronous or asynchronous? In-class or outside of class, with discussion of the contents in the ‘flipped classroom’
• #13: Benefits & challenges---convenience, access, relevance, linkage with real world, concrete thingsChallenges----fewer boundaries, distraction, multitasking.
• #14: Benefits & challenges----There is a growing need for information filtering, methodologies for “finding, interpreting, organizing, and retrieving the data that is important to us” (Johnson, Willis and Haywood, 2011: 4).-can be a great teaching tool for comparing sources of information---thinking critically about where information comes from, its credibility, its legitimacy, it use---
• #18: http://www.elearnspace.org/starting/index.htm
• #20: Explore Gapminder World graphs for the following criteria:Life Expectancy & Income per personSchool Enrolment & GDPChild Mortality & Income per person
• #22: IdeaScale:http://learn.ideascale.com/Wolfram’s Demonstration Project:http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/DayAndNightWorldClock/Google Art Project:http://www.googleartproject.com/Perhaps one of the most awe-inspiring examples is the recent project among computer programmers, scholars and Google, to digitize the humanities, mapping the “cultural genome” as it were.18 They have scanned the full text of about 5.2 million books – or some 500 billion words – to assist researchers to examine broad cultural trends over two centuries. The corpus is about 72% in English, but the project is pushing to include other languages as well. It is based primarily on books from major university library collections, and so represents the major trends in relatively serious writing for the past two hundred years. The scope of this project is vast: it represents about 4% of all books ever printed. Now, suppose there are about 400 people here in this room. If we all did nothing but read at about 200 words/minute and never stopped to eat, sleep or attend the ISA, it would take about 119 years to read the books scanned so far in this project. Since we don‟t have that kind of time, I thought I would show you just of few of the interesting cultural trends that can be discerned from a quick look into this database.18 Michel, Jean-Baptiste et al. (December 16, 2010) Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books. Available at www.sciencexpress.org / 16 December 2010 / Page 1 / 10.1126/science.1199644.14The vertical axis is the density of the word or phrase in the 5.2 million books, and the horizontalaxis represents the last century.