Ever since I came to work with online courses and teachers with classroom access to the internet, I have imagined that there would be a natural push to integrate free, open, high-quality digital content. As the National Science Digital Library and Teachers’ Domain came online, I thought for sure it would happen soon. That’s one reason why I was willing to invest in creating the North Carolina History Digital Textbook which can serve the classroom teacher as a replacement or supplement to the print text. I expected that this work, which integrates digitized content from universities, libraries, museums and historic sites, would be proof of concept, and we’d have insightful education leaders across North Carolina lining up to develop digital texts for environmental science and geometry, for starters.

Natural push to integrate? Not so much. But why? Seems logical that teachers and faculty developers would integrate the cool applets on Shodor’s Interactivate in their online, hybrid or face-to-face classes, but somehow we’re not making the connections between learners and high-quality digital content.

Sounds like a job for…. the Media Specialist! I know, you are already charged with class novel sets, checking out textbooks, replacing projector lamps, and troubleshooting everything that plugs in, but as the central curriculum resource in the school, who better to integrate quality digital content-area resources? And, where better for teachers and students to encounter these resources than the online public access catalog?

Thanks to Gerry Solomon, Media Mage of North Carolina, for alerting me to a study at Florida State University to explore ways of bringing digital content to school libraries. Digital Libraries to School Libraries (DL2SL): A Strategy for Lasting K-12 Open Content Implementation will explore how school libraries can successfully integrate digital library “open content” in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM materials) into their collections and services.

Clearly, the availability of free, open digital content is not enough. We need to make connections for teachers, align and describe the resources, and provide a central location, one they already turn to for quality, vetted content, for accessing these items. I still wonder at the disconnect between classroom instruction and quality online content, so I will be following this study closely.

Now that I have your attention…

Lesley shared an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that really makes you think. We know that putting computers in classrooms doesn’t always make for a better learning experience, but what about taking them out? What are the advantages of “teaching naked”?

Jeff Young’s July 20th article entitled When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom tells of a dean who is so unimpressed with the poor use of technology in instruction that he removed all computers from classrooms to encourage faculty to think about how they spend that classroom time between the bells. If your next lesson is to be presented as a lecture with [dare I say it] a PowerPoint presentation, is why take up precious face-to-face class time to deliver it? Technology allows for the publication and pre-class consumption of that lecture using podcasts, video, and screencasting. Class time can them be used for more engaging learning experiences including group discussions, hands-on activities and other more collaborative learning opportunities.

I would never think to encourage the removal of technology from a classroom and that is not, really, the point. It is not about shunning the use of technology in teaching, it is about effective technology use in teaching. To quote an excellent related blog entry from academhack,

This is not a story about a luddite professor, but rather about a professor who has developed an effective way to use technology in education. In fact what Jose has done, is allowed technology to thoroughly change the way education happens, rather than just treat it as a supplemental, incremental change.

In David A. Sousa’s article Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers in the free online June 2009 edition of Educational Leadership, he reviews what we know about how we learn and asserts that we may just want to consider this important information when we craft professional development courses for teachers. Imagine that. Simple exposure, a.k.a. “seat-time,” is not enough to enhance teacher effectiveness. They actually have to LEARN something!

Of course this is not news to us, but you wouldn’t know it, really, from looking at how professional development is created. Too often we plan or procure professional opportunities for teachers without consideration for adult learning theories, let alone brain research. The article makes a few important recommendations and explains why, neurologically, each should be considered if a professional development activity is to make a positive impact. You must read the article to understand why, but here are a few brain-friendly findings:

• Motivation is key, and teachers, like other adults, are usually motivated to learn things to build their skills. Activities that connect directly to job-related goals are more meaningful.
• Effective feedback — timely, specific and positive feedback — contributes to motivation.
• A positive learning situation, one in which the teacher is engaged and has ownership, is more likely to stimulate the part of the brain that allows for attention and retention of the skills or knowledge presented.
• Topics must be presented over enough time and in enough depth to allow for thorough understanding. Social and collaborative opportunities around the topic can help with implementation.

From what we’ve observed, it seems that the impact of professional development, the learning and application of learning, is often not even evaluated. If an evaluation is done, it is usually a post-workshop survey that focuses on the event rather than its impact, and the result may be that the workshop serving the best box lunch is most highly rated! While effective evaluation is more resource intensive, it needs to happen. Otherwise, how will we know we are making the best use of our professional development dollars?

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has identified 25 websites deemed “Best for Teaching and Learning.”
AASL provides a description of each of these free, user-friendly web-based resources, teaching tips for using them in the classroom, and alignment of each to Standards for 21st Century Learners. The Top 25 include tools and resources in:

• Organizing and Managing
• Content Collaboration
• Curriculum Sharing
• Media Sharing
• Virtual Environments
• Social Networking and Communication

The Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning were named so because they foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation and collaboration. The Web sites honored include: Animoto; Classroom 2.0; Curriki; Diigo; Edublogs; Facebook; Good Reads; Google Reader; Mindmeister; Ning; Our Story; Partnership for 21st Century Skills; Polleverywhere; Primary Access; RezED; Second Life; Simply Box; Skype; SOS for Information Literacy; Teacher Tube; Twitter; VoiceThread; Wikispaces; Wordle; and Zoho.

Happened upon the January 2 issue of Science magazine** today and thought there was a great deal of interesting content there, especially in light of our interest in the use of online resources, the development of game-based learning, and the improvement of teaching in the STEM disciplines.

The Table of Contents from this issue provides easy access to the articles. Of particular interest is an article by Merrilea J. Mayo about the use of video games in STEM education, something she’s been in discussion with various researchers in North Carolina to get developed. There is also an article that discusses the potential and reality of teachers’ use of digital assets from the National Science Digital Library.

If you are interested in media other than print, start with the video introduction to this special issue, or the podcast of an interview with Chris Dede on immersive interfaces for engagement and learning.

**note** You may need to access this while on campus or use NC LIVE to gain access to this subscription-based resource.

If you are going to publish a digital textbook, the first thing you ought to ask is whether anybody will be able to read it. This seems sort of obvious, but it’s too often left out of discussions about online textbooks and “e-textbooks.” Most e-book versions of college textbooks are just scans of printed pages stuck into a weak knockoff of a web browser. At the other end of the spectrum, professors slap content into “course management systems” without any thought at all to design (and, to be fair, course management systems don’t always make good design particularly easy). Rarely are the content and its presentation designed from the ground up for the medium of delivery — and when they are, the result is too often a mass of hyperlinks and interactive tools that “take advantage of the medium” but don’t actually aid reading or further comprehension. As a result, these means of delivering content to students are usually a step backwards from a well-designed print textbook. That’s a shame, because I think there’s tremendous potential for online textbooks — if they’re designed thoughtfully.

In working on North Carolina Digital History I’ve put a lot of thought and work into making the content as readable as possible — ensuring not only that people will be able to find the material they’re looking for, but also that they’ll be able to read it comfortably and effectively once they’ve found it. I won’t say I’ve entirely succeeded; the current page design is one step in a process of iterative improvement, but I think we’re making considerable progress. It is, in any case, a thoughtful design, and it’s that thought process I want to talk about here. Read the rest of this entry »

I attended a presentation yesterday, one of the UNC Scholary Communications Working Group brown-bag lunch series, about e-textbook adoption by professors and students. Bob Henshaw from IT and John Jones from Student Stores studied a dozen classes in which e-textbooks were offered as an option alongside traditional textbooks. At UNC, professors choose not only the textbooks for their classes but whether the e-book version is an acceptable substitute; if they permit the e-version, students can choose the version they want. (We’re not talking about open textbooks or web-based textbooks; these are all produced by textbook publishers.) Few students (less than 10 percent) chose them, and some who did actually went back to the store and bought a print copy. Here are several reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

The Quick and the Ed has a good post today about proposed limitations to Florida’s Virtual Public School. The author makes a direct reference to Disrupting Class.

As we have begun planning for our annual LEARN NC conference, I want to tell you about some of the strategies I learned in the HR class I took last week, “Managing Projects Successfully.”  These strategies may seem obvious, but they are all important and sometimes overlooked.

1.       Define the project and its requirements. When given a project, ask questions, make sure the purpose and goals of the project are clear.  With the supervisor or sponsor, discuss who the project team members should be. Determine the resources that will be necessary to have a successful project.  Make sure that your sponsor is totally committed to the project. That person needs to give you the authority to make changes in the project if necessary. The supervisor supports and empowers the project manager to get the job done.

2.       Define the stakeholders. As the project manager, you are a major stakeholder, but there are many stakeholders including the sponsor, the people who are involved in the project and those that will be affected by the project.  This even includes vendors that provide supplies for the project.

3.       Create a statement of work and define the goals and objectives (deliverables).  Objectives need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.  

4.       Create a work break-down structure including timeline.

5.       Create a risk analysis (the pitfalls) and have a contingency plan.

6.       Develop a project budget which includes performance and administrative costs.

7.       Hold scheduled team meetings and have a communication structure in place to make sure that all members are on the same page and aware of where the project is on the timeline. All team members must have buy-in to the project. Communication is critical.

8.       Evaluation of the project doesn’t just come at the end. You must evaluate all aspects of the project throughout the life of the project so that changes can be made if necessary along the way.

9.       At the end of the project, summarize the major accomplishments or deliverables, review the budget variances, assess the team’s performance, prepare and present a final report, and make recommendations for future projects.

10.   Most importantly Document everything!

NPR aired a segment clickers (student response systems) on March 2. Click here to listen to the 7:45 piece.

Although this story focuses on college-level use, clickers can an engaging way to gather formative data in K12 classrooms.