Archives: classroom IT

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.

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.

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 »

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.

I happened upon the New Media Consortium this week (and signed up as UNC TLT is a member organization!) and a report that may be of interest. The 2007 Horizon Report identifies key trends that and projects the adoption of various technologies in classrooms. The trends identified include increased importance (and unfounded assumptions) about information literacy skills, increasing globalization in the way we work and communicate, the interdisciplinary and collaborative aspects of digital scholarship (and the slow adoption of this in academia), the evolution of the read-write web (called collective intelligence and mass amateurization in this report) as an important contribution to scholarship … these validate the work we are doing at LEARN NC. The report also projects the top emerging technologies that will effect education in the next 5 years. This year’s report includes user-created content, social networking, mobile phones, and virtual worlds as the technologies to watch first. For more info, check out the attached report.