Wrapping up

Well the semester is rapidly coming to an end. Spring fever appears to have set in with many of us. The final readings took a look at the future -- the future of technology and the future of the IDT profession. Merrill's article decried the lack of solid empirical research in the field.

A couple of weeks ago the hot topic on the discussion board was the dreaded annual achievment tests. I was surprised at the resistance to any accountability. The practicing teachers didn't like anyone evaluating their progress. When an educational system is failing as badly as ours in the US the educational establishment loses the right to self-regulation. NCLB is not perfect. It may even be poor. But it is a start! If the education business doesn't like the evaluation methods, "send forth your champion" into the arena to battle the terrible federal regulators. If we know so much more about education than the regulators, then let's show it by creating appropriate and effective tests that can validate that real learning is in fact taking place.

FINISHED ! ! !

Well we finished our group project this week. I think it was helpful that we decided on a topic early in the semester. It allowed us to start thinking about the topic and let ideas sort of "slow cook". I had a blast creating the web site. It was also nice to have Debbie managing the project.

Reminds me of a story about a small-town mayor who would leave his office everyday at exactly 2:15 and be gone for 35 minutes. The citizens of the town were concerned that he might be doing something amiss so they had the sheriff follow him one day. The mayor drove to a small hill overlooking the town, got out of his car, just stood there for a few minutes, got back in his car and drove back to his office. The next day the sheriff followed him again. When the mayor was getting into his car to leave the sheriff approached him and asked, "Why do you come out here everyday at the same time?"

The mayor replied, "You see that train just going out of sight? I comes by everyday at exactly 2:28. And . . . It's just so nice to see something moving in this community that I don't have to push!"

Group Projects

It seems to be a common theme of this week's blogs to complain about the lack of effort by fellow team members. I've done a lot of work on the project, creating the website, but I enjoyed it. I have learned and done some things with CSS and HTML that I've wanted to try but didn't have (or take) the time. My experience with "group" projects is consistent with the 80/20 rule -- 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. In our case, however, it's not quite that drastic. Debbie has done all she can reasonably do to manage the project, but when team member's output is neither job-effecting nor pay-effecting there isn't much you can do.

I've probably spent 30-40 hours on the project but much of that was in a learning mode. If I had to do it again it would probably take 1/4 that much time. Hey, I'm not complaining. I had a good time. My wife, however, was not as excited about my being cloistered away in the computer room all weekend!

I spent Thursday and Friday this week at the HELIX (Higher Education Education Information eXchange) conference. The K-12 Connections Conference always runs concurrent with the HELIX conference and several of the sessions are open to attendees from both conference. The keynote speakers both days really provoked a lot of thought. Thursday morning's topic was "A New Generation of Learning." Dr. Mark Milliron discussed the topics of:

• The mix of millennials, gen-xers, and baby boomers teaching and learning together


• Blended learning


• Mobile devices


• Gaming


• Social networking


• Impact presentation technologies


• Analytics

Dr. Dwight W. Allen from Old Dominion University discussed the topic of "WikiTexts" the textbooks of the future. Dr. Allen has his students create their textbook for his "Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education" course at Old Dominion. The chapters are chosen by Dr. Allen with the option of additional chapters proposed by the students. His premise is that "Anyone can become informed enough in three weeks to write 1000 words on any topic." He even takes this as low as middle school students and perhaps as low as 3rd graders if the topic is elementary enough and the length of the paper is shortened according to the age and maturity of the students.

The students choose which chapter they will work on. Each chaper will have three separate submissions by different students. The submissions are peer reviewed and the submission receiving the highest score is included in the text. After the first semester using Wikitext creation, Dr. Allen no longer evaluated the submissions himself. His research indicated that the peer ratings were essentially the same as his instructor rating. (60 fewer 1000 word essays to score!!!). You can the view different versions of the WikiTexts at en.wikibooks.org

Another interesting finding was that the WikiText was actually read by the students!http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Social_and_Cultural_Foundations_of_American_Education.! Self-reporting by students indicated that students spent significantly more time reading the text. Some students from earlier classes indicated that they never opened the paper-based textbook. For those still questioning if volunteers can be trusted to compose and compile a reliable text, Dr. Allen directed them to the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) compiled by volunteers over several years, one of the main contributors being a "mad-man" who had been convicted of murder and submitted his work from his prison cell.

Reading Old Books

A couple of years ago I paid a quarter for a book that our public library had taken off the shelf due to non use. The book "Instructional Design" has a copyright date of 1973, was edited by Robert Merrill, and contains chapters authored by himself, Gagne, Glaser, and others. At that time the new buzz word was programmed instruction based on B.F Skinners' work.

I am not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water with programmed learning. I know that is is passe in the current educational community but I am finding that they bring a lot of interesting questions to the table. In a chapter written by Glaser he makes the distinction between "discovery learning" and "learning to discover". He talks about the two elements of "content" and "components" in instruction. Content is the information that the student needs to obtain. Components are the methods for obtaining the information. Sometimes the objective of a lesson is the information itself , while other times the important thing for the learner to obtain is the ability to gain information.

Mike Spector, who I think would consider himself a constructivist, acknowledged that before a learner can profit from a simulator learning environment the learner must possess certain fundamental knowledge and this fundamental knowledge can best be obtained through well structured instructor-led training. I would extend this to include not only instructor-led but also machine-led (programmed learning). In 1973 much of the computer technology that we take for granted was not yet envisioned. I truly believe that recent advances make intelligent tutors possible.

I find it so interesting to see the cycles that learning practices go through. Not too many years ago (in old man years) the push was to create "independent learners". Now the push is to create "collaborative learners". I think we need to realize that there are times and places for each. Not all work is done independently neither is it all done in groups. There are even different personality types who prefer to work in one setting or the other and will gravitate to employment that allows their preferred type of work.

Eyes in the Boat

Last week's readings from both Reiser & Dempsey and the Course Documents gave me a lot to think about. Since it was more focused on adult learning it was "right down my alley". The article by Fred Nichols really set me to thinking about what it means to improve performance in a "knowledge-based" workplace. Rewarding "contribution" and not just work is a challenge to implement. I know there was a program at Western Electric years ago that actually gave the contributor a portion of the annual savings amount for any cost-saving suggestions. They had one earlier at AT&T but they had to exclude anyone in the data processing field. They found that we regularly found huge savings potentials and would be entitled under the plan to receive large bonuses. They decided, instead, that this was just a part of our job. No bonuses for the people who could most affect the bottom-line -- go figure!

Adult learners, unlike most students, have multiple areas vying for brain-share -- family, bills, car maintenance and repair, financial planning. And that is when there isn't an immediate emergency. The phrase often voiced is Balance. Balancing all the responsibilities. Corporations have found that it is often necessary to remove learners from their day-to-day environment in order to give them "space" to concentrate on the material to be learned. This can be very expensive. It has also been shown to be less effective than training in the learners work environment. But the challenge is to motivate the employee to desire to learn and then to give them the time and space to gain the desired knowledge.

On another note: I am finding that I can't be distracted by what others in the class are saying and doing. Most of those in the class are in a K-12 setting. I've been there and don't want to go back. I have some strong opinions about our public education system but that isn't where I'm going and I am not in the position to affect change there. It concerns me that graduate students in the field of education do not use the proper grammar and often misspell words. I have to get past that. I began college at the US Coast Guard Academy. As "swabs" (freshmen) we were required to always have “our eyes in the boat,” looking straight ahead. Any movement of our eyeball away from that fixed position was considered a lack of bearing and discipline and we were punished by running through the halls yelling "My eyes are left, my eyes are right, my eyes are in the boat, sir." I feel like I need to "keep my eyes in the boat". For me that means seeing how the knowledge that I am aquiring in this course can be applied to my career in adult education and not looking "outside the boat" at how others are doing.

Has it really been that long?

I can't believe its been two weeks since I last blogged. In the last two weeks I have enjoyed the discussions with other classmates regarding various educational theorists and the difference between management and leadership (see cartoon above). It really doesn't matter so much what we choose to call the two roles but I do believe it is important to understand that they are different.

I can relate to a couple of my classmates who are NOT public school teachers. My personal interest is in adult education and I am somewhat disappointed that there are no courses offered specifically for teaching adult learners. This weeks reading on HPT are more directed at adults, however.

My interview with Mike Jefferies was enlightening. His current mantra is "Metaverse" - a sort of SecondLife on steroids! When I mentioned all the issues that I see with the current SL he equated SL today with the 2400 baud modems of 20 years ago. "It will get better." Mike said.

I also attended a video presentation on Mobile Learning as it is being implemented at Abilene Chistian University using iPhones. The project is named "Connected" and a dramatized video can be viewed at their university website - acu.edu/technology/mobilelearning. The presentation was interesting, but even more interesting was the lack of attendance. The invitation was broadcast to the entire faculty and staff community of UCM, but fewer that 20 people attended. All the discussion afterward seemed to be prefaced by "I know that I'm preaching to the choir, but . . ."