Integrating Technology, Pedagogy & Change Knowledge

"Stratosphere' is truly the best thing I have read on technology and education."

Well that's what the blurb on the back of the book says - and I have to say I think I agree, hence this post. What follows are my 'Sean's notes' ... But nothing beats reading the entire book yourself, at 78 pages this is not a massive overtaking - if you won't/can't should or won't or will but not yet - then give these notes a skim. The insights Fullan provides here are profound and of the utmost relevance to anyone who needs to integrate technology into their teaching and learning (by the way, that is everyone who would call themselves a teacher).*

Fullan M (2012). Stratosphere: Integrating Technology, Pedagogy and Change Knowledge.

The Journey

p 2

… the current education system is so very inappropriately content bound and [this is] why the new pedagogy–learning how to learn–is so essential. Learn how to learn because the evolving world is ever changing and elusive. We need the capacity to keep up–to periodically grasp the ungraspable. Only those who know how to learn, who can relate to others AND the environment (including "things"), and who make the world part of their own evolving being will thrive in this world. 

p 3

Research on pedagogy is now demonstrating that even for higher-order skills, small investments in targeted relationships with students pay off with high-yield motivational and achievement results. Technology can accelerate these learning experiences on a large scale with minimal costs after initial investments. 

p 4

… focusing on a small number of ambitious goals with a coherent strategy that attends in concert to half a dozen or so key factors: intrinsic motivation, capacity building, transparency of results and practice, leadership at all levels, and a positive but assertive stance on progress. Borrowing from Jeff Kluger, I call this change knowledge "simplexity" – a small number of key factors (the simple part) that must be made to gel with large groups of people (the complex aspect).

... four criteria for integrating technology and pedagogy to produce exciting, innovative learning experiences for all students – something desperately needed to bring education into the 21st century. These new developments must be (i) irresistibly engaging (for students and teachers); ii) Elegantly efficient and easy to use; iii) technologically ubiquitous 24/7; and (iv) steeped in real-life problem-solving.

...

Integrating technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge is fundamentally liberating. It democratises learning so that every student learns how to learn for a lifetime of pursuing personal passion, purpose, and fulfilment.  Best of all, students learn collaboratively, consolidating connections with others locally and from afar. Citizenship, human solidarity, collective problem-solving, and sustainability are thereby served. 

p 5

In education we have just about reached the end of squeezing good out of an outdated school system. The current system is too costly, too ineffective, and as any kid will tell you, deadly boring. 

Technology and Humans Shape Each Other

pp 12-13:

Kelly [Kevin Kelly (2010). What Technology Wants. New York: Viking] observes, "Yes, technology is acquiring its own autonomy and will increasingly maximise its own agenda, but this agenda includes – as it's foremost consequence – maximising possibilities for us." This is why Kelly eventually answers his question by concluding that "technology wants what life wants":

• Increasing efficiency
• Increasing opportunity
• Increasing emergence
• Increasing complexity
• Increasing diversity
• Increasing specialisation
• Increasing ubiquity
• Increasing freedom
• Increasing mutualism
• Increasing beauty
• Increasing sentience
• Increasing structure
• Increasing evolvability

(ibid, p 274)

When we turn these thoughts to technology and education, we have a long way to go. Technology in schooling has its dark side, including cyberbullying and inappropriate sexting, but its biggest problem is that it isn't present much. The digital life of students is largely outside schools, and it is a fairly undisciplined world, recalling worries of our distractor critics who see superficiality and long-term diminution of the brain as problems. 

[…] p 13

Goldin and Katz [Claudia Golding and Lawrence Katz (2008). The Race Between Education and Technology] conclude that "technology has been racing ahead of education in recent decades because educational growth has been sluggish, not because skill-biased technical change has accelerated." Try this for a crossover observation: technology has not raced ahead inside schools. Our answer in this book will not be let's load up technology in schools – I call this a "wrong driver" – but rather, let's rethink how technology can be used at our service as well as push us to do even more.

Rosen [Larry Rosen (2010). Rewired: Understanding The iGeneration and the Way They Learn] is perhaps too generous in his admiration of the iGeneration who, according to him, are introduced to technology at birth, are adept at multitasking, love virtual social worlds, and are confident and open to change. […] "Smart educational models must consider social networks as a valuable source for enhancing student interest and participation in the classroom […] The trick is to leverage their love of social networks to create educational tools built around them.

It is revealing that Rosen takes a dramatically more sober position in his newest book (presumably because the evidence is mounting about the dark side of technology). He calls the constellation of dangers "iDisorder." [Larry Rosen (2012). iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold On Us. New York: Palgrave Macmillan] 

p 14

Rosen amasses page after page of evidence that technology increasingly controls our lives in dysfunctional and pervasive ways, from the mildly rude checking-out of text messages every few minutes regardless of who we are with, to the more psychotic descent into schizoid behaviours of delusions, hallucinations, and social avoidance. 

Rosen takes the reader through a range of debilitating problems that technology does not cause but that it naturally enables. He outlines the evidence on the following domains of distortion associated with the increased presence of digital technology in our lives: narcissism (it's all about me, me, me), obsession (checking in with our technology 24/7), addiction (wallowing in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and social deviance), bipolarity (feeling high or low depending on one's social–networking digital day), ADHD (being jerked around by the instant gratification of hyperlinks with accompanying information overload, poor sleep, and an inability to stay with and complete tasks), decrease in quality relationships (including low empathy), hypochondria (a little medical knowledge is a dangerous thing), fixation on appearance (associated with eating disorders), schizoid behaviour (becoming more solitary, emotionally cold, and attached), and voyeurism (watching rather than engaging in). Whew! That can fill your day!

Rosen has been at this for a while, beginning his scientific studies in the 1980s and continuing to the present. He concludes that we have an increasing dependency on technology, but the worst part is that we are "happily traipsing down our road to an iDisorder," unaware of what is happening to us.

Rosen's main argument, as is the meaning of this chapter, is not that we should discount technology; rather, it is that we need to be aware of its dangerous downside in order to reduce its addictive power and maximise its prodigious upside. The basic question is, who is in charge here – human or machine?

When it comes to education and schooling, a whole new set of issues become evident. School boredom has no chance against the addictive digital draw of the outside world. Within schools, technology is conspicuous by its absence or by superficial, ad hoc use. […] How can technology help us by opening up the world to deeply engaged learning and worldwide, collaborative problem-solving? In a word, technology, well used, can help us race rapidly to the future that humankind wants and will find fulfilling.

p 15

… The solution consists of the integration of advances in pedagogy (especially built on how we learn), and technology (especially around engagement), and in change knowledge (especially around making change easier). If we get the combination right, the floodgates of learning will open and there will be an unstoppable explosion of energy and participation by all that will benefit individuals and the world alike.

p 16

As sinister as technology can become, it has far more upside than downside potential. It is time to define the learning game as racing with technology.

Pedagogy and Change: Essence as Easy

p 17:

Learning is all about purposeful engagement. The engaged student is attentive, committed, persistent, and finds meaning and value in the tasks, says Schlechty [Phillip Schlechty (2011). Engaging Students: The Next Level of Working on the Work. San Francisco: Jossey–Bass]. The engaged student finds that learning is worth the effort (high yield).

Change and the Student 

pp 18-19 [interventions]

What looks like a small intervention can appear quite large to a student. Interventions do not have to remain in the conscious mind for them to have an impact. If a message affects how a student [or teacher] thinks and feels about school or about self, it can work away in the subconscious mind. Yeager and Walton [David S Yeager & Gregory M Walton (2011). Social–Psychological Interventions in Education: They're Not Magic. Review of Educational Research 81, no 2: 267 – 301] call these "stealthy" interventions – a quality that increases their effectiveness. 

p 19

None of the interventions tried to directly persuade students to think differently, "rather than simply delivering an appeal to a student who passively receives it, each intervention enlisted students as actively [and knowingly] participating in or generating the intervention itself." (ibid, p 284) 

These "stealthy" interventions have the added benefit that they do not stigmatise students. They do not single them out for needing help. Stealthy interventions are brief and thus much less expensive. They can be long lasting, say Yeager and Walton, because they set in motion social, psychological, and intellectual processes that result in initial success, greater sense of belongingness, and a belief that students can learn more than they thought possible. Interventions like these, with corresponding supports, can alter students' academic trajectories.

Yeager and Walton do not assume that it is simply a matter of going to scale with these types of interventions. The interventions require on the part of the educators theoretical expertise (understanding the psychological experiences at play) and contextual expertise (understanding the background and experiences of students in the local context). The skinny, in other words, demands sophistication of design and good teachers in order to get ease of use.

[...] … essentially it involves knowing where every student stands, intervening in a nonjudgemental manner, providing a good program mix, improving teaching and learning, and connecting school deeply to their communities [Ben Levin, 2012. More High School Graduates. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press].

...

But little things made a big difference. […] These teachers work with school leaders and teachers and students to personalise the connection to students. 

20 minutes to change a life. 

Change and the Adult

pp 21-22

If we get the pedagogy right and incorporate technology accordingly, learning will become easier, deeper, and more engaging. Students and teachers will be putting in long hours, but what they do won't feel like work.

In the progress principle, Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer, write about "using small wins to ignite joy, engagement and creativity at work." [Teresa Amabile and Stephen Kramer (2011). The Making Of Young People Who Will Change The World. New York: Simon and Schuster] The progress principle: using small wins to ignite joy, engagement and creativity at work […] Making even small progress in meaningful work is the most powerful stimulant to wanting to do more. 

... 

What matters most is progress in the work itself and paying attention to small wins and setbacks on a daily basis – this is the essence of change management. If people are involved in meaningful work, and if they feel capable, and if they are helped to make even small progress, they become more motivated and ready for the next challenges. Effective organisations foster conditions of these positive progress loops to prevail.

p 22

Of course, there is more to organisational effectiveness than small wins. Amabile and Kramer identify several catalytic factors (such as time, resources, autonomy, and help), And nourishment factors (respect, affiliation, and emotional support)... The main point is that people – students and teachers alike, for example – need to feel and experience some regular progress. As the authors note, any video game designer knows that small steps of progress are essential for drawing players in. [Daily progress in work]

…

...the new pedagogy – technology combinations tap into, stimulate, and even create purpose and passion in what students want to learn. Amabile and Kramer essentially say that adults – teachers, in this case – must have the same motivational experiences. <What is good for the goose is good for the gander - smc> The magic of stratosphere is that students and teachers are conjointly stimulated to engage in the pursuit of deeper learning: it is fuelled by their passions and purposes. Both students and teachers are turned on.

The New Pedagogy

p 23

The new examples [constructivism through technology integration] meet our criteria: being engaging and offering ease of use. By ease of use, I do not mean simple, but rather use as relatively easy because of the draw of engagement and the work with others (much how you find work when you're doing what you like).

[Creativity]

...

Tony Wagner's Creating Innovators [Tony Wagner (2012). Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World. New York: Simon and Schuster, 32] is the perfect example of the new pedagogy. ... He draws on the work of Teresa Amabile ... He adapts her creativity model which is based on three components: expertise (knowledge), creative thinking (problem-solving), and motivation (intrinsic drive). Wagner considers motivation as the source of all good learning and unpacks it by concluding that intrinsic motivation is fuelled by playing (experimenting), purpose (wanting to make a difference), and passion (devoting yourself to something you find deeply meaningful).

p 24

All of these experiences contrast with the fundamental basis of schools as they are today. As Wagner says, schools currently reward individual competition, are subject based (versus problem based), and rely on extrinsic motivation (such as grades). By contrast in all of the successful examples, the students in question talk of doing things that are meaningful in the world, projects that focus on solving a problem, engaging in teamwork, and operating under conditions that encourage risk-taking. The new pedagogy involves helping students find purpose, passion, and experimental doing in a domain that stokes their desire to learn and keep on learning.

"Increasingly in the 21st-century," argues Wagner, "what you know is far less important than what you can do with what you know. This interest in and ability to create new knowledge to solve new problems is the single most important skill that all students must master today. All successful innovators have mastered the ability to learn on their own 'in the moment' and then apply that knowledge in new ways (ibid, p 142)."

The new pedagogy that Wagner documents does not involve a long list: its emphasis is on addressing real problems, intellectual risk-taking and trial-and-error problem-solving, collaboration in learning, and intrinsic motivation.

...

Although he doesn't delve far into it, Robinson makes the point that "digital technologies are now putting in the hands of millions of people everywhere, unprecedented tools for creativity and sound, in design, in sciences and in the arts." [Ken Robinson (2009). Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. Westford, MA: Courier Westford, p 205] 

p 25

Teachers are needed, but it is a new role that is required – the teacher as change agent. Robinson calls them mentors who play four roles: recognising, encouraging, facilitating, and stretching. 

p 27

… Feedback to students during learning is probably the most powerful teaching strategies we can use. Learning from mistakes is the key. [Wiliam - AfL]

p 28

... Lehrer [Jonah Lehrer (2012). Imagine: How Creativity Works. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.] has reinforced the point that creativity can be designed for and fostered in every student – not just so they can be more fulfilled individuals, but also because the mobilisation of individual and collective talent is essential for global survival. This different approach to learning could bring a marked increase in the level of innovation, entrepreneurship, problem solving, empathy, teamwork, and sustainability. It is the future.

...

…the entire curriculum needs to be redefined: the whole raison d'être of schooling becomes a single expanded entity called "learning about and for life" and doing it in a passionate and purposeful manner. We are talking about a total makeover – made practical by the integrated forces of technology, pedagogy, and change knowledge.

[4 reasons for technology integration]

p 31

1. The old technology of tell and test or experience and evoke does not work, and it is becoming clearer to more people that it can never work. 
2. Examples of the new pedagogy of partnering with students are rapidly under development. These examples will only advance in quality and availability all the more so because technology can be the great accelerator. Indeed this what the stratosphere phenomenon predicts. 
3. There will be a great appetite for the new way. Passion, purpose, and the new pedagogy are natural winners because they tap into and activate what is human – doing something intrinsically meaningful and of value to oneself, one's peers, and the world at large. You don't get any closer to secular spiritualism than this.
4. It really is easier than you might think for the simple reason that people will be doing what they like, and many people will be helping. Many hands and minds do make light work.

Prensky has 10 other measures that take minimal effort on the part of teachers, but have great potential positive impact on children's education:

1. Doing less "telling" while allowing students to research the answers to guiding questions on their own [Dan Meyer - 'less helpful']
2. Always connecting what is taught with real-world outcomes
3. Helping students distinguish the unchanging "verbs" (skills) of education from the rapidly changing "nouns" (tools)
4. Treating students as learning partners 
5. Employing students' own tools (particularly video and cellphones) for learning
6. Using more peer-to-peer teaching 
7. Offering students far more choices, rather than mandating what all must read or do 
8. Allowing students to be the primary users (and maintainers) of classroom technology
9. Sharing success via short video posted on sites such as YouTube or TeacherTube 
10. Regularly connecting students with the world via free, secure tools such as Skype and ePals

p 32

In summary, we are at the beginning of a powerful disruptive innovation that will grow in leaps and bounds. We must have our wits about us to take advantage of this once-in-a-century opportunity. We must take a trial-experiment-learn-refine approach to this next phase. We must, in other words, take a learning approach. The new journey will be bumpy, but less bumpy than what we are going through now. And it will be relatively easy with bursts of progress.

...

We need learners proactively in charge of their own learning–how-to–learn. And for the latter we need teachers and other mentors who can design and oversee the learning process.

Digital Disappointments and Dreams

p 33

The integration of technology and pedagogy to maximise learning must meet four criteria. It must be irresistibly engaging; elegantly efficient (challenging but easy to use); technologically ubiquitous; and steeped in real life problem-solving.

...

Irresistibly engaging is what it means to be rapt, or in a state of "flow" where time has no meaning.

...

...these new products must be elegantly easy to use – simple to get hooked on and natural to use – challenging yes, but because we are drawn in not so daunting. A crucial point in these developments is that as innovations they do not further complicate the lives of students and teachers, but, on the contrary, they make their learning easier and more interesting. Rarely do we experience changes that give us a net advantage from the beginning.

p 34

... Three pillars of the educated student: standards, assessment, and instruction or pedagogy. Currently priorities are being placed on standards and assessment while the solution in stratosphere must be driven by pedagogy. ... Fortunately, they can be incredibly accelerated by innovations in technology – as long as we get the causal sequence right: pedagogy to technology and then back and forth, back and forth. If there is any racing to the top it is humankind with machines. Yes, when you are in a fast machine it sometimes controls you, but ultimately the machine is there to serve you – to do things that you could never do without it. 

Digital Disappointments

p 35

There is no way to accomplish the ideas without the power of machines. The biggest culprit is 21st-century skills that seem to have been around since at least 1990. To state the conclusion upfront: the skills as treated are too vague to be of any use, and they almost always leave out pedagogy (learning experiences for getting there).

p 36

No matter how you cut it, we are not making progress on this agenda. By and large the goals are too vague, having a glitzy attraction. When we start down the pathway of specificity, the focus is on standards and assessment (which does help with clarity), but the crucial third pillar – pedagogy, or fostering actual learning – is neglected. And aside from its use in assessment schemes, which is a contribution, technology plays little role in learning, surely the main point of all this highfalutin fanfare.

p 38

When the Media awareness network did find effective use of integrating technology, it was "precisely because they [teachers] focused on pedagogy, were comfortable with not being the tech expert in the room, had strong classroom management skills, and saw online pitfalls as teachable moments." [Valerie Steve (2011). Young Canadians in a Wired world – phase III: Teachers Perspectives. Ottawa: Media Awareness Network, p 16]

...

Even high performance in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), such as Finland, do not fare well when it comes to the pedagogical use of technology. ... While 21st century skills are contained in the core National Curriculum, "they do not usually show up in the classroom," and "technology is well available, but the pedagogically innovative or effective use of ICT is still very rare." [Juho Matti Norrena, Marja Kankaanranta, and Arto Kalevi Ahonen (2012). Innovative teaching in Finland (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, BC, April 2012), 11]. In other words, even in countries touted for their leadership in education, use of the new scenarios as discussed in this book is only sporadic. 

...

Test results can increase relative to the old system, but applying knowledge is not advanced.

p 39 [Serious gaming for education]

[Michael F Young et al, (2012). Our Princess is in Another Castle: A Review of Trends in Serious Games for Education," Review Of Educational Research 82, no 1: 62-89] 

The biggest problem, according to Young and his colleagues, is that "educational video games are most frequently researched as the primary means by which the player learns, removing the instructor and allowing the student to complete his or her learning in isolation (p 61)." In other words, these innovations (or at least the research on them) omit the teacher. It is as if pedagogy is irrelevant. The authors obvious conclusion is that video games should be implemented "in concert with good teaching." Sound instructional design, skilled teaching, and quality implementation will be required. Most of all, partnership between teachers and students (and among teachers and students) will be essential.

...

p 40

The point of course is not that [gaming] technology is less effective, but that it is being grossly under utilised pedagogically.

Digital Dreaming

p 41

Resistance is futile. The December 10, 2011, issue of the Economist contains a 10 page special report on video games. ["All the world's a game," Special Report: Video Games. The Economist. December 10, 2011: 3–12] 

...

The best games have huge potential for education because they incorporate the very design elements that new pedagogical practices emulate. By turning learning into a game, we create the intuitive interface with mobile devices (sophisticated design, elegant ease of use); we can create something that game designers call "juiciness" (lots of feedback). 

p 42

"Gamifiers," or people who revel in developing games, says the Economist, make players want to perform difficult tasks and pay for the privilege. They "capture that sense of engagement by providing rapid, continuous feedback, a clear sense of progression and goals that are challenging enough to maintain interest but not so hard to put players off." [p 12] With improved everything, digital innovations are "marrying the power of modern technology to the insatiable human desire for play. "As every good kindergarten teacher knows, learning cannot be far behind. 

...

In 2011, Nancy Watson and I completed a review for the Hewlett Foundation of their "deep learning" goals. [Michael Fullan and Nancy Watson (2011). Deeper Learning: Right/Wrong Drivers Perspective. San Francisco: Report to the Hewlett Foundation] Their version of higher order skills contains competencies organised into three categories: content knowledge (master core academic content, and acquire, apply, and expand knowledge); cognitive strategies (think critically, solve problems, and communicate effectively); and learning behaviours (work collaboratively, and learn how to learn). 

p 43

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation aspires to use technology and innovative instructional practices where "students learn beyond the bounds of traditional classrooms," ... "How can we capitalise on their digital prowess to inspire confidence, curiosity, persistence, and desire for knowledge?" [Bill and Melinda Gates foundation (2011). Supporting students: investing in innovation and quality. Redmond, WA: Bill & Melinda Gates foundation]

p 44

We see in the ITL [Innovative Teaching & Learning - sponsored by MicroSoft's Partner's in Learning Initiative (PIL)] research that individual and small groups of teachers can improve instructional practices that, in turn, affect higher order learning outcomes, and that this process is strongly helped by the explicit use of digital technology for that purpose. 

p 46

In terms of this book, SWST [The Student Work Study Teachers initiative is a literacy and numeracy secretariat program structured around a collaborative study between an experienced practitioner working in a temporary research role, an SWS teacher, and a hosting classroom teacher.] is doing all this with one hand tied behind its back in the sense that technology plays no particular role. The integration of technology will make this work easier, less expensive, and way more effective in its impact on higher-order skills learning.

The Flipping of Teacher and Student Roles

p 47

John Hattie [John Hattie (2011). Visible learning for teachers: maximising impact on learning. London: Rutledge] also comes to our rescue with his army of meta-studies. He too sees the effective teacher as active change agent. When he compares the effect sizes of instructional practices of "teacher as activator" (feedback to students, helping students access there own thinking, furnishing challenging goals and the like) with those of "teacher as facilitator" (problem based learning, simulation and gaming, individualised instruction), The average perfect sizes greatly favourite teacher activator (0.60 to 0.17). Teacher as mere facilitator even with digital resources is not good enough.

p 48

Hattie strongly argues that the most important aspect that a teacher must get good at is to know what impact he or she has on every student. All of the high-yield practices he found in his empirical analysis rely on the influence of student peers, feedback, transparent learning intentions, success criteria, and adjustment of instruction to attend to both surface and deep knowing. So the undisciplined possibilities of the web, no matter how wonderful, will not be sufficient. Unassisted discovery will be less likely to have benefits compared with the teacher as change agent to help students learn how to learn and how to monitor their own learning.

p 49

The new pedagogy already is based on students working with one another and taking greater charge of their own learning, guided by the teacher as coach. Instead of thinking about how to differentiate instruction for each student, in the new essence-as-easy mode, the teacher needs to think of the class as a team and determine how to use the team to develop the team. 

p 51

[Park Manor is a senior public elementary school in Ontario, with 300 students in Grades 6 to 8] …their core goal is to develop "global critical thinkers collaborating to change the world." ... surrounded by "digitally rich learning tasks without limits." It integrates technological tools, exemplary pedagogy, rich learning tasks, and 21st-century learning skills.

At Park Manor it is clear that pedagogy is the driver with student learning at the centre and technology as the Formula 1 Grand Prix machine that gets the student there faster and better.

p 52

The school uses success criteria and evidence to determine the effectiveness of the framework as it relates to student learning. The success criteria explain in detail how students and teachers can determine that the technology tool, program, application, or website adds value to student learning. They pertain to student engagement, active learning, easier learning, assessment for learning (student feedback), assessment as learning (student monitoring their own learning), assessment of learning (concrete evidence), 21st century learning skills (creating, collaborating, communicating, critical thinking, and citizenship), support for higher-yield instructional strategies (differentiated learning and gradual acceptance of responsibility), and finally, easier instruction (for the teacher).

p 53

Technology serves to accelerate and deepen learning.

...

I chose Park Manor to feature because it is a normal school with standard resources – just like any of the 120 schools in the Waterloo School district. It has no special status or privileges. It has gone from a situation of using no technology to the vibrant integration of technology and pedagogy in just two and half years. Its success shows that stratospheric scenarios are practical and compelling. 

Design Principles and Change Knowledge

p 58

...this tablet [iPad] marks the beginning of ubiquitous technology, bringing us closer and closer to persons as easy – for all.

...

...the education revolution is not a given. The first is that even the most sophisticated technology still needs to be guided by strong pedagogy. In this respect even the vaunted iPad doesn't measure up.

...

p 59

...kids these days are technological whizzes when it comes to the tool, but pedagogically clueless with respect to getting the best out of it. Murray and Olcese [Orrin T Murray & Nicole R Olcese (2011). Teaching and Learning with iPad, Ready or Not. TechTrends 55, no 6, 42 – 48] eventually draw the following conclusion: 

We cannot point to a single application that steps up to modern understanding of how people learn. Our study suggests that there is a paucity of applications that truly extend capability… The lack of collaboration capabilities underlie this point, as do the overwhelming number of applications that are simply drill and practice or focused on delivering content for consumption, not creation or reuse.

Still, there is no denying that good technology under the direction of a great pedagogue can do wonders.

iPad Literacy

The next time you marvel at your 18-month-old granddaughter working away through some iPad apps and routines, remind yourself that it may be no more impressive than what an ape can do. More seriously, there is no question that this toddler will grow up to be a whizz at using technology. But how well she learns to work her way through the 21st century will depend on whether she encounters great pedagogy and mentors along the way. Technological prowess by itself doesn't make you much smarter (although it may appear to).

...

Pedagogy, powering 21st-century skills, is what will make the difference. 

Change knowledge

p 66

Progress for us is simplexity. We call it "motion leadership" or the skinny on becoming change savvy. Motion leadership is about leadership that causes positive movement forward for individuals, organisations, and entire systems. The change knowledge you need to do this must meet four criteria: (1) Motivate people to engage in deep and meaningful change, even when they might not want to do it at the outset; (2) help them learn from wrong paths and blind alleys; (3) use the group; and (4) do all of this on a very large scale (whole system reform).

Change knowledge:

1. Focus 
2. Innovation 
3. Empathy 
4. Capacity Building 
5. Contagion 
6. Transparency 
7. Elimination Of Non-Essentials 
8. Leadership

May 2011, Jobs asked Gates to outline his vision for education. Gates responded with the image of students independently watching lectures and lessons and then meeting in class to discuss them and solve problems. Jobs and Gates agreed that computers have had remarkably little impact on schools. But that would change, said Gates, if computers and mobile devices were to deliver more personalised lessons and to provide encouraging feedback (Isaacson, Steve Jobs p 554).

This vision is incomplete for our stratosphere agenda because it omits pedagogy – it omits the teacher! The teacher as change agent is crucial, or we will get aimless multitasking.

p 69

Let's redefine the role of teachers and equipment to be the orchestrators of learning and change agents required for learning to flourish. Use the world as the classroom. Embrace ubiquitous technology. For reasons stated throughout this book – essence as easy, the new pedagogy, mind-boggling technology – the time has never been more propitious. Bold moves have a real chance of connecting with what makes humans tick: the appetite for learning and doing something meaningful by collaborating with others. Failure to act is to leave dispirited teachers and students at the mercy of dominant technologies. Without the capacity building of professional capital, it will be no contest.

...

Our change knowledge sees and uses social contagion as a prime strategy. Remember the ITL findings. Innovative teaching and learning was found sprinkled across schools but was not embedded within many schools or systems. If you want an accelerated strategy to change this situation, use the group. Thus figure out how these innovative teachers who are further down the line than their colleagues can be deployed systematically as change agents for other teachers.

…

…as the capacity of the teachers increased in systems, peers became the greatest source of innovation [Mona Mourshed, Chenezi, & Michael Barber (2010). How the worlds most improved school systems keep getting better. London: McKinsey and company]. Leadership is still critical, but it operates in the service of social contagion. Social capital is the new resource.

p 70

Technology has just as much evil or good as we want to put into it. That is why we need pedagogy and the moral imperative to be the key drivers. Then you can't avoid wanting to embrace technology as one of the best means around.

…

Our challenge is to combine the best of change knowledge with the best of technology and pedagogy. If we can do so, progress in educational transformation will accelerate dramatically because of the synergising influence between these three forces. Pedagogy, technology, and change knowledge operating in concert will become a powerhouse of learning. Once this happens, technology, we can be sure, will pay more than its share. It will become a dynamic player shaping the future.

Making technology pay

p 72

Technology has dramatically affected virtually every sector in society that you can think of except education. It is shocking to have to say that. Learning, surely the most important human resource in the world, is not benefiting from the greatest technical resource on the planet. It is time that gadgets go to school and schools go to gadget 24/7. 

Technology is way too powerful for us not to have a plan.

p 74

The solution lies in the concentration of the three forces pedagogy, technology, and change knowledge. If you want to head off destruction, we need to make it all about the learning (the pedagogy part), let technology permeate (the technology part), and engage the whole system (the change part).

1. Make it all about the learning. 
2. Let technology permeate. 
3. Engage the whole system.

p 75

We should do less of spending money on assessment detached from designing learning and more of creating learning experiences that are irresistibly engaging. This is why I have made the primary driver pedagogy, or learning. The first thing to ask is this, "How do we make everything we do about learning?" Literacy and deep learning goals – higher-order skills (and proper literacy is higher order) need to dominate. Creativity, passion, and purpose must also flourish. We can do all this by gradually building a pedagogy where as they get older, students are more and more steeped in real-life problem solving, guided by teachers as change agents or mentors.

...we can't make everything we do all about learning if we don't let–indeed, make–technology permeate. We already know that digital power is almost limitless. Technology wants what we want if we work with it. Man against nature never worked, nor will man versus machine. 

p 76

Technology becomes more powerful as it becomes less expensive. Many of the pedagogical innovations free up inexpensive labour, so to speak – students do more of the work (but find it engaging), adults are involved in more efficient exchanges, crowd sourcing (in which users, the crowd, sort out quality through feedback and circulation of information) becomes widespread, quality teachers can reach more students, the myriad of free digital resources available on the internet constantly increases, and so on.

p 77

Change really isn't as hard as we thought if we capture people's interest and give them enjoyable, worthwhile experiences. It can thrive if we unleash the power of peers (students and teachers alike) to help one another learn and be even greater if we access intergenerational learning. The source of innovation is peers who are further down the line and people of all ages as they learn from one another.

p 78

With the help of technology we can go viral on the substance of innovation.

…

Technology is not a panacea. Not all technology is good pedagogy. And great pedagogy can and will exist without technology. We have, however, greatly miscast and underutilised technologies power. When we enlist technology in the service of exploratory learning for all, watch out! On the other hand, if we plod along with standards and assessment using technology only as a prop, we will get what we deserve: a higher level of tedium.

...

It is time to take the lid off learning. It is all there to be assembled. We know that the right combination of our triad already resonates with frustrated learners and frustrated teachers. 

It is time, to put it in a dramatically exciting way, to meet each other in the stratosphere where we get twice the learning for half the price. Instead of paying for technology that sits on the shelf, let's change the game. Let's race with the machines. Let's make technology pay! If we figure it out, we will find that technology wants what we want.

*Everything quoted is verbatim, all credit to Michael Fullan. Anything I have inserted (such as citations) is indicated in [square brackets].

Oversold & Underused?

Or: It's not enough to change the tools, you have to change mindsets

(And if you don't change mindsets, nothing changes)

Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban (2001)

I am amazed at how many of the teachers I encounter who are involved in 'edtech' - the ongoing of work to see real reformation and revolution in terms of the potential of digital tools to transform learning - who are oblivious of this book, and it's profound words of wisdom.

"“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” George Santanya

Alongside Fullan's Stratosphere, Cuban's seminal text on the challenges of tech integration has to be one of the most important, and insightful books on the subject of tech integration in schools I have ever read. What is more astounding still is that Cuban's predictions back in 2001 continue to remain as true today as they ever were.  As a case in point, take this closing paragraph; I see this almost everyday in my role:

"I predict that the slow revolution in technology access, fuelled by popular support and continuing as long as there is economic prosperity, will eventually yield exactly what promoters have sought: every student, like every worker, will eventually have a personal computer. But no fundamental change in teaching practices will occur. I can imagine a time, for example, when all students use portable computer this way they use notebooks today. The teacher would post math assignments from the text and appropriate links on their Website, which students would access from home. Such access, however, will only marginally reshape the deeply anchored structures of the self-contained classroom, parental expectations of what teachers should be doing, time schedules, and teachers' disciplinary training that help account for the dominant teaching practices. The teacher in my example would use the laptops to sustain existing practices, including homework. In short, historical legacies in school structures and parents' and taxpayers' social beliefs about what schools should be doing, I believe, will trump the slow revolution in teaching practices. Those fervent advocates who seek to transform teaching and learning into more efficient, proactive work through active, student-centered classrooms will find wholesale access to computers ultimately disappointing."

Why? In an environment, where, as Cuban predicted,  every one of our student's has a personal computer, how can these predications still be so true? Have we learnt nothing in the intervening decade? Seemingly, no.

Why?

Well the causes are myriad, but I see a correlation between the emphasis on high stakes assessment and the extent to which screens are used meaningfully. In the Primary school where traditional assessment has thankfully waned, there is much greater evidence of powerful, meaningful change, but as the focus pans upwards to the Middle School and beyond? The scope narrows, and the above quotation becomes all too evident, anywhere you care to look. Sure, teacher despondence has it's place as well, the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mentality, which fails to see that, worksheets and textbooks ARE broken, they just don't want to see it, but they're protected from the futility of these modes of instruction because the antiquated models that still dominate the assessment of learning, are the means that justifies their ends. Ends that can be achieved more efficiently using worksheets and textbooks, than with screens (or any human interaction)...

But is this is the way these students will be 'assessed' and appraised' when they leave secondary/tertiary education and enter the world of paid work? Will these artificial constructs benefit them then? As the focus narrows the closer we get to high stakes exams, and ends that justify the means, the artifice become more and more tangible.  No, we're not preparing these kids for the real world of paid work, we're preparing them for a the same old obsolete archaic modes of assessment that remain completely unchanged in decades; no wonder so many of their teachers cling to outmoded practices of instruction. Once the exams are over, what use will those of cram and regurgitate be to them then? Then, like generations before them, they will finally turn to the screen to help them compete in the 21st Century, ironically exploiting the same trial and error modes of learning by survival that their own teachers (taught and tested in the same way) had to use. When will we learn? According to Cuban, not very soon...

Now, I realise that most teachers have better things to do than read books about tech integration, so with that in mind, I have condensed the entire book into my own version of 'Cliff's Notes', and 'Sean's notes', in a Google doc. Below, for the sake of brevity I present the sections that I believe are absolutely essential. Everything that follows are Cuban's words, anything I have to interject is included in [brackets], in addition most instances of emphasis, and headings to structure content are also mine.

...

Levels of Integration

p53

These levels of integration with curriculum and instruction are drawn from Judith Sandholtz, Cathy Ringstaff, and David Dwyer, Teaching with Technology (1997).

The Initial level is entry (first months of using computers). Then adoption (teachers generally use text, lecture, and conventional approaches but introduce lessons to teach students how to use keyboard, mouse, and elementary applications). After adoption, the next level of integration is adaptation, when most of the classroom time is still spent in conventional ways of teaching, but students spend about one fourth or more of their time using computers for homework and daily work in class. The next level is appropriation, where the teacher is fully confident in the use of computers and integrates the technology regularly into daily routines. The highest level is invention, where teachers experiment with new ways of networking students and colleagues and use project-based instruction and interdisciplinary approaches.

Teacher's Attitudes toward Technology

p58
To fervent advocates of using technology in schools, no revolution had occurred in how the teachers organize or teach in these classrooms. Nor had there been dramatic or substantial changes in how teachers teach, or children learn. If anything, the addition of a computer center to the array of centers already in common use in these classrooms means that teachers had adapted an innovation to existing ways of teaching and learning that have dominated early childhood education for decades. Studies of computer use in other preschools and kindergartens across the country supported this observation.

p65
Despite the claims of technology promoters that computers can transform teaching and learning, the teachers we studied adapted computers to sustain, rather than transform, their philosophy that the whole child develops best when both work and play are cultivated and “developmentally appropriate” tasks and activities are offered.

p94
In interviews with the 21 teachers, 13 (just over 60 percent) said that their teaching had indeed changed because of their use of information technologies. [...] Of the 13 teachers who said that their teaching had changed, most referred to how they changed their preparation for teaching and how they used computers as another tool to teach. Only four said that they now organized their classes differently, lectured less, relied more on securing information from sources other than the textbook, gave students more independence, and acted more like a coach than a performer on stage. In short, they said that in using technology they had become more student-centered in their teaching; they had made fundamental changes in their pedagogy.

p97-98
Neither the age, experience, nor gender of teachers was a significant factor in our data. We found little difference in computer use between veteran and novice teachers, between those with and those without previous technological experience, or between men and women. Furthermore, we did not find technophobia to be a roadblock. Teachers at both schools called for more and better technology, were avid home users, and believed in the future ubiquity of computers in society.

p134
Teachers continually change their classroom practices. For example, some teachers quickly adopted computers for their classes, though most did not. Yet the teachers who decided to wait or choose to ignore the new technologies still engaged in changing other aspects of their teaching. Some may have decided to use a new textbook; others may have discovered a new way to do small-group work; and even others may have borrowed a technique from a colleague down the hall to press students to write more than a paragraph. These small changes are incremental and occur frequently among teachers. But these small adjustments are not what the promoters of computers had in mind. They wanted to transform teaching from the familiar teacher-centered approach to one that required the teacher to play a considerably different role. Using technology, the teacher would organize the classroom differently, giving students far more control over their learning (for example, working in teams on projects). Such changes would entail fundamental shifts in the teacher’s and students’ roles, the social organization of the classroom and power relationships between teacher and students.

The point, then, is that teachers change all the time. It is the kind of change that needs to be specified. Champions of technology wanted fundamental change in classroom practice. The teachers that we interviewed and observed, however, engaged mostly in incremental changes.

p137-138
In a previous study, I investigated teachers’ responses to the introduction of the technological innovations of film (1910’s-1940’s), radio (1920’-1940’s), and instructional television (1950’s -1980’s). Each of these highly touted electronic marvels went through a cycle of high expectations for reforming schools, rich promotional rhetoric, and new policies that encouraged broad availability of the machines, yet resulted in limited classroom use. [...] But logistics gave teachers a headache. Securing a film from the district’s audio-visual centre at just the right time for a particular lesson of having the radio or television broadcast available at only one time and not other times caused problems. Incompatibility between the existing curriculum and the offerings of films, radio, and television further reduced use. These growing complaints from teachers about inaccessibility and

p163
Since the nineteenth century, chalk and blackboard, pens, pencils, and textbooks have proven themselves over and over again to be reliable and useful classroom technologies. Teachers added other innovations such as the overhead projector, the ditto machine (later the copying machine), and film projector (later the VCR) because they too proved reliable and useful. But most teachers continue to see the computer as an add-on rather than as a technology integral to their classroom content and instruction.

p167-170
In the case of information technologies, teachers make choices by asking practical questions that computer programmers, corporate executives, or educational policymakers seldom ask. And the reason is straightforward enough: schools serve many and conflicting purposes in a democratic society. Teachers at all levels have to manage groups in a classroom while creating individual personal relationships; they have to cover academic content while cultivating depth of understanding in each student; they have to socialize students to abide by certain community values, while nurturing creative and independent thought. These complex classroom tasks, unlike anything software developers, policymakers and administrators have to face, require careful expenditure of a teacher’s time and energy. So in trying to reconcile conflicting goals within an age-graded high school or a bottom-heavy, research-driven university, teachers ask themselves down-to-earth questions in order to decide which electronic tools they will take to hand. Here are some of the questions teachers ask:

• Is the machine or software program simple enough for me to learn quickly?

• Is it versatile, that is, can it be used in more than one situation?

• Will the program motivate my students?

• Does the program contain skills that are connected to what I am expected to teach?

• Are the machine and software reliable?

• If the system breaks down, is there someone else who will fix it?

• Will the amount of time I have to invest in learning to use the system yield a comparable return in student learning?

• Will student use of computers weaken my classroom authority?


The maverick computer-using teachers I have identified sought to substantially change their instructional practices. They welcomed computers with open arms, took courses on their own, incessantly asked questions of experts, and acquired the earliest computers available at their school or for home use. They did so because they sensed that these machines fit their pedagogical beliefs about student learning and would add to the psychic rewards of teaching. Most of the innovators used computers to support existing ways of teaching. Others not only embraced the new technology, but also saw the machines as tools for advancing their student-centered agenda in transforming their classrooms into places where students could actively learn.

Thus, even within the constrained contexts in which teachers found themselves, teachers—as gatekeepers to their classrooms—acted on their beliefs in choosing what innovations to endorse, reflect, and modify.

p170

The introduction of computers into classrooms in Silicon Valley schools had a number of unexpected consequences. They are:

• Abundant availability of a “hard” infrastructure (wiring, machines, software) and a growing “soft” infrastructure (technical support, professional development) in schools in the late 1990’s has not led, as expected, to frequent or extensive teacher use of technologies for tradition-altering classroom instruction.

• Students and teachers use computers and other technologies more at home than at school.

• When a small percentage of computer-using teachers do become serious or occasional users, the—contrary to expectations—largely maintain existing classroom practices.

Slow Revolution

p171
Simply put, more and more teachers will become serious users of computers in their classrooms as the “hard” and “soft” infrastructures mature in schools. This explanation also suggests that uses of technology to preserve existing practices will continue among most teachers but give way slowly to larger numbers, especially as high schools and universities shift to more student-orientated teaching practices.

For the tiny band of teacher-users who have already transformed their classrooms into student-centered, active learning places, the slow-revolution explanation places them in the vanguard of a movement that will eventually convert all classrooms into technology-rich sites. Embedded in the explanation is a supreme confidence that with further work to secure better equipment, more training, and adequate technical support, as the years pass a critical mass of users will accrue, and the gravitational force of this group will draw most of the remaining teacher into technology’s orbit.

Depressing (but accurate) Predictions...

p175
I believe that core teaching and learning practices—shaped by internal and external contexts—would remain very familiar to those who would visit mid-twenty-first-century schools.

p177
Success in making new technologies available obscures, however, the divergent goals spurring the loosely tied coalition. Some promoters sought more productivity through better teaching and learning. Others wanted to transform teaching and learning from traditional textbook lessons to more learner-friendly, student-centered approaches. And some wanted students to become sufficiently computer literate to compete in a workplace that demanded high-level technological skills. Have these varied purposes been achieved in schools?

Beginning with computer or digital literacy, more and more students now take required keyboarding classes and courses in computers that concentrate on learning commonly used software. No consensus, however, exists on exactly what computer literacy is. Among computer advocates, definitions diverge considerably. Is it knowledge of and skill in programming? Is it being able to trouble-shoot computer lapses or software glitches? Is computer literacy knowing how to run popular software applications such as word processing programs and spreadsheets? Or is it simply completing a required course in computers? When we remember the many shifts in the meaning of computer literacy since the 1980's (recall how many experts once urged everyone to learn BASIC programming), any hope of securing agreement on a common definition appears slim. On such an elementary but crucial point, promoters offer little direction to computer-using teachers.

Some researchers have claimed that computer literacy, however defined, pays off in higher wages, further strengthening the educational rationale for using computers in schools. Yet schools can hardly claim full credit for students' growing technological literacy, when many also pick up computer knowledge and skills at home and in part-time jobs. The contribution that school courses and experiences have made to computer literacy and competitiveness in the workplace remains, at best, murky.

p178
Nor has a technological revolution in teaching and learning occurred in the vast majority of American classrooms. Teachers have been infrequent and limited users of the new technologies for classroom instruction. If anything, in the midst of the swift spread of computers and the Internet to all facets of American life, "e-learning" in public schools has turned out to be word processing and Internet searches. As important supplements as these have become to many teachers' repertoires, they are far from the project-based teaching and learning that some techno-promoters have sought. Teachers at all levels of schooling have used the new technology basically to continue what they have always done: communicate with parents and administrators, prepare syllabi and lectures, record grades, assign research papers. These unintended effects must be disappointing to those who advocate more computers in schools.

Securing broad access and equipping students with minimal computer knowledge and skills may be counted as successes. Whether such intended effects lead to high-wage jobs is unclear because the outcomes may be due more to graduates' skills picked up outside of school or to their paper credentials. When it comes to higher teacher and student productivity and a transformation in teaching and learning, however, there is little ambiguity. Both must be tagged as failures. Computers have been oversold and underused, at least for now.

p194
Yet technology will not go away, and educators have to come to terms with it as an educational tool. Understanding technology and the social practices that accompany it as a potent force in society is incumbent on both students and adults. From the telephone to the automobile to the computer, technologies carry with them the baggage of complex social practices and values that need to be explicitly examined.

How early childhood classrooms, high schools, and universities in Silicon Valley and across the nation responded to the last two decades of technological innovations is a case study in both stability and change. No one who attended schools in the 1950's and then visited schools in 2000 could fail to note many important differences in classroom practice. It is untrue that schools or teachers cannot change. Those visitors, however, would also note strong, abiding similarities between classrooms and teaching practices a half-century apart. Those similarities are due to the historical legacies and contexts. Ad hoc incremental changes have occurred often; fundamental changes have occurred seldom.

Although promoters of new technologies often spout the rhetoric of fundamental change, few have pursued deep and comprehensive changes in the existing system of schooling. The introduction of information technologies into schools over the past two decades has achieved neither the transformation of teaching and learning nor the productivity gains that a reform coalition of corporate executives, public officials, parents, academics, and educators have sought. For such fundamental changes in teaching and learning to occur there would have to have been widespread and deep reform in schools' organisational, political, social, and technological contexts.

I predict that the slow revolution in technology access, fuelled by popular support and continuing as long as there is economic prosperity, will eventually yield exactly what promoters have sought: every student, like every worker, will eventually have a personal computer. But no fundamental change in teaching practices will occur. I can imagine a time, for example, when all students use portable computer this way they use notebooks today. The teacher would post math assignments from the text and appropriate links on their Website, which students would access from home. Such access, however, will only marginally reshape the deeply anchored structures of the self-contained classroom, parental expectations of what teachers should be doing, time schedules, and teachers' disciplinary training that help account for the dominant teaching practices. The teacher in my example would use the laptops to sustain existing practices, including homework. In short, historical legacies in school structures and parents' and taxpayers' social beliefs about what schools should be doing, I believe, will trump the slow revolution in teaching practices. Those fervent advocates who seek to transform teaching and learning into more efficient, proactive work through active, student-centered classrooms will find wholesale access to computers ultimately disappointing.

Cuban L (2001). Oversold and underused: computers in the classroom. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

http://goo.gl/GtHxYK

Tech Enhanced Learning—Why bother?

Why? Why use ICT? Why not just use pen/pencil & paper? In my experience schools that make the leap into a 'tech enhanced learning' model (TEL) often fail to address this critical question

This is a crucial question, and one that needs answering. The bottom line for me is I honestly believe that virtually...

any teaching/learning context + ICT = better.

I started using ICTs properly, ie to learn/create, when I was about 18 (1988) using CAD systems on PCs for drafting, on an Industrial Design Diploma in West London, and from that day to this, one thing has remained consistent, I struggle to think of anything since that day which, related to my own experiences as a learner, now as learner and a teacher, that has not benefited from the inclusion of ICTs. As the technologies have evolved I've been able to add more and more ICT to things that I maybe couldn't before, and as far as I can see it's always been more, well, just MORE afterwards.

Hence my passion for all things technological and digital. So the problem is I am convinced, but are you? I don't need a WHY do justify the inclusion of ICT to almost anything, because I just KNOW it will be better - honestly I'm sitting here, trying to thing of a learning/teaching context which would not benefit from sort of ICT inclusion and I really can't!

I have a more detailed rationale for this, don't worry I didn't write it for you, I wrote it as an element of my Master's dissertation, but it is here if you do want to read it, all 3000 words. It is fully supported by the literature, and I have a separate list of References if you would really like it.

Ultimately, sure we could manage the next unit we plan to teach as teachers have for 100s years with paper and pen/cil, or we could do that AND make it more AWESOME with ICT.

I genuinely believe that if half of the teachers chose to use NO ICT for a unit, and half did, the kids in the classes of the half that did would be much, much better off.

Here are the main reasons, taken from the full document:

• Paper is a very powerful medium, but it is not dynamic and it does not provide sound, animation, real-time feedback that facilitates a capacity for continuous expansion. Integration of ICTs allow for more dynamic teaching, and more importantly, they allow students to show what they know in non-traditional and non-linear ways that more closely approximate the skills they will need to be successful in the adult world. 
• Critically, in my experience, it is the unanticipated, unplanned for possibilities that are powerful: ICT as a part of routine class activity offers unexpected sources of inspiration. This inspiration has an impact on learning interactions in ways that are often serendipitous for the teacher. It is more widely acknowledged that technology can inspire students, for instance by enabling them to make their own discoveries, perhaps more importantly, it often equips students to be sources of inspiration for others. 

ICTs make possible new forms of classroom practice. This is apparent in three distinct areas: 

• The reconfiguration of space so that new patterns of mobility, flexible working and activity management can occur, a finding also corroborated by a completely separate non ICT related study, (Hastings & Wood, 2002) who argue a pedagogical, empirical and essentially intuitive case for arranging the physical environment to support the attention and activities that a task requires. 
• New ways in which class activities can be triggered, orchestrated and monitored. 
• New experiences associated with the digital ‘virtual’ resources for established and routine practices – such as real time modelling, shared document editing, or manipulating spatial representations. 

ICTs create the possibility of a wide variety of learning practices.
Overarching this variety are three central activities, which are significantly enriched by the increasingly ubiquitous availability of technologies:

1. Exposition which is animated by the opportunity to invoke rich shared images, video and plans,
2. Independent research which is extended by the availability of internet search opportunities, and,
3. Creation, construction and presentation, which is made possible by ready-to-hand ICT-based tools. 

• It also important to consider that ‘technology’ does not simply mean PCs or netbooks. Some class activities depend on access to a variety of technology tools perhaps only briefly, especially when utilising mobile technologies, these experiences are about much more than working at the computer and typing a document, but requiring students to move around a room filming each other, making audio notes, taking pictures etc. 
• Engagement – students find ICTs ‘fun’. Used properly ICTs enhance classroom participation, feedback provision and pace of learning, offering multimedia presentations and the authentic link to future potential professions. 
• ICT practices invite an approach to understanding that considers the impact on learning practices, rather than the impact on learning outcomes. This not only shifts attention from attainment products to engagement processes, it defines activities in terms of learning practices rather than instructional practices (emphasis in the original). Likewise, Starkey (2010) notes that this enabled teachers to have students self-pace their use of digital technologies to meet their personal learning needs, giving the teacher time to spend with individual students. 
• positive benefits are reported relating to motivation (Becta, 2006b), Passey et al. (2004); on self-esteem, interest, attendance and behaviour among hard-to-reach students 
• Successful integration of ICTs in schools can help students to develop skills, both specific to ICTs and more generally, that will be useful for them in their future academic and professional lives, enabling them to use ICT skills to access, compile, synthesise and exchange information effectively.(ie in Grade 5, they will be better at this, having been exposed to this). 
• "… if the support for ICT usage in the primary school remains unsystematic, variable and unreflective then there are two significant dangers: the first is that young people with ready access to technology out of school will develop an incomplete and unreflective capability, unsupported by adult guidance, with risks both to their learning progress and their safety. The second is that a digital underclass, lacking opportunities for wide-ranging use of technology, will be permanently excluded from a world mediated by ICT." (Becta, 2009)

What we are really concerned with here is learning in a way that is most effective in an age dominated by digital technologies. The information revolution of the past couple of decades has created an impetus, to reconsider what learning should really be about – leveraging the tools of the digital age to ensure that the skills that have been the province of the few, become universal.

What is also new are the actual types of experiences that learning in a medium where screens are so ubiquitous as to almost become invisible, I would argue that these experiences are very different to anything that has gone before.

... so really the question we should really be asking now is not WHY, but HOW.

How? I'll tell you how. These kinds of experiences, or modes of learning are being transformed by 5 unique aspects of working with digital technologies, that I call 'SAMMS', learning which is transformed by:

• Situated practice (work anywhere, anytime, any place)
• Accessibility (to information)
• Multi-modality (image, audio, video, interactivity, reciprocity)
• Mutability (provisionality, flexibility)
• Social networking (access to people) 

Of course the bottom line is that as far as we are concerned UWCSEA as an institution is already committed to this so the WHY is a moot point, those that lead UWCSEA are and have been convinced...

How can we use ICTs most effectively?

That's a question we can only answer together.

Video Games & Violence...

A few years ago, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) in the UK, published a document, reviewing official government recommendations to improve children’s digital and video game safety. POST is an office of both Houses of Parliament, charged with providing independent and balanced analysis of policy issues that have a basis in science and technology.

The original document, in its entirety can be located here.

I have taken the liberty of highlighting the points that I as gamer and a father find particularly interesting.

First I should come clean; am I biased? Yes - absolutely, as a gamer of many years, and one who not only permits his children to play games, but actively encourages it, and have done since they were very young. Here's my son playing Dora and the Purple Planet when he was 4.

The back pack actually waits for my answer? No way! 

Well, I say 'they', despite my continued enticement my daughter remains less than enthusiastic about the whole gaming thing. A little Wii Fit is all she can tolerate before returning to her dolls, or making faces at herself on an iPad.

Truth be told given the choice between coming home from work and seeing my kids slouched on the couch passively gazing at a television screen or excitedly interacting and participating in a video game, I'll always choose the latter.

My concern is media bias, for some reason it's considered OK to blame games for the ills of the earth, but not TV, or film? If someone is a little hot under the collar after playing a video game, it can only be because of the violence, right? Wrong. Speaking personally, yes, games can sometimes leave me a little hot under the collar, but then very often so does sport, for the same reason, frustration, good old simple—this is really challenging—and I can't believe I find it so hard—frustration.

No, it's not mine. Really. 

If anything, I am more likely to get wound up by a level in a Mario game than a level in Call of Duty.

So—to the article, all are direct quotes I have selected from the original report, with my contributions in [brackets] or italics, all emphasis is mine:

"There is debate surrounding the impact of violent video games on behaviour. This document summarises the key aspects of the discussion, and other potential impacts of gaming such as addiction. It also examines the educational use of games, and reviews mechanisms to ensure children’s game safety.

As gaming increases, particularly among children and adolescents, so have concerns over the games’ content, influence and excessive use. While the main focus of research and policy has been on violent games, other impacts of games on addiction, brain development, social interaction and education are also considered

• Some, but not all, research suggests links between violent video games & aggression. However, causation cannot be proved. 
• A small minority may play video games excessively, but there are no firm criteria for diagnosing video game addiction. 
• Video games can be social, educational, and allow for personalised learning 

Research suggests that social, cultural and genetic factors have a stronger influence on aggressive behaviour than video games. For instance, gender, personality and violence in the immediate family environment are important influences on aggressive behaviour.

Desensitisation is the result of reduced emotional reaction due to repeated exposure to violence. It is thought to increase aggressive responses in individuals and to fuel a demand for more extreme games as gamers search for new excitement levels. However, this is not specific to games and applies to all media.

Many young gamers (aged 15) are upset by violence in games that are rated 18. Just as exposure to violence in films, television and the internet can be upsetting so can violence in games, and this is why content in games is age restricted (my emphasis).

(Young children are) more susceptible to negative, especially scary, content in video games and media. (Again, all forms of media, not just video games).

Despite the media focus on violent video games, the impacts of gaming are diverse and can be positive.

On average, 5-16 year olds play 1.5 hours of video games a day, but many gamers acknowledge that it is possible to devote too much time to games and many parents also worry about this. [Of course, it is possible, if not more likely, to devote 'too much time' to other media… Especially television]

A recent review of the literature reports that (only) 8-12% of young people (mean age 21) engaged in “excessive gaming”, whereas “problematic gaming” was present in (only) 2-5%."

Addiction?

"There remains debate over whether gaming addiction is a valid concept, with some researchers claiming that dependency and withdrawal are not observed in video game addiction. The American Psychiatric Association has stated there was not enough evidence to include video game addiction in the latest edition of the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."

[In my experience the symptoms often attributed hastily to 'addiction' would be better attributed to 'flow'. Something game developers work very hard to facilitate, and something that only the very best games are capable of inducing.]

"A sense of that one’s skills are adequate to cope with the challenges at hand in a goal directed, rule bound action system that provides clear clues as to how one is performing. Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted. An activity that produces such experiences is so gratifying that people are willing to do it for its own sake, with little concern for what they will get out of it, even when it is difficult or dangerous." (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991)

"Educational" Games

Some of the most popular games are 'educational' (eg brain training games). Generally, educational games are developed to increase pupils’ motivation, communicate information, improve specific skills and test competencies. They can allow for personalised learning by being able to target specific learning difficulties and can also be used with groups of children, allowing players an active role that demands a wide range of skills.

Importantly, there is a difference between learning skills such as problem solving, and learning behaviours from video games. Playing video games can improve reaction times and visual skills related to attention and problem solving regardless of their genre. However, it is more difficult to show that behaviours, both positive and negative, transfer from video games into the real world.

Ratings...

Video games that contain film footage or include violence, criminal or sexual activity are accounted by for by only approximately 6-7% of all games. (BBFC)

There is an on-going need to educate parents about their responsibility to monitor game play."

Here in Singapore, most games originate in the USA, and as such their ratings will be governed by the ESRB. The problem is the ESRB ratings have been over politicized, to the extent that they are not that useful; this is because the 'adults only' rating is rarely used, instead they prefer to use the 'M'(Mature) rating. This rating is often misleading, as many games that get the M rating are definitely adult games. For this reason I advise parents to refer to the European ratings instead.

Ratings from the USA—not so helpful

Games from the EU are governed by the PEGI classification system . Both classification systems have indicators that are obvious, but the advantage with PEGI is that they are more practical, as they are not afraid to use the adult rating (18).

European ratings, not afraid to use the 18 rating

The problem is, even when a game is rated adult, as they err on the side of caution, this can also be a little overzealous... eg the Batman games by Rocksteady, and the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) games get rated 18; but there is no way they can describe both of those games as being 'adult',  the former is not, and the latter most certainly is, and when they describe both of these games as being adult, it makes a mockery of the whole ratings system.

Fortunately, there are sites out there like Everybody Plays, that include reviews for parents.  Common Sense Media have also got a great review section which is very helpful, although I do find they also err a little too far on the side of caution to be useful, just aping the rating on the box. The Parent posts are a better way to gauge whether or not a certain game would be appropriate for your child.

Put simply, if in any doubt, go by the rating on the cover—ignore this at your peril!

Last, but certainly not least, the best approach is communication. If there is a game your child is desperate to play, there will almost certainly be plenty of game play footage on YouTube that you can use to get a sense of the level of appropriateness of the gameplay. Below I've included an example from the 'adult' rated Batman games, which I allowed my son to play when he was 12. Having watched the gameplay footage (search with the keyword 'combat') I felt the level of violence was no worse than a typical action film—far be it from me to be guilty of media bias!

Chocolate, Broccoli & a Minecraft ECA/CCA

No doubt many parents are wondering, "Why would a school offer a Minecraft activity as an after school activity? There are many reasons why, but a short answer would be; for the same reasons we offer a Chess Activity. Of course the main motivation for this is the cold hard fact that I am a gamer, I love gaming - contrary to popular opinion I do not believe it is 'addictive' - although it is extremely adept at creating a 'flow' state that can easily be interpreted as addiction... I definitely believe that gaming has a great deal to offer. But this is not the post for this subject, this one is:

http://pr0tean.blogspot.sg/2016/03/video-games-violence.html

So where was I? Oh yes, that said, if I'm honest, Minecraft is not my kind of game, but it is a rare kind of game that both my son (Grade 5) and daughter (Grade 3) LOVE. It is a game they can play together, but very differently, and therein lie the benefits... I'm very wary of attempts to try and make any game 'educational' - this kind of gaming invariably has the attraction of what is known in the industry as 'chocolate covered broccoli'.

Chocolate covered broccoli... via edutopia

Despite this, as a teacher, I could not resist the desire to attempt this anyway. For example I persuaded students to build a virtual maths museum, with exhibits that showcased ratio, basic 3d shapes, right angled triangles etc. but... But no matter how much metaphorical chocolate I covered it with, it was still broccoli - and I thought, do we do this with Lego? Channel their creations? "Hey kids why don't you build a Maths museum out of Lego?" No. We let them play, and let them take it where they want, just let them play, be creative, cooperate, collaborate, and that's good enough for me...

Therein lies the power of Minecraft, the kids aren't being duped, to extend the gaming industry analogy, Minecraft is not an 'educational (game)' it's an 'educational' GAME; or to put it another way, as far as the kids are concerned, it's chocolate covered chocolate.

Minecraft: chocolate covered chocolate

All that said there are some great examples online of teachers who have been able to kids to create some delicious chocolate broccoli with it, even without realising it. A colleague of mine in the UK let some of his students model homeostasis in Minecraft, But the essential element here is that it was their idea, the teacher didn't even know what Minecraft was. He does now.

And that's what I love about it, it was student centred; their ideas, their motivation, he was the catalyst... That's what I'm looking for. That in a nutshell is my rationale for Minecraft, when people inevitably ask 'Why?' - almost all the reasons you could give me for the value of playing with Lego, can be said of Minecraft.

Or to quote a sentiment commonly being expressed about '21st Century Learnng', we are preparing students for a future in which the 'three Rs' are embedded within the 'three Cs', communication, collaboration, and creative problem solving *(Thornburg, 1998). Minecraft is one example of students doing precisely that.

Think Lego, but with unlimited bricks, space, and best of all, no need to demolish it all at the end of each session.


The Minecraft game is available on almost all game platforms, even iOS. In fact playing Minecraft on an iPad (or even iPod touch or iPhone) is the easiest (and cheapest) way to play it, and multiplayer could not be simpler, up to 4 players, in the same room, on the same wireless network, that's it.

Minecraft on the iPad, a great way to introduce kids to this game.

Youtube - Use it better

Youtube is splendiferous

And what an awesome treasure trove of video delights it is, BUT, not if:

• you don't want to be reliant upon an internet connection to play the video... especially if you have more than one to show...

• you have to wait for it to buffer to play, because loads of people just happen to be online right now.

• you go back to show the video the following week/month/year/decade and it's ...  gone, just gone, or.. what was it called again?

• it has a load of highly appropriate comments (and the punctuation!!!!!????) underneath it, I've seen swearing in comments on a 1970s Mr Happy video, people swear about Mr Happy?

• you want to be able to insert the video into a presentation, or edit it into a video project... OK this one is a bit more geeky, I'll stop now.

Get my point? You can avoid all of the above by downloading the video in question to your computer, also you can then save it somewhere accessible, lie the shared drive, for you beloved colleagues to use as well.

Nerd Alert

It's really great to freeze frame a scene, (space bar to pause/play) and annotate over the image/scene (note facial expressions that indicate mood, scene details, or maybe situational considerations - oooh look the car is falling) using the IWB 'annotate over desktop' feature, (the blue rectangle with squiggle in it...)


So here's my preferred ways to download youtube video, easy and almost as easy:

Use a website...

1. ... like www.splandoo.com, or maybe keepvid.com, dirpy.com, no doubt there are others.
2. Find your youtube video, copy the URL in the address bar that's the gobbeldy gook that starts with stuff like 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= ... ' stuff in it, see the image below for an example...
3. Copy it
4. Go to www.splandoo.com
5. Paste it in the hole (actually, that's called a field) where it says 'Enter The Video's URL'
6. Choose FLV or MP4 (I would choose MP4, it's easier to playback, and edit)
7. Click the helpful 'Download!' button

 

Use a FireFox Add-on

Tip - Add-ons are awesome, they are helpful little modifications to your browser that let it do things it can't normally do... like the bionic man.

1. If you haven't already, download and install Firefox - http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
2. Open it
3. Go to Tools > Add-ons
4. Click the 'Get Add-ons' tab
5. Do a search for 'Easy Youtube Downloader' (there are others, this one I likey) and install it
6. When it's finished you will be prompted to restart your browser.. please do so
7. Go to a youtube video, and Oilah! Now a magical 'Download As' button has appeared below the video, so click it!
8. I would choose MP4 for the aforementioned reasons...
9. That's it, now any time you visit youtube with this browser on this computer you can download with one click.
10. Oh, there's more? Why YES. With this Add-on you can also download the audio ONLY, as an MP3 file, really handy for locating obscure bits of music you need...

 

You might need to download VLC to play the video with, either way it's well worth it.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/