Keeping Pace with Technological Change - Futile, or Fundamental?

For many teachers that I encounter in the day-to-day of teaching digital technology/tool integration, the answer to this question, is something like—

Futility.

Why? Because they hear of, or read things like this:

"Technological Knowledge (TK) Technological knowledge is always in a state of flux—more so than content and pedagogical knowledge. This makes defining and acquiring it notoriously difficult. Keeping up to date with technological developments can easily be-come overwhelming to time-starved teachers. This also means that any definition of technology knowledge is in danger of becoming outdated by the time this text has been published." (p 398)

Judith Harris, Punya Mishra, and Matthew Koehler (2009). Teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Learning  Activity Types: Curriculum-based Technology  Integration Reframed. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 393 Copyright © 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education)

Or...

"...the rapid rate of technological change ensures any knowledge gained about specific technologies or software programs would quite quickly become out of date" (p 151).

Mishra P, Koehler M J and Kereluik K (2009). ‘The song remains the same: looking back to the future of educational technology’, TechTrends, Vol. 53, No. 5, pp.48−53.

These kinds of quotes highlight an issue that has been bugging me for a while, the gist of it goes... "What? Learn ICT skills? What's the point? It all changes so fast, by the time we learn how to use one application it will be obsolete. So, why bother? which usually translates as ... "Let the kids do it, but ME? Me, I'm sticking with tools that I know from the 19th Century."

If theres's one thing I've learned about digital tools/technologies since I first started using them in earnest in the late 1980s, it's this:

... in truth, it's the beginning of nothing. 

And nothing has changed

Everything has changed.

David Bowie - Sunday

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

So digital technologies develop at a pace of change that is impossible to manage/keep up with?

Really? How?

How much has the way we USE digital technology really changed though? Speed, capacity, availability, yes, but use, not so much... Anyway, the same could be said of planes, trains, automobiles - more capacity, greater speed, more availability than ever. Changing capacity is not the same as changing capability.

If we reflect back to the ‘dawn’ of TEL in school in the 1990s, there were five overarching domains of computer use:

Text | Image | Audio | Video | Data

Text, image, audio, video, data. A sixth, ‘control’ was a core element of the ‘IT curriculum’ back then, but proved more difficult to integrate successfully. Ironically, two decades later, based on the recent alarmist rhetoric around a dearth of ‘coding skills’ it would seem control is back, albeit with a slight name change.

So, back in the 1990s when I first started teaching with computers there were 5 domains* of computer use, and here we are 2 decades later, and what do we find? The domains remain the same, the skills have evolved, but not much, and the conventions and tools? Identical, to the point of being nonsensical to this generation... A floppy disc icon to save? Really? An hour glass for wait time in Windows?

The truth is change in Tech happens more slowly than you might think, sure there are people out there attempting to, for example, rethink the design of the ubiquitous save icon, but these conventions have over two decades of embedded use, people like you, people like me, and even the generations who never used floppy disks know what the save icon means, despite its incongruity—so to say change is relentless, in this context, is nothing but  misleading.

http://dribbble.com/shots/506722-the-save-icon-redesign

CDs and DVDs are now almost obsolete, arguably with the recent advances in voice recognition, keyboarding could be next, but they're not dead yet, they are still hanging on... When digital tools change, they change gradually, incrementally, and obsolescence, while inevitable, happens sloooowwwllly.

Even 'professional' applications like PhotoShop evolve very gradually, with key conventions remaining virtually identical:

Nevermind the day to day icons we use for navigation...

Granted, computers are getting smaller, while their capacities grow larger, along with their processor speeds, drives are smaller [physical size], yet bigger [capacity] and faster than they've ever been, but all these changes do is make what we've always done EASIER, not OBSOLETE.

Big. Difference.

Change in terms of ICT skills are far from relentless, in fact, if anything, they are relentlessly, frustratingly, languorous... The domains are the same, and the core skills are virtually unchanged after 2 decades of relentless computer use, design and development.  Think about it for a minute—mouse skills? Keyboarding? Even overarching conventions like drag and drop, desktops, drop down menus, clicking on icons to give commands... Here's some skills from a document that was used by a school I worked at in the year 2000, see anything that is obsolete? Not much.

'IT Works' (Folens, 2000)

And that's about the only out dated reference I found in the entire scope and sequence, other than a reference to CDs and Laserdiscs, that was about it...  So are the core ICT skills that are a prerequisite for success in the 21st Century changing too quickly to bother to learn, or teach? No. But there HAS been change, oh yes,  I'd argue the biggest change is:

Ease. Of. Use.

It's never been easier to use ICTs, or to learn them. Time was, to edit video, you'd need a specialised machine, dedicated hardware and software, designed for professionals, with a learner curve steeper than Mount Everest. With advances in internet speed and connectivity from dial up to BroadBand,  a lot more can be done online than before. But they are the same things! Thumb sticks have replaced floppy discs, but they are still 'drives' that are inserted, read and written, and ejected, and ... lost.

Not. Any. More.

With the advent of 'Web 2.0' all four of the five domains can now be practised right in a web browser, no software installation needed, and they are (by and large) free. Video is a little tougher to edit 'in the cloud' but it's coming, YouTube already provide basic editing tools, and services like WeVideo.com are pushing back the boundaries of web based idea editing every day.

Instructions vs Conventions

The problem here is is not with the tools, it is with the teaching—teachers who focus more on instructions, or specific software, than overarching conventions and procedures. Don't teach kids how to use 'Word' teach them how to word process. Don't teach them how to use 'Safari' teach them how to browse. Again this is nothing new, we wouldn't think of teaching 'Harry Potter' as teaching 'reading' we might use a text like Harry Potter to observe overarching conventions and concepts—it's the same for ICTs.

Classic icon conventions—any change here is purely aesthetic.

Focus on conventions not instructions

Catch up vs change

The fact is that many, maybe even most teachers pretty much ignored the tech revolution that gradually unfolded since the 90's, it hasn't actually changed much in those intervening couple of decades, but the fact remains that 20 years of cumulated skill is a lot of catching up to do. THAT is the problem, not the rate of change, the considerable amount of catch up required. Catch up and change are not the same thing.

So let's stop whining about the futility of learning ICT skills and get on with it, they've stuck around since their inception, I dare say they'll be around for a little longer. The question is not WHY learn ICT skills but HOW? A subject I have written about here.

Mode vs Medium

I am not saying that digital tools do not present a unique challenge, when compared to their traditional counterparts, say... a pencil or pen and paper etc. Regardless of change, the sheer AMOUNT of digital tools are overwhelming, and increasing at exponential rates every day, to an extent that completely and utterly dwarfs the range of options and tools that would have been available to a teacher even 10 years ago. But, and this is worth repeating, I would still contend that regardless of their proliferation, the vast majority of the 'revolutionary' tools on offer stay well within the comfort zone of the 5 domains I have outlined above (6 if you include control/coding). Sure they might dress the context up a little more effectively, or introduce a clever mechanic, say ... touching instead of clicking, but the fact remains that while the mode may have changed, the medium has not. The same transferable conventions, the same iconography, the same procedures remain, regardless of the form factor of the device, the speed of the processor, the storage capacity, or indeed the sheer availability of these machines in recent years.

Dealing with the Deluge

So, the time invested in mastering or at least embracing core ICT skills and conventions are as relevant as ever in the face of this onslaught of pixelated promises. What is also important is to have an effective filter to manage the phenomenal proliferation of digital tools—on, literally, a daily basis, more tools with funky and not so funky names emerge into a market place already filled to overflowing with a veritable cornucopia of competitors. If you're fortunate, your school hopefully already has a dedicated tech integrator to stand between the teacher and the tsunami wave of digital applications, utilities and all sorts of 'Apps' boasting their pixelated promises to 'save you time' etc.

And if you don't? Then by all means ignore these 'wonders of the web' until you do. Yes, sometimes lurking in the sludge of similarity (and revolutionary? not really...) is the odd golden nugget of greatness, but it's not going to terribly affect your teaching to miss out on those. If that is not an option for you, then arm yourself with some effective filters and, like the prospector who wades through the mediocre, seeking to root out all except the most worthy, you can then bring the odd truly terrific tool triumphantly back to your team. Not that they will be as excited about as you will be. Yet.




* If anything at least one domain that has been and gone is back and currently experiencing a renaissance - computer coding, anyone?

Five Filters of Failure & a Scale of Scepticism

It's not the unrelenting torrent of information that I find troubling, after all, how many books are out there, never mind films and TV shows? How many articles, journals, newspapers, magazines? How many hard copies are holed up in folders, files, cabinets, archives and dusty basements all over the planet? Many I am sure, and yet no one ever complains about this sheer weight of data, I've never heard anyone complain,

"Dude, I just don't want read another book, there are just way too many out there, like, y'know? Like, if I read one a week for the rest of my life, I still wouldn't come even close, y'know?"

And yet, so often I hear this pointless observation made about the web, so yeah there's a lot of data, that's nothing new, the 'information revolution' proceeded the 'digital revolution' by at least a half a century—World Wide Web 1989, Libraries have been around for a lot longer... But even in 1945 library expansion was calculated to double in capacity every 16 years*, if sufficient space were made available... so there's been a lot of data for a long time; all we need to do is learn to deal with it. Literally.

So, the fire hydrant image below, while clever, I relate to more on the level of tech tool overload. Seriously, every gathering of tech types I ever attend is dominated by tech tool talk, new Web 2.0 tools, new gadgets, widgets, scripts, plugins, apps, features, software suite, usually accompanied by a lot of references to them being AWESOME.

So imagine my delight when I stumbled up on the most magnificent (nearly said AWESOME there) scepticism dial, or what I prefer to call... the Scale of Scepticism.

In order for me to assimilate a new digital tool to the point of actually recommending it to teachers to use with students, it has to have passed through a series of stages, along the lines of:

Stage 1 – utter scepticism (yeah, whatever)
Stage 2 – cool reticence (arms folded)
Stage 3 – emerging realisation that, actually, this might be worth a closer look (sitting up)
Stage 4 – mild interest, even emerging (muted) enthusiasm (leaning forward)
Stage 5 – semi-excitement (standing up)
Stage 6 – fervoured, obsessive exploration (squeezing through to the front)
Stage 7 – passionate commitment and desire to talk to everyone about it, to the marked irritation of, well, everyone (evangelistic zeal)

The only problem is I needed something more succinct, more ... manageable, I could feel the threads of my sanity slipping, and I needed something simpler to accompany my next foray into techdom.

Larry Cuban has a useful list in his seminal book 'Oversold and Underused' (2001) which reads as follows:

• 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? (p170)

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

And I have my own, a list I call ... the 5 Filters of Failure, now these were mainly conceived in the context of iOS devices, due to their increasing presence in my school, these have somewhat preoccupied my mind of late, but I do believe these 5 filters can be applied more generally:

1. Do this require me to do the same thing more than 5 times? Like tedious account creation for each student?
2. Is it transformational? Yeah, it's cool, but does it radically change what I can do? Is it too similar to something I already use?
3. Does it have pedigree? Reputation. How long has it been around? Is it tried and tested? Is it likely to be here in 4 weeks? 4 months? 4 years?
4. Is it well designed, simple to use? Can kids use this independently? Can Teachers work it out on their own? Is it intuitive?
5. Can the content be exported/shared easily? Can the App save to camera roll? Export to a universal format?

Dealing with the Deluge

This set of filters is essential in the management a phenomenal proliferation of digital tools. On, literally, a daily basis, more tools with funky and not so funky names emerge into a market place already filled to overflowing with a veritable cornucopia of competitors. If you're fortunate, your school hopefully already has a dedicated tech integrator to stand between the teacher and the tsunami wave of digital applications, utilities and all sorts of 'Apps' boasting their pixelated promises to 'save you time' etc.

And if you don't? Then by all means ignore these 'wonders of the web' until you do. Yes, sometimes lurking in the sludge of similarity (and revolutionary? not really...) is the odd golden nugget of greatness, but it's not going to terribly affect your teaching to miss out on those. If that is not an option for you, then arm yourself with these filters and, like the prospector who wades through the mediocre, seeking to route out all except the most worthy, you can then bring the odd truly terrific tool triumphantly back to your team. Not that they will be as excited about as you will be. Yet.




Now it doesn't have to fail all 5 filters to fail, but the more filters it fails, the less interest I have in taking it seriously, I can honestly say that all of the tools I rely on currently all pass at least 4 of the 5 filters. Will these filters change? Absolutely, I'm constantly reconsidering/tweaking/adjusting them—like the cornucopia of competing tools they are designed to filter they need to be flexible; after there were four filters of failure only a year ago.

1. Tedium
2. Similarity
3. Reputation
4. Simplicity
5. Ease of Export 

These are my filters
There may be many like them, but these are mine.
The question is... What are yours?

 *Rider (1944). The Scholar and the Future of the Research Library. New York City: Hadham Press.

Team Teaching—With Your Own Students [Techsperts]

Yeah, I'm not crazy about the name either, but that's what was in place when I got here, known as Techexperts at our sister campus (What? Isn't that 'tech-experts'?) So I've stuck with it, albeit with a slight adjustment.

Regardless of the name, it's an attempt to define a role in the process of teaching tech skills that includes students, and it's better than some others I've heard.

Many students are quick to learn many of the skills and potentialities of digital tools, what Mishra & Koehler (2006) call technological knowledge (TK), yet are not necessarily skilled at, for example, sharing them. The involvement of students through skilled facilitation (Ruddock, 2004) creates a collaborative ethos that harnesses the time spent in the classroom as time for ‘training’ by taking advantage of the students’ natural facility with digital technologies, while also harnessing the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of their teachers—their unique perspectives based on many years of experience. This is a repurposing of Mishra & Koehler’s model (2006) I describe as TK + PCK = TPCK. However, this approach requires the teachers to allow the students’ a certain degree of autonomy, for example, Jill struggled to establish this model with her students, complaining that her students,

… get themselves stuck because they haven't followed the instructions. Re-tracing their steps to sort out where they went wrong is what I find quite challenging at times - but this depends on how 'new' what I have taught/explained to them is also 'new' to me.

Students as collaborators

The students were struggling because they were not being given autonomy to learn independently, through enquiry, because their teacher was more comfortable ‘teaching’ them how to use the technology didactically, step by step, or more accurately, literally, click by click.  By shifting her approach from that of ‘instructor’, towards that of ‘mediator’ she was better able to bring together facilitative strategies, modelling a collaborative ethos—her organising influence as the teacher was still highly salient, albeit a form of leadership that was more ‘fluid’ (Peachey et al, 2008). The teachers found different ways to incorporate this model into their teaching.

Another teacher used a strategy I call “I teach you - you teach two”—each student teaches two others, and so on until the whole class has been covered. Knowledge and understanding are gained through combinations of the students’ and teacher’s co-constructing, acting together through ‘distributed cognition’. This creation of a supportive, problem-solving classroom community is essential to the development of these digital literacies (Beetham et al, 2009; Twining 2009).

Let kids lead [when they can]

The third of the teachers in my case study was eager to embrace this approach. During one of our interviews we set up a class website for him to use for class organisation and collaboration, he then designated one particularly keen student in his class to take on the day-to-day management of the site. As teachers became more comfortable with the awareness that students are going to be able to teach them, their contributions could be smoothly integrated into the fabric of a lesson. The previous teacher described how she felt this had ‘flipped’ her perspective on technology; she now feels comfortable “not knowing everything” and “letting them work it out”, which makes the prospect of using ICT much less daunting.

'Teachable Moments'

Scenarios become commonplace whereby a student finds a new way of doing something or makes a discovery that the teacher has never come across before, but rather than feeling threatened by this, the teacher facilitates this and turns it into a “teachable moment” (Crook et al, 2010). In this case the teacher could give the student control of the screen, via an IWB, to guide the class (and often the teacher) through the process. The student focus group interview highlighted their approach to technical problems, an approach with a notably positive bias,

"I don't really need to have technical support and when I have trouble with the computer, I don't avoid [it] that much. I just keep going on."

That, or they just don’t see technical issues as a problem at all,

"Computers have never failed [me] in my work."

The students appear to have a natural sense of determination and perseverance when faced with technical problems; even though they accept that these problems happen, they see this as an inevitable aspect of using technology - not an exception,

"Even if they [computers] go wrong, I still use them. […] In many cases it’s probably something I did wrong—not the computer."

The less you know, the more you can learn

This perspective contrasts considerably with that of many of their teachers, who, when faced with technical problems, tend to blame the machine, whereas the students are more inclined to assume the fault lies with themselves, in the way they are using it.

This way when a problem arises, rather than being a potential threat, it becomes a learning opportunity; if anything, an issue to be wary of is with teachers who are highly skilled with ICTs being too quick to offer solutions, instead of encouraging the students to find someone else in the room who has worked through that problem, so they can tutor one another. Seen this way, lacking technological expertise can be seen as a kind of enabler.

However, this can also lead to teachers who effectively ‘opt out’ of technology altogether, preferring to abdicate the responsibility for the use of ICTs entirely to their students—this raises the question of how effectively any teacher can effectively ‘mentor’ or guide their students if they have absolutely no idea what the available technology can do—teachers should at least familiarise themselves with the basic capabilities of the tools their student’s use, even if they are unable to use these themselves.

Stress Free Slideshows in Minutes on a Mac

Sure you can spend hours constructing a visual masterpiece in Keynote, Prezi, SlideRocket, or even, if you insist, PowerPoint...

If you do want a slide show with images and video, import it all into iPhoto and run the slideshow from there.

But what if you just want to create a slide show in a few minutes, no transitions, no titles, no fuss, no faff?

What if this slideshow can contain all sorts of visual media, images of course, but also PDFs, text documents but ... not video. Well not yet.

So, you have a folder stuffed full of the slide show content, (including content in sub folders) how does this magic work?

Easy, open Preview if it isn't open already - Grab the folder and drop it on the Preview icon in the dock.


Or, if you're drag and drop dysfunctional, go to Open, and browse to the folder you want to use, just click on the folder (not its contents) and click open.


Now all you do is choose View > Slide Show from the main menu.

If you have got something you want to include in the slideshow that Preview does not like, eg an Excel spreadsheet - just 'print' it and save it as a PDF. Sorted.

To loop a slideshow, and include video.

Dump all the media (video/image/pdf) in one folder (no sub folders)

Select it all, and press the spacebar to launch Quickview

Then go to full screen and press play.

Finally, make sure any media you want to use for a presentation is on your local hard drive (on your computer), not on a shared drive/Internet, unless you like the spinning beach ball of death to become the main feature of your presentation.

Keynote simplicity

If you really want to use Keynote, this can be quite painless as well—not as quick as the methods outlined above, but maybe only few minutes longer... 

Just select all the media (including PDFs, but it will only display the first page) and drag and drop it into the navigation panel on the site. Keynote will place each separate item on it's own slide, it will resize large images to fit, but smaller images will be left at original size.

To Skill or not to Skill?

Teaching ICT skills ...

Pickering (2007), found that a focus on skills and fixed knowledge to be acquired was criticised by the teachers in his study, although Daly et al (2009), citing his findings, conceded that:

“Clearly, ICT use demands that teachers acquire certain generic skills (p 27).” 

Understandably, there is a general hesitancy by tech integrators to embrace ICT skills teaching, as it tends towards,

“superficial, one-off and ‘box-ticking’ approaches which emphasise the development of functional skills and relegate pedagogical development to teachers’ ‘spare’ time (Daly et al, 2009, p 41).” 

Now, somewhat ironically, the situation seems to be becoming reversed – with the emphasis very much upon the development of pedagogical skills and the relegation of ‘functional development’ (skills) to teachers’ ‘spare’ time.

So teachers are now effectively expected to acquire skills,

“by studying manuals, talking to each other, talking to the instructor, and seeking out other locally available experts” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p 1038). 

The problem is this ‘grappling experience’ (ibid) or ‘productive failure’ (Kapur & Bielaczyc, 2012), while a powerful way to learn, if not managed carefully, can become a tedious, frustrating process. "Good pedagogy should challenge not frustrate" (ibid) but it is difficult to judge when it is better to let people ‘wrestle’ or to mitigate the potential tediousness of a long process of discovery, by providing a ‘short cut’. The challenge of managing this ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1987) is significant, the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by their need to engage in independent problem solving (trouble shooting) and the point at which they know they cannot proceed any further without ‘expert’ guidance, or collaboration with more capable peers, a 'knowledgeable other' (ibid) – or even, or perhaps more likely, students.

Frustration is common with digital technologies,

“any given technology [tool] is not necessarily appropriate” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p 1040). 

The plethora of software available to do even the most basic of tasks, means that even choosing an inappropriate tool can turn a task from a challenge to a crisis, like attempting to using Photoshop for image cropping, which is tantamount to using a Ferrari to deliver milk. What is likely to occur, is a situation where,

“teachers were so caught up in learning how to use the tools that they lost sight of the design tasks.” (Angeli and Valanides 2008, p 10). 

The “cognitive load” (ibid, p 9) imposed by learning how to use the tools was so high, that teachers were left without enough “cognitive resources” to attend to the actual exercise.

Although skills training is clearly vital to being able to integrate technology into teachers’ practice, more often than not teachers are plagued by an unconscious incompetence - they ‘do not know, what they do not know’.  Despite the proliferation of literature expounding the virtues of an integrated model, mention is rarely made of any consideration of a prerequisite skill set, one of these rare examples follows:

“The model assumes the existence of ICT standards [...] At a basic level these would include: basic ICT literacy, such as familiarity with and confidence in using the Windows operating system, basic word processing, PowerPoint and data software such as Excel and SPSS, software installation, and knowledge of the Internet such as how to use the Internet for resource searching, downloading and uploading files, communication via emails, video calls or web cameras.” (Hu & McGrath, 2011, p 54)

Balance is clearly critical here – one where an articulated skill set is defined that can be acquired within an authentic, integrated context. How much teachers know about technology makes a big difference in their uses of technology. Once technology is truly integrated, teachers and beliefs and knowledge are changed as well (Fisher et al, 1996). New pedagogical knowledge and practices emerge from the integration of technology, but only when teachers reach a certain level of technological understanding.

Unfortunately with the pendulum swinging well and truly away from a skills focus, we are in danger of throwing out the proverbial baby with bathwater, an issue alluded to in the recent Nesta report,

“…the lack of emphasis upon [ICT] skills, is a concern (2012, p 55).” 

Change? What change?

A common objection here is that digital technologies develop at a pace of change that is impossible to manage/keep up with, and so any focus on skills is futile. However,  if you consider this carefully you have to ask yourself how much has the way we USE digital technology really changed though? I have written about this dubious assumption here, but the truth is that yes, of course aspects of ICTs like processor speed and storage capacity have/are changing relentlessly yes, but use?

Not so much.

The same could be said of planes, trains, automobiles - more capacity, greater speed. Changing capacity is not the same as changing capability.

So, having decided that we do need to consider what teachers should know about technology, we must consider how much they need to know to even be able to begin.

Skills mapping and audits

"A potential barrier to ICT CPD is staff not knowing what the gaps are in their own ICT knowledge. Many schools have found an ICT audit mapped to the curriculum a valuable tool in helping staff to gain a clear indication of the ICT skills, competencies and pedagogies they need to have." (Becta, 2009, Point 81)

In order to avoid the skills element having a negative impact on learning, at the end of a unit of study, or even the end of the academic year, the teachers ‘traffic light’ the ICT core skills matrix to identify which skills have, or have not, been acquired, in order to determine which skills may have need to be focused on explicitly in other authentic contexts in the future.

Example of a skills audit - post reflection

This is not a question of skills vs pedagogic integration. Teachers and students need to acquire ICT skills before they can start to harness technological expertise for the purposes of student learning. This re-purposing of the TPACK  (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) framework, ensures that the focus remains pedagogically centred, but balanced and facilitated by clearly articulated ICT core skills.

In most organisations, what gets monitored gets done. When a school devotes considerable time and effort to the continual assessment of a particular condition or outcome, it notifies all members that the condition or outcome is considered important. Conversely, inattention to monitoring a particular factor in a school indicates that it is less than essential, regardless of how often its importance is verbalised.

The continued reluctance to engage with this issue should be resisted, as Becta's contribution to the Rose Review (2009) emphasised,"[ICT skills] should be regarded as an essential skills for learning and life, alongside literacy and numeracy." (Point 91) With warnings regarding the possibilities of neglecting this vital area:

“… there are two significant dangers: the first is that young people 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." (Point 94)

An impoverished generation?

Unfortunately I often, in fact usually, see students, teenagers, the so-called ''digital natives' using their state of the art machines in ways that are, quiet frankly surprisingly rudimentary. Attempting to construct a table of content manually, using a calculator instead of a spreadsheet for managing multiple interrelated calculations, relying on MS Word for, well nearly everything, except for when they are using Keynote—poorly. Why? Because no one has taught them the fundamental skills they need to use these beautify shiny machines they've been given.

A broad and balanced range of ICT competencies that span the domains of text, audio, image, video, data (and possibly control/coding) are in danger of becoming the proverbial baby thrown out with the bathwater. Practices to mitigate this must be carefully managed so that authentic opportunities for the acquisition of core ICT skills are planned for that are pedagogically centred, and concept driven not skills driven, but that do not neglect these skills.

"In Sweden, young adults ages 16–24 topped the charts in an assessment of technology skills that was administered in 19 countries. Participants were asked to perform tasks at three levels of difficulty: to sort e-mails into folders, organize data into a spreadsheet, and manage reservations for a virtual meeting room. Fewer than one-third of U.S. young adults could complete tasks more complicated than sorting e-mails, a performance that put them at the bottom of the list of performers from the 19 countries."

(Educational Leadership, 2014)

In the 'bad old days'  classes of students were taught a broad and balanced set of ICT skills, within the confines of a lab, in entirely contrived contexts, that were inauthentic, but were successful in at least teaching the students the basics. Now, with the understandable shift away from skills based lab teaching, to the far more appropriate integrated model, there is a very real danger that in so doing we will accidentally impoverish an entire generation of students, by expecting them to acquire foundational ICT skills through a process of little more than exploration and serendipity. Sure, we have an authentic context, but no understanding of the competencies or types tools that are necessary to function within them. To further compound the problem, this process is managed by teachers who are often less competent with ICTs than their students, in contexts where the main stakeholders are unaware of the key ICT skills they need to work effectively, and where there is no one who has the expertise to bridge the gap between ignorance and expertise.

This is not an approach to skills development we would countenance in any other area of the curriculum, and yet, in what is widely regarded as the most essential form of literacy, digital literacy, (alongside language and numeracy) it is. Yet another barrier to authentic integration looms, the barrier of a generation of students with an under developed ICT skill-set, ironically, despite the proliferation and availability of screens. Surprisingly, even those who should be the most likely providers of ICT skills teaching, tech integrators like me,  are often the most reluctant, due to their paralysing fear of a return to the ‘bad old days’ of skills teaching in isolation, they opt instead to restrict the skills sets of their students, to those learnt through a process of exploration and discovery, oriented around word processing, social media, and web browsing.

ICT skills do not have to be an either/or choice, using reflective practices, and building awareness of the prerequisite tech skills that are foundational for all learners in the 21st century, we can avert an impending crisis, by providing our students and teachers with screens and a broad, balanced range of skills to use them effectively.

The NETS are not enough

While useful as overarching standards,  I do not believe NET Standards are enough on their own - they are too generic to be of practical use in ensuring a broad and balanced curriculum; they are descriptions of (any) curriculum, not applications of digital technologies. Remove the token references to ‘digital’ and ‘technology’ and you're left with a description of curriculum, but nothing which in and of itself actually requires the use of ICTs, or more importantly, that could not be achieved without the use of digital technologies at all. For example,

“Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology” (NETS(S) 2007, strikethrough mine).  

To use the analogy of literary genres/strands (which I find helpful, but you could use science and mathematics strands just as easily) they need to be specific to the nature of the sphere of experience. Literacy genres are, NETS are not.

They need to be specific not generic. Yes you can argue that English literature is a 'subject' and ICT no longer is; this is just semantics. Who cares what we are defining them as now, we all know that just a few years ago 'IT' was a discrete subject, and it still is based on the definition of 'subject' it's just not 'discrete' anymore…

subject: a branch of (technological) knowledge studied or taught in a school, college, or university.

discrete: individually separate and distinct.

ICT is a 'subject' that is now integrated - and should be subject (see what I did there?) to the same rigorous checks and balances of any other 'subject'. The same argument can easily be made for English language, or Science, or Mathematics - these are core competencies that are applicable and a prerequisite for success in any domain in the 21st century. So call them what you like and distribute them how you will - but a broad and balanced education requires that the essential elements of these subjects are not neglected.

We should not neglect opportunities to read and write, for example, realistic fiction, or physics or shape and space in Mathematics, I believe the same applies to what could be called the 'digital domains' or literacies of ICTs, such as, text, image, video, audio and data (with coding/control waiting in the wings) - none of which the NETS explicitly describe or mandate, thereby rendering them useless as a means to articulate the effective use of digital technologies.

To put it another way - we're talking about students becoming holistically literate, that literacy has to incorporate 'multiliteracies' including language, scientific/methodological ways of thinking, mathematical literacy and of course digital literacy. ALL of these can be defined as 'subjects', all of these could also be (and arguably should/could be) taught in an integrated way. Just because we've chosen to integrate a subject, does not mean it should be treated less rigorously - integration should not mean invisibility - at least not for teachers. (I'd argue invisibility would be great from a student's perspective, but so would it be for maths and science et al - they don't see it as a 'subject' it's just another natural (for them) way of thinking and working)

So we have mandatory strands in each of these literacies that we expect all students to have multiple experiences with during their time in school, ideally in each grade, scoped and sequenced properly - I can't see how a student could be considered to be mathematically literate if, say, they had never been taught how to multiply, or in science, never experimented with forces, or in English, never read or written poetry, or in terms of digital literacy, never learned how to edit or use video. None of the strands in these subjects are left to chance, or to ad hoc integration. We carefully design authentic ways to ensure they are all experienced, all I'm arguing for is that we do not allow exceptions, especially not for one of the core competencies of the 21st century.

Put simply, if we believe that articulating a coherent scope and sequence of essential skills in the domains of language and mathematics are necessary, then how much more so in what is arguably THE prerequisite skill set of the 21st Century? 

For a PDF version of our ICT skills scope and sequence matrix, click here.

An example of a section of our ICT skills matrix

Vitamin D (VITAD)

Five Essential Domains: VITAD: video, image, text, audio, data - 'Vitamin D' 

Just like all subject domains, tech has its own overarching domains or strands that are an efficient way to organise the essential skill sets needed for true digital literacy.  We should not neglect opportunities to read and write, for example, realistic fiction, or physics or shape and space in Mathematics, I believe the same applies to what could be called the 'digital domains' or literacies of ICTs, such as, text, image, video, audio and data (with coding/control waiting in the wings) - none of which the NETS explicitly describe or mandate, thereby rendering them useless as a means to articulate the effective use of digital technologies.

Digital Illiteracy... 

An easy easy way to recall these essential areas is with the acronym 'VITAD', 'vitamin digital', now when you're considering whether not you can consider yourself, your students or any 21st century citizen to be truly digitally literate, how do they measure up to VITAD?

1. Can they view, edit, create, compose with video?
2. Can they organise, edit, resize, manipulate, incorporate image?
3. Can they browse/read/search text? Are they proficient at word processing, commenting, curating  texts?
4. Can the manage audio files, organise,  edit, create, compose audio using multiple audio tracks/sound effects?
5. Do they know their way around a spreadsheet, Can they organise data efficiently, perform basic calculations using functions and formulae, analyse, synthesise, and model data?

When, and only when you can confidently answer yes to all the above, then, and only then can you call yourself digitally literate!

Digital literacy and digital competency 

Essentially what I am advocating for, is an expansion of what we mean when we describe someone as 'digitally literate' in much the same way as we would when we describe someone as 'literate' or 'numerate'—we don't mean that we expect them to write like Shakespeare, or calculate like Einstein, in the same way digital literacy doesn't impose a skill set like that of Bill Gates, all it should mean is that, they are competent. For example, by the time our students complete their primary school education they should be 'literate' in language, number, and with digital technologies. That is why the skills matrix stops at Grade 5, by that point, if they have mastered all of the skills articulated within the matrix, they are digitally competent, competency meaning they have acquired knowledge of the key tools available in each domain, from word processors to spreadsheets, and the skills to use them effectively:

"In contrast to a view of 21st century skills as general skills that can be applied to a range of different tasks in various academic, civic, workplace, or family contexts, the committee views 21st century skills as dimensions of expertise that are specific to—and intertwined with—knowledge within a particular domain of content and performance. To reflect our view that skills and knowledge are intertwined, we use the term “competencies” rather than “skills.” (Pellegrino et al, 2013, p3)

Having established that foundational set of competencies, they are now well equipped to develop them further, with guidance or independently, but most importantly they are equipped, they know what they know, and they know what they don't know, and they have the capacity to extend their competency further in any of the domains should they need to or wish to.

When & How do we teach/learn these skills?

Any attempts to make time after school for any form of CPD are likely to be ineffective. ‘Training’ and ‘Courses’ do not really take account of the actual needs of teachers,

“there can be no one size fits all training (Hu and McGrath, 2011, p 50)”. 

When teachers can see the explicit relevance of the technology to enhancing their practice, their motivation increases, along with willingness to make the effort and to find the time to change (Daly et al, 2009). A core set of ‘little and often’ strategies are all you need; 4 strategies that are described here.

ICT skills have never been more essential, and learning these are far from futile, they are fundamental—but the mode and medium you use to facilitate the acquisition of these skills by teachers is critical*. 

*Whatever you do, don't try and teach these skills in didactic after school 'courses'. 

Pellegrino J W, & Hilton M L (Eds) (2013). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. National Academies Press.

The RAT, SAMr, Transformative Technology, & Occam's Razor

Digital technologies are all well and good, but if we're going to use these, can we at least make sure we are actually changing what it is possible to achieve? For our students to learn?

Probably the single greatest chalenge in my role is to encourage ICT use that does not make the mistake of just replacing or substituting pixels for pages. There are two frameworks, SAMR and RAT, I prefer RAT, but for some reason SAMR seems to get a lot more attention, which is crazy in my opinion, it's far too complex to be of any really practical use, and it's often misinterpreted.

Replace, Amplify, Transform*—that's it. 

SAMR is impossible to pronounce, in English anyway, and while it's simpler than most, it can be simpler, without, I believe, losing anything that is crucial. I don't need to wrestle with the distinction between Augmentation and Modification, seriously—is it that important? What I do see on a really bad day, is tech that is not just replacement, but worse; allow me to reiterate, people using computers in ways that are actually WORSE than not using tech at all—like the person who insists on printing out name labels for each kid, I mean, really? Just get a pen and a write the name on a sticker. I'll tell you what level of integration that is— Retrograde.

But don't take my word, take Michael Fullan's,

Many of the innovations, particularly those that provide online content and learning materials, use basic pedagogy – most often in the form of introducing concepts by video instruction and following up with a series of progression exercises and tests. Other digital innovations are simply tools that allow teachers to do the same age-old practices but in a digital format. Examples include blog entries instead of written journals and worksheets in online form. While these innovations may be an incremental improvement such that there is less cost, minor classroom efficiency and general modernisation, they do not, by themselves, change the pedagogical practice of the teachers or the schools. (Fullan M & Donnelly K, 2013, p25)

Less is More*

So, while I love and cherish SAM(r) I have new friend, its name is RAT (Hughes et al, 2006), and it is remarkably non existent on the 'Interweb'—I'm not sure why, but when I couldn't find any graphics to illustrate it for some upcoming PD I'm prepping I realised that I would have to ... *takes deep breath, yes it's hard to admit* make my own—so, here they are (CC free, just help yourself),  mash - mend - make your own, but please lets put some life back into the RAT framework, it was published in 2006, and from what I can see, it has been sleeping in obscurity ever since.

I'd describe what RAT means, except that, well, there's no need—that's the beauty of it, it's obvious (if you speak English).

R :: replacement | redundant | retrograde
A :: augmented | average | acceptable
T :: transformed | terrific | tremendous

Now all we need to do is wrestle with the holy grail of tech integration—defining the nature of transformative tech, I like these attempts, from the RAT paper:

Technology as Transformation

The Technology as Transformation Category involves technology use that transforms the instructional method, the students' learning processes, and/or the actual subject matter.

1. The actual mental work is changed or expanded 
2. The number of variables involved in the mental processes are expanded
3. The tool changes the organisation in which it had been used 
4. New players become involved with the tool's use (or expanded use of the tool). 
5. New opportunities for different forms and types of learning through problem solving, unavailable in traditional approaches, are developed.

... it [transformative use of ICTs] improves the process of bringing thought into communicable expressions in such significant ways that, once the tool is understood and used regularly, the user feels wanting if it is not available because it has opened up new possibilities of thought and action without which one comes to feel at a disadvantage. It's become an indispensable instrument of mentality, and not merely a tool. (Pea, 1985, p 175)

… we will be best served by setting our imaginations free from seeing a computer as a machine that lacks the warmth and security of a book, seeing it instead as a technological alternative providing almost unlimited potential to operationalise the humanistic values that fuel our noblest conceptions... (Reinking, 1997, p 642)

The more important question (that the bucket load of people who blog about SAMR rarely seem to address) is how do you move ICT use from one end to the other, from replacement to transformation (RAT), or from substitution, to redefinition (SAMR)?

There are few answers:

1. Maybe you don't need to, sometimes good old-fashioned traditional tools are more effective than using a screen, hard for me to admit that it is true… Sometimes. But not as often as Technophobes would have you believe… but if all you are doing is replacing with technology then there really is no point.
2. Maybe amplification (or augmentation/ modification in the SAMR model) is perfectly okay for the task at hand. Technology doesn't have to transform learning for it to be beneficial, I have often found that if we let the kids have the freedom, they can transform learning all by themselves. They can take amplified practice and transform it due to their greater confidence, or more effective use of technology, more effective than was maybe conceived by the teacher...
3. Focus on what it is about ICTs that make them unique—called 'unique affordances' or 'features'. Avril Loveless* listed these back in 2002 as
   
   "provisionality, interactivity, capacity, range, speed and automatic functions which enable users to do things that could not be done as effectively, or at all, using other tools." (Loveless, 2005)
   
   I found that list to be a little ... long, ie hard to recall/use, and a little out of date, in terms of the development of social media, and the internet in the past 10 years; so I took the liberty of coming up with my own. Actually I came up with this before I came across the 'Loveless List' as I call it. Mine is a framework for amplifying/transforming ICT use, called SAMMS: Situated learning that makes the most of access to plethora of online resources, to work in ways that are multimodal, mutable and socially networked. Here's a link:
   
   http://doverdlc.blogspot.sg/2013/10/a-framework-for-transformational.html

And more here on this blog if you want it:

http://pr0tean.blogspot.sg/search/label/SAMMS

*Unless it's just less, in which case less is just ... less.

Fullan M & Donnelly K (2013). Alive in the swamp, assessing digital innovations in education. London: Nesta. Available online: www. nesta. org. uk/library/documents/Alive_in_the_Swamp.pdf.

*Hughes J, Thomas R & Scharber C (2006). Assessing Technology Integration:

The RAT – Replacement, Amplification, and Transformation - Framework.

Loveless A, & Ellis V (2005). ICT, pedagogy, and the curriculum: Subject to change. London: Routledge/Falmer.

Pea R D (1985). Beyond amplification: using the computer to reorganise mental functioning. Educational psychologist, 20 (4)167 – 182.

Reinking D (1997). Me and my hypertext :). A multiple digression analysis of technology and literacy (sic). The reading teacher, 50 (8), 626 – 643.

http://www.slideshare.net/joanhughes/hughes-scharber-site2006

Is '21st C learning' different, really?

Yes.

Yes it is.

It bears stating explicitly – as, although the literature constantly implies this, it is rarely, if ever actually stated; when we talk about ‘21st Century learning', what we are really talking about is the effective, ubiquitous, transparent availability of ICTs for teachers and students to use anywhere and anytime to support teaching and learning (Weiser, 1991; 1999; van't Hooft & Swan, 2007).

That means computers. Lots of computers. They don't even have to have glowing apples on the back of them (although that does help). And when we say computers what we are really talking about are screens, lots of screens. 

There is a growing consensus, particularly amongst educators, that students need these ‘21st century skills’ to be successful today. The truth is that the skills often touted in this context, such as the 4 Cs of,

‘critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation”
(The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2013) 

... are not actually unique to this century at all. They have been core components of human progress throughout history, (Rotherham & Willingham, 2009).  The fact is that much of the rhetoric spouted by ardent proponents of the 21st Century movement is nothing but chronocentrism (try using that word in Scrabble), considering that these attributes were already articulated by people like John Dewey on the cusp of the twentieth century, never mind the ancient civilizations whose ‘4 Cs’ formed the foundations of our own civilizations:

“… it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions.” (Dewey, 1897)

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.

How? I'll tell you how. These kinds of experiences, or modes of learning are being transformed by...

SAMMS from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Situated practice. 

Now learning can easily be a ‘situated practice’ in that learning can more easily be connected to specific ‘domains’ of activity – ‘the settings, participants, discourses and dynamics of participation’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Therefore people may make connections between experiences even if the borders between domains seem to be highly delineated, such as home and school. ICTs enable educators to make the boundaries between school and life and work more permeable. This enables students and teachers to develop their skills, not as competencies out of context, but in ways that are authentically connected to other aspects of their learning (Davies & Merchant, 2009; Willett, Robinson & Marsh, 2009).

Access (that is unprecedented)

The ultimate power of learning using ICTs is access. This has been at the heart of the vision for these tools since they were first envisaged in Silicon Valley towards the end of the 1960s; the unprecedented access to reliable tools, “... tools to conduct our own education, find our own inspiration, shape our own environment, and share our adventures with whoever is interested (Brand, 1969; ref Isaacson, 2011).”

Digital technologies provide an unprecedented level of global access that is unique in history – a level of access that means the collective and individual success of entire societies, regardless of class, culture, or creed, depends on having such skills, not just a social or academic elite.

Finding facts wasn't always so easy. It's easy to forget that, until recently, much of the world's data and information was piled on the shelves of traditional libraries. And the rest of it was, “housed in proprietary databases that only deep pocketed institutions could afford and well trained experts could access” (Pink, 2006, p 102). But today, facts are ubiquitous, nearly free, and easily available. This has enormous consequences for how we work and live. When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to use them effectively; it is less about collecting dots, and more about learning how to connect the dots (Godin, 2012).

Teachers are faced with the historic opportunity of teaching students to know what to do with their power to access virtually unlimited amounts of information and to extend their own learning, about almost anything. Learners today have the world at their fingertips in ways that were unimaginable just a generation ago. World-renowned lectures, a symphony of voices and opinions, and peer-to-peer learning opportunities are all a click away; and with great access comes great accountability, now the opinions of many shine the light of criticism, correction and congratulation on words and ideas that would otherwise have remained in obscurity. The comments sections on pages across the web bear testament to the veracity of this form of 'peer review' that used to be the purview of the privileged, but is now the privilege of the people.

In addition to the sheer amount of content is access to unprecedented computing power, leveraging the horsepower of super-servers situated all over the globe that are connected 24/7 has potentiality that few users of the web even grasp never mind leverage. Yet. Combining this processing power with the the automaticity that computers are adept at has the power to relieve a generation of the tedium that was common place to their forebears—freeing them to concentrate on more creative endeavours instead.

We can not only access a wealth of knowledge online, we can also be makers, creators, participants and doers engaged in active and self-directed inquiry (Ito et al, 2013).

Multimodality & Mutability  

Screen centred learning means that speech and writing are already being pushed to the margins of and replaced by image and others. The once dominant page, especially in terms of the newspaper and the book, is giving way to the screen (Kress, 2005). Writing is now no longer the central mode of representation;learning materials—textbooks, web-based resources, teacher-produced materials. Still and moving images are increasingly prominent as ‘makers of meaning’. Uses and forms of writing have undergone profound changes over the last few decades (Bezemer & Kress, 2010). Two trends mark that history; digital media, rather than the (text) book, are quickly becoming the preferred medium for distribution of learning resources, and writing is being marginalised as image becomes the preferred form for representation. Users of the screen who have several windows open at once – chatting, browsing the internet, listening to music, are engaged in forms of ‘attention management’ entirely unlike the retreating, reflective modes expected when reading traditional written text. 

Texts are becoming increasingly multimodal, dynamic, fluid, multiply authored and ‘shared’ and, as a consequence, provisional. The humble 'undo' tool is arguably one of the most transformational ways of working ever conceived, it is the one screen tool I fervently wish I could use in real life.  This means that the screen is extremely forgiving, much more forgiving than a piece of paper—it will let you back out of almost anything you do, which is revolutionary when you’re engaged in the ultimate pursuit of  learning. The ability to undo, go back or escape is immensely reassuring—you know that you can always undo something if you get it wrong, which leads to an unprecedented sense of confidence— confidence to play and experiment.

Through this experimentation and play we learn and with knowledge comes a confidence in our own abilities. With the advent of the unique attributes and affordances of the screen ‘mending, mashing, and making’ has never been easier – by incorporating image and/or video – these can have a profound impact on the way people consume and create. As Kress explains in his contribution to Gillen & Barton’s research briefing on digital literacies, this 'multimodality' is revolutionising communication (Gillen & Barton, 2010). We can no longer treat image as merely decorative, or even just as ‘illustration’; images are now being used to make meaning just as much – though in different ways – as writing.

Social (asynchronous) Networking

We are in a period that could be characterised as a ‘fruitful turbulence’ in education (Kress, 2010). The Internet created a massive shift in how we access vast amounts of information and in the way it enables rapid communications. But the shift to what is currently termed ‘Web 2.0’ – the online tools that facilitate creative collaboration, (which are in many ways at the heart of this social learning transformation) promise to be even more disruptive, blurring the line between producers and consumers of content, and shifting attention from access to information toward access to other people. With these powerful ‘social learning’ practices, (Gillen & Barton, 2010) it is apparent that there have (already) been great changes, with far more people becoming involved in online social networking and online communications increasingly involving more than just two people.

It is this ‘Web 2.0’ shift towards creative participation that is another potentially transformative aspect of teaching and learning. Much of our knowledge arises from social interaction – whether we learn, and what we learn, depends on our relationships with others. Sometimes these relationships will be the traditional one of teachers interacting with learners, but increasingly this involves learners interacting with other learners – the role of the teacher is shifting away from managing a teacher–learner dynamic towards coordinating or mediating peer learning (Luckin et al, 2012). New forms of multi-user collaboration are ubiquitous now that ‘free’ tools such as 'Google Docs' can be edited by different users, working in synchronous – and perhaps more excitingly, asynchronous ways. This ‘asynchronicity’ enables students to,

“learn in and out of school, through activities that start in the classroom and then continue in the home or outside, enhanced by technology that reinforces, extends and relates formal and non-formal learning (TEL report, 2012, p 9)”. 

Since students can express their thoughts without interruption, they have more time to reflect and respond than in a traditional classroom (Shea, 2003]. This ‘peer-based learning’ is characterised by “a context of reciprocity”, (Ito et al, 2008, p 39) where participants don't just contribute, but also comment on, and contribute to the content of others. This practice is already becoming relatively seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the classroom so that dialogue and pupil collaboration can be enhanced and extended, (Garrison, 2004) a cooperative combination of multiple interactions, which is indicative of a new, collaborative pedagogical practice.

Welcome to the 21st Century. It's not about 4 Cs, it's about SAMMS, it is learning which is transformed by:

Situated practice (work anywhere)
Accessibility (information)
Multi-modality (screen centred)
Mutability (provisionality)
Social networking (people power) 

Situated Access that is Multi-Modal, Mutable & Socially Networked

References

Bezemer J & Kress G (2009). Visualizing English: a social semiotic history of a school subject. Visual communication, 8(3), 247-262.

Brand S (1968). The whole earth catalog: access to tools. Sausalito, Calif.: Point 

Davies J A & Merchant M G (2009). Web 2.0 for schools: Learning and social participation (Vol. 33). Peter Lang Pub Incorporated.

Dewey J (1897). My Pedagogic Creed. School Journal vol 54 (January 1897), pp 77-80.

Garrison, D R (2004). Student role adjustment in online communities of inquiry: model and instrument validation. Journal for Asynchronous Learning Networks 8: 61–74.

Gillen J and Barton D (2010). Digital Literacies. A Research Briefing by the Technology Enhanced Learning phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme.

Godin S (2003). Stop Stealing Dreams (What is school for?). Retrieved 10 October, 2012 from http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams

Isaacson W (2011). Steve Jobs. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Ito M, Horst H, Bittanti M, boyd d, Herr-Stephenson B, Lange P G, Pascoe C J, and Robinson L (2008). Living and learning with new media: summary of findings from the Digital Youth Project. Chicago, Ill.: John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation.

Ito M, Gutiérrez K, Livingstone S, Penuel B, Rhodes J, Salen K, Schor J, Sefton-Green J, Watkins S C (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. 

Kress G (2005). Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and composition, 22(1), 5-22.

Kress G (2010). The profound shift of digital literacies. A Research Briefing by the Technology Enhanced Learning phase of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme. 

Lave J & Wenger E (1998). Communities of practice. Retrieved June, 9, 2008.

Luckin R, Bligh B, Manches A, Ainsworth S, Crook C and Noss R (November 2012). Decoding Learning: The Proof, Promise and Potential of digital education. Online. Retrieved 18 November, 2012, from http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/DecodingLearningReport.pdf 

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Retrieved 28 April, 2013, from http://www.p21.org

Pink D H (2006). A whole new mind: why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Riverhead Books.

Shea P J, Pickett A M, Pelz W E (2003). "A follow-up investigation of ‘teaching presence’ in the SUNY Learning Network", Journal for Asynchronous Learning Networks 7: 61–80.

The TEL Report (2012). System Upgrade – Realising the Vision for UK education.  A report from the ESRC/EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning Research Programme. Director: Noss R, London Knowledge Lab.

van't Hooft M and Swan K (2007). Ubiquitous computing in education: Invisible technology, visible impact. Lawrence erlbaum associates.

Weiser M (1991). The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American, 265(3), 94-104.

Weiser M (1999). The computer for the 21st century. ACM SIGMOBILE mobile computing and communications review, 3(3), 3-11.

Willett R, Robinson M, & Marsh J (2009). Play, creativity and digital cultures (Vol. 17). Routledge.