Friday, August 31, 2007

OUCH!

















The ABCs Of Fast Growth

Area Tech Firms Plug Into Education

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 30, 2007; D01

Fairfax County school officials this fall are carrying BlackBerrys that connect to a database of student information, including parent contacts and medical warnings. Dartmouth students are using wikis, blogs, podcasts and other interactive media tools for their courses. A graduate school at Carnegie Mellon has bought new, Web-based software to administer financial aid.

The initiatives are all the work of Washington-area businesses -- part of a wave of education technology companies that have emerged in the region in recent years. Defywire, based in Herndon, makes the mobile database software that is being used by Fairfax schools. Learning Objects, in the District, sold Dartmouth the Web products, and Regent Education of Frederick created the financial aid software.

All told, more than 20 education technology companies have set up shop in greater Washington. Some cater to universities, others to local school systems. Some help educators manage big budgets and intricate bureaucracies; others provide tools for use in the classroom -- or, in some cases, seek to replace the classroom altogether.

What many of the companies share, executives say, is fast growth and a belief that schools will increasingly come to rely on technology, trends that they hope could be attractive to high-powered investors.

"The volume of opportunity in education technology is far greater than it was five years ago," said Frank Bonsal III, a Baltimore venture capitalist. He is trying to raise money to start a fund to invest in education companies.

One test of the sector's strength could come soon as a Herndon company called K12, a provider of online curricula, attempts to go public. Company executives declined to comment on their plans as federal regulators review their registration, filed late last month, to hold a $172.5 million initial public offering. The application said that sales at the company increased from $71.4 million in 2004 to $116.9 million in 2006.

Several company executives cited Blackboard, an education software behemoth based in the District, as a catalyst for new ventures. The company, they say, is evidence that an education software company can prosper. Venture capitalists have long been wary of putting money into these companies because school budgets are notoriously unpredictable and changing political priorities can affect the decisions of administrators.

Blackboard was founded in 1997 by a few 20-somethings who quit comfortable jobs to start the company. The dot-com boom swept up Blackboard, and it weathered the subsequent bust before going public. Last year, it had sales of $180 million.

"There's this whole new emerging category of academic technology that's just started to be invested in by universities," said Michael Chasen, Blackboard's chief executive. "That's helping to spawn new types of companies."

Those companies include firms started or populated by former Blackboard executives.

An original member of the team that founded Blackboard, Greg Davies, left to start Presidium Learning in 2003. He was looking to provide technical support to universities, which, he figured, would need help as they increased their investments in information technology.

At the beginning, Presidium had a few hundred thousand dollars in contracts, much of it acquired through Blackboard. "They've provided us with strong partnerships and access to their sales team," Davies said. Last year, Presidium did more than $10 million in sales.

Derek Hamner and Hal Herzog, founders of Learning Objects, are two other Blackboard alumni who have left the company but continue to capitalize on its software.

Learning Objects builds extensions to Blackboard's best-known product, a system that allows schools to manage their courses online. Specialized Web sites allow teachers to post reading lists, homework and other materials, and students can submit their work.

Learning Objects' software allows professors to use wikis, blogs, podcasts and other new media tools. "Students go out into the real world, and instead of coming back to class, they'll keep a journal or a reflective blog related to their experience that they can share" with their class, Hamner said.

Jill Stelfox, a former wireless executive and self-described "crazed mother," created Defywire in 2003 to allow teachers, coaches and other school officials to use their BlackBerrys and handheld devices to access information on students from a school's central database.

Venture capitalists have been impressed by the idea, in use in 40 school districts. Intersouth Partners of Durham, N.C., Amplifier Venture Partners of McLean and Anthem Capital of Baltimore have poured $17 million into the company.

Novak Biddle and Updata Partners of Reston have invested in Spectrum K-12, which makes special education software. The software is used to keep tabs on 6 million of the 44 million special education students in the country and is used in Montgomery and Loudoun counties.

The local market does not come without challenges. Bonsal, the Baltimore venture capitalist, said fellow investors are skeptical about putting money into education start-ups, although they are willing to back more-developed companies.

Ed Meehan, an Oakton venture capitalist who follows the education market closely, said the incentives for innovation in education technology are not the same as in other markets.

"The people who are making the purchasing often gain no personal benefit by picking a cool new technology," he said.

Even the big guys can feel the pressure. Blackboard may one day find itself squaring off against competitors offering similar course-management solutions at far reduced costs. One such technology, called Moodle, is free. Some companies have created businesses around hosting and supporting Moodle operations -- at, say, $1 a student. Martin Knott, chief executive of such a service, called MoodleRooms, said his two-year-old company grew at a rate of 1,500 percent last year, to 350 clients, and is expected to quintuple in size this year. UCLA recently switched to Moodle as its course-management software.

Oakland Wireless and Wireless Washtenaw! SIGN-ON to PROJECT!

Oakland, Washtenaw wireless systems coming soon

Posted on 8/30/2007 8:45:39 AM


Municipal wireless projects in Oakland and Washtenaw counties should be complete in 2008 and will offer considerable economic development benefits, officials of the two counties told a Great Lakes IT Report - WWJ Newsradio 950 breakfast Thursday.

The systems, Wireless Oakland and Wireless Washtenaw, will offer particular advantages for rural areas in western Washtenaw and northern Oakland counties, which are currently limited to broadband.

"West of Zeeb Road, we don't have access" to broadband, Washtenaw County deputy county executive and CIO David Beehan said during the event. He said business owners in western Washtenaw are telling the county, "We only have dial-up, and it's killing us."

Beehan and Phil Bertolini, Oakland County deputy executive and CIO, outlined their respective counties' progress toward free wireless Web access to a crowd of about 100 at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield.

Bertolini said the inspiration for the project came from a 2004 visit by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson to Dubai, which has universal Web access.

"Brooks said there's four square miles of Dubai, there's 910 square miles of Oakland County -- make it so," Bertolini said.

Both counties' projects involve no government investment or ownership. Instead, the counties are making government assets such as power poles and radio towers available for free to a private sector partner that provides the actual service. A basic level of service -- 128 kilobits per second, about twice as fast as dial-up -- is provided free, with higher speeds available at a price. The provider also gets advertising revenue from a portal start page that all users begin at.

In Oakland County, those upsell rates and prices range from $19.95 a month for 512 kilobits per second download speed to $39.95 a month for 1.5 megabits per second.

Berolini said Wireless Oakland's Phase I has covered 18.5 square miles, an area comprised of 35,000 households and businesses. So far, 11,000 of them have signed up -- far exceeding the county's initial projection of a 5 percent signup rate. Of the 11,000, about 200 are paying for higher speeds, Bertolini added.

Bertolini said Wireless Oakland is currently developing its rollout schedule for the rest of the county, which should be complete by the end of 2008.

Roughly the same schedule is in effect for Washtenaw County, which has a 15-square-mile pilot system operating in Saline, Manchester and downtown Ann Arbor. In Washtenaw, though, only 300 have signed up.

Both counties said government is one of the "anchor tenants" of the system and will use it extensively.

And Bertolini said the system is already paying off in terms of economic development.

"We already have companies contacting Oakland County and saying that part of the reason we are looking to locate in Oakland County is that the county is building a wireless network across 910 square miles," Bertolini said.

Behen said Washtenaw County got its inspiration not from Dubai, but from the fact that the private sector simply doesn't seem interested in providing broadband to rural areas.

"I'm not going to argue with the private sector," Behen said. "But in my position as deputy county administrator and CIO, I have to think a little bigger, and think about the quality of life for those areas."

Both plans also include programs to bridge the digital divide, once the wireless network is up and running. The counties will be providing free or low-cost computers and training for low-income residents.

Both speakers also said they're watching the development of WiMax technology carefully, but that it's still years away from widespread use. Oakland County is already using WiMax for backhaul, Bertolini said.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Something to Emulate!

2007 Forum
2007 Innovative Teachers Forum Winners

Learning teams from the following schools have been chosen by our selection committee to participate in the 2007 Microsoft U.S. Innovative Teachers Forum:

Abington High School, Abington, PA
Aspen Valley High School, Colorado Springs, CO
Austin Jewish Academy, Austin, TX
Byng Junior High School, Ada, OK
Central Middle School, Portage, MI
Cleveland High School, Seattle, WA
Columbus East High School, Columbus, IN
Fayetteville High School, Sylacauga, AL
Ft. Sumner High School, Fort Sumner, NM
Highland Park High School, Highland Park, IL
Highlands Elementary School, Saugus, CA
J.Clyde Hopkins Elementary School, Sherwood, OR
Keith Valley Middle School, Horsham, PA
Libby Center Tessera Program, Spokane, WA
Mary Institute Country Day School, St. Louis, MO
New River Middle School, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Park View High School, Sterling, VA
South Columbia Elementary School, Martinez, GA
St. John's Episcopal School, Dallas, TX
Sun Prairie High School, Sun Prairie, WI
Washington Elementary School, Washington, UT
William C. McGinnis Middle School, Perth Amboy, NJ

The winning teams described a wide range of collaboration strategies and projects which incorporate 21st century learning. For example, junior high students used math, science, and technology to develop an award-winning plan to increase school safety in their community, and elementary students learned about the real-life skills necessary to qualify for and run in the Iditarod race.

In the next couple of months, we'll bring you news and information from the Forum about the teaching and learning of these outstanding teams of educators.

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Importance: URGENT!

The Preschool Question: Who Gets to Go?

Va. Expansion Efforts Highlight Debate

By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 22, 2007; A01

The children in Carrie Hamilton's preschool class yesterday drew wobbly hearts with wobbly letters underneath. They tapped the buttons on a toy cash register and raced cars over roads built of wooden tracks. Hidden in the games and giggles were lessons on the building blocks of reading and math.

These Fairfax County 4- and 5-year-olds are part of a national push to devote more public resources to the youngest learners. They are also at the center of a debate, underscored last week in a Virginia policy shift, over whether the government should offer preschool to all children or concentrate on those from poor families.

Nationwide, about 950,000 children are enrolled in state-funded preschool, a 36 percent increase from five years ago, said experts who track the programs. As advocates promote quality pre-kindergarten as a way to prepare children for school, strengthen the workforce and reduce crime, states have increased funding since 2005 for such programs by 75 percent, to $4.2 billion, according to the District-based organization Pre-K Now. Some in Congress have also proposed more federal money to help build state preschool initiatives.

The questions about which children will benefit most from government-funded preschool and how great the investment should be are at the core of Virginia's effort to expand pre-kindergarten but have also arisen in Maryland. Next week, in its first foray into all-day preschool, Montgomery County plans to introduce full-day, federally funded Head Start classes for 260 students at 10 elementary schools that serve low-income neighborhoods. This week, Prince George's County expanded its full-day state-funded preschool program by half, to 261 classes, also targeting students from poor families.

After campaigning in 2005 to offer free preschool to every 4-year-old in Virginia regardless of family income, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) scaled back his plan last week and said he would focus resources on the neediest children.

In an interview yesterday, Kaine said his pledge to launch universal preschool was prompted by research showing that a tremendous amount of learning takes place before the first day of kindergarten. But education experts persuaded Kaine to build on the work of existing public and private preschools.

"Instead of just creating a system from scratch, why not take the existing network and focus on the goals of increasing access and increasing quality?" Kaine said. "We can change the financial criteria to help kids who can't afford it and have an impact on the quality of all parts of the system."

Virginia 4-year-olds who qualify for free school lunches -- those in households with incomes of less than $27,000 for a family of four -- are eligible for free preschool, and about 12,500 children take part at an annual state cost of about $50 million. Kaine's plan would extend benefits to children in families with incomes up to $38,000. The new proposal, which envisions enrolling about 17,000 more underprivileged children by 2012, would cost an additional $75 million a year.

Kaine also is calling for a state-led rating system to help parents gauge how providers measure up. Preschools, much like restaurants or hotels, would be rated on a five-star scale based on such factors as the educational level and training of teachers, class sizes and an expert's classroom observation.

Kaine's plan to offer universal preschool for all 100,000 4-year-olds in the state would have cost about $300 million annually.

Bruce Fuller, an education and public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley who is a leading proponent of income-targeted funding, said research has shown that children from poor families get the biggest boost from high-quality preschool. He said universal preschool provides unneeded benefits to wealthy families and said the emphasis should be on helping children in lower-income homes, who tend to start school knowing fewer letters and numbers than their peers.

"We need to focus scarce dollars where the benefit is the greatest, and that's to children from low-income and blue-collar households," Fuller said. "If dollars are sprinkled across all families rich and poor, it's illogical to think early learning gaps will be narrowed."

But other education experts said the country should shift to preschool for all children. They say every dollar spent on public preschool will improve school performance, lessen the need for remedial education and have other long-term benefits.

A recent study of New Mexico's preschoolers showed that students in the state program learned many more words and scored higher on a test of early math skills than peers who didn't attend.

"Even though it costs more, the public is better off if they make sure it gets to all kids," said W. Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. "Even middle-income kids, the middle 60 percent, have a 1 in 10 chance of failing a grade, a 1 in 10 chance of dropping out of high school. A lot of that can be traced to how far behind they were when they started kindergarten."

Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K Now, which backs universal access, applauded Kaine's proposal. "Given the political realities of the state, he's starting where he should," Doggett said, alluding to Virginia's budget constraints.

The federal Head Start program provides preschool for about 900,000 children from low-income homes across the country, and many states fund classes targeted largely to disadvantaged children. Georgia and Oklahoma offer universal preschool that reaches large percentages of children. Other states, including West Virginia and New York, are working toward such programs.

In Florida, voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2002 that mandates pre-kindergarten for all children, but critics contend the quality of the program has suffered because of a lack of funding. Last year, California voters rejected a ballot measure that would have taxed the wealthy to pay for universal preschool.

In the District, more than 5,000 children are enrolled in full-day preschool programs in public schools.

The nonprofit preschool of Annandale Christian Community for Action, where Hamilton's students played yesterday, is one of several private centers in a pilot program started by Kaine to help Virginia reach more children from disadvantaged homes. This summer, the center has new state funding for 26 additional children.

Camilla Torejo, 4, showed off her artwork as classmates flipped through books, played computer games and zoomed around with toy cars. "I made this heart and this heart and this heart," Camilla said. Next to them, she wrote her name.

Staff writer Daniel de Vise contributed to this report.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Batter UP!

Published Online: August 14, 2007

Commentary


Why Education Reform Is Like Baseball


Thoughts for the Days of Summer

By Jeanne Century

If you are looking for an entertaining summer read, what could be more promising than a David-and-Goliath baseball story? That’s what I expected as I opened Michael Lewis’ 2003 best-seller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. But before I had finished the first chapter, I realized this was more than a sports story, and that my hopes of being distracted from the work of improving education were not going to be realized.

Moneyball tells many stories, one of which is how General Manager Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s used an otherwise disregarded statistic—on-base percentage—as a strategy for selecting players. His scouts were accustomed to the more traditional approach to finding baseball stars: traveling across the country and recruiting those who looked “right.” Beane’s analytic approach was decidedly unpopular, and the story of its implementation before the 2002 season is yet another illustration of the fact that, whether in baseball or education, systems are stubborn.

Moneyball tells about a system that did not want to change; of practices held steadfast in tradition; and of how a leader, with the right motivation and insight, innovated for success. So, as this season winds down and you sit watching nine innings, consider these nine lessons for educators drawn from an unlikely place: America’s simple favorite pastime—baseball.

1. Don’t go for the home runs … just get on base and the rest will come. Beane didn’t win baseball games by hoping for home runs. Home runs are rare, and hope doesn’t win games. He understood that individual players don’t win games; teams do—when they work together in a process of creating runs. In education, we identify isolated strategies that we hope will be our home runs. But experience tells us that a better approach is to get solidly and clearly “on base.” Then, the system can work, each piece supporting the other, stepping up when necessary and stepping back to “sacrifice” if that is what will win the game. The only way the system can work is if everyone buys in and does his or her part.

In a quickly changing world, practices that once worked can become ineffective artifacts, and those most familiar to us may be the very ones that are in fact standing in the way of improvement.

2. Money is important, but it is not the answer. Beane had to spend his team’s meager $40 million wisely; other clubs had several times that amount. So he set out to identify ways he could use his money more efficiently. As Lewis writes, “[I]n professional baseball it still matters less how much money you have than how well you spend it.” Instead of investing in one big star, Beane sought out those players who were regularly and consistently getting on base (see lesson one). We in education need to find ways to get on base. Small steps are enough if they are consistent and well informed. The smartest strategies don’t necessarily cost the most money. Indeed, some of them don’t cost anything at all.

3. Be willing to change the things that are the most familiar. When it came time to make changes, Beane identified a part of his organization that looked most like the others—his scouting department—and that is where he made changes that were key for his success. Educators can take a lesson from this. In a quickly changing world, practices that once worked can become ineffective artifacts, and those most familiar to us may be the very ones that are in fact standing in the way of improvement.

4. Decisions should be made with personal investment, but not overpersonalized. In baseball, the people who make the decisions generally have played the game at one time or another and, as Lewis puts it, they “generalize wildly from their own experience.” This sounds familiar? We all have personal experience with education, and it is easy to think that what worked for us will work for others. We need to make good decisions grounded in personal experience and beliefs. But we need to recognize that beliefs built on the experience of one person, or even a few people, may not hold the answers for the country as a whole.

5. Make decisions based on experience and evidence, not on impressions. Lewis tells us that baseball scouts had a dislike of short, right-handed pitchers and a “distaste” for fat catchers. But Beane looked past appearances and turned to performance. While scouts chose players without looking very far below the surface, Beane looked at past performance and made informed decisions based on what was most likely to happen next. In other words, he paid attention to history to inform his shaping of the future. In education, we need to hold our goals clearly in our sights while remembering to look below the surface and consider all that we know. Informed by our history, we can look optimistically forward.

6. The changing environment makes old rules obsolete. Lewis notes that some practices of baseball are vestiges of a time long gone when players wore no gloves and fields were rough expanses of dirt. Likewise, the education system was invented at a time when the world looked quite different, and yet, the instruction and function of our schools often looks very much the same. Even as ball fields have built lights and digital scoreboards, the object of the game has stayed the same. Likewise, the object of our “game” stays the same, but the setting is very different. We need to discard the obsolete practices and find those that will keep us apace in our growing world.

7. There is resistance to new knowledge and ideas. The book explains that as baseball statistics became more sophisticated and available, those inside the sport relegated them to a “cult” of users. Lewis notes that “there was a profusion of new knowledge and it was ignored. … [Y]ou didn’t have to look at big-league baseball very closely to see its fierce unwillingness to rethink anything.” This sounds painfully familiar. In education, we say we want to innovate and improve. But saying it and acting on it are two different things. Few are willing to let go of the familiar to take the risk of embracing the promising, but still unknown.

8. People do things even when there is evidence that they don’t work. Oddly, in baseball and education alike, people do things even though it’s clear that they don’t work. In baseball, for example, players might steal bases even when it seems to be statistically pointless or even self-defeating. In education, we know that an incremental, evidence-based approach will get us where we want to go. And yet, we continue to implement popular (albeit unproven) strategies on unrealistic timelines because that is what the constituents want, even if, in the end, it won’t help win the game.

9. A system is a system is a system. Lewis quotes the innovative baseball statistician Voros McCracken, who once wrote: “The problem with major-league baseball … is that it’s a self-populating institution. … [T]hey aren’t equipped to evaluate their own systems. They don’t have the mechanisms to let in the good and get rid of the bad. They either keep everything or get rid of everything, and they rarely do the latter.”

As I sat in the warm summer sun, I had to check the cover of the book, just to make sure I hadn’t accidentally picked up a book about education.

Jeanne Century is the director of science education and research and evaluation at the University of Chicago’s Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Thank You for PARTICIPATING in this Virtual Community!

August 15, 2007

Building Virtual Communities

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

from Technology & Learning

Online communities of practice are central to 21st century professional development. In this excerpt from techlearning.com, an expert shares her views—and we invite yours.

Building Virtual Communities

















Author, consultant, and social learning theorist Etienne Wenger describes virtual learning communities as electronic communities of practice where you find groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion for a topic. These communities deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. According to Wikipedia, traditional communities of practice are "based around situated learning in a colocated setting." In the blogosphere however, we see community developed not by common location, but through pockets of common interest.

Capacity Building

I spend a lot of time participating in communities online. I have had the opportunity to see some of the best and some of the worst in action. I am thankful for the new electronic models of professional growth that inspire me daily to think and collaborate differently. The diversity of ideas and thoughts represented in my community 21st Century Collaborative push the boundaries of my thinking as I share knowledge and do my part to advocate for educational reform.

The way I see it, social networking tools have the potential to bring enormous leverage to teachers at relatively little cost. The burning question: How can we accelerate the adoption and full integration of 21st century teaching and learning strategies in schools today?

What Makes a Community Successful?

A burgeoning body of opinion suggests virtual learning communities are becoming the venue through which agents for change operate. The potential is enormous, as knowledge capital is collected and the community becomes a sort of online brain trust, representing a highly varied accumulation of expertise. However, successful virtual learning communities are hard to come by, and many seem to fade away almost as soon as they get started. This past June at the EduBloggerCon at NECC several online community leaders tried to think about components and attributes of successful learning communities. The following are tips and tricks garnered from my lessons learned as I have created and led virtual learning communities for various purposes over the last seven years.

The Community Organizer

Typically, community organizers foster member interaction, provide stimulating material for conversations, keep the space organized, and help hold members accountable to the stated community guidelines, rules, or norms. They also build a shared culture by passing on community history and rituals. Perhaps most important, community organizers are keenly aware of how to empower participants to do these things for themselves. Organizers use their group facilitation skills to help all members of the community to become active participants in the process. They work hard behind the scenes to support socializing and relationship-and trust-building.

Points to Consider

Besides finding the right organizer, other key attributes of successful online communities include:

  • a shared vision of what constitutes the mission or niche of the community

  • a core group willing to chime in on a variety of topics, self-monitor, and keep the conversation rolling

  • opportunities for content creation such as book reviews, book chats, lesson sharing, and other professional development input

  • regular posting of relevant, provocative issues.

Here are some questions you need to ask when designing your learning community:

  • Will communications be asynchronous, synchronous, or both?

  • Will we need file-storage and file-sharing capabilities?

  • How will we share and store links to Web-based resources?

  • How will we support collaboration on projects?

  • Will we need archiving capability for Webcasts, chats, and threaded discussions?

  • Will we need polling or surveying tools as part of our work?

  • Is voice capability important for our synchronous events?

  • Is a member profiling tool an important feature?

  • What recruitment and rollout strategy will we have?

  • Is the community open or closed?

Measuring Impact

Evaluation needs to be built in to this work from the beginning. In addition to any evaluation done in connection with scholarly research, it is critically important for organizers to use "just-in-time" assessments that allow for continuous improvement of the virtual community experience. Since this is a relatively new field, many research questions remain to be answered.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is a regular speaker on teacher leadership and virtual community building. Her Web portal is 21st Century Collaborative.

21st Century Digital Learning Environments would like to hear your comments on and experiences with virtual learning communities:

  • What role does Web 2.0 play in the development of teacher leadership and implementation of school reform through the communities in which we learn and play?

  • What are the components of successful, thriving virtual communities?

  • Do intentional roles and norms lead to building the trust that is necessary for a community to grow?

  • Does part of the answer to meaningful change and implementation of 21st century skills and dispositions in schools lie in the collaboration that occurs in virtual learning environments?
To participate in the conversation, visit http://www.digitallearningenvironments.blogspot.com

The TIP(S) of the ICEBERG!

November 1, 2006

Tips for Building an Online Community

Susan Taylor

Attention school administrators: using technology to support virtual collaboration and establish an online community can serve as a useful tool to “keep the fire burning” among a planning group and help bring positive resolution to the task at hand.

The value of bringing the school community and various stakeholders together to address problems, find solutions and generally contribute to improving situations on the campus cannot be overstated. The most common way to bring people together is to host a face-to-face meeting. However, most issues are not resolved during a one-time meeting and follow up is usually required. In today’s world of competing priorities, it is difficult to find the space and time amenable to everyone’s schedule to allow for follow-up and ongoing conversations. To the rescue comes Virtual collaboration, and it can make a real difference.

Virtual Collaboration Tools

Virtual collaboration may be either Synchronous or Asynchronous. The difference: if it occurs during real-time activities like video teleconferencing or audio conference, where people are in different places participating at the same time, it is Synchronous; but if it enables participants to join in from different places at different times, then it is Asynchronous.

Some strategies to support virtual collaboration include the following:

  • Establish regular times for team interaction
  • Send agendas to participants beforehand
  • Designate a team librarian
  • Build and maintain a team archive
  • Use visual forms of communication where possible
  • Set formal rules for communication and/or technology use

Establishing an Online Community

To accommodate an online community, it is useful to think about the media being utilized and its effect on group dynamics. Kimball (1997, p. 3) provides some useful questions to help you with this process:

Media

Questions for Facilitator/Manager

Electronic Mail

  • What norms need to be established for things like: response time, whether or not Email can be forwarded to others?
  • What norms are important about who gets copied on Email messages and whether or not these are blind copies?
  • How does the style of Email messages influence how people feel about the team?

Decision Making Support Systems

  • How does the ability to contribute anonymous input affect the group?
  • How can you continue to test whether “consensus” as defined by computer processing of input is valid?
  • How can you help participants have a sense of who is “present?”
  • How can you sense when people have something to say so you can make sure that everyone has a chance to be heard?

Media

Questions for Facilitator/Manager

Video conferencing

  • How can you best manage the attention span of participants?
  • Where can video add something you can’t get with audio only?

Asynchronous Web-Conferencing

  • How do you deal with conflict when everyone is participating at different times?
  • What’s the virtual equivalent of eye contact?
  • What metaphors will help you help participants create the mental map they need to build a culture, which will support the team process?

Document Sharing

  • How can you balance the need to access and process large amounts of information with the goal of developing relationships and affective qualities like trust?

Building trust and establishing relationships is cited as a challenge for online communities, so begin with a face-to-face meeting and then pursue the online community. During your face-to-face meeting, let people know that you want to continue the conversations and ask people to join your online community by submitting their Email addresses to you.

To reach as many people as possible, keep things simple in the beginning. Initiate your online community with listserv messages. Begin by sending a message to your group thanking them for attending your recent meeting. One way to begin interaction is to post a question and ask people to respond.

Consider if you want responses to go out to everyone on the listserv or if you want all responses to come to you and you will compile the responses and send back to everyone. Compilation of responses may help ensure anonymity for your members and encourage participation in the beginning when the trust level may not be where it needs to be.

As your online community grows, it will be useful to host an audio conference or another face-to-face meeting to continue the work on building trust.

Remember to offer content and information focused on participants’ interests. Provide resources to help participants make informed decisions. Although information sharing does not encourage community interaction, it may serve to reinforce continue use of the online community.

Use opportunities to share success stories and reward or recognize members.

As your group becomes comfortable with the online community, you may want to consider providing more sophisticated methods to support and maintain your community. Of course, this will be determined by your members’ level of expertise and ability to meet the technology requirements.

Email: Susan Taylor

REFERENCES

Kimball, L. (1997). Intranet Decisions: Creating your organization’s internal network, Miles River Press.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

21st Century Digital Learning Environments

AIM for Technologically EVOLVED Learning!

A Classroom Evolved

Students Advance Because of Technology and Real-World Application

By Missy Raterman

Diablo Valley College is one of three publicly supported two-year community colleges in the Contra Costa Community College District in California. DVC serves more than 22,000 students of all ages through more than 2,600 courses offered in 57 occupational specialties.

Many students at the college come from underrepresented socioeconomic groups. Thanks to a grant package that provided wireless technology, cash, and professional development, new learning experiences ignited student interest in the subject matter and helped them get a better focus for their studies.

Calculated Improvement

When Diablo Valley College Calculus II professor Despina Prapavessi was asked whether students entered her course with a strong background in the type of mathematics that they would be expected to engage in during the semester, she replied, "This particular class happened to have a rather weak background in many of the fundamentals they would need to build on for the purpose of the course, but once technology was incorporated in the classroom, participation and learning improved close to 20 percent."

As a recipient of a 2005 Hewlett-Packard Technology for Teaching Higher Learning grant award package, Prapavessi was able to redesign her curriculum with a focus on technology. This gave way to immediate results. Once technology was incorporated into the classroom, 17 percent of Prapavessi's students improved their scores by one to two letter grades during the 18-week semester. This course also reported a 98 percent attendance rate and Prapavessi saw a level of camaraderie between the students that she had never before experienced in her 16 years of teaching at DVC. Along with improving their ability to collaborate on projects in the classroom, students also strengthened their independent, critical thinking skills. These positive additions to the classroom environment resulted in a spike in the number of students with an overall score of 83 percent or higher.

During her course redesign, Prapavessi had a two-fold philosophy of teaching that guided her course development. She felt it was important that the curriculum supported:

  • Inquiry-based learning: A method that encourages students to question why they want to learn the subject at hand and creates the need for the learning to be relevant beyond the objective of classroom testing.

  • Cooperative-based learning: A method that stresses the importance of the social experience of classroom learning and supports the building of strong relationships between teacher and student, student and student, and student and curriculum.

To achieve this type of environment, Prapavessi felt that it was important to create memorable and active learning experiences, "It's important that students own their learning," she said.

Make it Fun

The award package Prapavessi received included, along with other amenities, 20 tablet PCs which were shared with two other classrooms in a rotation cycle. Personal familiarity with tablet PCs allowed Prapavessi to maximize the impact of having the technology in her classroom. Prapavessi experienced several positive results, which included:

Flexibility: Students could walk around the room taking notes and collecting data or work as a group in areas outside the classroom.

Ability to give feedback in real-time: The tablets, along with the software programs used in the course of the semester, allowed for instant submission and feedback of work during in-class problem solving exercises. Prapavessi was also able to garner anonymous submissions from students by way of the tablet PCs and then cast the submissions on the projector screen, using a software program to work through the students' misconceptions as a group.

Confidence: The new method of communication seemed to lighten the mood in the classroom so that students felt more comfortable making mistakes, which in turn made them more open to learning. The anonymity that the tablet PC submission process was able to provide in terms of feedback cycles also led to instances of many students "tagging" their submissions and including jokes to share on the projector, providing students with a way to laugh together while learning.

Keep it Relevant

Along with the inclusion of new technology in the classroom, Prapavessi's redesigned curriculum incorporated fieldtrips that allowed students to see how calculus is relevant in the real world. These trips included a visit to the Pacific Southwest Forest Service Station where students saw how mathematics can be used to study hawk migration and elk movements. A trip to Roche Pharmaceuticals prompted positive reactions from students. One student said, "The field trip was like the word problems we learned in class but more complex. So now we know that the math formulas we are learning are actually used in real life." The technology alone did not enhance the learning that occurred in the classroom. Rather, it was a combination of real-world applications and relevant teach-friendly technology that worked together to make learning accessible and pertinent to the students.

In the words of Jim Vanides, program manager of the Worldwide Higher Education Grants in the HP Corporate Philanthropy department, "If you take technology and throw it into a classroom where a professor is really focused on teaching the way they've always taught with no plan to really change the learning environment, you risk having the wrong things happen. It's the combination of exemplary teaching plus the power of the technology where the magic happens."

More Than Just the Hardware

HP's educational philanthropic philosophy initiatives focus on three major areas:

Transforming the learning experience: Integrating technology into classrooms to revolutionize teaching and learning processes.

Leading students to high-tech careers: Increasing the number of students on paths toward high-tech careers, emphasizing groups that are underrepresented in the technology sector.

Student success in math, science and engineering: Enhancing skills in math, science and engineering through national and district-wide school reform and teacher professional development.

When the U.S. HP Technology for Teaching Grant Initiative was launched in 2004, the grant supported projects in more than 400 schools. The original vision had been to commit $25 million over the course of what was intended to be a three-year program. However, HP will be funding its fourth year of grant recipients and has provided more than $36 million since 2004, impacting 589 K-12 public schools and 155 two- and four-year colleges and universities engaged in transforming teaching and learning through the integration of technology in the classroom and beyond. "The philosophy really is: plant a bunch of seeds, see which ones grow and then help those projects who are having the most success really blossom," says Vanides. During the past 20 years, HP has contributed more than $1 billion in cash and equipment to schools, universities, community organizations and other nonprofit organizations worldwide. However, HP strives to provide more than just the hardware for the educators and communities it supports, as Vanides notes, "If you just give away hardware, you might as well forget it."

Forging On

The learning for educators doesn't stop once the funding runs dry. Vanides is involved in several continuation projects that focus on the development of grant recipients and non-recipients. He is also committed to connecting educators with educators. "This is not about 'Here's some technology, have fun and good luck,'" Vanides says. "It's really, first and foremost about helping students learn better and giving professors a chance to redesign their course, and the technology is supposed to support all that. The projects are more about teaching than they are about technology, and what's interesting is that the technology allows teachers to do some things that they were never able to do before ... it creates a whole new social environment," says Vanides. Prapavessi remarked on this in her classroom, too: "It's refreshing to be able to have the freedom to explore new methods of teaching. For me, it makes the learning feel less fragmented."

The continuity and connectedness of the grant initiative is evident from the funding to the classroom and beyond. The process starts with visionaries like Vanides who strive to connect educators with global learning tools; the process is supported by the grant initiative which requires measurable outcomes; the process is enacted by leaders like Prapavessi who support students through innovative redesign and willingness to learn alongside them; and the process is further fueled by classroom software tools. With the right perspective, there are really no limits to what technology can inspire.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

CHANGE Comes From Outside but Must Resonate Inside!

Education Week

Published Online: August 14, 2007
Published in Print: August 15, 2007

Scholars Reaching Outside Education for School Fixes

By Debra Viadero


The story of how New York City’s beleaguered police department turned itself around between 1994 and 1996 has become a classic case study in graduate business schools.

Management students routinely read how William Bratton, the brash former police commissioner from Boston, took the helm of the Big Apple’s force and transformed it by introducing a computerized data-management system and changing the culture of police work.

Now, some education scholars, in newly published papers and a book out this month, say educators looking to turn around failing schools ought to heed lessons from leaders in other fields, such as Mr. Bratton, who have pulled off similar feats.

“There’s something to be learned from what other organizations have done in the corporate world, in churches, hospitals, and police departments, and, surely, there are things that are applicable to our business,” said Joseph F. Murphy, a professor of educational leadership at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and the co-author of Turning Around Failing Schools: Lessons From the Organizational Sciences, published by Corwin Press, of Thousand Oaks, Calif.

In practice, though, most school leaders and education researchers don’t refer to that wider body of research, according to Mr. Murphy and doctoral student and co-author Coby V. Meyers. “Indeed,” they write in the new volume, “there is an insularity and parochialism in the turnaround literature that is as arrogant as it is ill-advised.”

Mr. Murphy and Mr. Meyers are among a handful of education scholars who in recent years have begun to cast a wider net for advice on how to engineer successful school turnarounds. The need for turnaround strategies that work is more timely than ever.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the list of schools identified to be in need of help grows longer by the year, making educators increasingly desperate for some solid research-based advice.

A recent count by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center found that by the end of the 2005-06 school year, 1,200 U.S. schools had failed to meet the student-achievement targets set under the law for five years in a row. Another 800 schools fell short of their improvement goals for four straight years, according to the U.S. Department of Education. ("Turnarounds Central Issue Under NCLB", June 20, 2007.)

Changes at the Top

Yet the research base on successful turnaround strategies in education is too new and too thin to be of much help to those schools, scholars say. Existing studies in education, they say, tend to focus on making incremental, rather than dramatic, improvements and ignore decades of time-tested studies documenting what worked for managers in other fields.

If education scholars had looked at the deeper body of research beyond their backyard, Mr. Murphy contends, they would have found that some of their own intervention prescriptions conflict with the advice emerging from the turnaround studies outside their field.

For his own review, which took three years, Mr. Murphy analyzed hundreds of case studies and empirical reports dating back to 1970. Most of those studies, he said, conclude that changing the leadership at the top of the organization is a critical ingredient for a successful turnaround.

Turnaround Tactics

With an eye toward turning around failing schools, education scholars are looking to research from various sectors of society for ideas on how organizations can reverse downward trajectories. Some common themes have emerged.

In a cross-sector research review, Public Impact found that leaders of successful turnarounds sought continuous improvement.


■ The U.S. Army operationalized that idea, the study found, by requiring soldiers to complete “after-action reviews” to get them used to thinking about how they could improve their work.

Dramatic change comes in an organization when leaders are free to act quickly, regardless of whether they get permission to act upfront or whether they apologize for it afterward, according to Public Impact.


■ Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston recovered from a disastrous 1996 merger, according to the report, after the turnaround leader persuaded the governing board to steer clear of day-to-day management decisions.

After reading hundreds of studies over three years, scholars Joseph F. Murphy and Coby V. Meyers concluded that most successful turnaround leaders forge a clear vision of the future.


■ The vision behind IBM Corp.’s dramatic transformation in the 1990s, they said, was the idea that the Armonk, N.Y.-based company could move from manufacturing computer hardware to providing computer services, solutions, and networks.

—Debra Viadero

“The thinking is that, if an organization has failed, whether the individual leaders are responsible for it or not, they were there, and they’re unlikely to turn it around or they would have done it already,” he said.

Yet turnaround studies in education tend to underemphasize that aspect of the change process, in Mr. Murphy’s view.

On that point, though, the Vanderbilt professor is likely to draw some argument from his colleagues. There’s more than one way to think about changing leadership in failing schools, said Daniel L. Duke, the research director for a 3-year-old, state-sponsored initiative at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville aimed at training cadres of “turnaround specialists” to work with struggling schools. ("In Struggling Schools, ‘Turnaround’ Leaders Off to Promising Start," Dec. 7, 2005.)

Students in his program, which is jointly run by the university’s business and education schools, also read cases about successful organizational overhauls outside of education.

But, Mr. Duke added, “I’m talking about changing people within the organization and not just switching people.” He said program graduates have had as much success by retraining principals of low-performing schools as they have with replacing them.

By the same token, though, Mr. Murphy and other scholars warn against a complete change of staffing in schools, noting that such sweeping changes can exacerbate morale problems and rob the schools of individuals with institutional memory and practical knowledge of the system.

‘Begin With the Budget’

Mr. Murphy said his reading of the wider literature also suggests that school administrators need to spend more time upfront identifying where the problems and inefficiencies are in their organizations, rather than rushing out to find a school improvement model to adopt.

“Almost all other organizations begin with the budget and start identifying inefficiencies,” he said. “While you can argue that may not be applicable to schools, our argument is that you probably should start with the budget and figure out where current money can be reinvested to serve in the turnaround.”

Another common theme of turnaround studies, both inside and outside of education, is that it’s important to accomplish a few highly visible achievements in the first year, said Bryan C. Hassel, the co-director of Public Impact, an educational consulting firm based in Chapel Hill, N.C.

For a study led by his wife, Emily Ayscue Hassel, Mr. Hassel helped review 59 reports written since 2000 on successful turnarounds of schools, districts, hospitals, the U.S. Postal Service, the U.S. Army, city governments, and agencies serving disabled children, among other organizations.

A case study of the New York Police Department’s two-year turnaround, for instance, showed that Mr. Bratton used an “early win” strategy by pushing to get bulletproof vests and more powerful weapons for officers and ordering darker, more authoritative-looking uniforms in his first week on the job as police commissioner.

In subsequent months, he reduced processing time for arrests from an average of 16 hours to one hour and marshaled officers to clamp down on “quality of life” misdemeanors—most famously by cracking down on the then-ubiquitous “squeegee pests” who washed the windshields of cars stopped in traffic and then demanded payment for their efforts.

“You need early, tangible wins to build confidence,” Mr. Hassel said. “Otherwise, the demoralization continues.”

Plan Around Data

In their reviews, the Hassels and Mr. Murphy also found that successful organizational overhauls tended, in some fashion, to redirect workers to focus on or identify with their “customers.”

“One of the reasons that organizations fail consistently is that there’s a disconnect from customers,” Mr. Murphy said. “That’s one of the things you see less of in education.”

Across the spectrum, though, successful leaders in schools, police agencies, hospitals, and other organizations also brought about dramatic change by measuring and reporting progress and crafting an action plan based on the data they collect, according to experts.

One example from the broader body of work: Commissioner Bratton, a student himself of the literature on organizational management, brought in a sophisticated data-management system called Compstat that displayed maps and charts showing where crimes occurred and police-response patterns.

Using the system, the agency’s 76 precinct commanders presented data on their precincts’ progress at semiweekly meetings with top department officials.

Mr. Bratton’s story is famous in part because his changes appeared to produce dramatic, and widely reported, improvements. Between 1993 and 1995, a time when other major U.S. cities saw crime rates rise, incidences of crime in New York dropped by nearly 26 percent.

Stacey M. Childress, a lecturer in general management at the Harvard Business School, said she uses the NYPD case study with students in the Public Education Leadership Project, a 4-year-old program jointly run by Harvard’s business school and its graduate school of education.

Once they identify a successful strategy in the general literature, though, her students also examine the ways in which schools and districts have successfully adopted and adapted the same idea. After reading about the Compstat system, for instance, her students looked at case studies describing how schools in Montgomery County, Md., and Memphis, Tenn., used student-achievement data to improve schooling.

“Having a distillation of things that seem to work across multiple sectors is a great addition to the field,” she said. “But you need to take one more step and take the ideas you’ve distilled and test those on the ground in public education to see whether or not they do adapt to different contexts.”

“My guess,” she added, “is that many would.”

Coverage of education research is supported in part by a grant from the Spencer Foundation.

Friday, August 10, 2007

LEARNNG in the 2.0 WORLD!

(Compliments of Sherry Kuchon via Marlana Krolicki / THANKS!)

Connectivism:



A Learning Theory for the Digital Age


December 12, 2004
George Siemens


Update (April 5, 2005): I've added a website to explore this concept at www.connectivism.ca


Introduction


Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism are the three broad learning theories most often utilized in the creation of instructional environments. These theories, however, were developed in a time when learning was not impacted through technology. Over the last twenty years, technology has reorganized how we live, how we communicate, and how we learn. Learning needs and theories that describe learning principles and processes, should be reflective of underlying social environments. Vaill emphasizes that “learning must be a way of being – an ongoing set of attitudes and actions by individuals and groups that they employ to try to keep abreast o the surprising, novel, messy, obtrusive, recurring events…” (1996, p.42).

Learners as little as forty years ago would complete the required schooling and enter a career that would often last a lifetime. Information development was slow. The life of knowledge was measured in decades. Today, these foundational principles have been altered. Knowledge is growing exponentially. In many fields the life of knowledge is now measured in months and years. Gonzalez (2004) describes the challenges of rapidly diminishing knowledge life:

“One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago. The amount of knowledge in the world has doubled in the past 10 years and is doubling every 18 months according to the American Society of Training and Documentation (ASTD). To combat the shrinking half-life of knowledge, organizations have been forced to develop new methods of deploying instruction.”

Some significant trends in learning:

Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime. Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.

Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same. Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.
The organization and the individual are both learning organisms. Increased attention to knowledge management highlights the need for a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning.

Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.
Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).

Background

Driscoll (2000) defines learning as “a persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world” (p.11). This definition encompasses many of the attributes commonly associated with behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism – namely, learning as a lasting changed state (emotional, mental, physiological (i.e. skills)) brought about as a result of experiences and interactions with content or other people.

Driscoll (2000, p14-17) explores some of the complexities of defining learning. Debate centers on:

Valid sources of knowledge - Do we gain knowledge through experiences? Is it innate (present at birth)? Do we acquire it through thinking and reasoning?

Content of knowledge – Is knowledge actually knowable? Is it directly knowable through human experience?

The final consideration focuses on three epistemological traditions in relation to learning: Objectivism, Pragmatism, and Interpretivism

Objectivism (similar to behaviorism) states that reality is external and is objective, and knowledge is gained through experiences.

Pragmatism (similar to cognitivism) states that reality is interpreted, and knowledge is negotiated through experience and thinking.

Interpretivism (similar to constructivism) states that reality is internal, and knowledge is constructed.

All of these learning theories hold the notion that knowledge is an objective (or a state) that is attainable (if not already innate) through either reasoning or experiences. Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism (built on the epistemological traditions) attempt to address how it is that a person learns.

Behaviorism states that learning is largely unknowable, that is, we can’t possibly understand what goes on inside a person (the “black box theory”). Gredler (2001) expresses behaviorism as being comprised of several theories that make three assumptions about learning:

Observable behaviour is more important than understanding internal activities
Behaviour should be focused on simple elements: specific stimuli and responses
Learning is about behaviour change

Cognitivism often takes a computer information processing model. Learning is viewed as a process of inputs, managed in short term memory, and coded for long-term recall. Cindy Buell details this process: “In cognitive theories, knowledge is viewed as symbolic mental constructs in the learner's mind, and the learning process is the means by which these symbolic representations are committed to memory.”

Constructivism suggests that learners create knowledge as they attempt to understand their experiences (Driscoll, 2000, p. 376). Behaviorism and cognitivism view knowledge as external to the learner and the learning process as the act of internalizing knowledge. Constructivism assumes that learners are not empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Instead, learners are actively attempting to create meaning. Learners often select and pursue their own learning. Constructivist principles acknowledge that real-life learning is messy and complex. Classrooms which emulate the “fuzziness” of this learning will be more effective in preparing learners for life-long learning.

Limitations of Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism

A central tenet of most learning theories is that learning occurs inside a person. Even social constructivist views, which hold that learning is a socially enacted process, promotes the principality of the individual (and her/his physical presence – i.e. brain-based) in learning. These theories do not address learning that occurs outside of people (i.e. learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). They also fail to describe how learning happens within organizations

Learning theories are concerned with the actual process of learning, not with the value of what is being learned. In a networked world, the very manner of information that we acquire is worth exploring. The need to evaluate the worthiness of learning something is a meta-skill that is applied before learning itself begins. When knowledge is subject to paucity, the process of assessing worthiness is assumed to be intrinsic to learning. When knowledge is abundant, the rapid evaluation of knowledge is important. Additional concerns arise from the rapid increase in information. In today’s environment, action is often needed without personal learning – that is, we need to act by drawing information outside of our primary knowledge. The ability to synthesize and recognize connections and patterns is a valuable skill.

Many important questions are raised when established learning theories are seen through technology. The natural attempt of theorists is to continue to revise and evolve theories as conditions change. At some point, however, the underlying conditions have altered so significantly, that further modification is no longer sensible. An entirely new approach is needed.

Some questions to explore in relation to learning theories and the impact of technology and new sciences (chaos and networks) on learning:

How are learning theories impacted when knowledge is no longer acquired in the linear manner?

What adjustments need to made with learning theories when technology performs many of the cognitive operations previously performed by learners (information storage and retrieval).
How can we continue to stay current in a rapidly evolving information ecology?

How do learning theories address moments where performance is needed in the absence of complete understanding?

What is the impact of networks and complexity theories on learning?

What is the impact of chaos as a complex pattern recognition process on learning?
With increased recognition of interconnections in differing fields of knowledge, how are systems and ecology theories perceived in light of learning tasks?

An Alternative Theory

Including technology and connection making as learning activities begins to move learning theories into a digital age. We can no longer personally experience and acquire learning that we need to act. We derive our competence from forming connections. Karen Stephenson states:

“Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people (undated).”

Chaos is a new reality for knowledge workers. ScienceWeek (2004) quotes Nigel Calder's definition that chaos is “a cryptic form of order”. Chaos is the breakdown of predictability, evidenced in complicated arrangements that initially defy order. Unlike constructivism, which states that learners attempt to foster understanding by meaning making tasks, chaos states that the meaning exists – the learner's challenge is to recognize the patterns which appear to be hidden. Meaning-making and forming connections between specialized communities are important activities.

Chaos, as a science, recognizes the connection of everything to everything. Gleick (1987) states: “In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect – the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York” (p. 8). This analogy highlights a real challenge: “sensitive dependence on initial conditions” profoundly impacts what we learn and how we act based on our learning. Decision making is indicative of this. If the underlying conditions used to make decisions change, the decision itself is no longer as correct as it was at the time it was made. The ability to recognize and adjust to pattern shifts is a key learning task.

Luis Mateus Rocha (1998) defines self-organization as the “spontaneous formation of well organized structures, patterns, or behaviors, from random initial conditions.” (p.3). Learning, as a self-organizing process requires that the system (personal or organizational learning systems) “be informationally open, that is, for it to be able to classify its own interaction with an environment, it must be able to change its structure…” (p.4). Wiley and Edwards acknowledge the importance of self-organization as a learning process: “Jacobs argues that communities self-organize in a manner similar to social insects: instead of thousands of ants crossing each other’s pheromone trails and changing their behavior accordingly, thousands of humans pass each other on the sidewalk and change their behavior accordingly.”. Self-organization on a personal level is a micro-process of the larger self-organizing knowledge constructs created within corporate or institutional environments. The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy.

Networks, Small Worlds, Weak Ties

A network can simply be defined as connections between entities. Computer networks, power grids, and social networks all function on the simple principle that people, groups, systems, nodes, entities can be connected to create an integrated whole. Alterations within the network have ripple effects on the whole.

Albert-László Barabási states that “nodes always compete for connections because links represent survival in an interconnected world” (2002, p.106). This competition is largely dulled within a personal learning network, but the placing of value on certain nodes over others is a reality. Nodes that successfully acquire greater profile will be more successful at acquiring additional connections. In a learning sense, the likelihood that a concept of learning will be linked depends on how well it is currently linked. Nodes (can be fields, ideas, communities) that specialize and gain recognition for their expertise have greater chances of recognition, thus resulting in cross-pollination of learning communities.

Weak ties are links or bridges that allow short connections between information. Our small world networks are generally populated with people whose interests and knowledge are similar to ours. Finding a new job, as an example, often occurs through weak ties. This principle has great merit in the notion of serendipity, innovation, and creativity. Connections between disparate ideas and fields can create new innovations.

Connectivism

Connectivism is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements – not entirely under the control of the individual. Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.

Connectivism is driven by the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly altering foundations. New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. The ability to recognize when new information alters the landscape based on decisions made yesterday is also critical.

Principles of connectivism:

Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning. Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.

Information flow within an organization is an important element in organizational effectiveness. In a knowledge economy, the flow of information is the equivalent of the oil pipe in an industrial economy. Creating, preserving, and utilizing information flow should be a key organizational activity. Knowledge flow can be likened to a river that meanders through the ecology of an organization. In certain areas, the river pools and in other areas it ebbs. The health of the learning ecology of the organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow.

Social network analysis is an additional element in understanding learning models in a digital era. Art Kleiner (2002) explores Karen Stephenson’s “quantum theory of trust” which “explains not just how to recognize the collective cognitive capability of an organization, but how to cultivate and increase it”. Within social networks, hubs are well-connected people who are able to foster and maintain knowledge flow. Their interdependence results in effective knowledge flow, enabling the personal understanding of the state of activities organizationally.

The starting point of connectivism is the individual. Personal knowledge is comprised of a network, which feeds into organizations and institutions, which in turn feed back into the network, and then continue to provide learning to individual. This cycle of knowledge development (personal to network to organization) allows learners to remain current in their field through the connections they have formed.

Landauer and Dumais (1997) explore the phenomenon that “people have much more knowledge than appears to be present in the information to which they have been exposed”. They provide a connectivist focus in stating “the simple notion that some domains of knowledge contain vast numbers of weak interrelations that, if properly exploited, can greatly amplify learning by a process of inference”. The value of pattern recognition and connecting our own “small worlds of knowledge” are apparent in the exponential impact provided to our personal learning.

John Seely Brown presents an interesting notion that the internet leverages the small efforts of many with the large efforts of few. The central premise is that connections created with unusual nodes supports and intensifies existing large effort activities.

Brown provides the example of a Maricopa County Community College system project that links senior citizens with elementary school students in a mentor program. The children “listen to these “grandparents” better than they do their own parents, the mentoring really helps the teachers…the small efforts of the many- the seniors – complement the large efforts of the few – the teachers.” (2002). This amplification of learning, knowledge and understanding through the extension of a personal network is the epitome of connectivism.

Implications

The notion of connectivism has implications in all aspects of life. This paper largely focuses on its impact on learning, but the following aspects are also impacted:

Management and leadership. The management and marshalling of resources to achieve desired outcomes is a significant challenge. Realizing that complete knowledge cannot exist in the mind of one person requires a different approach to creating an overview of the situation. Diverse teams of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas. Innovation is also an additional challenge. Most of the revolutionary ideas of today at one time existed as a fringe element. An organizations ability to foster, nurture, and synthesize the impacts of varying views of information is critical to knowledge economy survival. Speed of “idea to implementation” is also improved in a systems view of learning.

Media, news, information. This trend is well under way. Mainstream media organizations are being challenged by the open, real-time, two-way information flow of blogging.

Personal knowledge management in relation to organizational knowledge management

Design of learning environments

Conclusion:

The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today. A real challenge for any learning theory is to actuate known knowledge at the point of application. When knowledge, however, is needed, but not known, the ability to plug into sources to meet the requirements becomes a vital skill. As knowledge continues to grow and evolve, access to what is needed is more important than what the learner currently possesses.

Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. How people work and function is altered when new tools are utilized. The field of education has been slow to recognize both the impact of new learning tools and the environmental changes in what it means to learn. Connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.

References

Barabási, A. L., (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks, Cambridge, MA, Perseus Publishing.

Buell, C. (undated). Cognitivism. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://web.cocc.edu/cbuell/theories/cognitivism.htm.

Brown, J. S., (2002). Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn. United States Distance Learning Association. Retrieved on December 10, 2004, from http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html

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Thursday, August 9, 2007

One Small Step for Mankind, One GIANT STEP for Distance Learning!

Philip Andrews for The New York Times

Spectators watched as the space shuttle Endeavour lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The New York Times
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August 9, 2007

Shuttle Endeavour Lifts Off Toward Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug. 8 — The space shuttle Endeavour lifted off into humid skies on Wednesday evening, carrying pieces of the International Space Station and a living reminder of the loss of the shuttle Challenger two decades ago.

One of the Endeavour’s astronauts, Barbara R. Morgan, was the backup to Christa McAuliffe for the teacher-in-space program in 1986. Ms. Morgan was one of the spectators at the Kennedy Space Center when the Challenger exploded 73 seconds into flight on Jan. 28, 1986, killing Ms. McAuliffe and the other six astronauts.

As the Endeavour passed the 73-second mark on Wednesday night, Rob Nevias, providing commentary from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said Ms. Morgan was “racing toward space on the wings of a legacy.”

After the Challenger accident, Ms. Morgan returned to work as an elementary school teacher in Idaho. Later, she decided she wanted to be an astronaut and joined the astronaut corps in 1998.

On this flight, her first, she is not a teacher but a mission specialist. Her primary task will be operating the shuttle’s robotic arm while other astronauts are conducting spacewalks.

But she is scheduled to conduct at least one video question-and-answer session with students on the ground. If the mission is extended to 14 days from 11, she will conduct two additional sessions.

Relatives of the Challenger astronauts were invited to the Endeavour launching. Several, including June Scobee Rodgers, widow of the Challenger’s commander, Francis R. Scobee, attended.

Sixty of the 114 finalists for the teacher-in-space program watched the Endeavour’s launching, including Stephanie Wright, who also watched the final Challenger launching.

That Ms. Morgan is now in space is “an absolute fantastic dream come true for educators and children across the country,” Dr. Wright said.

The Endeavour is carrying a 4,000-pound truss segment and other pieces to be installed on the space station. Three spacewalks are planned, with the possibility of a fourth.

The mission is scheduled to last 11 days, but mission managers plan to extend it if a new system that allows the shuttle to plug into the space station’s 120-volt power system works as designed.

That would allow the Endeavour, whose electronic systems run on 28 volts, to conserve the power in its fuel cells.

Cmdr. Scott J. Kelly of the Navy is the mission’s commander, and the pilot is Lt. Col. Charles O. Hobaugh of the Marines.

In addition to Ms. Morgan, the other crew members are Tracy E. Caldwell, Col. Benjamin A. Drew Jr. of the Air Force, Richard A. Mastracchio, and Dafydd R. Williams of the Canadian Space Agency.

This mission is the Endeavour’s 20th, and its first in nearly five years. After it landed on Dec. 7, 2002, it went into a hangar for a major overhaul, one that had already been done on the other shuttles.

The loss of the Columbia in February 2003 extended the Endeavour’s stay on the ground. The 194 modifications included a modern “glass cockpit,” the system for plugging into the space station, a system for monitoring the three engines during launching, and global positioning system receivers. In addition, 2,045 of Endeavour’s heat tiles and blankets were replaced, as were 3,223 “gap fillers” between tiles.

“It’s like a new space shuttle,” N. Wayne Hale Jr., the shuttle program manager, said at a news conference on Monday.

The apparently flawless liftoff puts behind, at least for now, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s public relations turmoil of a couple of weeks ago. First, a Congressional committee criticized the agency for losing $94 million of office equipment over 10 years. Then, an internal report reviewing physical and psychological records of astronauts turned up two anecdotes of astronauts showing up for launching drunk, and NASA officials later revealed that electronic equipment destined for the space station had been sabotaged.

NASA is investigating the accusations of alcohol abuse by astronauts. But Michael D. Griffin, the NASA administrator, said at a news conference after the launching, “I will be extraordinarily surprised if there’s anything really there.” Dr. Griffin said the last 10 years of shuttle and Soyuz launchings had been reviewed, and “we can’t even find where it would be a possibility.”

Commander Kelly also criticized news reports in a letter to some newspapers. “To imply that my crew or I would ever consider launching on our mission in anything but the best possible condition is utterly ridiculous,” he wrote.

The damaged electronic equipment, a device that gathers data from strain sensors on the station, was repaired and is being carried aboard the Endeavour to the space station as originally planned.