01000100
01101001 01100111 01101001 01110100 01100001 01101100 0100000 01110100 01100101
01100011 01101000 01101110 01101111 01101100 01101111 01100111 01101001
01100101 01110011 0100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 0100000 01001011 0101101
0110001 0110010
–
translation, “technology for K-12.”
The
above is presently the natural language of computers, binary arithmetic, that quickly
gave way to assembly/optimization routines and creative “languages” that allowed
computer instructions to be more easily created and applied. But the evolution of over 50 computer
languages over six decades has enlarged the gap of understanding between
computer professionals and civilians, lasting into the present.
Digital
thinking for education is robust and evolving, with the capacity to radically
change learning protocols, and is not “magical thinking” as attributed by some
retro educators. The question
is: Are there presently in our
public education systems, in the schools that prepare teachers and
administrators, in the US Department of Education, and in state education
bureaucracies, the wits, objectivity, and creativity to use these evolving tools?
Technology Issues
If
there weren’t use challenges, NCLB, RttT, and a toxic brew of standardized testing
and state school grading tactics would likely not exist, slowly dissolving
rational learning in our public schools. Central are:
How digital technologies are translated into practical teaching/learning
protocols; the chasm between the technology microcosm that created our
computers and applications versus users; the low overall level of education’s human
resources awareness of digital technologies; and the convergence of pressure on public K-12 to adopt technology (too frequently hardware for “show”) versus the paucity of
decision tools to guide those investments. The result, predictably, has been investments typically in
hardware divorced from the knowledge and experience to productively use its
products.
The
digital revolution actually spans over 65 years, with institutionally available
large scale computing since the early 1960s. Next generation and mini systems populated the 1970s and
‘80s. IBM launched then
prematurely abandoned the personal computer, leaving
in that wake the origins of Microsoft’s monopoly that actually drove and impeded US digital
development (while creating Gates’ fortune). Jobs' commitment to humanizing computer operations launched the next growth phase. Lastly, originally via ARPA, the invention of data “packet”
logic enabled the Internet.
The
combination of Moore’s Law, the manufacturing experience curve, new materials,
and the genius of Apple enabled present mobile devices with the computing power
of earlier decades. But that
miniaturization and mobility also moved the center of digital gravity, from
places created for processing to anyone’s hand and any time; “Google Glass”
even promises to take the need for a hand out of the formula.
America
has developed, only really noted in this century, a developer class; this is a
cadre (in still short supply) of human resources with technical savvy
coupled to creativity, creating source code that powers the entire digital
industry. This factor has an
upside and a downside: The upside
is that America is still leading the world in creating digital languages and
applications; the downside is rooted in a vision of the ‘90s, that a new breed
of object-oriented programming – going beyond specialized coding to
manipulating next generation function blocks described in recognizable
linguistic terms – would emerge that would make virtually any professional
capable of creating digital applications.
It failed to materialize.
The
result was that places where digital applications could be most contributory –
K-12 education, higher education, professional development, job training, and
learning communities – are still dependent on that professional arc of
developers. If you can’t
immediately discriminate a bit, byte, word, flops, and processor architectures, some of the 50
computer languages that have been created, and a slug of other digital basics,
you bypass digital literacy. Simultaneously, that level of machine familiarity isn't a
To
add even more distress to adapting contemporary digital technology to
education, our public schools have been laggards in employing even last
century’s statistical and research tools, much less the now tens of thousands
(not overstated) of “apps” for laptops and pads in education. Apple alone has 20,000 apps available.
In the present mix of chores facing both K-12 teachers and administrators,
there has been little effort to create curricula using those tools.
The
unfortunate results are that to catch up schools are adopting heat-and-serve, profit-driven,
and pro-forma packages. An
example is PLTW (Project Lead the Way) for project-based constructivism, with
less than noble origins and characterized by mediocrity and misdirection, versus
creating targeted courses that fit local needs. Ironically most digital
technology was in reach of public education for at least two to three decades
had there been self-assessment and technology learning entrepreneurship.
Futures
The
litany of digital technology developments underway is finally via open source
values, and via Google and other search assets, available to any who choose to
do the work. At the front of the
advancing edge are: Practical
payoffs for over five decades of work on artificial intelligence; even more
mobility and flex in hand-held and hands–free processing and communication;
falling costs of these devices a logical consequence of their manufacturing
experience curves and market expansion; and the emergence within the various
spheres of application of some of the technology translation human resources
needed by those specialties. The latter are still in short supply in public education.
On
the horizon, but now visible are mind-boggling extensions of present
computing: The continuing evolution
of digital tools and learning applications that are moving the center of
gravity off the school and classroom stage and into student and parental control; the
potential of new materials and manufacturing refinement that would allow Moore’s Law to continue its
prescience; and even quantum computing that could obsolete the opening zeros and
ones as the currency of processing while creating levels of magnitude greater
processing power.
Here and Now
Futures
are exciting, but the here and now of US public education are destructive
reform constructs. They are finally being recognized in the public
square, with cohesive and broad-based protest developing. Perhaps the tipping point will be the
belated recognition that the first products of NCLB’s misdirection and all that
followed will soon be issuing as products of our high schools. If the public education establishment
has the wits to create legitimate longitudinal research, a question can be
answered: Has the entire reform
agenda improved, or potentially worsened the genuine learning of K-12 products
unleashed on higher education and the nation’s needs for creativity and problem
solving?
But
in that same here and now, what technology contributions to public schools
could pay off without the future invention? Not amazing at all, there are practical applications of
educational technology that could be adopted. Below are a few that depend less on arcane technological
prowess than technology reaching the education street and touching real learning needs.
What Can Technology Do for K-12
Today?
AI
(Artificial Intelligence)
AI has now launched in a large venue
with panache, refuting the observations that its
potential for wide application, or even demonstration of functionality has been
overrated. Hitting the press April
4, 2013, was the announcement that Harvard and MIT (two reasonably respectable
institutions of higher education) have introduced an AI system that can be used
to grade essay questions and short written answers, dubbed EdX.
Educational Luddites will quickly go
into low earth orbit with criticism.
In fact, with an aside that this application is early times and subject
to the ever-present experience curve, AI is widely misunderstood, being
misperceived primarily as a computer technology. Computer processing power
enables the field, but AI is powered conceptually by logic, linguistics, human
heuristics, relevant specific knowledge, probability, knowledge engineering,
natural language processing, speech recognition, vision processing, and other
knowledge sets. Key is that this
application signals a breakthrough.
At the practical level, this writer
recalls grading thousands of blue books, engaging days and even weeks. Typically, only a handful of key points
were conceived in the testing, but even with that compromise it was virtually
assured that over many hours of grading those value judgments drifted and were
likely biased. The strategic
implication is that the AI application illustrated, engaging likely the same heuristics as the human grading, could increase reliability
of assessments, while more time could be employed to upgrade curricula and
teaching prowess.
This specific AI application could also
be a measured opening and catalyst for public K-12 education to recapture the
testing initiative, to both create and implement more complex and meaningful
assessments for learning. The
model could wrest testing away from present corporate scams and put it properly
back into the purview of public education’s teachers – if there is the wisdom,
creativity and courage to grab the opportunity?
MOOC
Massive online open courses have become
the favorite whipping boy of every critic of opening up educational
process. Yes, they are a threat to
dug-in educators who cannot perceive learning outside the artificial boundaries
of school or classroom in spite of contemporary wisdom to the contrary. It is apparent that for some stratum or
progression of learning based on highly effective transmission, a MOOC can
select and offer the very best delivery of materials. The argument for rejecting the opportunity to raise
the level of that presentation suggests defensive or self-serving motivations
and disinterest in real learning goals.
But there is an opportunity to apply
MOOC logic so obvious that it is almost embarrassing to relate, falling into
that hopper metaphorically labeled a no-brainer. Arguably the most critical and current need for public K-12 learning
that could be conveyed by MOOC work, and with an almost perfect fit to its
clients, is: The augmented educational
development of our over three million public school teachers. While spending millions of dollars on a
precious minority of TFA teachers, the venture itself seemingly turned into
profit-seeking, the educational development of our already experienced public
school teachers has been virtually ignored. (Correction:
Well, not exactly ignored; they are being beaten with personal
assessments based on VAM, flawed testing, and administrative ignorance.)
Infrastructure is frequently already in
place; the model minimizes the overhead of development; development can be
scheduled around personal timetables; the audience is already learning-aware, ideally
positioned to internalize new learning; present teaching responsibilities need
not be jeopardized; and there should already be in place professional third
parties who could provide oversight and verification of assessments of MOOC
performance by a teacher.
Pragmatically, the teacher MOOC effort
might need to be preceded by similar plenary development of public school
administrators, who in many cases, and egregiously, perceive teacher
development as updates on bureaucratic reporting.
Buying
Hardware
One of the more discouraging
performances in public K-12 has been the willingness of local boards and system
administration to spend millions of dollars on laptops and pads, while avoiding
the due diligence and lacking awareness of how that physical technology will be
employed to increase learning, or improve its productivity, or reduce other
costs. The issue goes beyond just the software enabled, and gets into
core understanding of how the functions – communication, processing, self-study
– offered by the technology actually enhance short and longer term knowledge?
A logic and method that has served in
other venues for decades in evaluating capital investments, and that might be
adapted to K-12 technology is termed the "defender-challenger"
concept. Essentially any investment, for example in one-to-one pads, is
based on the assessment of whether that challenger is more cost effective than
what it replaces, the defender. Not particularly novel in manufacturing and
manufacturing engineering where it has been applied for decades, the
calculations would presently lack metrics for learning effects from alternate
modalities. However, that measurement development is now needed across all of
K-12 inputs to address issues raised by the reform movement.
But
How Would I Use Digital Technology?
The NEA estimates there are currently
over 100,000 apps for mobile computer devices, in addition to entire education
venues such as the Kahn Academy, MIT’s curricular export efforts for high
schools, et al. The issue is not
whether there is an adequate inventory of teaching materials for development,
but whether there is presently in public education the intellect and will to “create”
better curricula.
A case can be made that the present
CCSSI (common core) standards for reading and math – not created by America’s
educational best and brightest, and laced with ideology – should not be the
nation’s learning standards. More
egregious, the current proposed common core STEM standards – that were created
by AAAS and America’s real scientists – are being overridden by the same
mentalities that produced the former alleged common core.
The case can also be made that
America’s public schools and teachers should be granted the responsibility to
develop the curricula they must teach, and equally develop its assessments, informed
by nationally recognized knowledge content as developed and protected by those
who oversee the various disciplines.
The true knowledge sources in the US, its social, biological and physical
scientists, have been shunted aside by traditional “education” practicing the
same disaggregation of knowledge that created our K-12 failings. (For Ohio's latest contribution to education insanity, click here.) Self-evidently, an argument can be made
that the first player in public education to be held accountable for doing it better
should be the majority of America’s intellectually bankrupt schools of
education.
Networking
The continuing expansion of
connectivity fueled by penetration of smartphones, pads, enhanced bandwidth,
and VC opens the gate to socially-based learning, to learning communities, and
to learning that can be tapped virtually at any time and from any locale. Is it time the traditional view of a
“school” as the place of learning be replaced by the view that learning is
ongoing, can be spontaneous, and needs to be conceived as accessible whether in
a dedicated building or wherever the learner is sensitized to the process?
The major opportunity to link teachers
in diverse learning communities by using the Internet and VC has been largely
ignored or underutilized. There
may be greater effect in achieving curricular common cores of knowledge by
putting together in supported social networks, teachers from geographically and
culturally diverse places, utilizing the capacity to have genuine exchange of
knowledge and experiences.
Blended
Learning
Even where students are ensconced in,
and now even (in paranoia) locked down in schools, there is using the same
communications and social tools as above the opportunity to pursue blended
learning opportunities. That means
linking especially 9-12 curricula with real world practice, using communications capabilities to leverage the experiences.
Related, the same technologies support
the “flipped classroom,” now proving an alternative to the traditional view of
classroom versus extra-school learning.
If this is not recognized, it entails using distance, video, and
self-directed learning to create exposure to material, using in-school time to
create interactive learning and development of HOTS.
Technology
Enabled Tactics for Learning
Psychology demonstrated long ago that,
for example, reading instruction that utilized multiple senses – visual
decoding, concurrent aural exposure, and even visual object associations – produced
greater short- and long-term memory acquisition and recall. The tools to make that primary in the
classroom are all present, but still not fully exploited.
Related, gaming and simulation now
virtually blanket the adolescent world, with software and even hard processing
capacities that beggar allegedly serious computer enterprise. It is not uncommon in better schools to
see elementary simulation modeling being taught, even AI in higher technology
high schools. Where is public
education in general capitalizing on this student digital literacy, using
variants of that modeling to create more student interest and focus? This is not a technological failure,
but rather a crisis of objectivity and creativity in our public schools’ leaderships.
Differentiated
Instruction
In sharp contradiction of the present
testing mentality, one-size-fits-all, digital technology is the opening and
enabler to creating differentiated learning (and differential assessment) that
reflects the real world heterogeneity children bring to artificial grade bands.
This application takes a more expansive
mindset, using the potential of the sensing, sorting, scheduling, assessment,
and data mining tools now actionable to create individual instructional plans and assessments for every student.
Better
to Give Than Receive
In virtually every critique of US public
education the point is made that our students’ capacities for expression,
critical assessment, and both critical and creative writing come up short.
Incredibly, the technological revolution and the Internet have spawned arenas
where writing can be stimulated while engaging both high student interest and
creativity.
The wiki, the web page, the blog, all
open a door to engaging students in writing and publication experiences. Motivation to create is enhanced and
nurtured when students are given vehicles for presenting rather than just tuning
in. The massive popularity of
Facebook and YouTube are testimony to generations that expect greater
connectivity, and can be motivated by that potential. All of the tools are readily available, most free, to fully
engage students across the grade spectrum. The gut question may selectively be, why does your classroom
not have any or all of the above?
Rationalizations and Other Buts
In a universe of 99,000 public schools
there are obviously administrators and teachers who have already exceeded the
above near term opportunities to use digital technologies. One issue is, that with the advanced
capabilities of industry to use data mining, our public education venues,
including its misdirected US Department of Education, flunk the information
course. The public education bureaucracy
appears clueless about the precise realities of technology adoption and use in
that universe of public schools. We know
more about the incidence of toilets in America’s residences than we know about
how technology is being employed to support public K-12 learning. That is criminal.
Lastly, a common refrain from the FCC concerns
the nation’s “digital divide,” the chasm between the segments of our society
that have high bandwidth Internet and those not served. But that divide has another
connotation. A proposition is,
that too many public schools, not on the deficit side of the Internet divide, are
still deficient in utilizing the connectivity they are frequently gifted.
No comments:
Post a Comment