http://thejournal.com/Articles/2009/12/10/5-K12-Technology-Trends-for-2010.aspx

Sort of lame list….I think mine is better.

I think the biggest item missing from this list is open-source, open-source, and open-source. With raging budget deficits across the country educational institutions across the K-20 spectrum are going to be looking hard at open/free alternatives in their upcoming technology adoptions.

I also think that the recession is a nature time for us turn away from capacity building to spending some time developing efficiencies with the technologies we have. I look at the technologies that are available to most educators and would be willing to bet they only tap 25-35% of the capacity of a given device/service/application. You could make huge gains by increasing that efficiency to 45-55% for less than building more capacity.

And even though it develops capacity, I see virtualization really taking off! Their will be growing needs for technology but no money to purchase new hardware. Using VM, institutions will be able to create capacity by tapping unused potential in existing hardware infrastructure.

Again, economic troubles will bring Google Apps up as a viable option.

Educational content providers will figure out a way to provide a more iTunes like way of distributing digital content. This also has the potential to bring down the costs of distribution of instructional materials.

Will Richardson seems a bit concerned about the “Tops” lack of understanding, when it comes to high level officials. I wonder though if Brad Jupp isn’t correct. I mean there are two major undiscussed issues here.

The first is, “What Lawsuits?” Can anybody actually find a lawsuit related to blogging or the use of wikis? I couldn’t upon a 5 minute Google search. All I could find is a student suing their old principal for discipline related to cyberbullying on Facebook. It seems like every reference to a pending lawsuit had to do with social networking…interesting.

It would seem to me that the bigger problem is two-fold. First, in most cases schools have a ineffective or outdated policies for dealing with students/staff use of the web. Second, there is a major generational gap between how adults and teens/kids view the use of the Internet and what constitutes public.

Now is the time that school districts should update their AUP policies. Most important is that these policies are updated with a group of students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Each group looks at Web 2.0 applications through a different lens and it is a chance to set expectations for their use by all interested parties. Having a defined set of policies related to these technologies makes it much easier to handle the occasional problem that may come up from their use.

Now is also time to do some work to bridge the generational gap. It is important that educators using these tools understand how they are preceived by youth. Of course this is a two way street and using these tools is also a great time for educators to share important information about why privacy is important, the permanacy of the web, and the web is not as anonymous as you may think.

Finally, I think that teachers, administrators, and school IT departments need to look at the “free” Web 2.0 applications and decide why do we actually want this tool? What is the pedagogy driving instruction with these tools?

Part two of this issue is whether or not you need to use public Web 2.0 apps at all. There are some many incredibly easy to setup and use open source Web apps out there today. Any IT director worth a dime can have these systems up and running in no time. Most importantly these tools can almost always be tied to a directory server which makes user management a snap.

Using these tools a district can host it’s own social networking (Elgg or Buddypress), wikis (Deki Wiki), and blogs (Wordpress or Moveable Type). Educators get the advantage of these powerful tools, while administrators and IT directors get to have the control they need. Give you students some training wheels before they set off on the information superhighway.

Basically, it comes down to the basic issue of control and accountability. In a K-12 school environment you have to have both and the only way to do this is keep you Web 2.0 services in house.

I think it must just be the standardized assessment blues (our big state assessments are right around the corner), but I’m really feeling like we are squandering students’ time in the classroom. We spend so much time trying to “meet or exceed standards” by drilling information into students heads, that we are blind to more important issue of why are we learning? Information without context makes for a great “Trivial Pursuit” player but a poor worker/employee. Read the rest of this entry »

I think I’ve reach a turning point in my view of educational technology.

I’m finding myself rolling my eyes each time I hear about another cool gadget or gizmo that makes things easier to do. Put best by Gary Stager when discussing a recently unveiled digital video product:

“Animoto is undoubtedly a cool piece of programming, but my head will explode if someone tells me that it has educational value…”

Call me old fashion, but I like figuring out how to do hard things. Figuring out how to do hard things teaches you a lot of things. It demands that you focus your attention. Maybe it is just the way I’m programmed, but if something is to easy there is no reward. I feel that as we strip away the need for expert knowledge, we are left with a system devoid of accomplishment.

Ultimately, I think kids are missing out on the discovery of how “cool” things are actually created. Instead they drop a few pics they stole from Google images or Flickr into a template and call it good. Students miss out on critical production ideas such as layering, cueing, masking, and sound-tracking. Without all of the prior knowledge how can students hope to be able to create anything original?

An even bigger concern is that these programs change the way we think. Just look at effect of PowerPoint on instruction. In many cases, content has been reduced to a series of 3-5 factoids per slide. We change our instruction to fit the program, instead of changing the program to fit good instructional practices.

I think I’ll try to focus more on developing applications guided by theory, instead of instruction guided by application.

David Warlick’s “Teacher Technology Rant” and rebuttal “Why Teachers Don’t Use Web 2.0 – an historical perspective” by Gary Stager really got me thinking about the difference between Web 2.0, as a cultural phenomenon, and Web 2.0, as a set of innovative technologies.

As a culture, Web 2.0:

• is thrives on user created content
• holds freedom/democratization of information in high regard
• is inherently anti-authoritarian
• gives equal voice to anybody with a computer
• holds social networks in  high regard

As technology, Web 2.0:

• allows your Internet browser to become a collaborative tool
• permits the sharing of nearly all types of digital media
• allows for the Internet to become nearly any computer application you can think of

Most educators I have talked with see the inherit value of Web 2.0 technologies, but they do not see the value of Web 2.0 culture. This is interesting to consider. Can you have Web 2.0 technology without having also embracing Web 2.0 culture?

I’m not sure what I think yet.

After reading through the comments to David Warwick’s “Teacher Technology Rant”, I notice that system administrators were being listed as one of the prime reasons for teachers. I think that it is a valid observation and speaks to a growing problem in educational IT.

In many instances, educational IT managers have come from the business world. Business is about efficiency and keeping technology focused on making profits. Education is a messy affair and our product is students with the ability to think (or at least it should be). Business IT is about the box and educational IT is about the learning. Basically, educational IT and business IT do not share the same mindset.

Of course, this idea is not new. I think I first saw something along these lines at an Apple training workshop. The idea was along the lines that business and educational IT share the need for scalability, security, and reliability, but educational IT needs flexibility unheard of in the business world. It needs to be able to take risks.

I think that teachers need to be given the training and education to manage more IT. We need folks that are out on the fringe and in the trenches helping make the IT decisions. A centralized person or department, depending on the size of the school district, should be developing capacity, security, and reliability. However, there should be people at every site who can manage and adjust to meet teacher needs.