The Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, released earlier this month, identifies and describes six emerging technologies that will have a huge impact on K-12 education within the next one to five years.
The report groups these technologies according to their time-to-adoption horizon--one year or less, two to three years, or four to five years. It also outlines key trends and challenges associated with the their adoption.
Made possible through a grant from Microsoft Corp., the report draws on published resources, current research and practices, and expertise from an advisory board of experts in education and technology. Members include representatives from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), technology vendors, EDUCAUSE, and U.S. school districts and universities.
"This is the first report we have developed with a focus on emerging technologies for elementary and secondary schools, and we hope that K-12 educators will use it as a resource for robust dialog and technology planning," said Larry Johnson, NMC's chief executive. "The technologies we identified have the power to transform teaching and learning both in the short and long term."
The six technologies detailed in the report are...
- One year or less: collaborative environments and online communication tools
- Two to three years: mobile devices and cloud computing
- Four to five years: smart objects and the personal web
Collaborative environments
The report defines this as anything from simple web-based tools for collaborative work to multiplayer gaming environments, and from social-networking platforms to virtual worlds.
Examples of the tools used to create these environments include Voicethread, which allows users to collect multiple voices and viewpoints in a single package, and Ning, which lets teachers set up workspaces that include web feeds to pull in relevant resources, chat spaces (synchronous or asynchronous), forums, profiles, shared documents, calendars, music, and many other tools--all with a few clicks.
The benefit of using these tools, the report states, is to foster teamwork and critical thinking skills. The challenge is for educators to be able to assess these types of skills in real time.
Online communication tools
According to the report, these tools make it easy for students to move past the classroom walls and connect with their peers around the world, as well as with experts in the fields they are studying. Access to these tools gives students an opportunity to experience learning in multiple ways, develop a public voice, and compare their own ideas with those of their peers.
Tools mentioned in the report include Twitter, Skype, and Edmodo, a private micro-blogging platform that gives teachers and students a sheltered place to manage classroom assignments and activities as well as engage in protected conversations.
Mobile devices
Over the past few years, the report notes, smart phones and other mobile devices have become able to record audio and video, store more information, and access the web--making mobiles function like laptops.
"The combination of available applications and a device that [students] can carry provides an opportunity to introduce students to tools for study and time management that will help them later in life," says the report. "The implications for K-12 education are dramatic: the potential for mobile gaming and simulation, research aids, field work, and tools for learning of all kinds is there, awaiting development."
Cloud computing
This is a term for networked computers that distribute processing power and applications among many machines. Applications such as Flickr, Google Docs, and YouTube use a cloud as their platform, just as programs on a desktop computer use that single computer as a platform.
According to the report, cloud-based applications can provide students and teachers with free or low-cost alternatives to expensive, proprietary productivity tools. eMail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaboration, media editing, and more can be done from a web browser, while the software and files reside in the cloud.
Smart objects
A smart object, as defined by the report, is "any physical object that includes a unique identifier that can track information about the object." The object can connect the physical world with the world of information. Smart objects can be used to manage physical things digitally, track them throughout their lifespan, and annotate them with descriptions, opinions, instructions, warranties, tutorials, photographs, and so on.
School libraries, for example, can use smart objects for tracking their collections and checking materials in and out. According to the report, some libraries are investigating further applications for smart objects: A project called ThinkeringSpaces, from the Illinois Institute of Technology's Institute of Design, "combines physical and virtual components to produce an environment where physical objects, like books, can be annotated with contextual information that is added manually or retrieved automatically."
Smart objects have recently become cheap for students and teachers to create, using Quick Response (QR) tags and smart-code stickers. Web services such as Shotcode and Kaywa let anyone encode QR tags and print them out. Products like Tikitag and Violet's Mir:ror allow users to attach scannable stickers to household objects.
The personal web
This is a term to describe a collection of technologies "that confer the ability to recognize, configure, and manage online content, rather than just viewing it," the report says. Personal-web technologies give users the ability to sort, display, and even build upon web content according to their personal needs and interests.
According to the report, simple tools to create customized, web-based environments to support social and academic activities are easily available today, but their use in schools is severely hampered by access and filtering policies.
Along with a more fully developed discussion of the relevance of each technology to education, the report also gives examples of how the technology is being--or could be--applied in education. And it notes that two themes arose repeatedly during discussions of these technologies: assessment and filtering.
"Assessment continues to present a challenge to educators at all levels, particularly in the context of new media and collaborative work; evaluating student work that includes blogs, podcasts, and videos, or establishing how much an individual student contributed to or learned from a collaborative project, is difficult," the report explains. "Further, translating assessments of this nature into the metrics measured by standardized tests is not at all straightforward."
Continued the report: "Likewise, the practice of filtering is intimately related to each of these topics. At many schools today, the technologies named here cannot be used because they are blocked by content filters. The advisory board recognized the need for new [filtering tools] that do a better job of keeping objectionable content out of the way, while allowing useful tools and content to be accessed."
Other challenges to the adoption of these technologies in schools include the fundamental structure of the K-12 establishment, which is slow to adapt to new trends.
The full report is available on the NMC web site. The CoSN web site also features an online forum dedicated to an ongoing discussion about the report.
"For education leaders, this report is extremely valuable and critical to making sure that school districts are integrating technological tools that will have maximum impact," said Karen Greenwood Henke, CoSN board liaison. "Having a grasp on up-and-coming technologies empowers technology leaders to plan for the future and keep their students, educators, and administrators on the cutting edge."
Get more information at:
/http://www.educationinthenews.ca/2009/04/six-technologies-soon-to-affect.html
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Corporate Social Media: Here to stay?
Increasingly, corporations are experimenting with social media. They are using this type of corporate engagement to advertise their products and services, and also connect with customers and various audiences globally. Some are even using social media to communicate with employees, to collaborate on projects and to share ideas on every facet of the business.
Here are some examples of how companies are using social media.
http://mashable.com/2008/07/23/corporate-social-media/
The author of social media review, Aaron Uhrmacher notes that “there are no rules to what form of engagement to take”. In my opinion, if your organization is considering social media, be very aware of your corporate culture and have clear objectives. Many of these initiatives fail because “leaders” do not see the value and believe that the costs out way the benefits.
Here are some examples of how companies are using social media.
http://mashable.com/2008/07/23/corporate-social-media/
The author of social media review, Aaron Uhrmacher notes that “there are no rules to what form of engagement to take”. In my opinion, if your organization is considering social media, be very aware of your corporate culture and have clear objectives. Many of these initiatives fail because “leaders” do not see the value and believe that the costs out way the benefits.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Problem: Long Online Courses, Solution: Shorter Modules
Have you ever had to sit through a two, three or even four hour online course?
Well, you are not alone. Long online courses are quite the norm. It is customary for educational institutions and corporations to request that learners sit through a lengthy course in order to quickly complete a learning objective. However, after about 30 minutes or so of paying careful attention to the course material, the average person begins to wonder off. We can’t help it this is really just the way the brain works. So, as we click from one screen to the next, we continue to pay some attention to the content but get easily distracted by other thoughts as time passes. At the end of the course how much was retained? It’s hard to say.
I recommend that online learning content be broken up into carefully developed independent modules that are about 30 minutes long.
Dr. Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who directs a science education initiative at the University of British Columbia noted that the human brain “can hold a maximum of about seven different items in its short-term working memory and can process no more than about four ideas at once.”
So you must be wondering, just how does a three hour course become chunks of thirty minute modules? This can be challenging but the key is to have clearly defined learning objectives and to let the learning objectives dictate the content of each module. The goal is to have one or two learning objectives covered in each module.
Book recommendation:
How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school
By John Bransford, Ann L. Brown, National Research Council (U.S.)
Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning, Rodney R. Cocking, National Research Council (U.S.) Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice
Well, you are not alone. Long online courses are quite the norm. It is customary for educational institutions and corporations to request that learners sit through a lengthy course in order to quickly complete a learning objective. However, after about 30 minutes or so of paying careful attention to the course material, the average person begins to wonder off. We can’t help it this is really just the way the brain works. So, as we click from one screen to the next, we continue to pay some attention to the content but get easily distracted by other thoughts as time passes. At the end of the course how much was retained? It’s hard to say.
I recommend that online learning content be broken up into carefully developed independent modules that are about 30 minutes long.
Dr. Carl Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who directs a science education initiative at the University of British Columbia noted that the human brain “can hold a maximum of about seven different items in its short-term working memory and can process no more than about four ideas at once.”
So you must be wondering, just how does a three hour course become chunks of thirty minute modules? This can be challenging but the key is to have clearly defined learning objectives and to let the learning objectives dictate the content of each module. The goal is to have one or two learning objectives covered in each module.
Book recommendation:
How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school
By John Bransford, Ann L. Brown, National Research Council (U.S.)
Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning, Rodney R. Cocking, National Research Council (U.S.) Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice
Thursday, May 14, 2009
What's not so right with online learning
Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about the challenges with online learning and exploring some solutions.
If you have ever taken an online course, then I am sure you will have lots to say.
I have had my share of poor online learning experiences. So, join me in the discussion.
If you have ever taken an online course, then I am sure you will have lots to say.
I have had my share of poor online learning experiences. So, join me in the discussion.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Focus on education and training to prepare for better times
Various provincial governments, over the next few weeks, will be finalizing their 2009-10 budgets. The question uppermost in their minds will be how best to assist their residents to cope with the current economic downturn.
My recommendation to each of the finance ministers would be to focus on education and training as their number one spending priority. Such a shift in focus would better prepare Canada to emerge from this recession with the most productive, innovative, and competitive workforce in the world.
More and more people are either seeing their jobs disappear or are feeling more and more vulnerable to the vagaries of the economic slowdown. It is imperative that we do everything in our power to provide them, as well as our young people who will be graduating into a period of reduced job prospects, with the opportunities for continuing education and training which will lead to even more productive employment down the road. Such a shift in focus, of course, will also require a shift in thinking, from the accepted belief in the importance of full and part-time employment to one of the importance of full and part-time education and training.
Such an education-based workplace revolution will require the full and coordinated cooperation of businesses, unions, educational institutions, and governments. Management and labour must make worker education and training a higher priority in collective bargaining agreements. If businesses cannot afford retraining workers as an alternative to retrenchment, they may at least be able to offer factory floors, office space, and hands-on instructors for training programs operated by educational and training institutions.
Most importantly, provincial governments, to whom our constitution grants jurisdiction over education, must make the difficult but necessary decision to assign education and training spending an even higher priority during recessionary times than in the past.
Where will the money come from?
You will note that in each province far more dollars are spent on health care than on education, with health care alone now consuming around 40% or more of the total budgets of Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and BC, and educational expenditures accounting for less than 15% of the total budgets of PEI, New Brunswick, Ontario (yes, Ontario), Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
When these figures and percentages are plotted over time, they show spiralling health-care spending progressively “eating up” provincial budgets to the point where other vitally important social service functions such as education and training are starved for funding. We simply cannot allow this trend to continue.
Of course, a shift in hundreds of millions of dollars from health care to education and training raises the question, how will we achieve and maintain high-quality health care?
The answer for Canada lies in finally biting the bullet and doing what most of the other industrialized countries in the world (including the European Union but with the exception of the US) have done, and that is establish a well-balanced two-track health-care system, providing for both public and private health-care insurance, delivery, and financing.
Before I am accused of using an increase in continuing education and training funding as a backdoor attack on public health care as practiced in Canada, it is best to remember that numerous comparative studies, by the OECD and Canadian think tanks, have demonstrated that two track health-care systems outperform the Canadian health-care system in virtually every category of health-care outcomes. And if President Obama adds public health-care insurance to the current American health-care system, the U.S. will also have a two-track system, leaving Canada even more out of sync.
While there is room for legitimate debate as to what should be the relationship between public and private health-care tracks, and what must be done to maintain high standards of care in both, those are the questions we should be debating rather than whether private health-care insurance, delivery, and financing should be permitted and encouraged.
To offer hundreds of thousands of Canadians productive educational and training opportunities as an alternative to unproductive and disheartening unemployment requires provincial governments to make education and training their number one spending priority. To do that requires major reforms in health-care financing and spending which heretofore has consumed an ever increasing share of provincial budgets. Which provincial government will take the lead in making this important and necessary transition?
By Preston Manning
President and CEO
Manning Centre for Building Democracy
Troy Media Corporation
My recommendation to each of the finance ministers would be to focus on education and training as their number one spending priority. Such a shift in focus would better prepare Canada to emerge from this recession with the most productive, innovative, and competitive workforce in the world.
More and more people are either seeing their jobs disappear or are feeling more and more vulnerable to the vagaries of the economic slowdown. It is imperative that we do everything in our power to provide them, as well as our young people who will be graduating into a period of reduced job prospects, with the opportunities for continuing education and training which will lead to even more productive employment down the road. Such a shift in focus, of course, will also require a shift in thinking, from the accepted belief in the importance of full and part-time employment to one of the importance of full and part-time education and training.
Such an education-based workplace revolution will require the full and coordinated cooperation of businesses, unions, educational institutions, and governments. Management and labour must make worker education and training a higher priority in collective bargaining agreements. If businesses cannot afford retraining workers as an alternative to retrenchment, they may at least be able to offer factory floors, office space, and hands-on instructors for training programs operated by educational and training institutions.
Most importantly, provincial governments, to whom our constitution grants jurisdiction over education, must make the difficult but necessary decision to assign education and training spending an even higher priority during recessionary times than in the past.
Where will the money come from?
You will note that in each province far more dollars are spent on health care than on education, with health care alone now consuming around 40% or more of the total budgets of Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and BC, and educational expenditures accounting for less than 15% of the total budgets of PEI, New Brunswick, Ontario (yes, Ontario), Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
When these figures and percentages are plotted over time, they show spiralling health-care spending progressively “eating up” provincial budgets to the point where other vitally important social service functions such as education and training are starved for funding. We simply cannot allow this trend to continue.
Of course, a shift in hundreds of millions of dollars from health care to education and training raises the question, how will we achieve and maintain high-quality health care?
The answer for Canada lies in finally biting the bullet and doing what most of the other industrialized countries in the world (including the European Union but with the exception of the US) have done, and that is establish a well-balanced two-track health-care system, providing for both public and private health-care insurance, delivery, and financing.
Before I am accused of using an increase in continuing education and training funding as a backdoor attack on public health care as practiced in Canada, it is best to remember that numerous comparative studies, by the OECD and Canadian think tanks, have demonstrated that two track health-care systems outperform the Canadian health-care system in virtually every category of health-care outcomes. And if President Obama adds public health-care insurance to the current American health-care system, the U.S. will also have a two-track system, leaving Canada even more out of sync.
While there is room for legitimate debate as to what should be the relationship between public and private health-care tracks, and what must be done to maintain high standards of care in both, those are the questions we should be debating rather than whether private health-care insurance, delivery, and financing should be permitted and encouraged.
To offer hundreds of thousands of Canadians productive educational and training opportunities as an alternative to unproductive and disheartening unemployment requires provincial governments to make education and training their number one spending priority. To do that requires major reforms in health-care financing and spending which heretofore has consumed an ever increasing share of provincial budgets. Which provincial government will take the lead in making this important and necessary transition?
By Preston Manning
President and CEO
Manning Centre for Building Democracy
Troy Media Corporation
Sunday, May 10, 2009
I am a member of 'The Canadian Consortium of Technology Support Providers for Adult Basic Understanding'.
The consortium describes itself as "A proposed network of organizations, groups and
individuals interested in maximizing the potential of
technology assisted delivery to address the adult basic
education needs of learners across Canada".
In 2008, the consortium conducted a SWOT analysis of online learning for adult learners in Canada. “SWOT” analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
Here are some of the results:
Strengths: Good existing on-line resources and strong providers
Creative and engaged practitioners
Established literacy community in Canada
Some government support
Well educated population and workforce
Increasing access to computers
A major area of interest
Innate advantages of on-line learning
Weaknesses: Slow connections in some areas
Access to computers for some learner groups
Lack of critical mass for software developers
Copyright restrictions
Jurisdictional issues
Disparities among provinces, locations and groups
Lack of stable core funding
No systematic framework for professional development
Limited resources for special needs learners
Need for research and evaluation
Opportunities:Harvesting and networking of resources
Partnering and collaboration
Networking and communication through the Web
Technological advances
Proliferation of free on-line resources
National leadership
Addressing individual needs of diverse learners
Threats: Loss of funding
Provincial or sectoral silos
Sustainability issues
Changes in government policy
Canadian Consortium of Technology Support Providers for Adult Basic Education
Digital rights management and commercialization
Competitive culture re: funding
Rapid changes in technology and obsolescence
The consortium describes itself as "A proposed network of organizations, groups and
individuals interested in maximizing the potential of
technology assisted delivery to address the adult basic
education needs of learners across Canada".
In 2008, the consortium conducted a SWOT analysis of online learning for adult learners in Canada. “SWOT” analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
Here are some of the results:
Strengths: Good existing on-line resources and strong providers
Creative and engaged practitioners
Established literacy community in Canada
Some government support
Well educated population and workforce
Increasing access to computers
A major area of interest
Innate advantages of on-line learning
Weaknesses: Slow connections in some areas
Access to computers for some learner groups
Lack of critical mass for software developers
Copyright restrictions
Jurisdictional issues
Disparities among provinces, locations and groups
Lack of stable core funding
No systematic framework for professional development
Limited resources for special needs learners
Need for research and evaluation
Opportunities:Harvesting and networking of resources
Partnering and collaboration
Networking and communication through the Web
Technological advances
Proliferation of free on-line resources
National leadership
Addressing individual needs of diverse learners
Threats: Loss of funding
Provincial or sectoral silos
Sustainability issues
Changes in government policy
Canadian Consortium of Technology Support Providers for Adult Basic Education
Digital rights management and commercialization
Competitive culture re: funding
Rapid changes in technology and obsolescence
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Top 5 challenges in teaching and learning
After months of spirited discussion, the EDUCAUSE community has identified their top five challenges in teaching and learning with technology.
1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
2. Developing 21st century literacies (information, digital, and visual) among students and faculty.
3. Reaching and engaging today's learner.
4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with technology.
5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning with technology in an era of budget cuts.
Read more at http://www.educause.edu/eli/Challenges
1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation.
2. Developing 21st century literacies (information, digital, and visual) among students and faculty.
3. Reaching and engaging today's learner.
4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with technology.
5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning with technology in an era of budget cuts.
Read more at http://www.educause.edu/eli/Challenges
Monday, May 4, 2009
Education is now the number one economic priority
By Thomas Frey, Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute
“Education is now the number one economic priority
in today's global economy.” - John Naisbitt, Author of Megatrends
Transition from Teaching to Learning
Education has traditionally consisted of the two fundamental elements of teaching and learning, with a heavy emphasis on teaching.
Throughout history, the transfer of information from the teacher to the learner has been done on a person-to-person basis. A teacher stands in front of a room and imparts the information for a student to learn. Because this approach requires the teacher to be an expert on every topic that they teach, this is referred to as the “sage on stage” form of education.
While lecture-style teaching has been used for centuries to build today’s literate and competent society, it ends up being a highly inefficient system, in many respects, the “equivalent of using Roman numerals.” For any new topic to be taught, a new expert needs to be created, and this universal need for more and more experts has become a serious chokepoint for learning.
To illustrate this point, let’s look at the example of a new topic that cannot be taught because the expert on this topic lives on the other side of the world. A teacher-dependent education system is also time-dependent, location-dependent, and situation-dependent. The teachers act as a control valve, turning on or off the flow of information.
The education system of the future will undergo a transition from a heavy emphasis on teaching to a heavy emphasis on learning. Experts will create the courseware and the students will learn anytime or anywhere at a pace that is comfortable for them, learning about topics that they are interested in.
In the future, teachers will transition from topic experts to a role in which they act more as guides and coaches.
2.) Exponential Growth of Information
During the time of Gutenberg, people tended to live and die within 20 miles of where they were born, not because they were afraid to travel, but because they had no reliable maps. People during this era had a very limited understanding of the world around them. The flow of information was controlled by just a few elite members of society, and they understood well the concept of knowledge equaling power.
We have gone from that time, just 500 years ago, where information was precious and few, to today, a time where information is so plentiful that we feel like we are drowning in it - information overload.
However, we still see many of the same “information control” issues permeating society today. Elite members of society still control the flow of information, perpetuating the notion that only doctors can understand medicine, only physicists can understand how the universe works, and only teachers know how to prepare us for the world to come.
There are many ways to talk about the rapid growth of information that we have experienced over the past few years. But it is important to pay attention to the changing dimensions of information as well as the sheer volume of it. Information is no longer just text-based, but graphical, musical, audio and visual.
Consider the following statistics
* The number of songs available on iTunes – over 3.5 million.
* The number of books on Amazon – over 4 million.
* The number of blogs available online – over 60 million.
* The number of entries on Wikipedia – over 4 million.
* The number of user accounts on MySpace – over 100 million
* The number of videos on YouTube – over 6.1 million
3.) Courseware Vacuum
After viewing the data above and thinking about the size and shape of information around the world, now consider the number of courses available, either online or in a classroom.
Information is exploding around us in every possible form. Yet, we do not have an easy way to translate these blocks of information into courseware. While some attempts are currently being made to unleash the public on this problem, we remain a long ways from solving the problem.
Open Education Movement - The open-education movement was inspired by the open-source software movement (i.e. Linux). It mixes in the powerful communication abilities of the Internet and applies the result to teaching and learning materials, such as course notes and textbooks. Open educational materials include text, images, audio, video, interactive simulations, and games that are free to be used and also re-used in new ways by anyone around the world.
It is estimated that more than 150 well-intentioned initiatives have been launched in this area. Over time, the increasing levels of attention and activity will cause one initiative to stand out and become the “industry leader.” This leader will, by default, set the standards for everyone that follows.
Some open-education projects are already attracting a large number of users per month. Some, like the MIT OpenCourseWare project and its OCW Consortium, are top-down organized institutional repositories that showcase their institutions’ courses. Others, like Rice University’s Connexions, Wikiversity, and Moodle are grassroot efforts that encourage contributions from all comers.
* MIT OpenCourseWare makes the course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all MIT’s 1,400 undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. MIT now claims 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet.”
* The OpenCourseWare Consortium is an extension of what MIT began. Students don't have to register for classes but need only to log on to more than 1,800 potential courses at 12 universities that provide the course materials such as syllabi, video or audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, and illustrations.
* Connexions claims more than one million people from 194 countries are tapping into its 3,768 modules and 199 courses developed by a worldwide community of authors.
* Wikiversity is a division of Wikipedia serving as a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Wikiversity is a multidimensional social organization dedicated to learning, teaching, research and service. Its primary goals are to create and host free content, multimedia learning materials, resources, and curricula for all age groups in all languages.
* Moodle is a course management system using a free, Open Source software package designed to help educators create effective online learning communities. Moodle claims over 20,000 participating sites listing over 820,000 courses.
* Curriki.org is an education development resource with over 3,000 members and 450 courses in development.
While we applaud these efforts, there are some critical elements missing. The learning system of the future will have a single access point for all of its courses. Moodle is claiming over 820,000 courses but they are spread over 20,000 sites and many courses are duplicates. We estimate the number of unique and different courses to be less than 50,000, not in the millions like the number of available books and songs.
Using books as a close analogy, it can be argued that every available book has the potential of being translated into courseware and, most often, multiple courses. There are currently far more topics discussed in books than there are courses to teach the material. This leaves an obvious courseware vacuum waiting to be filled, and the key to unlocking this vacuum is the participative courseware-builder described below.
4.) Expanding Gulf Between Literates and Super-Literates
According to the New York Times, there are an additional 20,000 new words added to the English language every year. The primary driver behind this ever-expanding dimension of vocabulary is the ongoing development of science and technology.
Along with the creation of new science and technology comes the need to explain its attributes, its function in technical terms, and its overall purpose. New words and their associated colloquialisms help create meaning and structure around the emerging new concepts as they attract more research and come into focus.
Young students can learn new words quickly: on average, 3,000 new words each year, which works out to 8 words a day. This, of course varies significantly from one student to the next.
In the English language, the 2,000 most frequently used words account for 80-85 percent of the words used in non-specialized written texts and about 90-95 percent in conversational speech.
However, the total number of words in the English language tops out around one million words, and the vocabulary of some of our most gifted scientist and engineers tops out around 200,000 words.
The distance between the functionally literate and the super literate is growing. Some people who have become expert on a specific topic have pushed the envelope of understanding far beyond the comprehension of the rest of the world. And in doing so, have created whole new vocabularies to describe the concepts and phenomenon they encountered. These super experts often live in a research community where they are often the only living person who truly understands the topic of their research.
Until now the primary tool for these super literates to pass along their understanding of research to future generations has been through papers that are published in technical journals. Because of the rigid requirements for publication, these papers often take months to compose, and are written in a vocabulary few can comprehend.
An alternative to publishing papers will soon be the creation of courseware. While developing courseware in the past has been laborious and poorly utilized, the new courseware builder described below has the potential to change all that. Courseware will become an alternative to publishing papers or writing books, and will serve as an additional channel for the super literates to disseminate their understanding of the world.
“Education is now the number one economic priority
in today's global economy.” - John Naisbitt, Author of Megatrends
Transition from Teaching to Learning
Education has traditionally consisted of the two fundamental elements of teaching and learning, with a heavy emphasis on teaching.
Throughout history, the transfer of information from the teacher to the learner has been done on a person-to-person basis. A teacher stands in front of a room and imparts the information for a student to learn. Because this approach requires the teacher to be an expert on every topic that they teach, this is referred to as the “sage on stage” form of education.
While lecture-style teaching has been used for centuries to build today’s literate and competent society, it ends up being a highly inefficient system, in many respects, the “equivalent of using Roman numerals.” For any new topic to be taught, a new expert needs to be created, and this universal need for more and more experts has become a serious chokepoint for learning.
To illustrate this point, let’s look at the example of a new topic that cannot be taught because the expert on this topic lives on the other side of the world. A teacher-dependent education system is also time-dependent, location-dependent, and situation-dependent. The teachers act as a control valve, turning on or off the flow of information.
The education system of the future will undergo a transition from a heavy emphasis on teaching to a heavy emphasis on learning. Experts will create the courseware and the students will learn anytime or anywhere at a pace that is comfortable for them, learning about topics that they are interested in.
In the future, teachers will transition from topic experts to a role in which they act more as guides and coaches.
2.) Exponential Growth of Information
During the time of Gutenberg, people tended to live and die within 20 miles of where they were born, not because they were afraid to travel, but because they had no reliable maps. People during this era had a very limited understanding of the world around them. The flow of information was controlled by just a few elite members of society, and they understood well the concept of knowledge equaling power.
We have gone from that time, just 500 years ago, where information was precious and few, to today, a time where information is so plentiful that we feel like we are drowning in it - information overload.
However, we still see many of the same “information control” issues permeating society today. Elite members of society still control the flow of information, perpetuating the notion that only doctors can understand medicine, only physicists can understand how the universe works, and only teachers know how to prepare us for the world to come.
There are many ways to talk about the rapid growth of information that we have experienced over the past few years. But it is important to pay attention to the changing dimensions of information as well as the sheer volume of it. Information is no longer just text-based, but graphical, musical, audio and visual.
Consider the following statistics
* The number of songs available on iTunes – over 3.5 million.
* The number of books on Amazon – over 4 million.
* The number of blogs available online – over 60 million.
* The number of entries on Wikipedia – over 4 million.
* The number of user accounts on MySpace – over 100 million
* The number of videos on YouTube – over 6.1 million
3.) Courseware Vacuum
After viewing the data above and thinking about the size and shape of information around the world, now consider the number of courses available, either online or in a classroom.
Information is exploding around us in every possible form. Yet, we do not have an easy way to translate these blocks of information into courseware. While some attempts are currently being made to unleash the public on this problem, we remain a long ways from solving the problem.
Open Education Movement - The open-education movement was inspired by the open-source software movement (i.e. Linux). It mixes in the powerful communication abilities of the Internet and applies the result to teaching and learning materials, such as course notes and textbooks. Open educational materials include text, images, audio, video, interactive simulations, and games that are free to be used and also re-used in new ways by anyone around the world.
It is estimated that more than 150 well-intentioned initiatives have been launched in this area. Over time, the increasing levels of attention and activity will cause one initiative to stand out and become the “industry leader.” This leader will, by default, set the standards for everyone that follows.
Some open-education projects are already attracting a large number of users per month. Some, like the MIT OpenCourseWare project and its OCW Consortium, are top-down organized institutional repositories that showcase their institutions’ courses. Others, like Rice University’s Connexions, Wikiversity, and Moodle are grassroot efforts that encourage contributions from all comers.
* MIT OpenCourseWare makes the course materials that are used in the teaching of almost all MIT’s 1,400 undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. MIT now claims 1.4 million visits per month from learners "in every single country on the planet.”
* The OpenCourseWare Consortium is an extension of what MIT began. Students don't have to register for classes but need only to log on to more than 1,800 potential courses at 12 universities that provide the course materials such as syllabi, video or audio lectures, notes, homework assignments, and illustrations.
* Connexions claims more than one million people from 194 countries are tapping into its 3,768 modules and 199 courses developed by a worldwide community of authors.
* Wikiversity is a division of Wikipedia serving as a community for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. Wikiversity is a multidimensional social organization dedicated to learning, teaching, research and service. Its primary goals are to create and host free content, multimedia learning materials, resources, and curricula for all age groups in all languages.
* Moodle is a course management system using a free, Open Source software package designed to help educators create effective online learning communities. Moodle claims over 20,000 participating sites listing over 820,000 courses.
* Curriki.org is an education development resource with over 3,000 members and 450 courses in development.
While we applaud these efforts, there are some critical elements missing. The learning system of the future will have a single access point for all of its courses. Moodle is claiming over 820,000 courses but they are spread over 20,000 sites and many courses are duplicates. We estimate the number of unique and different courses to be less than 50,000, not in the millions like the number of available books and songs.
Using books as a close analogy, it can be argued that every available book has the potential of being translated into courseware and, most often, multiple courses. There are currently far more topics discussed in books than there are courses to teach the material. This leaves an obvious courseware vacuum waiting to be filled, and the key to unlocking this vacuum is the participative courseware-builder described below.
4.) Expanding Gulf Between Literates and Super-Literates
According to the New York Times, there are an additional 20,000 new words added to the English language every year. The primary driver behind this ever-expanding dimension of vocabulary is the ongoing development of science and technology.
Along with the creation of new science and technology comes the need to explain its attributes, its function in technical terms, and its overall purpose. New words and their associated colloquialisms help create meaning and structure around the emerging new concepts as they attract more research and come into focus.
Young students can learn new words quickly: on average, 3,000 new words each year, which works out to 8 words a day. This, of course varies significantly from one student to the next.
In the English language, the 2,000 most frequently used words account for 80-85 percent of the words used in non-specialized written texts and about 90-95 percent in conversational speech.
However, the total number of words in the English language tops out around one million words, and the vocabulary of some of our most gifted scientist and engineers tops out around 200,000 words.
The distance between the functionally literate and the super literate is growing. Some people who have become expert on a specific topic have pushed the envelope of understanding far beyond the comprehension of the rest of the world. And in doing so, have created whole new vocabularies to describe the concepts and phenomenon they encountered. These super experts often live in a research community where they are often the only living person who truly understands the topic of their research.
Until now the primary tool for these super literates to pass along their understanding of research to future generations has been through papers that are published in technical journals. Because of the rigid requirements for publication, these papers often take months to compose, and are written in a vocabulary few can comprehend.
An alternative to publishing papers will soon be the creation of courseware. While developing courseware in the past has been laborious and poorly utilized, the new courseware builder described below has the potential to change all that. Courseware will become an alternative to publishing papers or writing books, and will serve as an additional channel for the super literates to disseminate their understanding of the world.
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