Several years ago, Greenville County Schools in South Carolina took an innovative approach to designing a new middle school to be named for our former superintendent, Dr. Phinnize Fisher. We threw out traditional building specs and came up with a new process to design the school around a focused curriculum: STEAM and project-based learning (PBL).

Like most districts, our building specs drove our school design. They were effective in providing standardization but not innovation. Under the direction of Deputy Superintendent (now Superintendent) Dr. Burke Royster, we developed a new way to design schools that has become the model for how we design schools. In 2015, for the first time in more than 20 years, Dr. Phinnize Fisher Middle, a K-12 facility from the southeastern U.S. was named the national James D. MacConnell Award winner by the Council of Education Facility Planners International.

Here are some of the lessons we learned while designing the Dr. Phinnize Fisher Middle School.

1. Re-think the purpose of schools
We have schools so that students can learn. Up until recently, the school building was seen as just that—a building that houses students so they can learn. We were missing out on an amazing opportunity to use the building for learning, not just a place to learn. Fisher Middle has exposed ceilings with colorful pipes, server rooms that are behind glass, and walls and walls of windows letting in maximum sunlight and reducing energy costs. The building is literally a teaching tool.

2. Involve all stakeholders
In most cases, when a school is commissioned, the ed specs are pulled out, architects called in, and project managers start their work. With Fisher Middle, multiple stakeholders were involved well before we started to design the building. We asked for design input from local community partners, business partners, and multiple district departments. Typically, the academics division is not involved until the school is completed. For this project, academics was involved from the start.

3. Eliminate the silos
Our executive director of facilities, Terry Mills, led the process and made it clear from the beginning that academics should provide the direction on the design so that the school could be designed around the curriculum. He and his team supported us as we provided insight on how the school could best be built to support the curriculum. He made sure all departments worked together. The end result? A school that truly was built with curriculum in mind.

4. Know your purpose
We knew that Fisher Middle would be a STEAM school with a PBL curriculum. All students in our district have the same curriculum but the delivery model and focus varies from school to school. For this PBL school, we designed wide open spaces and classroom walls made of glass to make collaboration a breeze. Small workrooms, also made of glass, include a TV and table so that students can work on projects while teachers watch from a distance. A rain-collection system in the cafeteria allows students to see rainwater being collected and reused for other purposes. These are just some of the innovative spaces that required outside-the-box thinking.

5. Don’t be afraid to take risks
When you are designing a multi-million-dollar building, it is daunting to take risks. We took many risks in the design, and I’m happy to say that most, if not all, paid off. For example, we did not assign teachers a classroom. Instead, there is a collaboration room for teachers in each of the nine learning communities. These collaborative spaces house teacher’s cubicles, materials, books, and personal belongings. Each classroom in the learning community is designed differently so that teachers can change rooms based on the activities they will be doing.

Initially, we weren’t sure how teachers would feel about not having a traditional classroom that belonged to them. However, if you talk to the teachers today, most will tell you that they collaborate at a much higher level than ever before because they are together all the time. That collaboration can certainly be seen as you walk around Fisher.

Our new model for designing schools has one big drawback: the amount of time it takes to design each school. Although it is time intensive, watching how perfectly the school fits the focus of learning makes it worth the time invested.

I remember walking into Fisher Middle the first day students entered the doors. The look on their faces and the excitement at seeing the new building made it worth all the hours spent in design meetings. They didn’t know how the building was going to impact their learning—they only saw the cool exposed ceilings and the blinking lights of the servers behind glass. The building sparked a curiosity among students that led to questions about the building. And our incredibly talented teachers turn those inquiries into learning experiences every day! As educational leaders, how better could we give of our time than designing something that will truly serve the educational needs for decades to come?

Throughout my entire career as a computer teacher, I have used project-based learning (PBL). I’ve had students as young as first grade working on projects using LCSI’s Microworlds, an authoring tool that enabled them to create animated stories, simulations, and games. My students have used HyperCard, Macromedia Director, FileMaker Pro, and Google Apps to work on some really amazing projects ^[1]. The level of excitement, engagement, and interest that working on these projects engendered made it clear that PBL is probably the best way that students can learn.

My experience shows that students are highly engaged when they are working on a project that is interesting to them. However, I have discovered that students are also looking to be challenged. One of my students from a robotics class once said to me: “Your class is the only challenging class that I have in this school.” Additional experiences testing this notion proved it to be true: Students feel much better about themselves when teachers ask them to solve thought-provoking problems.

What is PBL?

PBL is not just another way of teaching; it is the method by which students learn to solve the problems they will tackle throughout their lives. In a research article ^[2] about implementing PBL, Tara N. Tally shared the skills that students need to do PBL. These include communication, inquiry, collaboration, research, and activation of prior knowledge.

I agree with Tally and believe that PBL success depends on helping students develop those skills, so that when they need to tackle any problem, they know how to.

Some teachers believe that PBL is just about building something physical, such as a robot or an artifact. Many times, at the end of this process, students don’t understand how the artifact that they created works or what knowledge it is based on. That is why some research indicates that our key challenge in teaching PBL is focusing on identified learning outcomes rather than promoting “doing for the sake of doing.” Building something is a crucial part of PBL, but it should always be done with a focus on understanding the underlying concepts.

Finally, students need to learn collaborative skills. Guiding students to collaborate is essential, because many students have no experience talking to each other about ideas and working independently in small groups. Teachers need to create a safe environment in which students can feel comfortable sharing ideas and providing feedback in a civilized, respectful manner. Collaborative skills entail a great deal of decision-making and planning regarding project goals, division of labor, timelines, schedules, and identifying needed project resources.

The skills and tools teachers need

In my interactions with teachers around the country, I’ve noticed that many teachers try to do PBL before they have the chance to grasp what such a transformation entails. This is unfortunate, because just as students need scaffolding to succeed in PBL, teachers need it, too. Learning how to train students to practice that basic skill set of communication, inquiry, collaboration, research, and activation of prior knowledge is essential for a successful PBL practice. Teachers need to feel comfortable practicing those skills themselves and feel comfortable training their students to use them.

The messiness of PBL goes against the traditional learning methods that teachers are accustomed to, which is why many of them are seeking ways to systematize, order, and regulate the messiness. However, PBL’s messiness is what makes it so powerful, because it allows students to stray off the planned path and discover unknown treasures, develop unforeseen abilities, and grow in unpredictable ways.

A web-based collaborative platform like Project Pals ^[3] can support both linear and organic learning processes by allowing students to structure information and at the same time look at information from multiple perspectives. Students can create, access, and view project resources in one place.

Assessing PBL

Assessment seems to be one of the big obstacles to PBL implementation. I’ve heard students and teachers complain about the difficulty of knowing how much each individual student really contributed to a project. Project Pals addresses this pain point by providing analytics that track every student action in the project. The analytics measure student activity, its duration, types of actions performed, and accomplishment of tasks, providing teachers with an accurate, quantitative evaluation. Teachers can also use rubrics to provide a qualitative evaluation of the student. Analytics measure students, projects, classes, institutions, and districts.

Maintaining a PBL movement

A successful PBL experience requires access to a variety of resources. To make sure that students can perform intellectual tasks on their own, teachers need to build a solid foundation for these skills through the use of scaffolds. Here are some best practices for scaffolding PBL:

• Students must have an appropriate level of subject knowledge and methodological competence to carry out their projects.
• Student motivation can be maintained by assigning projects that are authentic or applicable to the real world.
• A learning atmosphere in which students are comfortable discussing issues relevant to their own lives and beliefs empowers them to make mistakes without fear of criticism or judgement.
• The allocation of roles to group members, including management roles, has a positive impact on teamwork.
• Student training in teamwork is absolutely essential, both during and after the project.
• A range of assessments is recommended, including ones that evaluate how the project progresses, such as student journals.
• Online technology is central to PBL. There are three important requirements for online learning in PBL: a space for negotiating meaning between students, for coordinating the project work, and for organizing the resources.

Andreas Schleicher, the division head and coordinator of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, once said, “In the 20th century when you did not know the answer to a question, you could look it up in the encyclopedia and you could trust the answer to be true. When faced with the same problem in the 21st century, you look it up on Google and you find 30,000 answers to your question. You need to learn to navigate that kind of information, triangulate different information sources, and build your own representation of knowledge. Literacy today is about constructing and validating knowledge.” And that is exactly what successful PBL trains students to do.

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) has become more prominent as an effective approach to interdisciplinary learning. However, implementation is not as simple as following a new curriculum or purchasing materials. During the edWebinar “STEAM: Innovations That Solve Real World Problems ^[4],” Cheri Sterman, director of education, Crayola; Lucie Howell, director of learning and engagement, The Henry Ford; and James Wells, innovative teaching & learning manager, Crayola, explained the movement’s genesis and offered strategies for a successful transition.

Integrating STEAM

1. STEAM is a guided approach to exploratory learning where teacher-talk is at a minimum and students drive interaction and discovery. Implementation, though, is not about lessons, units, or even just adding a few elements of science into art or vice versa. Embracing it means a commitment to a new way of teaching and learning, and this new language must be spoken across all classrooms.

2. Schools can start small, but it must be more than one teacher. Individuals from each content area should form a creative leadership team to investigate best practices and work together to develop a model that will work in their school. Once the leadership team feels confident in its knowledge, the members will become coaches for their colleagues.

(Next page: Additional tips for integrating STEAM)

3. At the same time, administrators need to provide teachers with proper support in the form of time and resources. Administrators should create opportunities for teachers to co-plan curriculum and encourage frequent check-ins, perhaps even daily, to ensure consistent implementation. In addition, school leaders can play a vital role in developing community partnerships, e.g., museums, to expand their STEAM network.

4. Within the classroom, lessons should shift from teachers standing in front of the classroom and telling students what they need to know to student-centered learning. Students should be asked to contemplate real-world problems, research the issues, and collaborate on solutions that use knowledge across disciplines. The result is a louder, messier journey, but one that empowers students and engages them in their own education.

5. Assessments then, too, should change. Rather than textbooks and tests, authentic assessments are based on process and artifacts. Again, the path to the solution becomes as important as the solution itself.

6. Begin with something fun and accessible, but to maintain momentum, teachers and administrators must have a growth mindset. Celebrate the wins, learn from mistakes, and keep planning new projects.

“It could begin in a shared space, like a makerspace,” said Sterman, “But ultimately you know STEAM is alive and well when it is infused into the regular day in every classroom in every learning space, not as some special treat you get to go down the hall and do once a week.”

About the Presenters

Cheri Sterman is the Champion Creativity edWebinar series presenter and the director of education at Crayola. “Bringing colorful wings to the invisible things that live in the hearts and minds of children” defines her career. She helps educators understand creativity and build their creative capacity. She translates research and best practices into professional development resources. Sterman has served on the executive boards of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, National Association for the Education of Young Children, and National Child Development Council. Prior to joining Crayola, Sterman taught child development at the University of Cincinnati and Sinclair College in Ohio. She served as a consultant to the National Governors Association, White House Commission on Children and Youth, Children’s Defense Fund, and the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities Turn-Around Schools Initiative.

Lucie Howell is the director of learning and engagement at The Henry Ford in Michigan. She previously served as STEM director at Teach for America, and the STEM teaching & learning director at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut.

James Wells is the innovative teaching and learning manager at Crayola. He previously served as fine art supervisor for Shelby County School District in Memphis, director of arts access for the Tennessee Arts Commission in Nashville, and education programs manager for the Culture & Heritage Museums in South Carolina.

Join the Community

Champion Creativity: The Power of Art-Infused Education ^[5] is a free professional learning community that helps principals, art teachers and other teacher leaders build creative capacity schoolwide.

This broadcast was hosted by edWeb.net ^[6] and sponsored by Crayola ^[7].

The recording of the edWebinar can be viewed by anyone here ^[4].

[Editor’s note: This piece is original content produced by edWeb.net. View more edWeb.net events here ^[8].]

Most students spend an average of 14,000 hours in the classroom during their K-12 years. As a result, the learning environment is powerful in impacting relationships among students and with their teachers. Until recently, most of us were using an age-old model, with teaching’s emphasis on standardization designed to support that model.

To break out of this mold, our district decided to pilot the Inspired Classroom project during the fall of 2016. Using an infusion of technology, high-impact classroom furniture, and teachers’ creativity, this initiative helps districts create learning spaces that look, feel, and operate differently than traditional models and instead support our current Google age!

Ready, set, go!

With a donation from the Franklin I Fickett Foundation, we kicked off the initiative by meeting with pilot participants to share ideas and lesson plans that would effectively leverage the new furniture and technology. The furniture was installed in October 2016, and from November through February 2017, we held two more meetings to share ideas, needs, and experiences. Technology training took place during December.

Next page: How the district moved away from sit-and-get learning

Prior to implementing the Inspired Classroom, students in our pilot classrooms took a 10-question survey concerning the furniture in their classroom. Of the students surveyed, 43 percent felt that the classroom furniture had no impact on their learning. However, after using the new furniture for three months, 88 percent of students felt that the new modern furniture had helped them learn. In fact, two out of three students felt the furniture had a significant beneficial impact on their learning.

This project challenged our traditional sit-and-get model of student learning. For example, the technology and flexible furniture configurations provided new ways for students to learn, increased collaboration, and helped us build and strengthen other 21st-century skills. This wasn’t going to be easy. Before we started with Inspired Classroom, just 25 percent of our students felt that classroom furniture made it “easy to work” with their classmates. Afterward, 94 percent felt that the furniture made collaboration easier, with 55 percent saying that the furniture made it very easy to collaborate. In fact, students are now working with each other 60 percent of the time.

The furniture, technology, and training we infused into the classroom not only impacted the students, but it also changed our teachers’ instructional methods.

5 steps to success

As with any major organizational shift, moving from a general agreement on values to an actual strategy and tactics often requires support from outside coaches or consultants. In our case, we partnered with MeTEOR Education to come up with a five-pronged approach to developing our new, High-Impact Learning Environments™. The five areas that we focused on were:

Integrated technology. One of the very first questions to ask when planning the design of new learning environments should be: “How will our students be using technology as they pursue their learning experience?” There is no single answer to this question and each district can benefit from coming up with its own answer(s).

Learner mobility. Schools must consider how to support both formal and informal teaching and learning in order to effectively maximize current and future square footage. A properly designed environment can allow students to seamlessly move from space to space as their work changes.

Multiple modalities. All students are different, so a high-impact learning environment should be able to easily accommodate differentiated instruction or many modes of learning. Both teachers and students should be able to self-organize their respective spaces to match the specific activity, emphasis, or learning style that best suits the moment.

Adaptability. An inflexible space does very little to accommodate impromptu needs. In fact, the location of electrical sockets, casework, and other finishes may unintentionally make it difficult for teachers to veer from the traditional front-facing lecture mode.

Dynamic ergonomics. While many of us remember the hard, rigid, plastic or wooden chairs of our own school time, studies have since shown that such furniture–when used over long periods of time–can negatively impact skeletal structures, circulatory systems, and respiratory systems.

Measuring the results

After our students had used the new spaces for three months, we surveyed them and found that 94 percent felt that collaboration was much easier. Teachers in our pilot program reported that the new spaces have been a catalyst for thinking outside the pedagogical box and making lesson plans more collaborative. Additionally, flexible furniture configurations allow students to reorient themselves to different views of the room as needed and encourage the teachers to move around and be more involved.

As schools continue to fully leverage the benefits of educational technology, the need for high-impact learning environments that support collaborative learning and student voice and choice is growing exponentially. By creating learning environments that support students’ concentration, engagement, well-being, and future success, districts can prepare pupils for success now–and well into the future.

Open space and technology brings the classroom of the future to life

The classroom buzzes with the low hum of conversation mixed with concentration.

In one corner, senior Jacob Routh works on setting up a 3D printer. In another, sophomore Desi Osterhout and junior Cydney Seley sit on blue-green patterned armchairs, looking through Google Cardboard goggles that use smartphones to create virtual-reality experiences. At a long, markerboard-surfaced table in the room’s center, a group of students builds robots from Cubelets, box-shaped elements that use sensors to perform different functions. Another group builds circuits using a kit with snap-on pieces.

These students belong to one of Anthony Donahoo’s Environmental and Spatial Technology classes at Creston Community Schools. Better known by the acronym EAST, these classes combine the use of technology with community service.

This year, Donahoo’s EAST students are in the process of testing and discovering the new equipment in one of Creston’s two brand-new next-generation learning spaces, also called 21st century classrooms.

Creston Schools furnished the classrooms — one in the high school and one in the elementery/middle school — in partnership with the Green Hills Area Education Agency. The classrooms are two of the first constructed in southwest Iowa and will be used by teachers in the district beginning next week.

Each of the two rooms contains many of the same furniture elements: tables with markerboard tops and raised chairs, flat-screen TVs that can display images from students’ personal devices, cushioned areas for more relaxed activities, green screen areas for creating broadcasts, a Smart Kapp markerboard that transfers the board’s contents to digital devices, and an interactive projector.

Each room also has a closet full of technology like GoPro cameras, circuitry sets and robotics of all shapes, sizes and functions.

Finding what works

Stephanie Mikkelsen, Green Hills Area Education Agency technology integration specialist, said a major role for these classrooms is seeing how these new technological elements benefit instruction. She said the main goals include increased student achievement, increased student engagement and learning; and increased student and teacher literacy with technology.

“A big thing about these classrooms is a lot of research and development: What works? What doesn’t work? What are the students using? What’s really helping the teachers enhance their lessons?” Mikkelsen said.

Teachers will have the opportunity to use these spaces for their classes by signing up to use them for certain periods. Mikkelsen said eventually, these elements might be working their way into other classrooms.

“We’re trying to create all the experiences (here) that they might want just so they can get an idea what they might want in their classroom,” she said.

Today, Creston is holding a 21st century classroom open house as part of the Green Hills AEA’s 21st Century Learners’ Conference, also being held at Creston High School. Mikkelsen, Donahoo and technology assistantTeri Keeler, along with some students, are presenting the technology and the vision for it to educators from around the area.

“Part of the partnership between Creston and Green Hills AEA was to make these rooms available to start conversations with other districts, as well, and give them an opportunity to see how this room might enhance student experiences,” Mikkelsen said. “The doors these rooms can open for our students really create endless possibilities.”

Project background

Creston Superintendent Steve McDermott said when he was hired in 2013, boosting Creston’s use of technology was one of his top “marching orders” from the school board.

McDermott said he worked closely with Green Hills AEA to brainstorm the possibilities, and they discussed partnering to create the learning spaces.

Green Hills AEA provided the technology equipment, a total of about $89,000, and Creston funded the furniture and other renovations to the room, a total of about $68,000, plus an additional amount for a video conference network that will allow students and teachers to communicate with others around the nation and world.

“We have a lot invested in these two spaces, but again in terms of research and development and in terms of just terrifically expanded student learning opportunities, we just felt like the investment was worth it,” McDermott said. “We’ll watch our return on our investment to see how it goes.”

McDermott said his hope is that teachers are eventually “fighting over the use of that space.” But he also said he realizes it might take some time before people use the space to its full potential.

“Like I told people, we have a new Harley in the garage, and we’ve been riding a bike, so we need to climb off the bike and learn how to ride the Harley,” McDermott said.

McDermott said he is already looking into applying for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) grant to expand technology offerings, which may include putting a similar room in the Early Childhood Center.

As for the immediate future, Donahoo said the high school students have been loving the new technology.

“I’ve been letting the kids free-range discover, and they’ve been coming out with some amazing stuff,” he said. “I’ve had at least three kids a day tell me how cool this is. I love to hear the words ‘how cool’ and ‘fun.’”

And, he said, it provides an open range of opportunities for the EAST students.

“The vision is just to do bigger, better projects,” he said. “The sky’s the limit on what students can create, what we can do.”

©2015 the Creston News Advertiser (Creston, Iowa). Visit the Creston News Advertiser (Creston, Iowa) at www.crestonnewsadvertiser.com ^[9]. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. ^[10]

Collaboration and creation do not lend themselves to rows of desks. What is the future of learning spaces?

Ed. note: This post, the first of a three-part series, was originally published on SmartBlog on Education. ^[11]

The spaces we inhabit have a profound effect on how we inhabit them. Space induces a particular way of feeling, of being. What are we saying to our children with we line them up in 5×8 rows facing the same direction toward a voice of authority? What do we say about desks that lock us in place, where the majority of movement within our gaze is eyes forward, eyes down? I remember my surprise when I walked into first grade for the very first time. The change from kindergarten to first grade was extreme. I looked at the arrangement of desks and thought, “what game is this?” It was a game I would play for the rest of my developing years. I was disappointed. I knew it could be better than this.

We look inside current learning spaces and look at the world; there is a big disconnect. It’s not reflective.We as a society have agreed by doctrine that our children will come together in a building and learn, and yet we allow our kids to be behind desks for a majority of their developing years. We evolve behind desks. Think of that! Students don’t need places to sit, listen and write. Instead, they need places to connect, explore, discover and relate. They need places of support. We spend over a decade being conditioned to receive and compete, imagine if space invoked us to support each other, everyday and in every way.

We need environments that help realize that within us there are unbounded treasures. We need environments that shine a light on our potential and provide opportunities to express ourselves. Schools at their heart should be human potentiality incubators. We need to think about what type of environment supports our own individual greatness. They come first, before college, before careers, before testing. The cultivation of the student, the child, the learner is all that matters. So the question becomes: What kinds of spaces naturally lend themselves to drawing out, rather than pushing in? How does one draw out what is within? And how do we enable one to feel confident enough to draw out from oneself all the magic that is inside. These are the questions of an educational space designer.

A few years ago, I found myself designing learning spaces for new school models of learning. The Playmaker school in Los Angeles became a canvas to explore these ideas. The school model was to make every day interactive, playful and creative. The space created needed to be versatile and functional for experiential learning across a broad spectrum of approaches: role-play, making and building, digital simulations, games, mobile apps, ideation and collaborative exploration. I thought about what experiences could happen in those spaces, extracting the qualities and characteristics of technology, space and teaching methods that could be applied to each space. We experimented with three rooms and asked ourselves, “What kind of room would provoke this way of being?”

A space for the birth of ideas

Imagine yourself within a soft, white room. The room feels safe, perhaps even feminine, not unlike a blank canvas or white egg. Bright, sloping whiteboard walls surround you so every inch of wall space can be drawn upon. Creativity is celebrated here. This is a fresh environment where ideas are free to emerge. Curved, stretchy chairs meet flexible tables, with writable surfaces. Both stand atop Astroturf; a sign of nature and an open field of exploration. The windows are Tetris-shaped and multicolored.

The space acts as an open-ended explorative think tank for education, where kids can purposefully dream, explore and create. Whether launching school projects, openly exploring math and science concepts, constructing novel inventions or imagining innovative companies; this kind of a space symbolizes birth.

A room for adventure

What follows birth? Experimentation and adventure. Imagine a large room with a ceiling grid for hanging displays and dividers that can be sectioned off into small group exploratory spaces or opened up for large collaboration and presentation. It’s an exploration space, ideal for mobile learning, embodied learning, floor simulations and game-based learning where students freely explore a variety of content domains by interacting in virtual environments and one another.

They role-play through different time periods, design their own galaxies, experiment with forces and motion. Here the room takes on a different theme of exploration by simply changing the digital content and room arrangement. In this space, educators are not positioned as lecturers, at the front of a class. Rather, they move throughout an exploratory space as a guide and advisor, listening in and offering advice as needed. Expression and collaborative interaction is championed in this learning environment.

The makerspace

After exploration and experimentation, creation follows — the manifestation of cultural artifacts, inventions and product as well as the building of confidence through real experience. A space that enables easy movement between individual and group work allows machines to be built, inventions to be launched, games to be programmed, or prototypes to be created. The space adapts elegantly with various multimedia stations, such that all students are motivated to physically manifest their intuition — whether individually or by virtue of collaboration.

The idea that a school’s function is one of purely academic development should be retired entirely. We have a responsibility to foster each student’s inherent genius and draw out his or her natural brilliance while maximizing emotional growth. Schools have an opportunity to create spaces that represent a more complete trajectory of growth; intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and physically. What if the foundation of schools was to support students holistically? Imagine if every space represented an emotional step in your life. What would these spaces look like? What colors? What ideas? What structures? What tools? What objects of learning would be placed in front of you, every step of the way? Can we imagine a progression of tools and psychological spaces that reflect the whole development of a human being?

Let us imagine it. Let us create that reality.

Lucien Vattel is CEO of nonprofit GameDesk. ^[12] He also is the founder and co-director of the PlayMaker School.  ^[13]

Photos courtesy of Gensler.

This article is no longer available. 

Student-centered learning, collaboration, and more may be the keys to transforming schools

It is not terribly difficult to get people to agree on the need for school transformation. The expression of this need comes not only from the “usual suspects,” i.e. politicians and academics, but also from teachers, administrators, and parents. Yet, despite this agreement the specific nature of what the transformed school should look like is harder to pin down.

The agenda for school transformative change reveals five critical terms. Each of these terms have been used when talking about teaching and learning in schools for decades. That’s the problem!

It may seem that school transformation simply means doing what we have always tried to do but better. But school transformation is actually about establishing a new vision of schooling.

What those five terms mean to those who are serious proponents of major school transformation is quite different from how they have traditionally been used in conversations about schools. Our challenge is to get beyond just using the right words to implementing the right practices. This requires us to sort out the somewhat more technical use of the five terms from the common usage of them.

Next page: Student centered learning, collaboration, and other terms

 

1. Student or learner centered learning is used frequently by school personnel when describing the nature of teaching and learning in their classrooms. Yet, anyone who visits schools that claim to be student centered will find that many of them are as traditional as any school one might have visited decades ago. What the personnel in those schools seem to mean by “student centered” is that school personnel care about their students and want to what is right for them.

In a student centered school, when the term is used by those involved with school transformation, the student becomes a key decision maker with regard to their educational program, and plays an active role in shaping their learning experience in the classroom according to their own unique nature, interests, and needs. The axiom “teacher knows best” gives way to a situation where the student has ownership and a high degree of control of what they will learn and how they will learn it.
Further reading: Teaching Excellence in Adult Education has authored a helpful fact sheet ^[14] that provides additional detail on student centered learning applicable at any level.

2. Collaboration is ability to work together with others to produce a product, and is a valuable life skill. Group work is a longstanding practice in classrooms, but group work and collaboration are not synonyms. The fact that a group of students may be working on a project together does not mean that they are engaged in effective collaboration. In reality, the way that group work typically is done in schools may be more of a detriment to expanding capabilities of students to collaborate since students, too, might conflate the two terms. True collaboration features much a much more focused approach to working in groups, with clear expectations, roles, and feedback systems addressed upfront.
Further reading: Check out this article ^[15] by educator Timothy Quinn, which provides a good analysis of the difference between collaboration and group work.

3. Engagement is one of the most critical terms in the transformation lexicon. Paying attention and being on task may or may constitute engagement. One can require the student to pay attention or to stay on task, but compelling engagement is a different matter. Engagement pertains to the relationship between the learner and the content of the learning. The engaged student is motivated by the sense that the knowledge or skill to be learned has deep relevance for her or him that goes beyond any extrinsic motivating force, such as teacher approval or a good grade. While it is often not an easy job to get students to stay on task and to pay attention, engagement in the learning process cannot be mandated. Student centered learning is a key factor in students becoming engaged in their learning. Engaged students are committed to making persistent effort even in the face of difficulties and obstacles, and without prodding from their teacher, because they see personal value in the knowledge or skill they are seeking to learn.
Further reading: Stephen Bowen has written a thoughtful analysis ^[16] of the meaning of engagement in learning situations.

Next page: How to connect students to the world around them

 

4. Participatory learning is another problematic term. It is easy to get agreement among teachers and administrators that students need to participate in what is occurring in the classroom and school. Participatory learning, as used by proponents of transformation, means that the student has many ongoing opportunities to become involved with their community and the world. Rather than just occasional field trips or special projects, participation with the appropriate media and information outlets, people, and communities via both conventional and digital media means is the modus operandi of the school. The classroom becomes permeable. Students not only have the opportunity to learn from others beyond the school as they work with them, but also make contributions to civic affairs, the arts, and other disciplines and activities. Rather than being a walled garden, the classroom becomes a magic carpet.
Further reading: Henry Jenkins and his colleagues produced a seminal paper ^[17] that considers student participation in the context of cultural changes stimulated by the wide spread use of digital media.

5. Connected learning is closely related to participatory learning. Some use the two terms interchangeably. Connectivity is a word that in common usage generally refers to the ability to access the internet. To speak of “connected learning” is often taken to mean that student are making uses of computers or hand held devices for their school work. For those proposing school transformation connected learning takes on a different meaning; the extent of connected learning is not determined by how many computers there are in the school and how often they are used. Connected learning is as much about the human element as it is about the technical element. It involves relationships, and the sense of the term is quite similar to what is meant when we speak of a person who is “well connected.”
Further reading: The MacArthur Foundation’s Connected Learning Initiative has produced a cogent document ^[18] that explains the term “connected learning” as a learning environment that goes beyond devices and wires.

Any of the five terms can be used as buzz words. They can provide sense of something being done that is important and current—as long as no one probes the meaning of them too closely. Progress in changing teaching and learning in the classroom in ways that fall within the common usage of these terms is not easy. Accomplishing the practices in the transformative use of the terms is a much tougher challenge and demands all the skill and persistence the person can bring to the task.

James Bosco is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Educational Studies at Western Michigan University.

Free online tools that can save teachers time, new innovations that could make online learning more accessible, and keen insight into how educators can let students take responsibility for their own learning safely were among the highlights at the 2010 Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) in Orlando last month.

More than 7,000 educators and administrators gathered in Orlando Jan. 13-15 for the 30th annual FETC, one of the largest state ed-tech conferences in the nation. The conference also featured an exhibit hall with more than 400 ed-tech vendors.

Here are some of the highlights from this year’s show. (To read about each topic, click on the headline.)

Free web tools can save time and effort for teachers ^[19]

While technology can be a powerful educational tool, many teachers still worry that it’s just not worth the effort. But thanks to keynote speaker Tammy Worcester, technology just got an “easy” button.

What every 21st-century educator should know ^[20]

Keynote speaker Cheryl Lemke discussed what it takes to be a 21st-century education leader.

November to educators: Let students use online social tools ^[21]

The most important change technology brings to education is that it enables students to take charge of their own learning, said education technology consultant Alan November. Yet, this is happening in too few classrooms, he said—and one reason is that schools are blocking access to the very tools that allow such activity.

Visual learning a key strategy for helping students succeed ^[22]

Software that takes a visual approach to teaching math has led to double-digit gains in the test scores of Orange County, Calif., students—and the software’s maker was one of several ed-tech companies demonstrating new visual learning products at FETC.

Software shows students’ full test history ^[23]

School data systems are getting more sophisticated, a perusal of FETC exhibitors suggested—and at least two companies now offer systems that show teachers the entire history of their students’ test results, including the results from prior school years.

New tools will make online courses more accessible ^[24]

Florida Virtual School, a pioneer in K-12 online learning, is adding to its reputation as a national innovator with the introduction of read-aloud functionality and other accessibility tools in its online courses.

FETC 2010: Hardware ^[25]

A multi-touch netbook, an entry-level workstation that is priced like a desktop, and a USB-based virtual computing appliance were among the new hardware innovations launched in Orlando.

FETC 2010: Instruction & Assessment ^[26]

Software that facilitates peer reviewing of student papers, a scaled-down (and less expensive) version of a popular data logger for science classes, and a media player for accessing more than 10,000 digital resources from the NBC News archives were among the new instructional technologies unveiled at FETC.

FETC 2010: Audio-Visual Systems ^[27]

Three-dimensional projectors, control systems that tie together multiple devices from a single source, and a digital “TV-station-in-a-box” were among the AV highlights.

FETC 2010: Online Learning Communities ^[28]

Software platforms for delivering personalized instruction, teaching with laptops, and communicating with stakeholders were showcased.

FETC 2010: Security ^[29]

Read about a new anti-theft computer system, network safety technologies, and a biometric security system that reported is 100 times more accurate than fingerprint technology.

FETC 2010: Training & Consulting ^[30]

A new tool that gives school district employees an anonymous way to report fraud, an online training course for using SMART Board interactive whiteboards, a support system for meeting the needs of students with autism, and more.

FETC 2010: Exhibitor Index ^[31]

Looking for coverage of a specific company from FETC 2010? Use this handy index to find the information you need. Clicking on each link will take you to the story where that company is featured.

Despite all the buzz about Apple’s iPad tablet ^[32] and how it could be useful for reading electronic textbooks, a new software program on the way might hold even more promise for education.

Blio ^[33], a free eReader program that is expected to be available in February, reportedly will allow users to read more than a million electronic books on nearly any computer or portable device, with the ability to highlight and annotate text, hear the text read aloud, and more.

Blio was announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and is the brainchild of education technology pioneer Ray Kurzweil, creator of Kurzweil Educational Systems ^[34] and a range of assistive technology products.

Perhaps the software’s most impressive feature is that it can support the original layout, font, and graphics of any book in full color, its creators say. It also can support embedded multimedia such as video and audio, and readers have the ability to highlight, annotate, and share information.

Blio isn’t yet available, but already it’s backed by Baker & Taylor, one of the world’s largest publishers, as well as Elsevier, Hachette, HarperCollins, Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley. Blio users will have access to more than 1 million books altogether, its makers say—including a large selection of current bestselling titles.

Lisa Galloni, partner relationship manager for Blio, said the software has had tremendous support from publishers because it can preserve any book’s original layout and graphics.

Its flexibility is appealing as well, Galloni said.

“Because it’s not attached to any one device like a Kindle, it’s not restrictive,” she said.

As a user downloads eBooks, these are permanently stored in a personal virtual library, Galloni said. The entire library seamlessly migrates to up to five devices per user, any of which can be mobile.

“What’s great about it is that since all these devices are synched, you can read seamlessly,” she said. “Say I am reading a textbook on page 23, and then I leave my computer and decide to read on the bus via my iPhone. When I click on that book, it will still be on page 23.”

Because all texts are stored virtually, all of the user’s highlights and annotations are saved as well.

Users also reportedly can:

• Create a personalized list of reference web sites, for one-touch lookup of highlighted phrases;
• Adjust reading speed and font size;
• Translate to or from English in an embedded translation window; and
• Insert text, drawings, audio, images, or video notes directly into the content. These are saved and can be exported to create lists or study materials.

Another feature that could prove useful for assistive and language learning is Blio’s read-aloud function. A synthesized voice can read texts aloud using text-to-speech functionality, synchronized with follow-along word highlighting, so a user can look and listen at the same time.

Amazon.com’s popular Kindle eReader also includes text-to-speech capability, but in a concession to publishers, Amazon requires users to turn on this functionality themselves. Turning on this feature of the Kindle currently requires users to navigate through screens of text menus, which is a problem for users who are visually impaired.

Last June, the National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind joined a blind Arizona State University student in suing the school for its use of the Kindle in a pilot project, alleging that the device’s inaccessibility to blind students constituted a violation of federal law. The parties settled the lawsuit ^[35] in January, in part because Amazon said it was working on making its Kindle eReader more accessible for the visually impaired.

Other features of Blio reportedly include the ability to open a book in 3-D “book view” for realistic page-turning, a “text-only” mode for optimal page display on small screens, the ability to display dual pages or tile multiple pages, the ability to enlarge text without distortion, and a high-resolution display.

Blio’s makers say the software will allow users to read eBooks on computers and mobile devices running Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone operating system. Supported eBook formats include XPS, PDF, and ePub.

Downloading the software will require a computer running Windows 7, Vista, or XP, Windows Media Player 10 or higher, and at least a gigabyte of system memory. Galloni said a version of the software for Mac users will be available later this spring.

A full list of system requirements can be found here ^[36].

eSN.TV: See how Blio works

How it compares

A key advantage of Blio is that it doesn’t tie users to a single proprietary eReading device like the Kindle or any of its competitors. That means schools can use whatever computers or mobile devices they or their students already have to make electronic textbooks available to learners.

Blio also might be a more attractive option than other computer-based eReading software, such as the Amazon Kindle for PC ^[37]or Stanza Desktop ^[38].

Though both the Kindle for PC and Stanza are free, Blio reportedly offers thousands more books than either of these platforms, and it is touch-capable, works with Windows 7, and has read-aloud and translation capabilities—all features lacking in these other programs.

A chart comparing Blio’s features with those of other eReader devices and programs can be found here ^[36].

Besides offering multiple study tools that will allow students to interact with their textbooks, Blio includes a library model that will enable students to borrow or rent certain electronic texts for a month or a semester at a time, Galloni said.

“I’ve looked at Blio, specifically in regard to foreign language instruction, and I am really impressed,” said Ryan Layman, an assistant professor in the English Language Program at Kanazawa Institute of Technology in Japan.

“Extensive reading has been widely touted in our field as a means for learners to build their language abilities, and Blio makes [texts] even more accessible to them. Its multimedia features, the vast amount of content, and the fact that it—and much of that content—is free provides … learners with a multi-functional learning tool at no to minimum cost.”

While Blio appears promising for schools, Layman said, it also holds promise for independent learners.

For example, the software’s read-aloud function “can be used to check pronunciation of unfamiliar words as well as for listening practice, and multimedia features allow for deeper comprehension of the material. Study tools such as sticky notes, highlighting, and bookmarks provide more functions for learners to engage in student-centered learning.”

The Blio “looks incredible and feature-rich; however, without the context of a device, it is hard to compare,” said Anthony David Adams, founder and editor of DetentionSlip ^[39], an education blog. “For example, I love my Kindle 2 because it is simple, easy on the eyes, and reads like a book. On a PC, however, this looks to be a superior product for reading books.”

Links:

Blio ^[40]

Kurzweil Educational Systems ^[34]

DetentionSlip ^[39]

For more news on recent developments in eReader technology, see:

Educators intrigued by Apple’s iPad ^[32]

Can Apple’s tablet spark a textbook revolution? ^[41]

eReader boom kindles variety of new options ^[42]

New electronic devices could interest schools ^[43]

Schools and colleges that use wireless microphones operating on the 700 megahertz (MHz) frequency band have until June 12 to change the radio frequency or buy new equipment, according to a Jan. 15 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The FCC’s decision is part of a larger government effort to clear the 700 MHz band for use by cell phones, digital TV transmissions, and emergency communications. About 25 percent of the country’s wireless microphones will have to be modified or replaced, according to federal projections.

The ruling affects schools, colleges, sports stadiums, churches, theater groups, musicians, and others who rely on wireless microphones to amplify sound. Some schools and colleges using wireless mics to help their instructors or performers be heard more clearly could end up spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to replace the banned equipment.

Violating the FCC’s order could result in penalties and fines, although the extent of this punishment isn’t yet known. Manufacturers of wireless microphones say many schools are unaware of the frequency change and its potential impact.

“I think a lot of people are still pretty vague on what’s going to happen” after the FCC’s June deadline passes, said Paul Harris, CEO of Aurora Multimedia, a New Jersey-based company that makes wireless microphones and has customers in higher education.

Schools “are probably going to keep using [the 700 MHz band] until it becomes a problem,” Harris said, adding: “If it’s not causing any problems, why should they have to stop using it?”

Harris said his company’s education customers won’t have to adjust to the new federal rules, because Aurora microphones use Bluetooth technology, avoiding use of the now-prohibited wireless spectrum.

The FCC has posted a list ^[44] of companies and products that will violate its new 700 MHz rules. The product list is lengthy and includes hundreds of model numbers from more than a dozen manufacturers, as well as information about whether these devices can be modified to abide by the new guidelines.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the 700 MHz ruling will promote next-generation wireless technology and clear the airwaves for police and firefighters.

“Our decision will accelerate the buildout of 4G wireless networks and will prevent interference with first responders who rely on the 700-megahertz band for mission-critical communications,” Genachowski said in a prepared statement.

The FCC’s decision came two years after a complaint filed by consumer groups accused many users of wireless microphones of unwittingly violating FCC rules that require government licenses for the devices.

In the complaint, the groups accused manufacturers such as Shure Inc. of Niles, Ill., of deceptive advertising in the way they market and sell high-end wireless microphones to people who are not legally permitted to use them. (See “Filing amplifies concerns over wireless mics.” ^[45])

Many of the most common suppliers of wireless microphones and sound amplification systems to schools, such as Anchor Audio, Audio Enhancement, Califone, Calypso Systems, and Extron Electronics, do not appear on the FCC’s list. One company that does is Shure, which says on its web site that it will provide rebates of up to $1,000 for each new wireless system purchased when a 700 MHz system is returned.

Harris said a more public notice will be needed to grab wireless microphone users’ attention in the coming months.

The FCC is “leaving it up to you to know these things are magically changing,” he said, adding that the economic downturn could be a barrier for schools that need to buy or adjust microphones to fit federal rules.

The FCC held an auction last year to sell off parts of the 700 MHz band. Verizon paid more than $9 billion for part of the band, and AT&T paid $6.6 billion.

Link:

FCC’s wireless microphone guidelines ^[46]

Apple’s new tablet computer, the iPad, could push other companies to bring more color-capable eReaders to the market in a move that could make digital books more commonplace on school campuses, educators said after the long-awaited release of the technology giant’s latest product.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad Jan. 27, calling it a new third category of mobile device that is neither smart phone nor laptop, but something in between.

The iPad, which is Wi-Fi enabled, has 10 hours of battery life, features a 9.7-inch screen, weighs 1.5 lbs, and will use the iPhone operating system, meaning education companies that have made iPhone apps can make their technology available for iPad users.

The iPad will be available in two months, according to Apple.

Jobs said the device would be useful for reading books, playing games, or watching video, describing it as “so much more intimate than a laptop—and so much more capable than a smart phone.”

He said the iPad can sit for a month on standby without needing a charge. What’s more, Apple is selling a dock with a built-in keyboard for the device.

A 16-gigabyte iPad will cost $499, according to Apple’s announcement. A 32 GB version will cost $599, and a 64 GB version will cost $699. Jobs also said Apple soon will launch an iBooks site that will be much like iTunes, where customers go to download music and movies to their iPods.

Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Harper Collins are among the publishing companies that will have digital books available in the iBooks store—an encouraging sign for eReader advocates who hope students soon will be downloading their textbooks on a tablet rather than lugging them around campus.

“I think this changes the picture for eBooks considerably,” said Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, an international group of colleges, universities, museums, and technology companies. “This has a lot of potential for higher education. … [Apple] has really seemed to think through the book experience.”

Educators have long complained that eReaders like Amazon’s Kindle lack the color that brings textbook graphs and charts to life. With the iPad bringing color to eBooks, Johnson said he expects competitors to follow.

“It’ll really drive others” to embrace a color screen, he said.

Carolyn Reidy, chief executive of Simon & Schuster, called the iPad a “terrific device” that gives readers the ability to adjust the typeface and turn pages by touching a finger to the screen, as opposed to pushing a button, as the Kindle requires.

Steven C. Mitchell, owner of Componica, an Iowa-based company that developed an iPhone app called “Memorize Words for Spanish,” said the iPad holds promise as a learning device for students.

“Most eBook readers, for whatever reason, are priced at about the level of a low-end netbook, which proves to be a significant barrier,” Mitchell said. “A tablet that is both an eBook reader and a netbook-like device would make it much more attractive to your everyday user. Plus, interactivity will bring new content and media that hasn’t been imagined yet.”

Still, tablet computers have existed for a decade with little success. Jobs acknowledged that Apple will have to work to convince consumers who already have smart phones and laptops that they need the iPad.

“In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks,” he said. “We think we’ve got the goods. We think we’ve done it.”

Cost tempered some of the excitement surrounding the iPad’s release. Although the entry-level price of $499 was less than most analysts had anticipated, many in education remain skeptical that students or their schools will spend $500 for an unproven electronic reader, even if it comes with the web-browsing features of Apple’s latest release.

Jobs said the iPad—like the iPhone—would use AT&T’s 3G service to supplement its Wi-Fi connectivity. Technology experts had speculated that Apple would tap Verizon to provide the iPad’s connectivity after consistent customer complaints about AT&T service.

The iPad models that can connect to AT&T’s wireless network will cost more, however—$629, $729, and $829, depending on the amount of memory they have.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Links:

Apple iPad ^[47]

New Media Consortium

Educators should change the way they view technology’s role in everyday life in order to understand students’ educational needs, said Don Tapscott, chairman of nGenera Insight, during a Jan. 19 Consortium for School Networking ^[48] webinar on the digital generation.

The nation is at a turning point, Tapscott said, and many institutions that have served us well for decades or even centuries—including education—have come to the end of their life cycle and must be “rebooted” or reinvented for a new age.

“This is an age where human communication is possible on a global basis,” he said.

Tapscott’s newest book, Grown Up Digital ^[49], looks at the so-called digital natives, some of whom are now college graduates, and how this generation is shaping education and the workforce. In 1998 he wrote Growing Up Digital, which examined this same group of students when they were K-12 students.

These digital natives are truly shaping the way technology is used and the things it is used for, he noted.

In 1998, “I noticed these kids were using the web differently than adults were—they were mainly using it for discussion or communication,” Tapscott said. “This is the true meaning of the internet—it’s not about presenting content or managing knowledge, it’s a new platform for communication and collaboration, for building communities.”

He added: “This is the Net Generation—computers, the internet, and technology shape it.”

The Baby Boomer generation tends to liken students’ continual internet use to excessive television watching, but the two are not necessarily the same thing, Tapscott said. The internet is not preventing kids from talking to their parents, doing their homework, or participating in extracurricular activities. If anything, he said, it takes away from TV time.

“Others think the digital age makes people stupid, that this generation is glued to the screen, is losing social skills, and is addicted to video games and the internet,” Tapscott said.

But in reality, today’s digital natives have made technology a natural and necessary part of their daily communication efforts, he said.

“This is the first time in history when children are an authority on something important. This digital revolution is changing every institution,” Tapscott said. And this, he added, has caused a generation “lap” instead of a generation gap, because kids are lapping parents on the digital track.

“This generation has a big problem—it’s us. The problem, to me, is older people who don’t ‘get it,'” Tapscott said.

“If someone was frozen 100 years ago and woke up today, they’d look around and they’d say the world has changed, and technology has been at the heart of these changes,” Tapscott said. “If they walked into many typical classrooms, they’d breathe a sigh of relief and say, ‘I recognize this.'”

The emphasis in today’s schools should be “not so much [on] what you know when you graduate, because we need learning to be lifelong,” Tapscott said. “We need to have a generation coming into the workforce that not only has knowledge, but can think, solve problems, communicate, and collaborate.”

Tapscott said educators should not “throw technology into a classroom and hope for good things.” By cutting back on lectures and using technology to engage students in tasks such as real-world problem solving, he said, educators will empower students to collaborate and focus on lifelong learning, not just teaching to a test.

Links:

Consortium for School Networking ^[48]

Grown Up Digital ^[49]

Educators face a growing challenge in trying to compete for their students’ attention with near-constant access to entertainment media outside of school, a new study suggests.

Today’s technology enables children to have nearly 24-hour media access, and many are choosing to spend an average of close to eight hours per day using entertainment media, according to research from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The study, “Generation M²: Media in the Lives of eight- to 18-Year-Olds,” found that children devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media during a typical day. However, because they spend so much of that time “media multitasking,” they manage to fit a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into that 7 and a half hours. The report identifies media multitasking as using more than one medium at a time.

“Generation M²” is the third in a serious of large-scale, nationally representative surveys by Kaiser about young people’s media use. It includes data from three time periods—1999, 2004, and 2009. The most recent report is based on a survey conducted between October 2008 and May 2009 of 2,002 third through twelfth grade students ages 8-18, including a self-selected subsample of 702 respondents who completed seven-day media use diaries, which were used to calculate multitasking proportions.

The study found that high levels of media multitasking also contribute to the large amount of media young people consume each day. About four in 10 seventh through twelfth graders said they use an additional medium “most” of the time they’re listening to music (43 percent), using a computer (40 percent), or watching TV (39 percent).

Paul Olean, director of marketing for interactive teaching technology provider mimio, said he was not surprised by the survey results. Olean said he sees the burden this increase in entertainment media use puts on teachers.

“The relationship to that and the classroom seems to place a greater burden on teachers to compete for [students’] attention and keep the student engaged. While interactive teaching technologies are not the whole answer, they are [an] instrument by which teachers can break through the clutter,” he said. “When teachers are given the opportunity to [use interactive technologies,] they are in a better position to compete with the commercial media for the minds of the student.”

Stephen Balkam, chief executive officer of the Family Online Safety Institute, attended the Jan. 20 event announcing the survey’s findings and said attendees seemed surprised with the results.

“I think everyone in the hall was somewhat taken aback by the degree of increase in media consumption,” he said. “I know that one of the authors had said five years ago that he thought we had reached the ceiling of how much media kids could consume, and yet there was this dramatic increase.”

Balkam added that handheld technologies have contributed to the swell.

“And part of why there was this increase was the mobile technology that allows kids to walk around with the internet in their pockets, basically. To have it on the school bus, to have it at playtime, to have it when they’re going to bed. In Japan they’ve created a waterproof cell phone, so now kids can take it in the shower with them,” he said.

According to the report, mobile media device ownership increased dramatically among 8- to 18-year-olds, from 39 percent to 66 percent for cell phones, and from 18 percent to 76 percent for iPods and other MP3 players. During this period, cell phones and iPods became true multimedia devices, the report said.

In fact, young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of 49 minutes daily) than they spend talking on them (33 minutes), the survey found.

Balkam said the findings highlight the need for schools and teachers to revisit their methodologies.

“What we have now is a situation where kids are having to power down when they get to school and basically go from the 21^st century to the 19^th century in terms of methodology and approach,” he said. “That’s not true for all schools, and that’s not true for all teachers, but by far the majority of schools simply do not know how to integrate the technology that’s in the schools—the computers themselves—and most are clueless about how to integrate the technology that kids bring into school.”

To make that change, Balkam said educators must blur the lines between what they consider to be entertainment and what they consider education—although, he noted, the idea faces resistance.

“We’re at that stage now, and what is so extraordinary is that kids are far more clued in to how the devices work and where to go while on them,” he said. “And the parents and the teachers are trying desperately to catch up.”

The report states that while the study cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship between media use and grades, there are differences between heavy and light media users.

About half (47 percent) of heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades, meaning mostly Cs or lower, compared to 23 percent of light users. These differences might or might not be influenced by their media use patterns. Heavy users are defined as young people who consume more than 16 hours of media a day, and light users are young people who consume less than three hours of media a day.

But Balkam noted that the study did not differentiate between the different types of entertainment media.

“I don’t feel as pessimistic as some people did in responding to that. Yes, there must be a balance, yes, there must be a time when kids switch off somewhat. I think that to be constantly stimulated by your cell phone buzzing or constantly updating your Facebook account, anything that gets to sort of obsessive levels can’t be healthy,” he said.

Balkam said school and district leaders need to rethink teaching and learning by providing professional development for existing teachers and recruiting new teachers who are comfortable with interactive technology use.

“I think we’re at a generational shift. In five, 10, 15 years, the kids who are growing up with the internet, particularly the mobile internet, who will then become the next generation of teachers will find it far easier to integrate this,” he said. “I think what we’re having is a generation of digital immigrants trying to teach digital natives. And there’s a mismatch here.”

Jean Westcott, senior marketing and publicity manager for International Publishers Marketing and author of Digitally Daunted: The Consumer’s Guide to Taking Control of the Technology in Your Life, said the study holds value for those who might not have considered just how much technology is rooted in children’s everyday lives.

Westcott said she was shocked with how fast media use has increased from five and 10 years ago.

But just because today’s students spend more time on iPods and in front of the computer does not mean those behaviors, when within reason, are unhealthy, she said.

“I think that once we absorb that this is how our adolescents spend their lives, we need to see how that may affect the other parts of their lives,” Westcott said. “We may be tempted to simply demonize those behaviors, but instead we need to look at how it shapes how kids relate to one another, to their families, their teachers, and their world at large.”

In fact, educators can use the study to learn more about their students and how students use technology.

“Does it make forming and maintaining friendships easier? Does it encourage gossiping or bullying? Does it allow for you to be a supportive community or build school spirit?” Westcott asked. “Teachers can ask their students if electronic communication between the teacher or the school and students makes things easier. No more forgotten textbooks or homework? Can class web pages have suggested resources for homework help or test review?”

Westcott said it’s also important to consider those students who do not have home access to technology and think about how they can gain access to the educational tools that require a computer or high-speed internet connection.

“Teachers also need to consider how technology has changed the way that information is accessed and perhaps learn from their students,” Westcott said. “Teachers can look for continuing education offerings that [help them] learn how to adapt lesson plans to take advantage of these tools and how to teach students to use them responsibly.

Links:

“Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds” ^[50]

mimio ^[51]

Family Online Safety Institute ^[52]

International Publishers Marketing ^[53]

In a move that could shake up the interactive whiteboard (IWB) market, two projector manufacturers have just released new products that can turn virtually any surface into an IWB.

The development means schools no longer have to buy separate hardware to enjoy the benefits of IWBs, whose interactive surface and ability to engage students have made them quite popular in classrooms.

“We would certainly consider this projector a game-changer,” said Claudine Wolas, project manager for Epson Electronics’ BrightLink 450Wi. “It’s not just the newest and latest in projectors, but in whiteboards as well.”

The BrightLink projector, introduced Jan. 13, can be mounted to any type of classroom wall (of course, the smoother the better—and old-fashioned, non-electronic whiteboards work the best). Because it’s an ultra short-throw projector, it can project a whiteboard surface image from a very short distance, meaning that as a teacher or student interacts with the surface, no shadowing exists.

The projector comes in XGA or WXGA models, and images can be anywhere from 59 inches to 96 inches diagonally with WXGA resolution, or from 55 inches to 85 inches with XGA resolution. (Click here for a full list of specs.) ^[54]

“The entire projection area is the interactive area,” explained Wolas. “Before, educators would have to consider board size in terms of both pricing and classroom size, and costs would differ accordingly. With this projector, which has Epson 3LCD technology and 2,500 lumens, now educators can choose any type of size for their IWB, at no cost increase. It’s every size of whiteboard in just one projector.”

Educators and students can interact with the whiteboard surface using an infrared pen, and the software driving the system is platform-agnostic, meaning students and educators can work with virtually any Web 2.0 application, digital media file, or eTextbook.

Epson also is partnering with RM Education to provide RM’s Easiteach ^[55]interactive lesson software; however, the companies have not yet decided whether RM’s content will be provided free of charge with the projector or will come at an additional cost.

As of press time, the BrightLink 450Wi was priced below $2,000 (including mount), and it will begin shipping this spring.

The day before Epson announced its new BrightLink projector, Boxlight introduced a similar product, the ProjectoWrite2/W—a short-throw LCD projector with XGA resolution that can project an IWB surface up to 80 inches diagonally. The ProjectoWrite2/W improves upon a technology that Boxlight first unveiled in 2007.

Epson and Boxlight aren’t the first companies to come out with technology that can turn any flat surface into an IWB. AVRover’s SVS200 with ONfinity CM2 Max is a portable AV system that can turn almost any surface into an IWB. And mimio’s Interactive System includes a small bar, stylus, mounting hardware, software, and USB interface that can attach to any dry-erase board or other surface to make it interactive.

But to use these other systems, schools will still need a digital projector—whereas Epson’s and Boxlight’s solutions are self-contained.

For less than $2,000—half the price of the average IWB—schools can have twice the number of IWB surfaces in their schools, simply by purchasing the BrightLink, Wolas said.

“Or they can use the money saved for other school costs,” she added.

According to Ted Lai, director of technology and media services for the Fullerton School District in Fullerton, Calif., the BrightLink 450Wi is a great solution for future-proofing classrooms.

Fullerton has been piloting one BrightLink 450Wi projector since November 2009 and plans to install another at the end of January.

Lai said that while traditional IWBs are useful, there are still problems. For example, “with a mounted LCD and IWB, there can be issues of calibration when AC units turn on or the building shakes. The shaking/calibration issues are more pronounced in portables,” he said.

He added: “With the traditional all-in-one IWB units, we have found those are much more stable, but they are also a much higher cost for the hardware and installation. Additionally, the projectors on all-in-one units are generally lower quality than what we are accustomed to. The Epson image is much clearer and brighter and has more accurate colors. Also, the BrightLink is a single unit that is installed, not a board and projector.”

And with fewer parts involved, “less can go wrong or break,” he concluded.

Mike Rodems, founder of AVRover, said adding IWB capabilities directly to a projector eliminates the need for constant recalibration, and it makes setup easy. But he noted that his company’s ONfinity solution will work with any projector, “allowing [schools] to select the projector that matches their needs best.” And with the ONfinity technology separate from the projector, “the interactive technology will be available to use long after the projector wears out, becomes obsolete, or is … damaged,” he said.

Linda Thomas, vice president of marketing for SMART Technologies, the leading manufacturer of IWBs for schools, had this to say about the new IWB-capable projectors:

“We are confident that educators will continue to choose SMART Board interactive whiteboards [owing] to their superior ease of use, driven in part by our touch technology.” (SMART Board users don’t need a stylus to interact with the board, as the company’s technology is touch-sensitive.)

Thomas continued: “There are already many low-cost, pen-only hardware offerings in the marketplace. We are not concerned about another entrant in that space. When educators invest in education technology, they are not just buying a whiteboard or a projector. They are also investing in the content, resources, and services that are required to transform classrooms. They choose SMART because we provide the best complete education solution.”

Links:

Epson ^[56]

RM Easiteach ^[55]

Boxlight ^[57]

AVRover ^[58]

mimio ^[59]

SMART Technologies ^[60]

New netbooks, tablet computers, and eBook reader devices, as well as fresh developments in television and even a wireless tether to keep cell phones from getting lost, are among the technologies being unveiled this week at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas–technologies that might hold interest for schools and colleges as well.

Small and inexpensive netbooks have been among the most popular computers during the recession, wooing schools and consumers alike with their portability and prices that were often below $400. Now, with the economy improving, computer buyers will be asked to open their wallets to new styles of computers, including some costing a bit more.

Among the new offerings introduced at CES: lightweight, medium-sized laptops meant as a step above netbooks in price and performance, as well as a new category of device called the “smartbook,” a tiny computer that combines elements of netbooks and so-called smart phones.

That isn’t to say the netbook has reached the end of its line. PC makers such as Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba are demonstrating new netbook offerings with such features as touch screens and the latest Intel Atom processors, which offer improved performance over the earlier Atoms that fueled the initial run of netbooks.

But the netbook’s popularity has come at a price for the industry: slim profit margins for chipmaker Intel Corp. and the PC manufacturers.

For many PC makers, the rise of netbooks has meant falling revenue and profit from PC divisions. HP, the world’s largest computer maker, gets a third of its revenue from its PC business but just 15 percent of the company’s operating profit, numbers that are shrinking thanks to netbook sales and price cuts on other machines.

Ever since Taiwan-based AsusTek Computer Inc. got the netbook craze going with its 7-inch Eee PC in late 2007, schools and consumers have been gravitating to the devices. According to data from research company Gartner Inc., netbooks made up an estimated 10 percent of all PC shipments in 2009, up from 4 percent a year earlier.

These devices had small screens–generally 7 to 11 inches, compared with about 14 to 17 inches on a full-sized laptop–and often smaller-than-normal keyboards. PC makers kept prices down by avoiding extras such as DVD drives and Bluetooth wireless connectivity.

Netbooks were meant to be companion devices that could slip into a purse or backpack for on-the-go web surfing, though for many schools and consumers, netbooks were the only computer they bought in 2009.

Now, computer buyers can expect to see a number of devices that fit above and below the small laptops in price, size, and performance, as PC companies try to widen the market.

Lenovo Group Ltd. is banking on so-called “smartbooks,” which are meant to combine the constant internet connectivity and long battery life of a smart phone with a laptop’s classic shape.

The company announced its first smartbook, the Skylight, on Jan. 5. The skinny Skylight has a 10-inch screen, full-size keyboard, and 10 hours of battery life and weighs less than 2 pounds. It includes Wi-Fi connectivity, and users can use it over AT&T Inc.’s high-speed data network if they sign up for a data plan. If they do, the Skylight will be able to switch automatically between the two network types.

But under the hood, it’s less powerful than a netbook because it uses a weaker class of processors.

The Skylight is slated to be available in April at $499, though AT&T might subsidize the cost for users who also sign up for a data plan.

Computer makers also are coming out with devices that are thin and light like netbooks, but have more powerful processors and screens that are a bit larger, at 11 inches to 13 inches. The price tags are be a bit heftier, at $400 to $600.

Philip Osako, a director of product marketing for Japanese electronics company Toshiba Corp., said those laptops should resonate with consumers who want an affordable gadget that can do more than surf the web and check eMail on the go. As it is, netbooks aren’t good at demanding tasks such as viewing high-quality video.

“It’s the natural step up from the netbook,” he said. “It’s also a sweet spot relative to where full-size traditional notebooks are.”

At the same time, PC makers are releasing a new generation of improved netbooks.

Lenovo, a fairly early player in the netbook market, is showing the latest entrants to that line at CES, one of which has a 10-inch touch screen that swivels around to become a tablet.

The new S10-3t model, like Apple Inc.’s iPhone, will understand multiple finger gestures, allowing you to pinch the screen to zoom in and out of photos, for instance. It will have Intel’s latest Atom processor, which should consume less power and depict graphics better than an earlier version.

The S10-3t is expected to be available in January for $500, while a similar model without a swiveling touch screen will cost $350.

Toshiba, meanwhile, is demonstrating the mini NB305. It keeps the 10.1-inch screen and full-sized keyboard available on the company’s current mini NB205 model but adds the new Atom processor and 11 hours of battery life, two more hours than before. The netbook is expected to be available Jan. 12 with prices that start at $350.

New eBook readers

For the first time, eBook readers have their own section of the CES exhibit hall floor, with 23 exhibitors hoping to follow Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle to the cusp of the mainstream.

Samsung, the leading maker of phones and TVs for the U.S. market, is launching eBook readers early this year, it announced at CES–joining a host of manufacturers who hope to capitalize on the shift away from paper books.

Samsung will be launching two models with 6-inch and 10-inch “electronic ink” screens, similar to the sizes of Amazon’s Kindle models. Users of the devices will be able to download public-domain books from Google Inc. via Wi-Fi, and the e-readers will come with styluses so users can write on the screen.

The models will cost $399 and $699, respectively, Samsung didn’t say who would provide for-pay eBooks for the devices.

Also, Sprint Nextel Corp. said it has made a multiyear deal with a startup called Skiff for a thin eBook reader that operates over Sprint’s high-speed 3G network, as well as over Wi-Fi.

The Skiff Reader will have an 11.5-inch screen, larger than those on competing devices such as the Kindle, Sony Corp.’s Reader, and Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook.

Sprint and Skiff tout the device as the thinnest to date, at just over a quarter of an inch thick. The e-reader’s entire page will be a touch screen, unlike the Kindle, which uses physical buttons for navigation, or the Nook, which has a small built-in touch screen separate from the book page.

The Skiff Reader will connect to its own online content store. Skiff said it’s also working with other electronics manufacturers to put its technology into a variety of devices. Pricing and availability had not been disclosed as of press time.

New tablet devices

Delivering Microsoft Corp.’s customary keynote on the eve of the show’s opening Jan. 6, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demonstrated a new touch-screen, tablet-style computer from Hewlett-Packard Co., the first of several such devices expected to be unveiled this month.

The tablet–also known as a slate, a one-piece portable computer without a physical keyboard–was one of several new PCs Ballmer demonstrated. During his speech, Ballmer said the HP tablet will be available later this year. He also gave a glimpse of two similar devices from Archos and Pegatron Corp.

Tablet-style computers that run Windows have been available for a decade, but HP’s new machine is bound to draw extra attention thanks to expectations that Apple Inc. will launch a similar device later this month.

Apple, notoriously secretive about upcoming products, has not commented on the matter. But given the iPhone’s success, which propelled competitors to come out with copycat touch-screen phones and centralized “app” stores to sell add-on software, all eyes are on Apple to define what a slate or tablet-style computer should look like and how it will be used.

Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, announced that Natal, new technology that lets video game players control the action by moving their whole bodies instead of using a joystick, will go on sale for the Xbox console in time for the holiday shopping season in late 2010.

Bach said in an interview with the Associated Press that devices built for touch, gestures, and other so-called natural user interfaces will become much more mainstream in the next few years. While Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has for years said the same thing, Bach says computer science and hardware technology are now sophisticated enough to support Gates’ and other visionaries’ big ideas.

Microsoft also said it forged a new search distribution deal with HP that will make the company’s Bing search site and MSN.com content portal the default search engine and web home page on new HP computers sold in 42 countries.

The software maker has signed similar deals in the past, including one with HP in 2008 that made Live Search, Bing’s predecessor technology, the default on computers sold in the U.S. and Canada. People who buy such computers can still change their preferred search engine to something else.

Ballmer also announced a new version of Mediaroom, its technology that delivers TV over the internet on such services as AT&T Inc.’s U-verse system. The newest version of Mediaroom will let subscribers watch live and recorded TV and video-on-demand on Windows computers and phones and through Xbox 360 consoles, in addition to a set-top box. It will work over regular broadband, not just special fiber connections.

Other TV-related news

In other TV-related news from CES, the prospect of watching live, local TV shows on mobile phones and other portable devices is getting closer, as manufacturers showed off gadgets that can receive a new type of digital TV transmissions.

”Mobile DTV” gadgets will be available this spring for consumers in the Washington, D.C., area to try. The devices include a cell phone made by Samsung and a Dell Inc. laptop. There’s also the Tivit, a device about the size of a deck of cards that receives a TV signal, then rebroadcasts it over Wi-Fi so it can be received by an iPhone or BlackBerry.

Conventional digital TV broadcasts are designed for stationary antennas. So devices that are moving–because someone’s carrying them, or because they’re in a car–have a hard time getting a picture. The Mobile DTV technology gets around that problem, letting broadcasters add a secondary signal to the towers they use for sending TV signals to homes. About 30 stations have done so in the last year, hoping to reach viewers on the go as gadgets such as smart phones gain in prominence.

So far, only prototype devices have been able to receive these new signals. Cell phones, particularly ones with large screens, would be natural devices for Mobile DTV reception, but U.S. carriers have shown little interest in the technology. The two largest ones, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, sell phones that are compatible with a rival broadcasting system, FLO TV, run by Qualcomm Inc. It provides 10 channels for $15 per month.

Mobile DTV differs from FLO TV by providing local channels with traffic, weather, and sports content, and by being free, at least for some channels. One of the goals of the consumer trial is to figure out how willing consumers will be to pay, according to the Open Mobile Video Coalition, an industry group that represents both broadcasters and equipment makers.

The new Samsung phone is a version of the already available Moment, with an added telescoping antenna for TV reception. It has a screen made of organic light-emitting diodes, providing eye-popping color saturation. Samsung spokesman John Godfrey said about 300 of them will be in consumers’ hands in the D.C. area in the first few months of the year.

Phone service will be provided by Sprint Nextel Corp., which doesn’t have a deal with FLO TV. But the extent of Sprint’s support doesn’t yet go very far: It hasn’t said it will sell Mobile DTV phones.

The Tivit approaches the phone market differently: It’s a separate device that can beam a TV signal to most Wi-Fi-capable phones. It thus bypasses the cellular carriers. It was originally designed to provide TV viewing to the iPhone in Japan, where TV reception is considered a must for phones. Valups, the Korean company behind the device, said the Tivit will go on sale this spring for about $120.

LG Electronics Inc., which like Samsung has helped develop the Mobile DTV technology, has said it will introduce a portable DVD player that will also tune in Mobile DTV. It will be available later this year for $249, it said.

Dell will be supplying hundreds of small laptops for the trial in Washington, and the computer maker believes it will be able to sell Mobile DTV tuners as upgrades for its laptops, said spokesman James Clardy. Dell already sells laptops with the option of a built-in receiver for standard digital TV, for about $50.

This also is supposedly the year 3-D television becomes the hot new thing: Updated sets and disc players are coming out, and 3-D cable channels are in the works. But it’s not clear the idea will reach out and grab mainstream viewers.

Besides having to spring for expensive new TVs, users would have to put on special glasses to give the picture the illusion of depth. Unfazed by the potential hang-ups, however, the biggest TV makers began revealing their 3-D models Jan. 6 before the official opening of CES.

Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics’ consumer division, said in an interview with AP that 10 to 14 percent of the roughly 35 million TVs sold in the U.S. this year will be 3-D-capable.

Samsung is determined to make 3-D a big feature on its more expensive TVs this year. And Panasonic Corp. said it will debut four 3-D sets this spring, but they won’t be LCD sets, the most common type of flat panel. Instead, Panasonic is using plasma panels, saying the viewing quality will be superior to 3-D on LCDs.

Sony Corp. said its 3-D sets will be out this summer. Some will come with glasses, while others will be “3-D ready,” which means that buyers will have to complement with a separate plug-in device and glasses for 3-D viewing.

LG Electronics Inc. said it will introduce 47-inch and 55-inch flat-panel TVs with 3-D capabilities in May. LG didn’t announce exact prices for its new sets. But Tim Alessi, director of product development at LG Electronics USA, said 3-D TV sets will likely cost $200 to $300 more than comparable flat-panel sets without 3-D capabilities, which already run more than $1,000.

Manufacturers aren’t counting on 3-D to take over instantly. Color TV and high definition caught on over many years. Like those earlier advances, 3-D programming requires upgrades throughout the TV and movie infrastructure, from shooting to editing to distribution. But as the technology evolves, and as more 3-D content becomes available, 3-D TVs could become technologies that schools might consider, too.

New cell phone tether

Losing a cell phone can be exasperating and expensive, something that could easily challenge already tight school budgets–but what if your phone could call out to you, letting you know it was about to be left behind?

Zomm, a newly minted consumer electronics company from Tulsa, Okla., believes this would cut down on disappearing handsets. At CES, the company showed off a small device that does just that.

The company’s device, also called Zomm, connects wirelessly with your phone via Bluetooth and sets off an alarm if you walk away from it.

The Zomm, which is about the size of an Oreo cookie, also includes a personal alarm that users can activate and a button that will call emergency services with your phone. It acts as a speaker phone and alerts users of incoming calls as well.
The product includes a rechargeable battery that can last for three days per charge and is expected to be available this summer for $80.

Laurie Penix, co-founder and president of Zomm, came up with the idea for the gadget earlier this year after a friend’s husband lost his third iPhone. She started the company with her husband, Henry Penix, who is also its CEO.

Link:

International Consumer Electronics Show ^[61]

Next month we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which fell Nov. 9, 1989, and many no doubt will sing the praises of Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev for this important historical marker signaling the end of the Cold War.

But there are, of course, many others who deserve credit. Who, for example, remembers that just a year before the wall’s collapse, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a unique educational experiment?

The architect of this partnership was a former New York teacher, Peter Copen, who used “computerized electronic mail” (the precursor of eMail) and the first satellite phones (the internet was still a plaything of the military) to connect a dozen schools in New York with a dozen in Moscow. The project’s goal was to improve understanding and break down Cold War tensions.

The project’s symbolic value was clearly as important as what it led to: the network’s expansion to include nine other countries and, after 9/11, the creation of a now 2 million user strong network across 120 countries–the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN).

Like many people in the U.S., President Obama seems not to have heard of iEARN or other international educational networks that now span the globe and are used proportionally in greater numbers by non-U.S. students.

In his famous Cairo speech, our 44th president called for the creation of “a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate instantly with a young person in Cairo.”

The vision the president set forth was an exciting one–he said he looked forward to a world where we would begin to break down centuries of misunderstanding between the Muslim and the non-Muslim worlds through the same kind of youth-to-youth exchanges that Peter Copen advocated almost two decades ago.

This vision already is taking place in several forward-thinking schools. The fact that networks like iEARN (and others such as ePals and Global SchoolNet) already exist means we no longer have an excuse to continue to use technology in schools as a glorified electronic textbook, useful mainly as a labor-saving device.

We can start using technology to let young people communicate and collaborate with their peers around the world. These networks have solved some of the key barriers to internet use in schools, chief among them security issues that worry teachers and parents alike.

Global networks such as iEARN and ePals insulate student communication from the rest of the internet and let teachers monitor eMail accounts, as well as provide for the creation of secure blogs that can only be seen by the recipients. Assisted by standards-based curriculum materials, these networks link participants from a diverse range of countries in a discussion of globally relevant issues.

One project led by a facilitator in Iran compares women’s social and political statuses in different countries. Another focuses on the role the United Nations plays in the world.

John Dewey famously said, “Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”

A globe full of torment and confusion and danger is made all the more visible by the 24-7 news cycle that today’s students are relentlessly exposed to.

We can pretend in our classrooms that this electronic reality does not exist and that the old rules apply–adults know best, and students need to wait their turn to learn and speak about the issues that so concern them–for everything from global warming to terrorism and flu pandemics. Or, we can let our students engage with the world in ways and on levels they can understand and relate to–ones that are more comprehensible when they understand the perspectives of their peers from other countries.

In survey after survey, the key thing students seem to crave in schools is relevance. If they can find it in their lessons, then they can engage.

Students are looking for personal meaning that can reach out to them amid the forest of facts they need to memorize for a test. How much better would it be, for example, if–rather than plotting the principal rivers and mountains of a country on a worksheet–students understand the perils of water shortages on a continent like Africa and understand firsthand how key fresh drinking water is to their health and economic futures?

We are all inheritors of the new globally interdependent world created after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today’s students are marked by being the first globally connected citizens, able use their computers and cell phones to connect to all regions of the Earth and contribute to a global discussion through Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and unlimited web sites.

This is a generation that understands the importance of personal connections–even with those they might never meet. Instead of ignoring these facts, we should welcome the opportunity to promote a deeper kind of global awareness using the dynamic ways that new technologies allow.

Laurence Peters is the author of Global Education: Using Technology to Bring the World to Your Students (International Society for Technology in Education, 2009). More information can be found at www.laurencepeters.com ^[62].

Netbooks–the small, scaled-down notebook computers that have proven to be popular with consumers and schools alike–have taken the computer market by storm in the past year.

During a time of steep budget cuts, many school leaders have turned to netbooks as a less expensive way to get computers into the hands of every student. But not everyone agrees that netbooks, with their smaller screens and processing power, are an ideal solution for education.

Here are two very different perspectives on the issue, published as competing Viewpoints in the October print issue of eSchool News.

What do you think? Let your colleagues know; share your thoughts in the comments section.

–The Editors

Low cost or learning tool? ^[63]
Netbooks are all the rage, but they don’t really meet the needs of today’s students
By Jon Bower

More than just a fad ^[64]
Not every student needs a high-end computer–and netbooks can help bridge the access gap
By Bob Moore

Imagine you’re back in school, and you’re learning about the human body. You open your book and see the flat image of a skeleton on your page. You imagine what it must really look like and try to study as best you can. Now, imagine you’re a student today. … That’s where the imagination stops. Thanks to new technology developments in projection and filming, students soon will be able to see the human body and other complex images, projected up close and in three dimensions. Welcome to the real education of the future.

3-D images floating out of screens, and kids in lightweight glasses with their jaws dropping open, might sound like science fiction–but in less than a year, school across the country will be piloting 3-D projectors to give all students, and especially those who are visual learners, a chance to fully understand the curriculum.

“It’s not something you watch,” says director James Cameron, who’s filming his new movie Avatar in 3-D. “It’s a reality you feel you could step into.”

Cameron is one of many directors using 3-D video to enhance movies. In fact, between movies and the availability of high-end, low-cost 3-D technology, 3-D video is now on the cusp of being home- and school-ready.

Interestingly, 3-D imaging is actually an old technology. It was first created by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838 through “stereopsis,” or the perception of depth, and his invention of the stereoscope in 1851 was viewed by Queen Victoria.

3-D video creates the perception of a differential between two slightly offset images when viewed by each of two eyes. By presenting each eye with a slightly offset or different image, a projection system or display can create the illusion of depth.

It’s estimated there were a million stereoscopes in living rooms around the globe by the mid 1850s, but owing to the technology’s lack of sophistication, consumers had headaches as a result of eyestrain and images were shaky at best. Not until the late 1990s, when IMAX began projecting in 3-D, did the platform really gain momentum.

In 2005, Hollywood studios’ Digital Cinema Initiative, aided by the Entertainment Technology Center’s Digital Cinema Lab in Los Angeles, created a specification for a standard digital cinema package. Now, approximately one in every three digital theater screens in the United States is equipped for 3-D, according to the report “3-D TV: Where Are We Now and Where Are Consumers,” by David Wertheimer, CEO of the Entertainment and Technology Center at the University of Southern California, and Shawn DuBravac, adjunct professor at the George Mason University School of Business.

But it’s not just movies that are using 3-D. Broadcasters, video game makers, home theater manufacturers, projector software developers, and even educational content developers have entered the 3-D market as well.

One large player in the 3-D market is Panasonic, which is working with Cameron to help direct Avatar by supplying him with 3-D plasma displays. Panasonic also is developing 3-D-capable TVs, DVD players, and active glasses.

According to Peter Fannon, vice president for technology policy and government affairs and 3-D expert at Panasonic, Panasonic’s active glasses and TV screens are fully high definition (HD) 3-D capable, which Fannon says is available only through Panasonic.

Panasonic’s active glasses are little LCD lenses that open and close the left and right eye images 120 times per second, making 3-D images appear seamless. “There’s no shuttering, no blurring of any sort. The TV emits the images to the glasses via a receiver built into the glasses. You see 1,080 lines of resolution on the screen–full HD quality–seamlessly,” said Fannon.

“We also have something called ‘schoolroom in a box,’ which [includes] whiteboards, plasma panels, small laptops, cameras, and projectors that are backwards compatible–meaning that you can buy these projectors, and when more 3-D content is available, adjust your projector to be 3-D capable for a modest premium,” he explained.

Other major players in the 3-D arena include Sony, LG, Philips, Samsung, Mitsubishi, Sensio, Intel, Dolby, Ubisoft, NVIDIA, Digital Projection, BenQ, AVRover, Sharp, Vuzix, and Texas Instruments (TI).

Three companies in particular–TI’s DLP division, BenQ, and AVRover–have specialized their 3-D technology for education, and these solutions debuted at Infocomm earlier this year. 3-D projectors also were a big hit at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington, D.C., this past summer.

AVRover, a maker of portable AV systems, has partnered with projector manufacturer BenQ to release the AVRover 3DSVS24, which the company says is the “first fully integrated 3-D Stereoscopic Educational System.”

This product is a portable and rugged 3-D AV system with all components securely mounted inside. It features a powder-coated, scratch-resistant steel console, as well as sequentially numbered active glasses eyewear, storage, and sanitation.

TI’s new 3-D technology uses just one projector with “DLP Link” active shutter glasses, meaning no IR emitters, polarizers, or special screens are required.

Images appear in three dimensions when the projector’s 120 Hz output gets divided between the left and right eyes, with each eye receiving 60 Hz in red and blue colors. Synchronization occurs during extremely brief “dark” times between active data transmission.

“For the first time,” said Dave Duncan, worldwide education business development manager for TI, “we will be launching affordable 3-D projectors in line with XGA and SXGA pricing made specifically for the classroom environment.” This means that pricing for the systems will be comparable to projectors with similar specifications that do not have 3-D capabilities.

One key feature of TI’s new technology is that its 3-D projectors also function normally as 2-D projectors without image distortion.

So far, roughly 15 projector manufacturers have adopted TI’s 3-D technology. There are 35 projector manufacturers that use DLP technology in all, and TI’s DLP division shares its technology, which includes 3-D capabilities, with all of these companies.

Boulder rolls the dice with 3-D

With all the relatively low-cost and seamless 3-D technologies now available to educators, some schools are starting to take advantage.

The Boulder Valley, Colo., Independent School District has decided to “future-proof” its classrooms by rolling out TI DLP’s 3-D technology.

The district, which spans 500 square miles and has 28,000 students in 51 schools, has always been an early adopter of technology, according to Len Scrogan, director of instructional technology.

“We always have extensive planning–we take our time, consider what really matters, and then we make investments in what matters when it comes to technology and our district,” explained Scrogan.

Boulder is a high-bandwidth district that believes in taking advantage of the resources available in education today…and in the future. “We live stream , we have many internet projects, and we plan on distributing 3-D as part of our technology backbone,” Scrogan said.

In a process that took about 18 months from start to finish, Boulder has reached its goal of having 3-D-capable projectors mounted in every classroom.

Boulder chose Vivitek projectors, which use TI DLP’s 3-D technology.

According to Rick Nguyen, executive vice president at Vivitek Corp., during Boulder’s competitive-bidding process, 46 3-D-capable projection units from different companies were invited for a tech shootout.

In total, Boulder purchased 400 of Vivitek’s 930TX units and 625 of the D825EX units.

“We really focused on total cost of ownership issues,” Scrogan said. “We standardized on DLP and we had specific expectations. DLP has a better contrast ratio and greater readability than LCD, and a good quality of image. But what’s also great is that there’s no filter cleaning, and it’s sustainable that way–it won’t deteriorate.”

“Educators have a lot to think about when considering how to implement 3-D,” said Bob Wudeck, business development manager for TI’s pro AV group, “including the brand of projectors, the content you want to use, research on 3-D and the technology, how best to invest, what type of glasses to use, and how you’re going to clean those glasses.”

Wudeck mentioned that AVRover’s eyewear cleaning box is a great solution, and that “little things like this” can really help a district when switching to 3-D.

Scrogan said his district will introduce 3-D video into the classroom with math and science curriculum first, then progress to many other subjects.

“We want to try things that are innovative and can make a difference in all areas of education,” said Scrogan.

Content still catching up

Even with more than 1,000 3-D-ready projectors mounted in Boulder’s classrooms, students might have to wait a little while before they begin realizing the benefits of 3-D video–because while the technology has arrived, the content is a little slower in coming.

Wudeck said TI is talking to major content developers about how to make their content work with DLP’s 3-D technology. These developers include SAFARI Montage (which is currently partnering with AVRover and BenQ to deliver a library of 3-D-ready content), EON Reality, Discovery Education, RM Education, and Promethean.

Since TI DLP’s 3-D technology is both 2-D and 3-D compatible, “once 3-D content is uploaded, the chip will recognize it as 3-D and switch from 2-D to 3-D [automatically]; it’s that simple,” said Wudeck.

“Once the content is there, we’ll start using our 3-D-ready projectors for 3-D ,” said Scrogan.

Having content readily available might encourage more educators to make the switch to 3-D-compatible projectors, although–according to Wudeck–educators already are lining up to future-proof their classrooms with or without content.

“Because of the affordability, ease of use, and quality of 3-D, educators will start implementing pilot programs around the country in about 90 to 120 days,” predicted Wudeck. “Just since NECC, TI has had an incredible amount of requests for demos. And when content comes in, I’d say, five to six months, then you’re really going to see a huge boom.”

“Once the pilot programs get running, we’ll start to get data about how kids remember … and understand content better when they see information in 3-D,” said Duncan. Like Wudeck, Duncan believes that white papers and case studies from 3-D pilot programs will be available during next year’s major tradeshows.

“We’re still in the early phase of the adoption curve,” said Wudeck, “but it’s moving fast. Expect to see some big rollouts in 3-D next year.”

Links:

T.I. DLP ^[65]

AVRover ^[66]

Panasonic ^[67]

Boulder Valley ISD ^[68]

Note to readers:

Don’t forget to visit the Building a Cost-Effective Digital Classroom resource center. If today’s students are to compete in an increasingly global economy, schools will need much more than textbooks and traditional pencil-and-paper approaches to succeed. Students need the benefit of technology-rich classrooms to give them marketable skills that they will use throughout their professional lives. Go to: Building a Cost-Effective Digital Classroom ^[69]

A significant key to students’ academic success is their ability to take complete and accurate notes during class–and recent developments in digital-pen technology might help students do just that.

A number companies have created digital “smart” pens that can digitize handwriting, convert writing into word-processing text, and even record the audio that corresponds to the notes students take.

Digital pens made by companies such as Livescribe, IOGEAR, and WizCom can be found in retail outlets and even in many campus bookstores. Developers say students who use the pens to capture and upload their notes to computers for review possibly could perform better in school. The pens also are a more convenient option for students who typically carry their laptops to class to take notes.

“The student becomes more efficient,” said Keith Renty, business development manager for IOGEAR.

With IOGEAR’s Mobile Digital Scribe, the pen emits an electronic signal that is attached to the student’s paper. The receiver has enough memory to store the notes on 50 standard-size sheets of paper.

Renty said there are several similar pens on the market, but unlike other digital pens, the IOGEAR Mobile Digital Scribe doesn’t require any special paper or ink. The receiver can be attached to any paper the user writes on, he said.

Livescribe’s pen, called the Pulse, is unique in that it not only records handwriting using a special dotted paper and a tiny camera attached to the pen, but it records audio as well, developers say.

“Taking complete and accurate notes is one of the hardest things to do,” said Andy Van Schaack, senior science advisor for Livescribe and a professor at Vanderbilt University. He said taking notes is, cognitively, as challenging as playing chess. “You have to listen, write, and as you’re writing you have to listen to what [else] the speaker is saying,” he explained.

By also recording audio while a student is writing, Livescribe’s Pulse enables the student to focus more on the lecture, as opposed to making sure he or she is jotting everything down, Van Schaack said.

“Usually students have to decide if they’re going to listen and understand or take complete and accurate notes,” he said. The Pulse allows them to do both.

“If you believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, when you add audio, it’s worth a million words,” Van Schaack said.

In addition to audio, the pen records handwritten notes written on the special dotted paper, which acts as a barcode for the pen’s microprocessor when digitizing the handwriting. Then, when students want to review a spot in their notes where the handwriting might be illegible or their notes incomplete, they simply tap that place on the paper–and the audio recorder plays what was being recorded at the exact time they were taking notes.

“It records everything that’s being said as you write, synchronizing what you write” with what is heard, Van Schaack said.

Though Livescribe’s pens originally were marketed to colleges and college students, Van Schaack said he saw K-12 educators gaining interest in the Pulse as well.

Carla Rody, who teaches science at Cross Creeks High School in Florida, said the Pulse allows her and her students to concentrate more on the speaker.

She and her students can “take immediate notes that we want to jog our memories, and relax and learn. Later, we can go back to anything that we marked as critical or need to review by tapping on the section in our notes, and we can hear what the speaker was covering at that time. We fill in or add to our notes, and we fill in the gaps and study,” she said.

Julie McLeod, a sixth-grade math teacher at Roundtree Elementary School in Texas, began using the Pulse late last school year as a way to digitally document her students’ thinking.

“Math is very procedural. So if the process is documented, we can pinpoint areas where they’re struggling,” she said, adding that she tried other technology but nothing was as natural as the Pulse for the students to use.

This school year, she will have 10 pens in her classroom, allowing students to work with a partner doing peer interviews in which a student coaches his or her partner to talk though math problems.

When students use a traditional pen and a separate audio recorder, it’s much harder for them to find the right place in the recording that matches their notes, Van Schaack said.

“You have to listen to ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ trying to find the spot in the lecture,” he said, referring to the high-pitched sound of the recording being fast-forwarded and rewound.

WizCom’s InfoScan TS and InfoScan TS Elite help students who are taking notes from a text they are reading.

“It’s what we call a highlighter with a brain,” said Chris Anderton, director of business development with WizCom. “It’s aimed at helping students with note taking and with being able to put together their study notes.”

The pens, which can scan up to 500 pages of text, have a touch-screen interface that allows students to edit the text they have just scanned. The pens also feature text-to-speech technology.

“The notes stored on the pen can be read out loud, so you can listen to the notes that you just scanned. You also have [a] dictionary blended onto it, so that you can highlight a word and it will display the dictionary definition to you,” Anderton said, adding that the InfoScan pens are being used in a number of K-12 schools to teach students life skills and note-taking skills.

Notes recorded with both the Scribe and the Pulse can be uploaded to a computer exactly as they were written by students.

“It’s not an exact match to your handwriting, but to the discernable eye it looks exact,” Renty said.

Van Schaack said the Pulse’s special paper captures everything that is written.

“Whatever you write down, the doodles in the corner, notes, charts–everything gets digitized,” he said. Once uploaded to the computer, “all the pages appear in front of you. It looks like you ripped a page out of your notebook.”

Both the IOGEAR and Livescribe pens also come with handwriting recognition software that can turn handwritten notes, once uploaded to the computer, into digital (typed) text ready for editing.

“Now the student has the workings of a paper, and he doesn’t have to look back through his notes and key it all in himself,” Renty said.

Livescribe’s Pulse also has a search feature, making notes easily navigated once they are on the screen. A student can type a search term, and that word is found in the student’s notes.

Notes scanned by the InfoScan also can be uploaded to a computer or smart phone, with the text being fully editable.

All of the pens on the market have the potential to get students excited about learning, something that McLeod said she saw in her students who weren’t generally fans of math class.

“I saw, in the short time we had the pens, that the kids cared very much to make sure that they were doing the problems correctly,” she said of her students using the Pulse. “Many of them would work it out beforehand with a pencil and call me over to talk it through and make sure they were doing it right. Some kids pushed themselves to do more work than I ever asked them to do,” she said. “They’re putting forth more effort on their own. And if you find something that gets kids to put in the effort, there’s definitely potential there.”

Links:

IOGEAR Mobile Digital Scribe ^[70]

Livescribe Pulse ^[71]

WizCom InfoScan TS ^[72]