NECC Wednesday’s Sessions Wed, Jul 2, 1997

Chris Dede – 10 Big Question, with some big answers

“Ten BIG QUESTIONS are dominating current discussion
about educational technology:

• How do we pay for multimedia-capable, Internet-connected
  classroom computers for every two to three students?
• How can my school afford enough computers and
  telecommunications?
• How do I get my colleagues involved with educational
  technology?
• How do we move our community beyond traditional ideas about
  teaching, learning, and the role of schools?
• How do we prove to our community that new technology-based
  models of teaching/learning are “better”?
• If we use technology well, what should we expect as “typical”
  student performance?
• What comes next after the World Wide Web?
• How can educational technology increase equity rather than
  widening current gaps?
• Where can I get external funds for innovation?
• How can I keep up?”

How do we pay for capable computers for every 2-3 students?

- We can’t! Computers aren’t the only, Ignores fhe teacher
training needs, Ongoing costs are prohibitive

-We shouldn’t do it! Wrong model

We need more financial leverage from outside (the school)
technology and develop learning as part of living. This will
require the building community partnerships.

How can we afford enough technology? (ie; without doing
anything else)

”Enough” is a moving target

How do expenditures alter when educational technology is used
effectively?

-Less textbooks

-Less data managment

-Less Reteaching

-Dillerent ratios Of student :teacher

How do we move our community beyond traditional ideas of
learning and teaching.

-3rd generation thinking

-Active collaborative

-Shared cognition

-Distributed learning

How do we Prove the new models are Better?

Evidence:

Motivational Evidence

Expanding range of topics

Conventional content Mastered by More, Sooner

Skills for knowledge based workplace

Higher outcomes on standardized test

What should we expect as typical student performance?

Beyond TIMSS and Similar tests, beyond dlsipliie based
standard,

Beyond new pedegody

Equity Question? Initial Widening but Ultimate Narrowing

Content and services are as Important as access and literacy.

Integrating the internet into the classroom

Four Parts

• Equipment
• Access
• Connectivity
• Training

Previous experience running a Webcamp for teachers. At the
beginning no one scored themselves below a 3 on the technology
rubric. After the course their scores went down because they
didn’t know what they didn’t know.

Three uses for the internet

Internet as a ProD tool

Teaching and learning about the Internet

Teaching and learning with the Internet

E-merging instructional practices on the Internet

bvsd.k12.co. us/ ~black/ NECC97.html

lt’s Not the Internet its the Information

Ian Jukes

Handout At : http://www.tcpd.org

We Continue to focus On hardware

So the revolutioi isn’t here yet

Don’t blame a pencil if a kid can’t write

Headware not hardware

Who is this guy?

• what is he going to do?
• overview of Internet from different perspective
• present and future of Internet for schools
• outline information literacy curriculum

The Internet Revolution: Do you remember when?

• you didn’t see gee whiz articles about the Internet in
  magazines and newspapers
• surfing was done outdoors
• Java was something you drank
• the Web was a TV or a phone
• you didn’t see “http://” written at the bottom of ads
• you didn’t have to explain the @ sign
• how long ago was that? 19 months
• it has been there for some time, but it’s been flying below
  our personal radar

It’s spreading like wildfire

• become the infrastructure for every company and industry in
  marketplace
• although many just don’t know it
• world’s largest economic sector
• an import surpassing oil and steel
• driving fundamental changes in business and community
• new reality for 21st Century

What’s happening?

• explosion in summer of 1995
• went overnight from geekhood to coolness
• from a special thing done by a small priesthood to public
  consciousness overnight
• abolished distance making everywhere here
• in ’94 there were no commercial Web sites
• now they number in 6 figures
• everyone’s registering domains
• Yahoo gets 3,000 plus submissions daily
• Web doubling every 53 days
• this is biological growth – like red tide/lemmings

The e-mail explosion

• 30 million messages daily
• the equivalent of $9 million worth of first class mail
• total volume by Post Office is up 5% since ’88
• but business mail is down by 33% in same period
• only stuff that goes through is at-risk mail
• post office has become one giant piece of road kill on
  information highway

What is happening?

• cyberspace now middle class suburb
• this has happened in a world of $2,500 computers where using
  telecommunications is like trying to suck peanut butter up a straw

What will happen?

• when we see $500 network computers combined with @Home cable
  modem at 10,000,000 bps
• will the number of users go up, down, or stay same?
• obviously it’ll go up – this in part explains Internet fever
  and the rapid stock market

Where are we heading?

• we ain’t there yet…
• still hearing lots of criticism
• there are lots of problems related to slowness, security,
  under/over regulation, and potential overload
• this shouldn’t concern us as eventually Net will handle them -
  but this takes time
• but despite problems, a critical mass has been reached – we
  must acknowledge the sheer magnitude of an expanding base of true
  believers

Nothing but Net

• there is controversy over how many regular users there are but
  no controversy about the fact that the Internet is coming at us
  like tidal a wave
• it’s hard to exaggerate importance
• it’s opening communications to masses and quickly racing
  toward full-fledged status as commercial medium

So What About Schools?

• is it really a technological revolution?
• since late 70′s, billions of dollars and words have been spent
• in the 1995/96 academic year alone, tech spending in
  K&endash;12 public schools was $4 billion – twice the amount spent
  on textbooks

So what’s the problem?

• we have endured years of hype and hope for electronic
  education, most of which has been undertaken with the very best of
  intentions
• unfortunately, the primary focus has been on tool and hardware
  du jour
• as a result, the revolution is still not here – why?
• we primarily focused on the tool not the application of the
  tool to curriculum
• we can’t blame a pencil if a child can’t read or do math – and
  we can’t blame the technology for failing
• the problem lies mainly with curriculum and teaching
  strategies
• so how does this relate to the Internet?
• it’s déjà vu all over again!

What about the Internet?

• 90% of classrooms in America today don’t have access
• beyond that, classrooms are limited by the available equipment
  as only 12% of computers in schools today are capable of Graphical
  User Interface access to the Internet
• 35-50% of schools have some access but this is usually a
  single station located in a classroom, the office or the library
• this is like having a single pencil for the entire school and
  expecting everyone to become pencil literate

Where are we heading?

• only 9% of classes have access (which is up from 3% in 1994)
  but this will change quickly based on trends about Internet access
  outside of education
• but based on the trends outside of schools, let’s extrapolate
• 5 years from now – do you think that there will be more, less,
  or the same level of access for students?

So what’s the problem then?

• it’s not about access – this will happen
• very few doubt the power and potential of age-appropriate tech
  to transform education
• the problem won’t be access to computers or the Internet
• no – the real problem is about the focus

What’s wrong?

• instructional technology holds enormous potential for
  instruction and learning allowing access for any student in their
  native language to a world that they are very comfortable with
• it provides opportunities to take digital field trips and
  access to world-wide resources
• this isn’t the problem – it’s the mindset that we’re applying
  to the technology
• we need to prepare for this new world – and we need a new
  mindset that focuses on a new curriculum and new teaching
  strategies

How is it being used today?

• for most we use a proximal learning model – we put students
  close to the technology and hope or assume that somehow they will
  learn by osmosis – unfortunately, more often than not this does
  not happen
• the problem is that kids know more than teachers so the kids
  define the context and content
• so where do they go? to Wrestlemania, the Scooby Doo home
  page, the NBA online, to live chat lines and to the Doom home page

So what’s the problem?

• most schools today are little more than ISPs because students
  and teachers are using Internet services without an instructional
  context
• we have to ask whether this new media to be used for higher
  level learning or will it just become a new generation of
  educational Nintendo?

What skills are needed?

• skills needed to effectively utilize Internet are little
  different than those used in a library – the only difference is
  that we have new technology, but despite this, we’re applying an
  old mindset
• whatever the medium, users need a set of analytical skills to
  process this information – but schools have never really mastered
  teaching of information literacy

It’s not the tool, it’s the task

• tools have no meaning without context – if I give you a
  shovel, you have no idea what the context is – but if I give you a
  shovel and tell you to dig a ditch, it has a context
• the Internet is a great tool, but for what?
• and this the crux of the problem – many teachers just give
  students the Internet and then get out of the way
• this is a case of leap of faith, proximal learning!
• as a result, we are simply replicating old problems and
  processes with new technology – now we get animated, full color
  meaningless, gratuitous information more quickly – this is not
  learning!
• for learning to take place, it must do so inside a context

The problem transcends technology

• in the past, we gave kids an assignment on Saturn and got back
  the Encyclopedia Britannica
• along came optical disc technology – we gave kids an
  assignment on Saturn and got back the Grolier’s Multimedia
  Encyclopedia
• now we give kids an assignment on Saturn and we get back the
  Internet
• this is simply information bulimia – they suck up the
  information and spit it out with little consideration of what it
  means – as a result, many of our students are suffering from
  intellectual and informational anorexia
• schools think that if they’re connected, they’re doing it

What’s wrong?

• instructional technology and Internet are being used to gather
  raw data but much of the writing and research is garbage
• information is not knowledge; and computer literacy doesn’t
  necessarily cultivate information literacy
• it appears that the Internet breeds a kind of intellectual
  laziness
• the ability to find and list data is no substitute for
  figuring out how to organize information
• as a consequence, even in schools with full connections
  students can surf the Net but can’t move beyond visiting home
  pages

Geraldoization of information

• the Internet is a wasteland of unedited data without any
  pretense of completeness – it lacks editors, reviewers, and
  critics – as a consequence it is predominantly not information,
  but noise
• the problem is that this is not recognized by most students
  and teachers
• this is the crux of problem – people have not been able to get
  beyond oohing and aahing about sites and suffering from terminal
  technodrool
• as a consequence, we really need to shift gears… because
  it’s not the Internet, it’s the information that’s important

What is needed?

• people need more than just raw data – they must look beyond
  the data for significance
• what skills are needed to see significance of data?

An example

• the Captain Picard model of problem solving
• how and when does he use technology?
• only when he has a task to do
• he asks a question of the computer based on a problem
• access to technology is transparent
• he then analyzes the data retrieved and turns it into
  knowledge
• then applies the knowledge to solve the problem
• then assesses process_ he has undertaken

5 Stages of Information Literacy

• Ask
• Access
• Analyze
• Apply
• Assess

Stage 1 – Ask

• comes out of a problem
• if you don’t have a problem, you don’t have a question
• at this stage you are defining problem
• problem solving fosters ownership of learning

Stage 2 – Access

• strategies more important than tools
• use driven by context created by questions
• searching techniques used to locate information
• techniques are media independent

Stage 3 – Analyze

• how credible is the information
• need to use the tripod model of analyzing – the stool won’t
  stand unless it has 3 legs so the information can’t be trusted
  unless there are 3 corroborating sources
• students must be able to look at information critically

Stage 4 – Apply

• use information to solve problem, write essay, do report,
  create graph, complete argument, make presentations
• at this stage, you must take what you’ve got and create
  products
• need to submit both raw material and analysis
• access is nothing if you can’t both analyze and apply what you
  have obtained – to do this you need both technical and conceptual
  skills

Stage 5 – Assess

• have original goals been met?
• what has been learned?
• not just what has been learned but also how it was learned?
• how could process or product be improved?

This is what the Internet needs to be about!

Information literacy

• transcends Internet
• applies equally well to magazines, newspapers, textbooks,
  CD-ROMs
• it’s not the tool, it’s the task
• it’s an issue of headware not hardware

It’s not the Internet, it’s the information

• what we have is data explosion not knowledge explosion
• we have the best educated, least prepared generation
• we need the tools but we can’t stop there
• we need repeated opportunities within formal, structured
  informational context

Achieving information literacy

• students need to work with the information resources that will
  bombard them throughout life
• this is not just about the ability to read and regurgitate
  facts – it’s about knowing where to find facts and then how to use
  them
• it’s about using real-life information resources for solving
  real-world problems
• my greatest fear is that if students view and use the Internet
  the way they view and use encyclopedias and CD-ROMs, we will
  continue to get what we’ve always got

It’s time to shift gears

• we must move students and teachers from a quantitative to
  qualitative mindset
• it’s not how much information they have, it’s how much
  knowledge they’ve gained

Making the shift

• the bottom line is that it’s not what you use but how you use
  it