Four to Five Year Time Horizon

This post is number four of a four-part series on the Horizon Report 2010. To start at the beginning visit the overview.

In its farthest reaching predication, the Report looks to two significant changes in the way that we interact with computers and the data that they produce.

Gesture-Based Computing

First citing the iPhone’s natural gesture based navigation advancements and the Nintendo Wii’s accelerometer-based interactive remotes, the way that we interface with machines is changing.  Forty years of keyboard and mouse as the only way to manipulate the computer seems to be dissolving as new technologies appear.  Numerous other improvements are in the works, the Microsoft Surface may change the way we interact with a device, from the multitouch interface, to the ability to recognize an input device, like a camera and connect to it wirelessly.

The question that I am left with is: “How does this impact education?”

Opportunities:
The shift that we are observing is already present in many of your classrooms as interactive whiteboards take hold.  With the right professional development, teachers can easily realize the potential for these devices far beyond a fancy presentation device, but can harness the Kinesthetic aspect of learning for all students.

Beyond the classrooms of today, imagine a computer that can instruct a student in sign language by “reading” their hand gestures, a flat surface table that children in all grades gravitate to in groups to learn about a wide variety of students, a virtual lab-room tabletop or even a human anatomy program that allows for the virtual dissection of a digital cadaver.  With a little bit of imagination the possibilities are endless.

Challenges:
Like usual, money could prove to be a challenge.  But, given that the trend appears to be the integration of gesture-based computing as a norm in the way we interface with the machines, the cost could be minimal as we repalce older equipment in our facilities.

Action Steps:
We need to stay aware of the pace of change and new opportunities as they present themselves.  This means reading, networking, and attending conferences to see the most cutting edge advancements.

Visual Data Analysis

Aside from changing the way that we interact with the physical hardware, the report looks to a shift in the way that we analyze data.  As researchers amass vast amounts of data, the analysis of these data can’t always be comprehended through spreadsheets, summaries and traditional methods.   But when the data is aggregated in a way that is more accessible to the human mind.  The chart above, created by Wordle summarizes the 2010 State of the Union Address in a way that reveals an interesting perspective on the speech that can only by achieved in this unique way.

Opportunities:
New ways of analyzing data could reach students in new ways.  Visual learners especially can benefit from a new perspective on otherwise flat and untenable data.  Many of these trends in data analysis are appearing all over the web, from the visual representation of data by Mint.com (Visual Representation of Russia compared to USA) to sites like the above-mentioned Wordle, Gapminder and Flowing Data.

Challenges:
The chellenge here is a professional development one.  Teachers accustomed to traditional methods of data visualization may not even know that these tools exist.  Train them now so they are ready in five years when this trend peaks!

Action Steps:
Educate Teachers! Now.  Before we find ourselves surrounded by this & confused about it.

Two to Three Year Time Horizon

This post is number three of a four-part series on the Horizon Report 2010. To start at the beginning visit the overview.

Electronic Textbooks

My oldest school-friend and I used to walk home from elementary and middle school hauling our bulky textbooks and I vividly remember a conversation we had about a not-too-distant future where we would just carry home a CD-ROM with all of our information on it. . . Well, along with my promised future of flying cars, jet packs and robot housekeepers the future is turning out to be somewhat of a disappointment.

According to the Horizon Report, Electronic Textbooks are not that far from becoming a reality in many college campuses.  I completely agree, with the increasing number of e-book readers that are hitting the market in 2010, the apparent of a long-awaited Apple Slate iPad device and the increasing ebook consumer market, the climate is finally right for electronic textbooks to have their day.  I just hope it gets done right.  Many publishers (as I learned from Hall Davidson at TRETC this year) still don’t quite get the idea that an electronic textbook has the potential to be so much more than just the pages from the print version of the book.

Opportunities:
1) Digital Texts could Redefine Our Notion of Classroom Materials
The possibilities are endless for Digital Texts to revolutionize the way we use a reference text in the classroom.  Basically, I’m hoping for an experience that transcends the linear and isolated reading experience found in contemporary printed texts, in favor of an experience that makes connections within the text, and also with other learners.

2) Potential Cost Savings
At the university level the  fact that students purchase their own books points to an opportunity for significant savings if they purchase an e-book over the dead-tree alternative.  In a K-12 setting, the cost of textbooks is taken on by the district.  Depending on the licensing agreements and subscription deals, there may or may not be a great cost savings to schools, however, electronic textbooks could be easily maintained and updated.  The textbook replacement cycle may diminish if the text remains up to date.

3) Customized Texts
Electronic textbooks might also afford schools the ability to pick and choose the content that they purchase in order to support the specific culture that they are targetting.

Challenges:
1) A model for K-12 electronic textbooks
Book vendors Digital Content Providers and Schools will really have to think outside the box to

2) Potential for a standards war
iPad, iPod, Netbooks, Tablet PCs, Web-Based, Kindle,ePub . . . there are so many potential devices that could view electronic textbooks.  To ensure success of digitally distributed content, it needs to be done right, preferably around an open, standards-based format like ePub to ensure compatibility across platforms.

3) Accessibility
This should be an opportunity, as digital texts can be adapted for all kinds of accessibility needs, but we would be wise to think of these requirements during the selection process.

Action Steps:
Is the possibility of any kind of electronic textbook resources considered when we go through the textbook adoption process?  How do we evaluate the quality of electronic supplementary resources that come with textbooks?  Is there a potential cost-savings associated with finding an innovative way of using electronic versions of textbooks.  Taking a longer view, is there someone in the district who can stay abreast of the developments in electronic textbook

Augmented Reality:

I have to admit that this is the area that I have the hardest time envisioning in education.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m psyched about the idea of a virtual Heads Up Display in my car and beamed onto my eyeballs.  Just imagine, I’d never forget a face.  But the reality of augmented reality using an App like Layar means peering through a 4-inch screen at the world.  I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt, maybe in a more urban area this is the best idea since sliced bread, but I just haven’t seen it in action enough to get excited about it.

I guess that in fieldwork this could be fabulous.  I love the notion of standing in the Roman Colosseum and using an augmented reality app to fill the space with live action and crowds watching a gladiator in battle, but my imagination needs some stretching to see an immediate application.  All that being said, augmented reality was apparently all the rage at the British Education Training and Technology (BETT) show in London this year.  Perhaps I just need to see it in action for myself.

Opportunities:
Adding a layer of digital content to real life brings in a whole new dimension to the world.  Google sky map is an awesome example of what can be accomplished — just point it to the sky, and it labels what you are looking at.  It is remarkable.  I’m looking forward to a day when this can be expanded.  Imagine pointing the device at a bird and getting a precise identification and data on that specimen, getting chemical information molecular structure and data in Chem Lab.   I can imagine lots of awesome future uses, but today’s technology is still a little clunky for my likes.

Challenges:
I would be cautious of this being a technology for technology’s sake issue. If it were incorporated into an existing device, then that sounds much more realistic.

Action Steps:
Pay attention to further developments.

Thanks to @starryhope01 for sharing the link to the Horizon Report 2010 Edition last week!  This post is number one of a four-part series on the Horizon Report 2010.

I prepared this summary to share with a “Future Thinking” group that is part of my district’s Technology Future, Global and Technology Mission Team.   My  approach to this summary is from the perspective of our K-12 educational institution.  Because of the length that the post was getting I decided to break up the post into four sections, an overview here and three subsequent posts looking at the emergent technologies for the three time horizons identified by the report.  Our group’s charge is to answer the following questions:

• Where are we going?
• In a year?  In five years?
• (How will we get there?)

It is fun (and challenging) being part of a group with such a broad task, as we can think freely about what might be.  Hopefully this report and my reflections on it (which are purely my take on what I read) help us to think (and imagine) about the future role that “technology” will play in the next five years and beyond in out schools.

Background of the Horizon Report 2010:

The Horizon Report is a summary of emerging trends in technology that will impact education in the coming years.  The Report’s main concern is on technology as it impacts Higher Education.  While this is the main focus of the report, K-12 educators can look to the emerging technologies here to see two things:  the skills students need to work with in their post-secondary learning, and to look to the opportunities that are coming to K-12 Education.  The New Media Consortium (NMC) produces a K-12 version of the Horizon Report, but the 2009 K-12 version wasn’t released until March last year.

The report tries not to just focus on the tech itself, but also looks at the impact and relevance of emergent technologies for Teaching, Learning and  Creative Inquiry.

The Four Key Trends (key drivers of tech adoptions)

• Abundance of resources and relationships made possible via the internet.
• People expect to be able to work, learn, study whenever and wherever they want to be.
• Technologies are increasingly cloud-based, and out notions of IT support are decentralized
• The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative in nature, cross-campus collaboration between departments.

Critical Challenges

• Changing role of the academy
• New forms of publishing
• Digital Media Literacy
• Economic Challenges

I think that whether we like it or not, all four of these challenges are clear and present in the K-12 world.  There is a cacophony of criticism of the American school model, whose school-year is based on an agrarian calendar and often scheduled like a factory floor.  Testing pressures put strain on the teaching of skills like creativity, entrepreneurship, self-branding, and lifelong learning.  I’m not yet convinced that the type of radical change that some suggest is the answer, but flexibility will be key to continued success.

We are so used to a traditional publishing model that we find it hard to imagine the use of an electronic textbook, but those opportunities are on their way sooner than we think.  Will we know enough about it to ask the right questions of publishers?

On a related note, the skills that students (, teachers and administrators) need to have navigate all types of digital media in an informed way are being taught in small pockets, but not tied together on a global scale.

Unlike Higher Ed institutions we can’t rely on any other major source of funding other than local tax revenue, and to a far lesser extent state and federal money.  We feel the blow from economic difficulties in times like these, but public schools should never expect to be entirely free of the pressures of budgeting challenges.

Technologies to Watch

The following posts focus on the specific technologies as they might impact education in our schools.  I’ve taken the liberty to both report what the report says in summary and to editorialize on their thoughts.

• 1-Year or Less Horizon
  • Mobile Computing
  • Open Content
• 2-3-Year Horizon
  • Electronic Textbooks
  • Augmented Reality
• 4-5-Year Horizon
  • Gesture-Based Computing
  • Visual Data Analysis

Past Horizon Reports

I thought that it might help to know where the Horizon Report is coming from.  Fortunately @Profdebock did the work for me already in the form of this chart:

2010 Horizon Report Johnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, Smith, Rachel S. and Stone, Sonja. 2010 Horizon Report. Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2010.

It’s embarrassing to drop by my website and see that it has been literally months between posts!  On the other hand I have been busy with any number of other projects:

• An internship @ Upper St. Clair School District’s Technology Department
• Administration of our middle school’s Edline
  • Training Staff
  • Getting our report cards set up
  • and on and on
• Developing my in-class VLE through Blackboard & BlendedSchools.net
• My last two classes for my Master’s at CMU
• Prepping for a session at TRETC ’09
• Grading Spanish for a Cyber School

• Oh yeah, getting ready for PlattsChild.girl 2.0

Frankly I’ve found Twitter to be a better place for my day to day ‘bloggy’ activities.  It is more real-time, connected and personal that what I do here.  Not enough to scrap the blog nature of my front page, but enough to keep me away for a while.

I was thrilled to find that, with Bluehost I can host multiple sites under one account, which rocks!  RichPlatts.com is live as a Nameplate site, though I’m not thrilled with the design & would love to get creative with posting my latest tweet . . . I need more time in the day.

And, when reading mrplatts.com on a widescreen monitor this column size seems a bit tight.  Time to stretch out I think…

In response to the assignment:

This week, you will design two technology-based learning activities for your target group of learners. In the Learning Activities section of the wiki, find your page and post to it a description of two learning activities you design for your learners. Explain 1) your learning goal or what you hope to accomplish with each one, 2) describe the technology you will use, and 3) justify your choice of technology or technologies based on the cost, usability, and how well it addresses your learning goal. Provide links and descriptions of any Web-based resources you will use.

Activity A — Vocabulary Wiki Activity

(1) Vocabulary acquisition is central to all levels of language learning, and especially at the early stages, such as I teach at Fort Couch Middle School.  In middle school German Classes it is easy to reduce units of study to lists of words to be memorized for the upcoming quiz.  This is a dangerous area, as students are experts at rote memorization for an assessment, only to immediately discard all of that ‘learning’ as soon as the test is done

Additionally, students in my classes do not have a ‘textbook’ per se.  Students know how to use online German-English dictionaries such as http://dict.leo.org but these results are often too ‘raw.’  It turns out that middle school students are pretty bad at using the dictionary to help them find German words.  They can look up the meaning of German words with some success because they understand the context of the English words that are offered as meanings.  When faced with the opposite scenario, students just grab at the first word that appears in the results, often using the word in the wrong context.

By using a student-generated wiki as a resource for content appropriate and previously learned vocabulary and grammar, students will be provided contextually appropriate definitions and examples of use that have been created and vetted by their classmates.

My learning objectives are:

Create a usable student generated reference

Find and correct errors in the wiki

Use “fair-use” content to enhance the vocabulary wiki entries

These objectives directly address the Communications Standard of the National Standards for Foreign Language.

COMMUNICATION

Communicate in Languages Other Than English

Standard 1.3: Students present information, concepts, and ideas to an audience of listeners or readers on a variety of topics.

CONNECTIONS

Connect with Other Disciplines and Acquire Information

Standard 3.1: Students reinforce and further their knowledge of other disciplines through the foreign language.

COMPARISONS

Develop Insight into the Nature of Language and Culture

Standard 4.1: Students demonstrate understanding of the nature of language through comparisons                                                  of the language studied and their own.

For each entry, students are required to provide the English meaning for their German word, provide relevant grammatical information (gender of nouns, stem-changing verbs if any, verb conjugation tables), a sentence using the word, and a fair-use picture to enhance the definition.

(2) For this project I use the Wiki tool that is included in the BlendedSchools.net delivery of BlackBoard.  This wiki features an easy to use WYSWIG (what you see is what you get) editor, and an intuitive clean looking interface.  By nature the wiki is a ‘walled-garden’ accessible and editable only by registered students.

Other tools used in this activity are: Online Dictionaries, Creative Commons image search, and class resources, either online or in the classroom.  For teaching about what a wiki is and how it works, I use the instructional video: Wikis in Plain English by CommonCraft.

Since the wiki is included with the existing software, the cost of this learning activity is not an issue.  Other free wiki websites are available for educators such as pbwiki.com or wikispaces.com.

(3)  This activity addresses my learning goals above, only if it is regularly updated and used by all members of the class.  Time must be dedicated during class for students to get into the habit of updating the dictionary and some sort of accountability must exist for such a project to take off in the classroom.  At first, I offered extra-credit for students who contributed to the class wiki.  I found that this resulted in high-quality entries, created by a few hard-working dedicated students, who frankly didn’t need the bonus points to begin with.  When I required everyone to contribute a minimum amount, I found that there were many more errors, and as they ran out of new ideas, the entries became less and less contextually relevant.  I feel that the latter situation is preferable, especially of part of the assignment is to find and fix errors in the the wiki.

Students, especially in my middle school, are not accustomed to this style of collaborative work, where everyone’s contribution builds value for the group.  Working in a loosely structured group like this is a skill that needs to be taught to students.

Examples:

Web Resources:

CommonCraft Video

Behold.cc

Creative Commons Search

What a cool morning!  I am so appreciative of the opportunity to attend the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Institute‘s Discover ’09 open house this morning.  My school’s tech director was unable to attend, and asked me if I was interested in going to check out some of the programs that they are developing and implementing in collaboration with educational institutions all over the country.  The focus of the open house was on five main areas.

• High Powered Computing (HPC) in modern business (engineering, manufacturing, etc)
• Biomedical Supercomputing
• HPC & the green economy
• Supercomputing hardware
• Outreach to educational institutions (K-12 and universities)

Obviously the last area of focus was most pertinent.  The PSC has several outreach programs, in which it “promotes the understanding of supercomputing and its application in today’s leading-edge scientific research.”  I spoke to several of the PSC representatives and got an overview of all of the programs, in which they work with schools & teachers to support teaching and learning in the areas of computer science as well as other science areas.

I particularly enjoyed learning about the program for introducing Parallel Computing to High School Students.  In fact, it was particularly interesting since our school’s Computer Science teacher (Todd Ollendyke) is one of the first to pilot the program as part of his Computer Science curriculum.  The impetus behind the program came from recognizing that many CS students were entering university level courses with a weakness in understanding the applications of High Powered Computing and parallel programming.

The program is unique in that it is a blend of some basic unix/linux skills (which our students lack) and the C programming language.  The first part of the project uses a Sudoko puzzle game, which students first program a serial ‘brute force’ solution to & then apply the lessons in parallel programming using the powerful resources of the PSC cloud cluster and the High Performance XT3 named BigBen.  After the relatively simple experience programming the puzzle solution, students will experience more practical applications, and see some of the real-life power behind these HPC resources.

What’s more, the PSC outreach is not limited simply to the High School Computer Science courses.  The jumpstart program using STAKEs to support STEM is perhaps a mildly confusing name for an educational program (and resources available on the linked page) for teaching about technology applications in science to a broader & younger audience (grades 8+).  As the emphasis is that HPC has a real place in the world (from the Pringles factory to natural gas turbines) it seems appropriate that the programs appeal to a scientifically-minded audience to show the importance of computing technology in an ever-increasing number of fields.

note:
[Science and Technology Active Knowledge Experiences] – [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics]

The second major outreach stems from one of the primary focuses of the PSC, the biomedical research and modeling made possible by HPC.  The PSC supports three programs under the heading Computational Thinking and Tools in the Science Classroom.  These three programs are all designed to directly support the introduction of computation into the high school science classrooms, connecting math & the sciences in an interdisciplinary manner.  CAST (Computation and Science for Teachers) offers training to science and math teachers to use modeling and simulation in the classroom.  CMIST (Computational Models in Science Teaching) is a program that distributes digital models of various biological functions.  The models are currently available on DVD, but will soon be offered via the CMIST Website.

Aside from the directly educational connections that exist at the PSC, I also got a chance to take a virtual tour of their computing center (to say nothing of the overview of their astounding dedicated network) using a wifi enabled robot to scoot around the computing room.  Their center is in a warehouse in Monroeville, PA.  What a datacenter! The tour included a look at the CRAY XT3 “BigBen”, rows of Altix 4700 machines, Pope & Salk (over 4,000 processors w/ a gig of memory on each.) And much more . . . al of this power is leveraged by various partners, like the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation and other ‘open scienteific research’

Finally, we took a look at one of the new nodes (knocks?) on the National Lambda Rail, part of an effort to bring distant scientists together using state-of-the-art ($40,000) CISCO teleconferencing units.

The gloves officially came off today in my development of my online resources for my German course.  It occurred to me that what I was doing was more than just creating online resources that went along with my teaching, but essentially writing a whole new textbook, though in this case an electronic/interactive version of what I think the textbook should look like.  This seems appropriate, since our current textbook is from the early 90s, and it shows.  Nobody wears clothes like that, or has haircuts like that anymore.  Not only that, but the only textbook available in the US seems to be an update of the version we have with very little difference other than a few (but not all) updated pictures.   My students are quick enough to display over the top cultural biases, they don’t need any more encouragement.  In any case, I stray from the point of this post.

Today, I spent much of the day wrestling with the quirks of BlackBoard’s antiquated user interface.  I’m not sure if the problem is that it is so backwards and poorly designed, or if I have been spoiled by smooth Web 2.0 interfaces for so long.  Needless to say, I see room for improvement.  Today marked the end of the first semester, which is the time span allocated for me to cover the school unit in our text.  I COULD jam chapter four of the Komm Mit text into 8-9 weeks, but instead I go into some depth, and use storytelling as a big part of my isntruction (TPRS)

Since my classes are so short (20 minutes a day adds up to about 60 hours a year) it is my intention to move the majority of independent practice to the Online portion of my classroom.  This is a HUGE change from the norm for my students, who, with the exception of the one other teacher piloting BlendedSchools, have a hard time getting into the routine of using the computer for much more than playing games.

Today I put real effort into formalizing a structure for the chapter that we are now concluding.  I had intended to do this as I went, but now that I have a feel for what worked and what didn’t, I feel that it is best to re-vamp the content while everything is fresh.  The content is broken up into Thematic Units, in this case I am working on the “School Unit.”  I established the six main Lektionen (Lessons that take about 8-10 20 minute periods to complete) and the mini-lessons that I intend to design as more independent learning (with 1-2 class periods to review.)

My students need more Homework (they don’t want to hear that) and although I do buy into the concepts of TPR (it’s all in the natural langauge acquisition process.) I catch hell from the High School teacher if they don’t get the grammar on the first try.  So, I have to comprimise and hope that the natural learning is complementing the intentional process of the simple Grammar explainations we do.

Resources to include within each lesson:

• SCORM Instruction & Practice packages
  • This was my evening project — I learned how to use (Reload Editor) it is cumbersome, but I see the potential.
• Multimedia
  • Audio as well as written text of stories
  • Video from the web
  • Music
  • Authentic Resources
• Hot Potatoes
  • I’ll admit that I am not so progressive that my students rush into my class just oozing desire to learn German.  In fact, as a rule students in the school are very point motivated.  Since I discovered the SCORM package export in Hot Potatoes, I’ll use it, since it is much easier to use than BlackBoard’s Native tools.
• Podcast
  • Student delivered content to drive student learning — coming soon, I swear.

• Other Ideas forthcoming
  • Google earth / Maps for Geography
  • Share more Student work
  • Reflections via Voicethread
  • More reflections in General
  • Writing Samples & E-Portfolios