Near-Term Technologies
In the near term--one year or less--those technologies include cloud computing and mobile devices.For education, the relevance of cloud computing this year--as opposed to last year, when cloud computing was focused more heavily on data systems--will be in allowing schools to expand the tools available for learning and teaching in ways that desktop software, with its restrictive licensing and often high costs, cannot.
"Schools are increasingly taking advantage of ready-made applications hosted on a dynamic, ever-expanding cloud that enables end users to perform tasks that have traditionally required site licensing, installation, and maintenance of individual software packages," according to the authors. "E-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaboration, media editing, and more can all be done inside a Web browser, while the software and files are housed in the cloud."
Mobile devices, of course, are already having an impact, but their potential, according to the report, has increased considerably with the launch of Apple's iPad, as well as the new and upcoming slate of Android- and webOS-based tablets that will help solidify the mobile/handheld device class as a well rounded and feature-rich technology category.
"With always-on Internet, mobiles embody the convergence of several technologies that lend themselves to educational use, including electronic book readers, annotation tools, applications for creation and composition, and social networking tools," the report said.
Mobile computing will continue to dominate the education landscape for the foreseeable future. Ubiquitous access, instant on features, and low price point will drive more adoption of these devices. I have seen a huge increase in adoption of the iPhone since it became available on Verizon in the school where I work.
Mobile devices are now found in the hands of most children, and school leaders are using that to their advantage by incorporating devices that students already own into classroom lessons and projects.
Concerns remain about students who are unable to purchase or borrow a device for use in the classroom, but districts might find creative ways—such as asking local businesses or community organizations for help—to provide devices in such instances, advocates of the trend say.
With access issues in mind, allowing students to bring their own devices from home can offer educational benefits, as well as some surprisingly positive results when it comes to creative thinking and classroom behavior.
You can read the full article here.
Mini Microscope is an attachment for the iPhone 4 that will allow you to use your Apple smartphone to conduct science experiments. The attachment comes with a 60X zoom lens and dual-LED lights to turn your iPhone 4 into a mini microscope that can come in handy for those who are working in the field.
At a recent Nokia Musings technology panel in Silicon Valley, Nokia had invited researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley to talk about the intersection of technology and humanity. Those researchers, who used Nokia smartphones and outfit those devices with their own custom lens solutions to create their own mini microscopes, say that the quality of their miniature microscopes are almost as good as more expensive and bulkier systems in the lab, but are a lot cheaper and more portable. With mobile labs enabled by high-powered smartphones scientists can rapidly obtain results without having to send their data to a lab, which can save time and resources.
If the iPhone 4′s kit offers similar results as the Nokia solutions, this may help field researchers and scientists in remote areas obtain, gather, and analyze data relatively inexpensively. Unlike the custom Nokia solutions that research scientists had to create, the iPhone 4 kits are commercialized, similar to telescopic lens solutions for a faux DSLR experience on an iPhone, and can be obtained for £29.99,
In 1985, when Bruce Springsteen wrote “We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school,” he was talking about the lure of whatever might be waiting outside every classroom around the world. That youthful feeling of the world passing you by — the things you were missing as you sat in a classroom day after day — is an age-old challenge for educators. It’s one that’s about to be subjected to an even greater assault as the digital generation moves deeper into education.
The Internet was the first volley on the way a generation learned. Students no longer had to trudge to the library to research a topic. The encyclopedias of our parents’ generation were tossed into recycling bins, and a combination of Google and Wikipedia was all students needed to complete even the most ambitious assignments. Even with all their merit — the world’s opinions and research at your fingertips — educators shunned the tools in the class. They banned the Internet to the corner, equipping it with the dunce cap.
Mobile is the second volley in this assault on education, and the impact is going to be far larger and broader-reaching than the Internet and computers were before it. If the web brought research to the desktop, mobile brings all that power — plus context — to the hip pocket. We all have the ultimate ability to find, disseminate, discuss, opine, distribute and create on the fly, and this power is something educators will need to embrace — and quickly.
New mobile technologies such as augmented reality, Google Goggles and real-time language translation applications are helping smartphones become key tools in the real-time learning toolkit. And students are bringing this technology into the classroom.
This generation of students is far different from its predecessors when it comes to the consumption of technology. Students coming of age during the Internet revolution seemed to be much more engaged in the making of technology — building the foundation of bits and bytes — while students today are much more inclined to use the technology for other pursuits, including education. Using mobile technology to learn is as natural a move and non-disruptive for this generation as it was for their parents to bring encyclopedias out of the library and into the home.
The single, most powerful pull of mobile is the seamless connectivity it enables. There has never been a time in history where the earth has been flatter, where it was easier to have a social network that extended beyond a city or country or hemisphere, or that different cultures were as exposed in real time – and it’s all because of the smartphone. This power is global and comes to life through the 250 million mobile Facebook users, photo applications like Instagram and mobile video sharing services like Qik.
“The next wave of teaching, when you’re facing students who have computers in their hands or on their desks, really is about taking advantage of that connectivity,” says Sidneyeve Matrix, National Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Film at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. “So that’s just another reason for educators to push for mobile learning opportunities or to challenge themselves to figure out to utilize the technology their students already have.”
With this power, there’s the growing potential to also increase the gap between the technology haves and the technology have-nots, as well as the growing concern that “always connected” means never able to concentrate on the task at hand. The classroom is the perfect place to teach the potential of mobile learning and, at the same time, expose the technology to students who don’t have access to it. Teachers can start by bringing in games that leverage mobile. Quizzes and micro-learning opportunities abound during the school day; use mobile to capture them. Exposure can also come in the form of recording classes and turning them into podcasts, assigning teams to work on mobile video projects or even doing real-time scavenger hunts on campus or in the community.
This often leads to a profound argument that has been in our discourse since Google launched and became the Internet’s conduit to humanity’s collective brain: Are kids learning to learn or are they simply learning to find. It’s a subtle difference. Has information become temporary, or even disposable? Face it; we don’t go to school really to learn about things — natural curiosity will overcome learning lethargy to drive lifelong education — but we do go to learn to learn and that’s what will be impacted the most with mobile.
Learning is a skill. Teaching that skill happens every day in the classroom but it need not end there, and that’s where mobile can truly shine. Mobile holds the nascent promise of bridging the desire to learn about everything and the ability to learn about it anywhere. The key now is to start.
For almost 10 years Rob has been immersed in the middle of the mobile revolution in roles ranging from strategic advisor, board member and coach to VP Operations and President and CEO. Rob currently runs UNTETHER.tv where he interviews mobile luminaries about how they are building their businesses and he also strategizes with major brands on embracing mobile within their organizations.
Image courtesy of Flickr user mortsan.
There is a new free resource called Study Boost that connects with mobile phones. You create an account on Study Boost, then you can create your own "batches" of study questions. You can subscribe to the study questions via cell phone (you can also view them on the mobile web). In addition you can share your study questions with friends, teachers, and others so they can also review on the go. Study Boost would be a great project for extending learning and allowing students to study at their own pace (and on the go!).
What is more disruptive, banning cell phones and requiring teachers to confiscate them, or embracing student cell phones and teaching students how to use them more responsibly. For the 2009-2010 school year we changed our cell phone policy at the school were I serve as an assistant principal. We allow students to use their cell phones in between classes and in the cafeteria during their lunch period. The rest of the school day is instructional time and their cell phones are to be off and out of site unless a teacher is using them as part of the lesson.
Additionally, we made another change to our cell phone policy. We no longer require teachers to confiscate a student's cell phone if they violate the policy. We tell the teachers to write up a conduct report and turn it in to the main office and we will handle it from there. Our goal was to eliminate the classroom struggle that ensues between the teacher and a student when there is a cell phone policy violation.
December 15, 2010
Nielsen’s new whitepaper on Mobile Youth Around the World [1] reveals that most young people with mobile phones chose their own device. In fact, across all the countries surveyed, only 16 percent of young people reported that their parents selected their mobile phone. Price was the most common consideration among youth in selecting a mobile phone, though that is true among other age groups, too. Youth aged 15 to 24 in all countries surveyed put price as the first purchase driver, with the exception of Russian youth, 21 percent of whom placed design/style first. (Some grown-ups care about design, too. Around 14 percent of Brazilian adults say design/style is the most important consideration, compared to seven percent of U.S. adults.)
[2]
[3]
Out of all the countries examined, Italy leads in smartphone penetration with 47 percent of young people ages 15-24 owning a smartphone, compared to 31 percent of adults over 25. Smartphone penetration among European youth averages 28 percent in the countries surveyed, while penetration among older adults in Europe is 27 percent. Twenty-eight percent of U.S. mobile subscribers have smartphones. Youth in the United States exceed the population average smartphone penetration by 5 percent.
All countries tend to skew male in smartphone adoption with one notable exception, the US, where 55 percent of smartphone users age 15-24 are female. In the overall U.S. smartphone population 55 percent were male.
[4]
Article printed from Nielsen Wire: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire
URL to article: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/a-global-view-of-cellphones-and-youth/
The Knox County Board of Education is considering a more lenient policy when it comes to students using cell phones, including in some cases, allowing them to be used during classes.The new policy would allow high school students to use the phones at various times during the day. Some schools already allow it, and are even finding them to be valuable tools.
Last year a few of our teachers successfully used Google Voice in some of our World Language Classrooms. They use Google Voice to quickly capture audio recordings of the students speaking in the target language. The use of student cell phones and Google Voice allows the teachers to provide opportunities for students to improve their oral proficiency and creates a forum for the teacher to assess that ability.
GOOGLE VOICE:
This year students will be asked to record themselves using Google Voice. This is a tool for me to easily record and assess student pronunciation and oral communication. It is free and I can access the recordings through the internet or my phone. It is completely private and the recordings are sent to my Google Voice account. Students may use their cell phones or home phones to create these recordings. I have a separate Google Voice line so no students will be communicating using my private home or cell number. I am able to text them through the Google Voice number or have the message sent to their email. This makes feedback easy and accessible. Students can also hear their own recording if I send it to them so they can listen and make improvements. This will be a useful tool on days when we will not have access to the lab, or when I ask for a recording for homework. I used it successfully last year with the support of Administration. I respectfully ask for your permission to request the cell phone number of your child in order to implement the use of Google Voice recordings. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.
Here are two articles featuring our use of Google Voice in the classroom last year:
http://www.convergemag.com/edtech/Google-Voice-Helps-Students-Learn-Spanish.html
NAME OF STUDENT: ______________________________________
Parent/ Guardian Contact Information: I would like to have this information so that I can communicate with you about your child’s progress.
Parent/Guardian Name: ____________________________________________
Email address: ___________________________________________________
Phone: Home__________________________________
Work___________________________________
Cell ____________________________________
Parent/Guardian Name: ____________________________________________
Email address: ___________________________________________________
Phone: Home__________________________________
Work___________________________________
Cell ____________________________________
Student email address: _____________________________________________
*Student cell phone number:_________________________________________
*I understand that my child will be using his or her cell phone to create recordings and text messages using Sra. Taylor’s google voice phone number.
Parent Signature ___________________________ Date _______________
I'm excited to use Pandora because it's free and I already had a bunch of Latino stations I can use in the classroom. I can use this to play during a do now or other "down time" where students are entering or exiting or working quietly. It does have commercials but it seems like there is no interruption for continuous play.
Just thought I would share. Not sure how many other people use music in the classroom, but this certainly makes it easier. No need to bring the iPod or buy a ton of songs on ITUNEs which I have done already.
Features of Ubiquitous Learning
The main characteristics of ubiquitous learning are (Chen et al., 2002; Curtis et al., 2002):
Permanency: Learners can never lose their work unless it is purposefully deleted. In addition, all the learning processes are recorded continuously in everyday.
Accessibility: Learners have access to their documents, data, or videos from anywhere. That information is provided based on their requests. Therefore, the learning involved is self-directed.
Immediacy: Wherever learners are, they can get any information immediately. Therefore learners can solve problems quickly. Otherwise, the learner may record the questions and look for the answer later.
Interactivity: Learners can interact with experts, teachers, or peers in the form of synchronies or asynchronous communication. Hence, the experts are more reachable and the knowledge is more available.
Situating of instructional activities: The learning could be embedded in our daily life. The problems encountered as well as the knowledge required are all presented in the nature and authentic forms. It helps learners notice the features of problem situations that make particular actions relevant.
Adaptability: Learners can get the right information at the right place with the right way.
Collegiate High School Principal Tracie Rodriguez said the science and English departments use texting the most with class assignments. Teachers can choose whether they want students to text them. The trend began with a student asking if it would be OK for them to text their teacher, she said.She said at one time students were coming to class with incomplete assignments and texting was a way for the students to feel comfortable with getting in touch with teachers outside of class, she said.
The school does still enforce a rule that cell phones can’t be used in class unless approved beforehand as part of a class assignment or in an emergency, she said.In addition, parents haven’t expressed concerns about their student’s cell phone bills or texting charges, she said.
A recent article in Edutopia.org talks about using iPods as voice recording devices to provide feedback to students who are learning to read. According to the article the students can listen to themselves reading and it provides the "missing mirror" in terms of reading instruction. The last thing students with poor reading skills want to do is read aloud in front of their peers. Having students read into an iPod provides a non-threatening outlet for students to listen to themselves read. Apparently this process also improved the students ability to read.
Evidence of Student OutcomesEscondido and Canby classrooms are seeing large gains in the speed of student reading, one part of reading fluency. In a Canby fourth-grade classroom of sixteen students, from the fall to mid-year assessment of reading fluency, when average increase in word count per minute (WCPM) is 12, the average in the iPod classroom was close to 20. (WCPM measures the pace of reading; accuracy is another component of fluency.) Most students achieved more than double the average expected.In an Escondido fourth-grade class of ten students, average increase was 48 WCPM in just six weeks. At the start of fourth grade, all of the students lagged behind the 120 WCPM goal for third-grade completion. Within the six-week period, more than half of them had caught up and surpassed the goal for fourth-grade completion, making more than a year's progress in that period.A pilot study of reading achievement using the Iowa Test of Basic Skills also showed impressive gains. A group of 12 fifth-graders in Escondido using iPod Touches averaged 1.8 years of reading progress in six months, compared with a matched group of students at the same school who averaged .25, a quarter of a year’s increase. Both districts are planning larger-scale studies of reading achievement.
The iPod makes personal a process that has been painfully public. No struggling reader likes to have his or her weaknesses exposed in a group, in front of the entire class or their reading circle. The iPod enables more intimate, 1:1 reading instruction between a student and a teacher listening to each other's voices in audio files.
We have heard teacher after teacher say, 'This has totally transformed my teaching!' 'I'm having more fun and being a better teacher.' 'I'm never gonna retire.'" One teacher told Shirley, '"Using iPods with microphones has engaged students more than anything I've ever experienced! These tools allow even the softest speaker to be heard and motivate even the most reluctant reader." Another said succinctly: "There's less of me talking and more of them doing."
I observed a lesson the other day in a Spanish 2 class. The lesson dealt with using the imperfect tense i.e. describing activities that one used to do in the past. Each student first had to pick two slips of paper - one with an activity on it, the other with a classmate's name on it. They then had to draw a picture of the classmate doing the activity. Using their cell phone, the students then called into the teacher's Google Voice account and described what the classmate used to do using the imperfect tense. The students, a few at a time, went out into the hallway to place the calls. Afterwards they turned in their drawings which the teacher numbered. While the students were drawing their pictures the teacher had Spanish music videos playing through her LCD projector on the front screen. The songs contained vocabulary words the students were currently learning and primarily used the imperfect tense. The next day in class the teacher played each call to the class. The students had to listen to the call and decide which picture the call was describing. If they guessed correctly the student then had to further add to the description using another original sentence in either the imperfect or the preterite, which they had studied earlier in the year. Correct answers were tallied and winners received homework passes. During day one of the lesson I asked the teacher how she would have done the audio recordings without the cell phones and she responded by saying she would not have been able to do the lesson. After thinking for a while she said she could have used digital recorders but would have had to download each file from the recorders in order to play them back to the students, which would have made it a much more time consuming process.
I roll my eyes every time I hear people talk about putting Smartboards in the classroom. Ugh….Don’t get me wrong, Smartboards are cool. They are just the least cost-effective way to improve learning I’ve ever seen. (Except for building new physical plant, that’s worse.)
