Social networking researcher danah boyd (yes, she likes to have it without caps) has shared some questions that she has gotten from people on US teenagers and their use of social networking sites and her responses. Her very short and concise answers are surprisingly informative and thought provoking.
For people that may have missed this despite all of the recent buzz, the Wolfram|Alpha “computational knowledge engine” is supposed to be launched sometime this month (May, 2009). Wolfram|Alpha is a search engine that will take various types of input and, drawing on data available on the Internet, will present, contextualize and perform computations on that data. This will be an incredibly valuable tool for researchers. Here is an introduction to Wolfram|Alpha that illustrates some of the things that it will do.
In the newest issue of Time Magazine there is a curious (mostly for its remarkably one-sided treatment of the issue) article on national educational standards in the US. The author, Walter Isaacson, is a clear advocate of the most rigid forms of standards and assessment, i.e. “this” is what should be learned and we test to the gills to assess it.
Included with the article is a brief interview with education secretary Arne Duncan. He has some interesting ideas about how to solve the US education problems. First, he thinks students should spend more time in school; lots more time. He wants longer school days, a longer school week, and a longer school year. One might even be led to believe that he would like most for children to simply move into schools at a tender young age and stay there until they’re ready to graduate. Secondly, he supports “alternative routes” for teacher training, i.e. suggesting that current teacher certification requirements are too rigid.
The comical part of all this is that on the page before the Duncan interview is a table ranking countries by their outcomes in international student surveys in math and reading (not included in the online version of the article). Topping both lists is Finland. In Finland, students start school later than in the US, their school days are shorter, and the school year is roughly the same. There are national curriculum guidelines but not the incessant standards based testing we find in the US. Teacher certification requirements are very demanding. Master’s degrees are required and only the best of the best are accepted.
So, here it is, sitting right under Duncan’s nose, that more time in school need not make a difference. Rigid standards and assessment need not make a difference. What makes a difference is that teachers are highly qualified and have the flexibility to do what is needed to help their students learn (Duncan suggests that “teachers give students knowledge” – I don’t think so).
The Finnish example suggests that there are other, potentially more effective, ways of achieving the educational goals we strive for. For example, one way would be to standardize around teaching processes. Rather than testing the students to death, we could use a sort of “total quality control” formative evaluation to ensure that teachers do everything they can to meet students’ learning needs.
Before anything like this can happen in a country like the US, there needs to be significant change in the underlying system. In the US it seems like education officials have become so engrossed in standards and standards based assessment that they can’t even entertain the notion of even slightly more radical change. But, I think there’s another reason for this. US educational institutions (and this probably goes for many other countries as well) are so resistant to change that the only possible reforms are incremental. They’ve launched themselves onto the standards and assessment path and can’t change course. To get around this hindrance we need firm and decisive leadership. I’m getting the sense that Arne Duncan might not be it.
Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) seems to have decided that the general public might just be a useful resource for gathering the knowledge of the world. Several years ago they were none too happy with Nature’s evidence-based claim that Wikipedia was no less reliable than their expert authored and peer reviewed encyclopedia. At the time they outright rejected Nature’s claims and demanded a retraction of the article on Nature’s study.
EB’s approach will be very different than Wikipedia’s. Hardly surprising since EB is not Wikipedia and does not want to be Wikipedia – and rightly so. It will certainly be interesting to see what sort of effect this has on EB.
Meanwhile, more and more educators are finding ways to use Wikipedia. Here’s an interesting article on one educator’s experience. A lot of the experiments of this type that I’ve been coming across involve higher education students. I see no reason why this couldn’t be done with others, including elementary, upper-secondary students, and especially students (at all levels) in developing regions. This is an exceptional and very real way to develop an understanding of the social aspects of information and knowledge development.
Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge is a timely and relevant collection of articles about the need to, and ways to, integrate formal and informal learning. The book has been released on the web, in its entirety, under a Creative Commons license. Although the book focuses on “openness” in a general sense, there is a strong emphasis on the impact and role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in facilitating the open environments and processes that affect today’s learners.
Given the emphasis on the impact of ICTs on learning and education, some may question the relevance of this book for educators in parts of the world where access to ICTs is limited, if it exists at all. In fact, I think it may be even more relevant for educators in those parts of the world because the authors approach education from a very non-traditional point of view. We have learned that development of education is most successful when it conforms to the needs and expectations of those whom it is meant to serve. The approaches covered in this book do just that by looking at the ways that learners learn in their daily lives and what formal educational institutions can do to support those activities.
In his foreword titled “Creating a Culture of Learning”, John Seely Brown covers a wide range of topics, as do the articles included in the book. His case for open approaches to education hinges on what is to be expected given the book’s title, free-flowing information, learners’ engagement in communities of practice and the socially constructed nature of knowledge. He also highlights some interesting novel issues that should be of concern to the modern educator. One is the concept of “immersion”:
“Immersion comes from being surrounded by others talking and interacting with us and is furthered [sic] facilitated by our deep desire to interact, be understood and express our needs.”
(pg. xiii)
As we see more and more deeply engaging activities supported by ICTs, such as role-playing games, this is a very interesting and relevant point.
Another interesting, and somewhat provocative, point that Seely Brown makes is that, “… no one pedagogical or technical approach is the answer to ensuring that students are engaged and prepared.” (pg. xiv). The alternative is then a shift of focus to the ways that individuals learn in various informal and formal settings, or what is referred to in a broad sense as “learningscapes”.
I don’t know why Seely Brown chooses to use the term “learningscapes” (and elsewhere “learning landscape”). I don’t think this term captures the emphasis on processes which, nonetheless, I think is his main point. His concept of “learning ecologies” would have made much more sense here.
Lastly, Seely Brown tells a very thought provoking story of his exchanges with an associate provost of the University of Michigan. He suggested that, despite offical enrollment of approx. 40,000 students, UM teaches approx. 250,000 students each year because of students’ involvement in widespread social networks.
I think the Finnish systemic approach to education is illustrative of at least some of what the authors of the articles in this book are talking about. See for example:
Interesting video about how ICT is integrated in the Finnish classroom
Robert B. Kozma’s very informative paper on ICT & education in Finland, Singapore and Egypt (note how Singapore is following Finland’s lead)
The MacArthur Foundation has published a report on the “Digital Youth Project”. This is a fascinating report on the findings of a research project that looked at young people’s informal use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and what they learn from it. This project is a significant contribution to the growing literature on the way ICT contributes to learning outside of formal educational settings. The major finding, that young people use ICTs to establish and communicatively participate in networks to develop and share knowledge, on their own initiative, suggests that educators have to start thinking very differently about the ways that they integrate ICTs in education. I think the general tendency is to look for ways to use ICTs to support what goes on in the classroom, but these findings suggest that it would make more sense to look for ways to use classroom practices to support communication and networking activities that young people already engage in. This is something that I have suggested in the past, but without the concrete evidence that this research provides. The authors of the report suggest the same,
“New role for education? Youths’ participation in this networked world suggests new ways of thinking about the role of education. What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks? Rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of it as a process guiding youths’ participation in public life more generally? Finally, what would it mean to enlist help in this endeavor from engaged and diverse publics that are broader than what we traditionally think of as educational and civic institutions? “
The implications of these research findings are fairly obvious for those parts of the world where we can pretty much assume that young people are able to access ICTs in one way or another, but what of the developing regions where this is not as much of a given? I think there are obvious implications for them as well, because I believe that these findings should be taken as not relating specifically to education for the ICT savvy, but as an orientation for education in an increasingly globally connected world in general. In the case of developing regions, however, we probably need to dig a bit deeper to uncover appropriate educational practices than in the case of developed regions.
