Paradigm Shift

ASB is a leader in the use of technology to enhance our students’ educational experiences. We believe that by using technology appropriately, students are more highly engaged in their own education, have increased opportunities to develop higher order thinking skills and are better prepared to participate in a world where technological fluency is essential.

With the increased availability of sophisticated personal mobile technologies, it is becoming possible to personalize learning for each and every learner. For students to be truly self-directed and reflective lifelong learners and collaborative meaning makers, they must own their learning and the devices that facilitate it.

At the elementary school level students in grades 1 to 5 are provided laptops by the school. (In the middle and high schools, all students buy and bring a school-specified Tablet PC.) Earlier this year we ran a prototype for eight weeks in a section of grades 3 and 4 where students brought their personal mobile device – iPad, Android tablet, Netbook, or Laptop – to school daily. This was an optional program – not all students brought a device to school. During the eight weeks we studied how using a personal device in school can impact student learning, classroom instruction, classroom management, and digital citizenship. This was done through classroom observations, focus group interviews, and parent surveys.

We were answering two questions through this prototype:

• What are the types of learning opportunities that a Bring-Your-Own-Device program can enable?
• What are the essential conditions for a successful Bring-Your-Own-Device in the ES?

These are the findings from the BYOD prototype in grades 3 and 4.

Parents’ hopes and expectations for their child(ren) prior to the start of the prototype:

• Learn to use their device.
• See their device as both an educational and a leisure time tool
• Understand how to use and become comfortable with using the same device at home and in school.
• Will be prepared for middle school laptop ownership
• Develop skills in consistently storing/managing data.
• Learn to be responsible in looking after the device – charging, etc.
• Will not only become proficient using the device and learn new and creative ways to use it but become more of an inquirer taking responsibility for their own learning
• Become more responsible and also enjoy new ways of learning.

Important Learnings from the prototype

• The Bring-Your-Own-Device option supports the following:

• Personalized learning for each and every learner
• Students can be more self-directed and reflective
• Give students more ownership of their learning – When students bring their own devices, the computers are not locked down and they have full ownership over the device. This has been shown to be valuable as it gives them control over the device which is then connected to control over their learning.
• Expand learning opportunities outside the classroom
• All our software is in the “cloud” or on the web. This is an important factor that contributed to the success of the prototype as no software installations were required. Irrespective of the operating system and device, students were able to access the tool they needed online.
• Not all devices were appropriate for the level of productivity we required from our students. The “tablet” devices like the iPad and Galaxy Tabs became supplementary consumptive devices and did not support the kinds of work our students needed to do using a connected device.
• Our conclusion — Devices that best support our students’ work in school – laptops.
• As laptops can be used for three or more years, we defined minimum specifications for these to support students’ use of these devices into middle school.
• A list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) was also created to support learning.

• Suggestions to consider:
• Guidelines for parents on home use of devices so they can provide effective guidance at home.
• Create drop-in office BYOD hours for parents after school (e.g. from 3 to 4 pm) a few times a week where parents can get tech help on their child’s devices.
• Share a list of laptops that parents can consider purchasing that meet the minimum specifications.
• Parents also noticed the following specific changes in their child(ren) and their use of the personal device
• Use of school email to access links and information for homework.
• Greater confidence and ease with the use of their personal devices and other computers at home.
• Seamless switching between devices to find the information they need.
• Proactive problem solving on all devices
• Shift in the use of the device from searching for games to creating google docs to sharing documents and information.
• Increased level of responsibility
• Seamless use of technology tools for research and learning
• The following conditions need to be in place for a successful BYOD:
• A Culture of Tech Integration – where technology use as a tool is already seamlessly integrated into the classroom.
• Digital Citizenship – a continuous and ongoing focus on digital citizenship and responsible use of technology (hardware, software, data)
• Technical Specs – Minimum specifications defined for the acceptable device so there’s minimal downtime.
• Tech Support – Guidance and advice available to parents and students.
• Parent Digital Fluency – Parents have a level of comfort in using technology and online tools so they can engage with their child in their learning as well as monitor use of technology at home.
• Home-School Partnership – ongoing conversations between home and school as both partner to prepare students for a world where using technology is an essential life skill.

What started as a prototype to answer two questions has now been implemented across the school. Next year we are going BYOD from grades 6 to 12 and giving students in grades 4 and 5 the option to bring their own laptop to school! It’s been a surprising and amazing shift in a short time. I look forward to continuing to share our journey over the next year.

Gaming has always been an area of personal interest and professional fascination for me. Over the past few years the public and business interest in gaming has grown. This morning I read a post in Mashable on Gamification. The author of the post defined gamification as “the use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems. In other words, it means taking the best lessons from games like FarmVille, World of Warcraft and Angry Birds, and using them in business. Whether targeted at customers or employees, across industries as diverse as technology, health care, education, consumer products, entertainment and travel, gamification’s impact can already be felt.” He goes on to share seven gamified innovations. The post ends with a forecasting statement — “Gartner Group estimates that by 2015, 70% of the Forbes Global 2000 will be using gamified apps, and M2 Research forecasts that U.S. companies alone will spend $1.6 billion on gamification products and services by that same year.”

Jane McGonigal was a speaker at the February 2010 TED event. Jane directs game R&D at the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit forecasting firm. She developed Superstruct, a massively multiplayer game in which players organize society to solve issues that will confront the world in 2019. Her philosophy – “Instead of providing gamers with better and more immersive alternatives to reality, I want all of us to become responsible for providing the world with a better and more immersive reality.” In her TED talk, she makes a case for harnessing the power of gaming to solve real-world problems.

In February this year PBS released a new program titled Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century. It shared five examples of 21st Century learning and featured thought leaders, innovators and practitioners in the field. One of the schools featured was Quest to Learn where design thinking and complex problem-solving are the school’s two big ideas. The school is the outcome of a collaboration between New Visions for Public Schools, the Institute of Play, and the MacArthur Foundation and uses ‘game-like learning’ as a way to teach kids. Quest to Learn opened in 2009 and its website states that Q2L “supports a dynamic curriculum that uses the underlying design principles of games to create academically challenging, immersive, game-like learning experiences for students.”

A wide and growing range of articles and blog posts make a case for integrating gaming and the principles of gaming in learning environments – e.g. Five Reasons Why Video Games Power Up Learning, How to Plan Instruction Using the Video Game Model, Teaching the Physics Behind Angry Birds, Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom, Students Design Games and Software Tools to Tackle Real-World Problems. . . Another TED speaker, John Hunter, shares how his World Peace Game engages his 4th graders through complex problem solving and deep engagement. . .

There are obvious reasons for the interest in using gaming to support learning. The human mind does not follow rules; it isn’t a calculator. It learns from experience and we know that well-designed learning experiences are very effective. A well-designed learning experience motivates (through emotional engagement), has clear goals, provides copious and immediate feedback, manages attention, provides practice, and has opportunities for debriefing and reflection. Some features in games that make them good for learning:

• Motivation (creates an emotional attachment)
• Clear goals
• Well-ordered problems
• Problem solving
• Performance before competence (like first-language acquisition)
• Cycle of expertise (give the person a problem, let them practice the problem until it’s automatic, give them a new problem where their automatic expertise doesn’t work)
• Copious feedback
• Mentoring within the game
• Failure is low-cost
• Meta-game (expressing learning in community settings; interest groups that talk about the games that are being playing)

As games are designed in totality, they are well-designed and complete learning experiences. AND they are social and fun! Talking of fun, I just finished reading a book by Tom Chatfield titled Fun Inc: Why Games are the 21st Century’s Most Serious Business. It provides valuable research and insights into the history of gaming and the business of gaming. Makes me wonder: Is Gaming the future of learning?

A few weeks back ASB‘s Parent Tech Rep, Debbie Grieve, and I made a presentation titled Passive to Active: Building Successful Home-School Partnerships in a 21st Century School at the European Laptop Institute.

Involving parents in school improvement is an ongoing challenge for schools. Research shows that successful parent involvement improves student behavior and positively impacts student achievement. However schools continue to struggle with defining meaningful parent involvement. The definition of successful parent involvement should be active and ongoing (not occasional) participation in their child’s education. At ASB we’ve built a very strong culture of parent engagement. Presenting this workshop at the European Laptop Institute gave me an opportunity to reflect on this culture, especially in our specific context of a 1-to-1 learning environment.

All our communications and school information are online. This ranges from weekly messages to homework assignments and grades to ordering lunch for primary school students to paperless board meetings . . . Our challenge is ensuring our parent community reads and responds to the online school communications and stays updated. We linked this challenge to the growing disconnect between a parent community’s digital fluency and our students’ native digital literacy. We have broadened our definition of parent involvement to include becoming digitally proficient. Both the transient nature of our international school and the digital nature of all our communications makes it critically important for parents to be digitally fluent. It is also essential for parents to learn about new technologies so they can continue to remain connected and engaged with their children. Enhancing their own digital fluency also supports their child’s learning to become responsible digital citizens.

Barriers to Parent Involvement

Often there is a perception in schools that parents don’t want to be involved. We don’t agree with this perception. Why would a parent not want to be engaged in their child’s learning? In fact they may not know HOW to be involved. The challenge for schools is to create deep meaningful opportunities and sustain them. In our 1-to-1 environment, it is essential for our parents to demonstrate a relatively high level of technological fluency. Some of the barriers to learning about technology are cultural and require a level of sensitivity in overcoming them. Others may be lack of time, language barriers, lack of opportunities that go beyond bake-sales, transient population. Often there is a lack of understanding of the importance of improving their digital literacy. Answering the ‘Why’ question (‘Why should I become proficient in the use of technology?’) is important for building the emotional link to the learning.

Ways To Engage Parents

Generally successful parent involvement takes many forms – reading with children, helping with homework, attending and participating in school events, volunteering at school. . . a range of activities to involve parents in the learning process. In a 1-to-1 learning environment this takes some new forms. We start with a belief that student success is a shared interest of both school and home. We envision parents as partners in the learning process, and identify and implement concrete ways that this partnership can be activated.

• Parent Tech Rep

This year we created a role called Parent Tech Rep. It’s a volunteer position that requires a few hours of work each week. The parent in this role needs to understand how adults learn, facilitate requests for parent tech support, plan and organize the parent tech tutorials, teach some of the tutorials, and recruit, manage and guide the volunteer cadre of parent tech tutors.

• ASB Community Network or Ning

This is an ideal way for parents to participate in a closed online parent network. It facilitates their transition and integration into the school and the city of Mumbai, and supports the building of a real network of connections with the school community. On the technology front, it demystifies social networking for everyone. It provides adults a hands-on opportunity to learn about digital etiquette and communication — i.e. How to communicate online on discussions, implications for posting messages, the permanent nature of online postings . . .

• Parent Tech Tutors Program

We run an extensive program of hands-on technology trainings for parents on a range of applications and tools that would be useful in their personal/professional lives. Tutorials include – Managing your Desktop, Facebook, Diigo, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs & Forms, LinkedIn, Flickr, Photoshop, building Personal Learning Networks. . . Between four to seven hands-on tutorials are offered on campus each week. What is unique about these tutorials is that they are taught by parents who have volunteered to become a Parent Tech Tutor!

• Parent Tech Skills Continuum

Our Parent Tech Rep, Debbie Grieve, created a Parent Tech Skills Continuum. This lists four phases of learning and skills that parents at our school need to acquire in order to become proficient in their use of technology, be able to communicate, and stay updated within this community. This includes building an understanding of digital citizenship and learning how to raise digital kids.

Parent involvement requires a paradigm shift in thinking about home-school relationships. It requires a shift towards viewing this important relationship as a partnership, a partnership that is crucial for the education of our children.

What are the ways in which you are building and renewing this partnership at your school?

Continuing the series of posts on changes in schools during this century, this post is a summary of forecasted changes in education in the next decade. It’s a thought-provoking list compiled from reports published by Institute for the Future, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and New Media Consortium.

1. Development of Adaptive Learning Tools and Resources – for ALL learners, not just special needs learners. Adaptive learning implies individualized, personalized learning. When considering instructional technology, focus will be on how it can support connected, continuous, relevant, and adaptive learning
2. Increase in Service Learnin projects focused on health, environment, education – with a deeper and more engaged role for students in leading these projects, aimed at instilling in them a sense of stewardship for self and environment
3. Innovation is valued in the world of business and will be embraced in schools. Schools will become important hubs of design knowledge, rapid prototyping, and problem-solving skills.
4. With the amount of data continuing to increase, data visualization will become the norm to make sense of this information. This will require new skills in recognizing and understanding meaningful patterns. Students, teachers, and parents will need to become sophisticated at pattern recognition in order to create effective and differentiated learning experiences.
5. Social media and collaborative tools will leave “data trails” of online interactions. Visible data picture of our lives as citizens, workers, and learners will be available anytime and online. School administrators and teachers will need to learn how to communicate and interact in this new world.
6. Technology will become a means for empowerment, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of our lives. Educational discourse will take place in online public forums and spaces as “educitizens” share the status of schools and educational decision-making, resources, and activities in their communities.
7. Digital natives and empowered educators and students will challenge traditional ways of organizing learning. There will be changes in the architecture of schools. We will witness growth in alternate forms of learning.
8. With the need to be prepared for disasters and uncertainties, schools will work on building resilience into school systems and for creating lightweight, modular infrastructures to support the health and wellbeing of students, staff, and families.
9. There will be increased interdependence between the school and the local community and businesses. Partnerships and networks will be essential and critical for building resilient school communities. Educator-business partnerships will grow to develop learning content.

There are many important and challenging questions to answer. . . What will the “school of the future” look like? How will learning be organized in this school? How will stakeholder roles evolve? . . . Would be exciting to paint a picture of this school! And then build it!

For a couple of years now I’ve been following a few different streams of conversations about emerging and evolving technologies. Over the past few months I’ve had deeper discussions about these technologies with experts and experienced practitioners in the field. These conversations and discussions are beginning to merge together into three clear trends that are worth exploring and understanding: Augmented Reality (AR), Mobile Learning, Games and Simulations.

Augmented Reality
I first heard the term in this BMW video that was posted almost three years back. Scott Klososky demystified AR in a blogpost. Later he outlined AR emergence as one of the tech happenings of 2009:
“Augmented Reality emerged. From nothing, to a slate of applications, AR is now more than just a concept. It will grow to be one of the common ways for delivering location-based information.”

The 2010 K-12 edition of the Horizon Report projects a five year time-to-adoption for AR:
“Emerging augmented reality tools to date have been mainly designed for marketing, social purposes, amusement, or location-based information, but new ones continue to appear as the technology becomes more popular. Augmented reality has become simple, and is now poised to enter the mainstream in the consumer sector.”

Mobile Learning
The Horizon Report has been highlighting the importance of mobile learning since 2006. The 2009 K-12 edition of the report projects a time-to-adoption for Mobiles as two to three years.

“It is becoming increasingly common for young people to own mobile devices. In the upper grades, it is not at all unusual to find that students carry mobiles, even if they are not allowed to use them during class, and younger students often carry them as well. The unprecedented evolution of these devices continues to generate great interest, and their increasing capabilities make them more useful with each new generation of devices. One recent feature — the ability to run third-party applications — represents a fundamental change in the way we regard mobiles and opens the door to myriad uses for education, entertainment, productivity, and social interaction.”

The 2010 K-12 edition of the report also projects a two – to three year time-to-adoption for Mobiles. It explains the reason for a lack of change in the 2009 adoption timeline as “The range and number of educational applications for mobiles are growing at a rapid pace, yet their use in schools is limited — more often constrained by policy than by the capabilities of the devices they run on.”

Game-Based Learning
The 2010 K-12 Horizon report’s time-to-adoption for Game-Based Learning is two to three years. “The interest in game-based learning has accelerated considerably in recent years, driven by clear successes in military and industrial training as well as by emerging research into the cognitive benefits of game play. Developers and researchers are working in every area of game-based learning, including games that are goal-oriented; social game environments; non-digital games that are easy to construct and play; games developed expressly for education; and commercial games that lend themselves to refining team and group skills. At the low end of game technology, there are literally thousands of ways games can be — and are already being — applied in learning contexts. More complex approaches like role-playing, collaborative problem solving, and other forms of simulated experiences have broad applicability across a wide range of disciplines, and are beginning to be explored in more classrooms.

Convergence
A couple of studies are worth mentioning.

Pew survey
A 2008 survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project asked respondents to assess predictions about technology and its roles in the year 2020. The predictions:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.

Prediction: “In 2020, while “one laptop per child” and other initiatives to bring networked digital communications to everyone are successful on many levels, the mobile phone—now with significant computing power—is the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world, providing information in a portable, well-connected form at a relatively low price. Telephony is offered under a set of universal standards and protocols accepted by most operators internationally, making for reasonably effortless movement from one part of the world to another. At this point, the “bottom” three-quarters of the world’s population account for at least 50% of all people with Internet access—up from 30% in 2005.”

• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020

Prediction: “In 2020, the most commonly used communications appliances prominently feature built-in voice-recognition. People have adjusted to hearing individuals dictating information in public to their computing devices. In addition “haptic” technologies based on touch feedback have been fully developed, so, for instance, a small handheld Internet appliance allows you to display and use a full-size virtual keyboard on any flat surface for those moments when you would prefer not to talk aloud to your networked computer. It is common to see people “air-typing” as they interface with the projection of a networked keyboard visible only to them.”

• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

Prediction: “Many lives are touched by the use of augmented reality or spent interacting in artificial spaces. In 2020, virtual worlds, mirror worlds, and augmented reality are popular network formats, thanks to the rapid evolution of natural, intuitive technology interfaces and personalized information overlays. To be fully connected, advanced organizations and individuals must have a presence in the “metaverse” and/or the “geoWeb.” Most well-equipped Internet users will spend some part of their waking hours—at work and at play—at least partially linked to augmentations of the real world or alternate worlds. This lifestyle involves seamless transitions between artificial reality, virtual reality, and the status formerly known as “real life.””

Latitude/ReadWriteWeb study
Latitude Research conducted a study with ReadWriteWeb asking children to visualize and share concepts for new computer and web interfaces. The results: Children want

• Immersive content experiences
• Physical-digital convergence — better integration of digital technology into physical objects, spaces and activities, (e.g. 3D)
• Interface characteristics — more intuitive and responsive

The study articulates the next potential iteration of our technology interactions: “each user will crave the ability to architect his or her own content experience: to step into it, to interact with characters, to add and remove plot constraints – ultimately, to alter the course of future events. It would mean the difference between interacting peripherally with a technology, and interacting with the actual story being told through the device.”

Disruptive Technologies?
At this year’s ISTE conference I attended a session presented by St. Marys City School on their innovative 1-to-1 learning program using smartphones. The school’s technology director, Kyle Menchhofer, Grade 4 teacher, Scott Newcomb, Grade 3 teacher, Jen Van Gundy, and Elementary Principal, Lisa Elson, shared how a small rural school in Ohio is using smartphones in the classroom and how the use is enhancing student learning and transforming teaching.

I also participated in a hands-on session on Integrating the Use of PSPs in the Classroom presented by two educators from the UK, Richard Healey and Jenny Ellwood. Commercial gaming systems are an important part of students’ lives. Rich and Jenny shared how PSPs can be used as media players and devices and have the potential to transform teaching and learning in amazing ways. Using QR codes the gaming devices integrate AR and games into one powerful media tool. In addition the PSPs can be used to record, collect, and play visual data (images and video). Imagine the incredible potential of these devices to support our students’ as critical consumers and creative producers of information!

This week I had a telephone conversation with the distinguished professor and researcher, Dr. Elliot Soloway. He has been exploring and promoting the use of mobile devices in schools and believes that the critical role of mobile devices in the workplace is a good enough reason to begin integrating them into the classroom. Dr. Soloway is working with schools in the US and in Singapore on building 1-to-1 learning programs using cellphones.

My practitioner’s lens and mindset is raising several questions whose answers have implications for our work as educators. Some of these are: Are any or all of these (AR, mobiles, games-based learning) the next disruptive technologies? What will be the next iteration of laptop-based 1-to-1 learning? With cloud computing making online access to tools and resources easy and seamless, what should the ideal multi-purpose mobile device? How will tablet and mobile technologies integrate? What will be the functionalities of a tablet-mobile device?. . .

It’s time for educators to ideate and proactively contribute to the design and functionalities of the next mobile learning device. What if we started with the list generated by students in the Latitude/ReadWriteWeb study and developed it further.

• Immersive content experiences
• Physical-digital convergence — better integration of digital technology into physical objects, spaces and activities, (e.g. 3D)
• Interface characteristics — more intuitive and responsive

What would we add to this list?

I’m at the ISTE conference in Denver. I’m amused at the intensive marketing and advertising blitz of Interactive White Boards or IWBs at the conference. I participated in the use of these boards for a couple of years in 2003 and have been following their use in schools since then.

The advertising conjures images of a magical tool that transforms learning in the classroom. Far from it! The rapid evolution of technology over the last five years is making IWBs irrelevant. IWBs continue the old “front of the classroom” paradigm. Students paying attention to some activity at the front of the classroom changes nothing from the past. The blackboard and overhead projector had the ability to do that decades ago. IWBs are the right tool if we need a tool to automate the 19th century classroom. Or if we need a tool to make the classroom look high-tech, shiny, magical and progressive, then we should get the IWBs. Of course companies will tout the magic of these devices – why shouldn’t they? They aren’t in business to lose money. The companies have the resources to sell them and to conduct studies that show learning gains. Unfortunately the value of IWBs is less than their cost. They are over-priced and over-hyped. Any examples of successes are either special situations or examples of short-lived newness effect.

I believe the front of the classroom is not where current and future learning will take place. Think of the iPad. While the device is not yet ready for education, it does highlight the direction in which technology is going. Tablets and touch-screen devices in the hands of students with the ability to project using a wireless projector or large screens. . . The teacher and students sharing control of the screen interaction.. . Empowered students focusing on their individual and collaborative small group learning . . . That’s a paradigm to consider. Some trends that are supporting this shift — lower costs of bandwidth, internet access, growing content on the web, cloud computing, lower costs of portable devices. . .

It’s only a matter of time when IWBs will become classroom dinosaurs and we may find it difficult to explain their expensive entry into the classroom.

Paradigm Shifts fascinate me. I am a believer in paradigm shifts for any worthwhile progress. A paradigm is a way of seeing, a mental model, a worldview, a frame of reference. The term ‘Paradigm Shift’ was first coined by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). It described “a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science” (wikipedia). The term is now used variously in other non-scientific contexts and is defined as “the notion of a major change in a certain thought-pattern — a radical change in personal beliefs, complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing with a radically different way of thinking or organizing” (wikipedia). A paradigm shift is a revolution, a transformation. We’re all regularly witnessing paradigm shifts in various fields – medicine, laws, social attitudes, political systems, physical sciences, the way we work. . . One would think that paradigm shifts had become the norm than the exception!

Paradigm Shifts don’t just happen. They are created and driven by agents of change. The printing press was an agent of change – it caused changes in attitude and thinking and in culture. The internet and the world wide web have been catalysts for shifts impacting both our personal and professional lives.

Education is one area where change is never easy and takes the longest. There is a statement I read somewhere during the days when the internet was referred to as the ‘information superhighway’ (remember those times!) — ‘while the rest of the world is on the information superhighway, education is on the dirt road.’ That analogy aptly describes the dilemma of change in education. However, we all know that rapid technological changes are highlighting the need to look at the old problems with new eyes. Over the past decade the educational technology landscape has seen many change agents who have been promoting the need for new paradigms – Scott McLeod, Clayton Christensen, Don Tapscott, Bruce Dixon . . . There are too many of them to list all. They are leading the creation of new paradigms. And it’s only a matter of time when a significantly large enough group of change agents, believers and supporters will lead to a revolutionary change in education.

It’s an exciting time to be an educator!