Digital Education

E-Rate Application Deadline Extended

2010-02-09T19:21:47Z

Here in Portland, Ore., where I live, it's been in the mid-50s and sunny for the past couple of days. But for many folks, including my Education Week colleagues based in Bethesda, Md., who are facing record snowfalls, the weather is creating significant logistical challenges. The federal government is facing even greater challenges and that's why federal offices in Washington have been closed for two days.

Turns out, the School and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company, which handles E-rate applications for schools and libraries, recognizes the inconvenience and has decided to push back the deadline for 2010 E-rate applications to Friday, Feb. 19, giving schools an extra eight days to complete the forms. The announcement was made on the USAC's Web site and can be viewed here.

A Call for Research on Media Multitasking

2010-02-05T18:12:49Z

A group of academic and industry leaders came together last summer at Stanford University to discuss the effects of media multitasking, a subject that is on the minds of many educators because of research like the Kaiser Family Foundation report and the Frontline documentary that aired this week, which point to the increasing amount of time kids are spending with media.

A new paper from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center documents the findings and discussions of the one-day seminar.

After reading through the report, it's clear that there are many more questions than answers about the effects of media multitasking and what they mean for schools. The report repeatedly calls for more in-depth longitudinal studies about media multitasking for all age groups. And clearer definitions and terminology are needed for this research, the report says. In addition, it is critical for new tools and survey methods to be developed to keep track of the rapidly evolving phenomenon before researchers and educators can begin to help schools adapt to changing behaviors related to multitasking.

The background paper for the seminar is here, and even more resources are here.

Edutopia Magazine to Make Shift to Online Only

2010-02-04T17:21:21Z

The George Lucas Educational Foundation announced today that it will discontinue the print version of its Edutopia magazine this spring to focus more aggressively on building free multimedia content for its Web site, Edutopia.org.

Edutopia.org was launched in 1994 as an online venue for spreading the word about innovative approaches to teaching and learning, from charter schools to teacher preparation to educational technology. Those stories have appeared in regular print issues of Edutopia, the subscription-based magazine. The April/May issue will be the last print edition.

"With the steady expansion of our online audience, we believe the time is right to shift our strategy to focus on Edutopia.org as the main, multimedia channel for all our content," says a statement from George Lucas, the famed Hollywood director who started the foundation. "The future of Edutopia is now on the Internet."

Milton Chen, who has led the organization for 12 years, is now a a senior fellow and executive director emeritus. Chen previously served as the research director for the Children's Television Workshop, now known as the Sesame Workshop. Cindy Johanson, the foundation's chief operating officer and a former executive with Public Broadcasting Service, is the new executive director.

Defining Effective Assistive Technologies

2010-02-04T15:19:09Z

The National Center for Technology Innovation has recently released a new paper called "Unleashing the Power of Innovation for Assistive Technology." The paper describes the ideal elements of assistive technologies, which are broken down into five categories:

• Convergence, which refers to a "transformation of various systems or devices into a single platform or device";
• Customizability and universal design for learning, which means it is "designed to be configured to meet the unique needs of individuals;"
• Research or evidence-based, which means it is "supported by evidence of effectiveness for students with disabilities";
• Portability to promote independence, which refers to "assistive technology that offers flexibility to be used in various settings and moves with the user"; and
• Interoperability, which is "the ability of two or more systems to exchange information."

Bottom line, concludes the report, is that the assistive technologies need to be simple to learn, use, and support. The report also talks about the ways that funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can be used to support assistive technologies, as well as findings about how assistive technology is implemented into the classroom.

When I look back at the list of five trends, it seems like it could easily be applied to technology in the classroom in general. Check out the full report for a much more detailed rundown of the importance of each of the five trends.

Obama's Budget Would Eliminate EETT

2010-02-03T21:02:08Z

Over the last several months I've reported on how a number of ed-tech advocacy organizations have decried the shrinking investment in the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology, or EETT, program. Indeed, funding dropped from more than $700 million in the early years of the No Child Left Behind Act to just $100 million in fiscal 2010, although $650 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act this past year softened the blow.

Now President Obama has proposed eliminating the EETT grants in his fiscal 2011 budget proposal. Actually, his budget would consolidate technology funding into several new initiatives under the umbrella of the "Effective Teaching and Learning for a Complete Education" program.

"Incorporating the use of technology is integrated into many ESEA programs," a footnote in the budget states. The budget describes the new program as "designed to improve instruction to support college- and career readiness standards, in part through the use of technology to deliver high-quality content."

Ed-tech groups like CoSN, ISTE, and SETDA have been promoting greater integration of technology throughout the curriculum, but I don't think this is what they had in mind. The new program seems to cover a lot of ground and could be interpreted as simply allowing or encouraging the use of technology to improve instruction, without actually mandating it.

There are three components of the Effective Teaching and Learning program, with $450 million for literacy, $300 million for STEM, and $265 million to support "a well-rounded education," meaning teaching across content areas. Technology is included in each, but without much specificity as to how and how much.

CoSN, ISTE, and SETDA issued this joint statement today expressing their concerns:

"We were very pleased to hear the Obama Administration's commitment to infusing technology across the range of its proposed programs and school reform initiatives announced this week. We fully concur that, as the President stated, 'Technology, when used creatively and effectively, can transform education and training.' We would like to see those sentiments translated into specific, tangible allocations that meaningfully incorporate technology throughout the Administration's new vision for ESEA and to the benefit of all students. In our view, a newly reauthorized ESEA must infuse technology across all program areas and be supported by targeted research, evaluation and investments that enhance state and local educational technology leadership and capacity, educator professional development, and technology-based innovation.

Last week, after the State of the Union Address, Don Knezek, ISTE's chief executive officer, told me he was encouraged to hear the president talk about the need for a greater investment in the nation's schools and for more innovation in general. But even then, Knezek was concerned that ed-tech would not be as much a part of that investment as he and other advocates were hoping for.

"Although I hear the innovation message, I hear the message about world-class standards for our schools and the need for kids to be globally competent, I don't sense real support for changing the learning experience," he said. "So far, we haven't seen an eloquent articulation of the expectation that education across all fronts would move into the digital age."

Of course, there's still a long way to go before a final budget is out. Stay tuned.

Textbook Publishers Seeking iPad Applications

2010-02-03T15:40:20Z

In yet another sign that textbook publishers are ramping up their products for digital platforms, the major textbook companies—McGraw-Hill Cos., Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Pearson Education—have signed deals with software developer ScrollMotion Inc. to create applications for the new Apple iPad and other electronic readers, according to this Wall Street Journal piece.

Tech developers have been working on applications for bringing school content to digital devices for a while now, according to news reports (see here, and here), including the Kindle, laptops and netbooks, and other portable computers.

With more states investigating their options for digital textbooks, as we've been reporting on edweek.org, observers say the schoolbook market could see a real shift in the near future.

What will schools do with all those 1990s-era history books?

Photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

Momentum Builds for Digital Textbooks

2010-02-02T19:18:57Z

Georgia is the latest state to take steps toward allowing digital textbooks in place of printed tomes in classrooms,according to this report from the Associated Press.

A bill passed handily in the state senate would include electronic readers under the state's definition of "textbook." The measure has not yet been taken up by the house of representatives.

A number of states have begun to look more seriously at digital textbooks as an option for schools, and steadily chipped away at the notion that bound books are an essential tool for delivering the curriculum. California, West Virginia, and other states are also taking steps to incorporate electronic materials into schools, as we've written about here.

What's happening in your state or district?

Online Reputation Topic of Data Privacy Day

2010-02-02T15:01:20Z

Paul Hyland, the chief technology officer for edweek.org, has the following report:

How did you celebrate Data Privacy Day? At a time when privacy issues are becoming a growing concern of the information age, the Jan. 28 event was touted as "an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information."

I attended an interesting workshop that morning at the Newseum in Washington, hosted by Microsoft Corp. and the Future of Privacy Forum, titled "Online Privacy: Your Reputation is ON the LINE." It examined potential risks and actual harms to personal reputations posed by various new and expanding uses of the Internet, including the burgeoning popularity of social networks.

Jules Polonetsky, co-chair and director of the Future of Privacy Forum, moderated the event.

Brendon Lynch, the senior director of privacy strategy for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group, presented the company's new study showing the extent to which online reputation increasingly affects job candidates' hiring prospects, and in some cases is a key criteria in the hiring process. In fact, 70 percent of recruiters and human resources professionals surveyed in the U.S. reported rejecting a candidate based on unflattering information found online. Cases of adverse consequences on existing jobs (including termination) are more widely known, but the extent of pre-employment screening is news. See this piece on a Pennsylvania teacher's suspension after her Facebook page was reviewed.

Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at The CATO Institute, laid out how such risks of online information fit into the legal and regulatory framework, and where government action might be appropriate.

Marsali Hancock, the president of iKeepSafe Internet Safety Coalition, discussed what parents and schools can do to protect or enhance children's reputations online, such as communicating with them about the potential impact of their digital reputation, and sharing stories of teens who's educational or employment opportunities were either positively or negatively affected by their online reputation. She also shared news of Project PRO, a partnership with the American School Counselors Association, which provides resources to help students nationwide understand the importance of privacy and reputation online.

Nat Wood, an assistant director of the bureau of consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission, talked about how parents and educators can talk to kids about online safety, steps that are outlined in the commission's free booklet, Net Cetera: Chatting with Kids about Being Online, part of their comprehensive OnGuard Online information service.

The event was capped off by Michael Fertik, the CEO of ReputationDefender, a company that provides reputation defense and clean-up services to individuals. He described how the concepts of privacy and reputation have evolved over time, but are now moving so fast that laws addressing them are in a relative "stone age." Fertik lamented that a major record label can get 50,000 videos removed from YouTube with a single letter of complaint, whereas a parent has no way to compel a social network to remove damaging or defamatory information about a child which has been posted on a site.

The notion of opting out of various privacy intrusions is difficult to manage in reality, several speakers said. New laws or regulations, they said, need to head off the kind of damage that could actually occur, rather than simply leave it up to individuals to manage their own information, which is rapidly becoming more complicated, more widely distributed, and difficult to track.

The FTC hosted the principal federal Data Privacy Day event on the same day. The daylong roundtable discussion at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, featured academics, government officials, privacy advocates, and representatives from industry. The panels focused on the effects of technology on privacy, particularly social networking, cloud computing, and mobile technology. Facebook was represented on the social networking panel, and the company opened up a forum for short commentaries on its blog, which already has over 500 comments and 2000 recommendations.

While these events mostly focused on consumers, the issues mirror many of the privacy concerns educators have in making the Internet readily available to students. What have you learned about keeping students safe online and giving them the wherewithal to preserve their reputations in a digital age?

Calif. Expands Digital Textbook Initiative

2010-01-29T14:11:09Z

California's free digital textbook initiative, which was launched last year and I wrote about here, just entered Phase 2.

In the first phase, a state panel reviewed a number of math and science textbooks that are available online for free and rated how well they align with state standards in those subjects. Now Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has expanded the program to include history-social science and higher level math texts.

"Resources like digital textbooks play a critical role in our 21st-century educational landscape, and expanding my first-in-the-nation initiative will provide local school districts additional high-quality free resources to help prepare California's students to compete in the global marketplace," Gov. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said in a statement. "I urge content developers to jump on board this second phase and submit social science and advanced math material to help ensure California's shift to a more advanced and cost-effective education system continues."

More information on the initiative, as well as submission requirements, is available from the California Learning Resource Network.

Watching a Digital Nation in Action

2010-01-29T00:16:16Z

If the Kaiser Family Foundation report on kids' excessive media use didn't give you enough evidence of the dominant role of technology in our lives, don't miss the Frontline report next Tuesday on PBS titled "Digital Nation."

The documentary, which I wrote about here, kicked off last year to take a closer look at how the Web is "transforming the way we work, learn and connect." Frontline Producer Rachel Dretzin and Correspondent Douglas Rushkoff go from home to school to the workplace as they explore the fascination with and dependence on digital devices and the online world.

Not surprisingly, there are a range of perspectives about whether the increasing amount of time spent on social networking sites, online video and news pages, and music and gaming programs—often while doing other things—has a positive or negative impact on users.

One MIT professor, for example, shares his observations of students' ability to absorb his course content as they are distracted by the programs they have open on their laptops during class time.

"It's not that the students are dumb. It's not that they're not trying," says David Jones as he explains how the class average on a midterm exam in medical history was just 75 percent, even though the content was covered thoroughly in class lectures and readings. "I think they're trying in a way that's not as effective as they could be because they're distracted by everything else."

The students interviewed, however, say they are quite proficient at balancing multiple mental tasks all at once.

But Dretzin interviews a Stanford researcher who has found otherwise.

"Virtually all mutlitaskers think they're brilliant at multitasking," Sociologist Clifford Nass says. "And what we're discovering is that they're really lousy at it."

But technology is also seen as essential to learning, work, even the accomplishment of everyday tasks. "Walking into a classroom without media," one educator says, "is like walking into a desert" for students these days.

There are some great clips of classrooms and interviews with educators about the challenges of engaging the digital generation in lessons. There are also some fascinating segments on gaming, second life, and the power of virtual worlds.

After you've seen it, come back and share your thoughts.

New National Research Center for Ed Tech

2010-01-27T20:36:07Z

Congress recently approved a $500,000 appropriation, provided through the U.S. Department of Education, to launch the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, which was established in 2008 under amendments added to the Higher Education Act of 1965.

The center aims to provide grants and contracts for research and development projects that explore the way advanced technologies can support learning in K-12 and higher education, as well as government and corporate training. The center hopes to do for education what the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health do for their respective fields, says Lawrence K. Grossman, the former president of NBC News and PBS, and a principal leader of the Digital Promise project, which is working with the Department of Education to launch the new national center.

Although the center is partially funded through the federal government, it will be an independent, nonprofit organization run by a board of directors selected by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, says Grossman. To bolster support for the national center, Digital Promise has already created three prototypes of the kinds of projects that the center hopes to fund, two of which are aimed at K-12 students: Immune Attack, an educational video game to teach biology, and Discovering Babylon, another educational video game that focuses on Mesopotamian history.

When I spoke with him, Grossman said that although games and simulations will likely play a significant role in the projects that the center will support, that is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of technology's educational potential.

To read more about the center, check out a press release about the launch here. The Digital Promise Web site also has lots of information about the center, including a detailed management plan as well as a "research and development roadmap" for the center.

Bill Gates Promotes E-Learning

2010-01-27T17:58:30Z

Bill Gates is a fan of online learning, so much so that it is among the nine innovations to receive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation over the next several years, according to the second annual letter by the Microsoft chairman outlining his vision for tackling the most pressing challenges facing the United States and the world.

While much of the letter addresses poverty and health issues, two of the 12 pages are devoted to education topics: online learning and teacher effectiveness.

On Page 9 of the letter, Gates describes his own fascination with online education, particularly the open source physics courses offered by MIT.

So far technology has hardly changed formal education at all. But a lot of people, including me, think this is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things—especially in combination with face-to-face learning.

The Gates Foundation will partner with teachers, software developers, and the online community to improve the availability of high-quality online courses, for both formal and informal settings. One area that needs improvement, according to the letter, is in the organization of online content, which I delved into in this piece in Technology Counts 2009. Gates suggests that setting some standards for categorizing and rating resources would help teachers find the best lessons for a particular topic and grade level.

Over time I think a large community of contributors and reviewers will develop and allow the online material to be easy to access and a crucial resource for all types of education. There will need to be a number of pilots to see how to take this resource and blend it into the classroom experience. I plan to spend a lot of time on this to see what would help get it to critical mass.

Take a look at the letter and let me know what you think.

Horizon Report: Technologies to Watch

2010-01-26T17:25:57Z

The 2010 edition of the Horizon Report, recently published by the New Media Consortium, is worth reading even though it focuses primarily on higher education. There are plenty of implications for the K-12 classroom in this report. In fact, last year, the New Media Consortium released a K-12 edition of the report, and there are plans to release another K-12 report later in the year, although the date has not yet been set.

After analyzing more than 115 technologies being used in higher education, the researchers narrowed their list of technologies to watch down to six that they believe will have the greatest impact on education. They are mobile computing, which includes smart phones, laptops, netbooks, and any other portable web-enabled devices; open content, which refers to educational materials and resources that are published and shared for free on the Internet; electronic book readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader, and the Barnes and Noble Nook, as well as book reader apps for the iPhone and other smartphones; simple augmented reality, which occurs when the real world is combined with virtual information, like using a wireless device to detect your location or information about your location; gesture-based computing, which includes a new class of devices designed to be interacted with through natural gestures, like the iPhone and the Ninetendo Wii ; and visual data analysis, which blends "highly computational methods with sophisticated graphics engines" in order to see patterns and structure in visual presentations.

Both the mobile computing and open content technologies are in the one year or less adoption phase, meaning that they're already in use in many places, and experts anticipate that their popularity will continue to grow. Electronic book readers and simple augmented reality fall into the two-to-three-year adoption phase, and gesture-based computing and visual data analysis will potentially be tapped in four to five years, says the report.

In addition to emerging technologies, the report also identifies critical challenges to technology in education, including changes in the role of higher education, the lack of standard metrics to evaluate emerging technologies and their impact on learning, the absence of formal training for digital literacy in teacher education programs, and shrinking budgets for further research and evaluation.

Although the rate at which technology changes makes it difficult to predict which devices and ideas are going to catch on and which ones, however promising, will fade into the background, I always enjoy checking out what the Horizon report has to say. I'm looking forward to seeing what the K-12 edition says and how that compares to the higher education report.

What do you think? Are these plausible predictions? Is there anything that you would take away or add to the list?

Breaking Down 21st-Century Skills

2010-01-25T22:32:50Z

In case you missed it, my colleague Stephen Sawchuk recently hosted a conversation on edweek.org with Patte Barth, the director of the Center for Public Education at the National School Boards Association, and Craig D. Jerald, the president of Break the Curve Consulting, about 21st-century skills. The chat, which took place last week, has an archived version here.

The conversation did not focus on technology as much as you might guess, and the guests even acknowledged that although using technology is one way to teach 21st-century skills—like collaboration—it's not the only way to do so. In fact, sometimes it's better to use low-tech solutions or in-person, face-to-face projects to teach the skills students need to be successful.

The chat guests also answered questions about how to assess 21st-century skills properly and how to encourage reluctant teachers to embrace and integrate technology into the classroom. Both Patte and Craig provided links to research and resources that might be helpful to those who are interested in this topic. For more background about 21st-century skills, check out Stephen's story about the motives of the 21st-century skills movement as well as his story about how West Virginia teachers are incorporating 21st-century skills into their teaching.

National Broadband Plan Delayed

2010-01-22T18:35:44Z

The FCC has asked for a one-month extension for delivering a draft of the National Broadband Plan to Congress, according to this piece on the Wall Street Journal Web site this week. The plan, authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed last year, is intended to expand high-speed Internet access to all Americans.

There's more information on the FCC Web site dedicated to the plan and its progress. The commission now expects to deliver a draft to Congress March 17.

The National Educational Technology Plan is also due out soon. No word yet on a delivery date.