Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book

Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning

Variable Workspace Environment Survey

Please complete this survey in order to provide insights about this direction of thought with regard to variable workspace environments.

I believe the stand-up desk question is actually a three dimensional equation where one could sit or stand while working on a vertical or horizontal surface, all cross-referenced with the particular task at hand. In other words, it is not a simple either/or situation.

Nor is it a generalizable personal preference. Instead, it is a task-specific, personal situation that may have a fourth dimension: Time. Does the time to complete the task (or work on the task) affect the preference as well? I think so, but will have address that in a later survey.

Until then, thanks for your participation on this pilot survey.

A Stand-Up Desk Experiment

In order to learn more about how the application of stand-up desk would work in MCPS elementary school classrooms, I thought it would be interesting to just put one in a classroom and see what happens.

A 3rd grade classroom at Lewis & Clark was chosen and one adjustable stand-up desk was delivered.
The desk, pictured below above, came with no strings, directions, or rules. The teacher was in charge of the desk. I guess there was one string, however. Well, two really. The first is that I would be returning the desk to its proper home at or before the end of this school year, and second, I wanted to know what the students and the teacher think about the desk, and would likely blog about it here.

Students take turns using it and chronicling their thoughts about it. The images below represent the written thoughts of the students who have used the desk thus far. The first two images are those things the students listed as pros of the stand-up desk, and the next two pictures are the cons about the desk. You can click on the images to make them larger.

Maine's Kindergarten iPad 1-to-1 Initiative

Years ago, I followed the Maine schools 1-to-1 laptop project. I found it interesting on multiple levels, but also I was skeptical for several reasons. Now it is time to dust off my past thoughts and update them given the changes across education, technology, and the 21st century world in general.

In the meantime, here are a few links to get readers up to speed:

The Impact of Maine’s One-to-One Laptop Program on Middle School Teachers and Students: Phase One Summary Evidence Research Report #1

The Impact of Maine’s One-to-One Laptop Program on Middle School Teachers and Students Use of Laptop Computers and Classroom Assessment: Are Teachers Making the Connections?

Research Report #4

Article: Going One-to-One from the December 2005/January 2006 issue of Learning in the Digital Age

Personally, I have an iPad and am quite pleased with the device's potential in education. The iPad2 is even better, but ultimately, it is not the machine but the use. As an instructional technologist encouraging the effective and appropriate use of technology in education, my goals include the fearless use of technology in academic and creative endeavours in order to pursue, with reckless abandon, great teaching and learning. In other words, the tech should become invisible within the experience and the learning be conceptualized and owned independent of the device.

In the above CNN video, I tired to figure out what the students were doing with iPads. A lesson learned (from my perspective anyway) from the earlier Maine 1:1 Laptop initiative was that in order for the technology to truly impact the students within the overall longterm goals of education, it had to take a backseat to the content and message of the lessons. However, in studying the 1-to-1 results including those in the links I referenced above, I sometimes had a hard time separating out the computer from its effects.

The yardstick I am using here is not to make the project platform-independent whereby any similar tech might/should yield similar results (as I believe that is often a mistake by the uninformed that leads to 1) the rapid downfall of a project, 2) measurable results contrary to those intended, and 3) a clear path for opponents to challenge the hardware decisions and budget), but instead to focus on the learning objective and outcomes by which the device is an efficient conduit to personalization and success.

The kindergarten entry point for this integration will also be a something to watch. Not only is it a project launching from a grade level often contrary to conventional district technology expenditures, but it provides a wonderfully effective leverage point causing all grades to follow to either get with the program or risk giving the impression that a student's matriculation is actually downhill slide into mediocrity.

Is the Future of Education on the Web?

Astoria High School in Astoria, Oregon just became an experiment in the future of student computing. The tech company Google put an experimental laptop into the hands every one of the school’s 700 students. Beyond the usual one-to-one initiative is the fact that the particular laptop, named the Cr-48, is not a regular laptop, but more a cross between a laptop and a mobile internet device.

Here's a video of the initial deployment at the High School.

What a day!

The video below is a humorous take on why to use an internet based notebook over a traditional laptop. Note: at the end it mentions that 25 computers were harmed during the filming. No kidding! With the fabulous photography, especially in slow motion, and the application of wonderful yet damaging scientific/engineering procedures, this five minutes and 37 seconds is well worth your time even though it is an infomercial.

What does the P in PC stand for? Why personal of course. But have you forgotten why the C was called P? I know, the Cr-48 is not just a dumb terminal accessing a mainframe…or is it? Either way, that’s not my point. Instead, I would like you to consider why we wanted some P in our C.

Was it to get away from the mainframe? Likely. But remember the mainframe is not dead, just remarketed. IBM has a whole page of mainframes for sale on their website as well as a historical archive of information about the mainframe. And with just a slight tweaking of the meaning of the term mainframe, cloud-based computing and thin clients have pushed mainframe as a concept back to the forefront. It’s just that the mainframe no longer must be physical machine in a physical place. Instead it is more of a mystical aberration where everything is sort of …well, everywhere, anywhere, somewhere?.

In a nutshell the Cr-48 looks like a laptop and behaves like a laptop, that is if you only use your laptop to surf the net and use web or cloud-based apps. It does not download in the traditional sense, nor run traditional programs beyond its browser-like OS called, as you’d expect, Chrome OS, and Chrome-based apps. In fact, in some ways is similar to the One Laptop Per Child Program's XO machine.

Here are some links to info and reviews about the Cr-48 notebook:

Google’s site showcasing the Cr-48

Engadget’s review of the Cr-48

A first-hand account of using the Cr-48

A description of a soon to be released public version

And of course, a naysayer’s take on the Cr-48

So the Google CR-48 Chrome notebook is an interesting change in paradigm…or is it?

I’ll spare you my take on the Cr-48, especially since I have not played with one yet, but I do find this technology innovation somewhat circular in its reasoning. Not good or bad, just circular. But remember, traveling in a circle does not mean you are always in the same time zone.

New technologies have a way of arriving before their time. But in this case, the Cr-48 just might be right on time. Very much like the iPad, it will take users of the Cr-48 a while to start asking what it can do rather than what it can’t. But once over that hump, there is a great big world of new possibilities waiting discovery.

And that's when things will really get interesting!

Really using 21st Century Technology

In the video above, a Missoula third grader gets to use a rather striking example of 21st century technology to talk about some common topics in science, namely earthquakes and volcanoes.

Interestingly, back at the 2009 National Science Teachers Association's national conference, the US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan mentioned that, “You need to challenge yourselves and each other to move the curriculum beyond dinosaurs and volcanoes…”

Duncan did not say don't teach about dinosaurs and volcanoes, but instead teach about them and then beyond them. Frankly, if kids could grasp the actual science behind dinosaurs and volcanoes, they would be far ahead. Sadly, most lessons in these areas focus on lower level (knowledge, comprehension, etc.) "facts" which are easy to assess with multiple choice instruments.

As I watched the video, I was encouraged by the pauses as the student studied the imagery on the globe. He is not reciting anything, but interpreting what he sees which in my book is at the highest levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. In other words, complex scientific images are presented in a spherical (authentic) representation of the earth which in turn are then cognitively analyzed (separated into pieces) by the student, then reassembled (synthesis) into a reasonably coherent explanation of the relationship between the pieces (remember the student is only 9) .

A few things to keep in mind: 1) the sea floor is visible here, but in real life it is not; 2) the images are in false color; 3) his sister is selecting and moving different images of which the student does not always know what is next; 4) the globe is bigger than the student so he cannot even see half the globe from his perspective; 5) the colors change and the oceans and continents switch between positive and negative space projections; and 6) the student is able to adapt to the images "on the fly" meaning he understands not only the individual concepts but their relationship to each other.