The K-12 Teacher and the Computer

On "the deconstruction of the K-12 teacher", we see When the Computer Takes Over for the Teacher - The Atlantic

I think it used to be taboo for teachers to borrow or buy plans written by other professionals, but it seems that times are changing. Just last week, I spoke with a history teacher from Santa Maria, California, who bluntly said, "I don’t ever write my own lesson plans anymore. I just give credit to the person who did." He explained, rather reasonably, that the materials are usually inexpensive or free; are extremely well made; and often include worksheets, videos, assessments, and links to other resources. Just as his administrators request, he can focus on being a facilitator, specializing in individualized instruction.

I’ve started recognizing a common thread to the latest trends in teaching. Flipped learning, blending learning, student-centered learning, project-based learning, and even self-organized learning—they all marginalize the teacher’s expertise. Or, to put it more euphemistically, they all transform the teacher into a more facilitative role....

Note that there's no claim here that the teacher is being marginalized; it's the teacher's expertise. And that might make a fundamental difference in who is qualified to be a teacher, and what pay scales should eventually be. Interesting.

Share & Learn; iPad Usage Research

Science Daily reports on literacy testing of young technology users at Kindergartners who shared iPads in class scored higher on achievement tests -- ScienceDaily

a natural experiment where classrooms in one school had 1:1 iPads; classrooms in a second school had 23 iPads to share, where kids primarily used them in pairs; and classrooms in a third school had no iPads. She looked at the effect that using 1:1 iPads for one academic year (9 months), compared to the other two conditions, had on student literacy (as measured by the STAR Early Literacy Assessment).

Results showed that students in shared iPad classrooms significantly outscored their peers in 1:1 and non-iPad classrooms on the spring achievement test, even after controlling for baseline scores and student demographics. Blackwell found that shared iPad students scored approximately 30 points higher than 1:1 iPad students and non-iPad users.

Sometimes the best teacher is another kid -- and not necessarily an older kid, though it might be. I am reminded of some of what Sugata Mitra said in his TED talk at The child-driven education

In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching....

Yes, you do need grown-ups sometimes (that's why Mitra's later work has been on his plan to School in the Cloud with the "Self Organized Learning Environment (SOLE) toolkit". Mitra wants to involve professional educators as much as possible...but his most dramatic successes have been with kids together with raw materials, sometimes encouraged by a "granny" who may or may not be physically present and who may or may not be professional at all. I think we need more experiments on "self-supervised" sharing. (With a grown-up in the background. Usually.)

NSF EdTech

Reports on reporting about what we're learning about learning (and, of course, teaching about teaching) at the Huffington Post's 7 Cyberlearning Technologies Transforming Education | Aaron Dubrow

...NSF funds basic cyberlearning research and since 2011 has awarded roughly 170 grants, totaling more than $120 million, to EdTech research projects around the country.

The speakers in the lecture series, all leading cyberlearning scholars, ... represent the forces transforming what education may look like in the future.

1. Classroom as Virtual Phenomenon: RoomQuakes and WallScopes

HelioRoom simulates the orbital motion of the planets in the Solar system on a set of synchronized computer displays situated on the walls of the classroom, with planets "orbiting" around the periphery of the room. ...

... RoomQuake, an earthquake simulation system where the classroom itself becomes an active seismic area. At unpredictable times throughout the unit, rumbles emanating from speakers attached to simulated seismographs signal to the class that an earthquake is occurring....

Students rush to terminals around the classroom, read the data from seismograms .... Over the course of six weeks and dozens of earthquakes, students discover a "fault line" emerging. ...

Tablets adjacent to the walls of classrooms serve as viewports into an imaginary space inside the walls filled with the virtual fauna in Wallcology. ...

2. Games for Good: Learning While You Play

... in the game "Citizen Science," created by Squire and his team, players help restore Lake Mendota, a real lake in Wisconsin that, in the year 2020, has become polluted. As players explore the landscape, they take water samples, interact with a virtual, simulated watershed and talk with stakeholders....

... for a game that might reach even broader audiences, Squire and colleagues created Progenitor X, a zombie-themed tissue engineering game. In Progenitor X, players learn about the relationships between cells, tissues, and organs while trying to survive a zombie invasion. ... As a member of The Progenitor X Defense Force, you are a part of a highly trained squad of scientists who use highly advanced bio-medical technology to locate, seek out, and treat infected humans to contain the threat. ....

"These projects are not only using technologies that only recently became possible. They also build on decades of excellent research on how people learn," said Chris Hoadley, the program officer at NSF who leads the Cyberlearning program. "I believe it's only by advancing technology design and learning research together that we'll be able to imagine the future of learning."...

3. Teaching Tykes to Program: Never Too Young to Control a Robot

... Bers described her latest project, the KIWI robotic kit (subsequently renamed KIBO), which teaches programming through robotics, without screens, tablets, or keyboards. Using KIBO, students scan wooden blocks to give robots simple commands, in the process learning sequencing, one of the most important skills for early age groups. By combining a series of commands, kids make the robot move, dance, sing, sense the environment or light up....

4. Virtual role-play and robo-tutors

... Virtual role-play - where learners engage in simulated encounters with artificially intelligent agents that behave and respond in a culturally accurate manner - has been shown to be effective at teaching cross-cultural communication.

"You learn by playing a role in a simulation of some real life situation"

"We found in our military training that when soldiers use this approach, once they get into a foreign country -- let's say they're sitting down with local leaders -- they feel as if it's a familiar situation to them... Moreover, the software could address the shortage of qualified teachers able to teach Chinese, Arabic and other less popular languages... The first Web-based course was tested last year via Virtual Virginia, a statewide virtual school program, and received overwhelmingly positive ratings from the students....

5. Tools for Real-time Visual Collaboration

... "Computers have been individualistic devices," said Ramani. "But a new class of technology is emerging that allows us to engage in our individual learning process and also in a collaborative process." SkWiki ... allows many participants to collaboratively create digital multimedia projects on the web using many kinds of media types, including text, hand-drawn sketches, and photographs....

6. Fusing data collection, computational modeling and data analysis

Simulation and modeling have come to be regarded as the "third pillar" of science... ... By embedding simulations and sensor data collectors in the classroom, Dorsey and Wilensky are able to aid students in gathering, visualizing and analyzing data from multiple sources. A principal innovation of InquirySpace is the integration of the Concord Consortium's CODAP data exploration software with the modeling environments. This integration enables students to plan extended investigations of models, to do sophisticated analyses of the model runs, and to engage in arguments from evidence. ...

7. Virtual Worlds and Augmented Reality: Increasing ecological understanding

... Two decades ago, with funding from NSF, Dede started investigating head-mounted displays and room-sized virtual environments... At the beginning of the two to four week EcoMUVE curriculum, the students discover that all of the fish in a virtual pond have died. They then work in teams to determine the complex causal relationships that led to the die-off. The experience immerses the students as ecosystem scientists. ... At the end of the investigation, all of the students participate in a mini-scientific conference where they show their findings and the research behind it.

I don't know how well the experiments will scale up, but I would like to note that all of this seems to require ending the teaching-to-the-test that the last few posts have been about. They all seem to require teamwork, but none of them have much to do with traditional lectures. All of them have a learn-by-doing framework, where the computer facilitates the doing -- or even provides the universe for that doing to be done in.

Google Classroom, mobile version

Google Classroom is a big deal, just as a set of utilities to make instruction work a bit better. Now it's an app: Google rolling out Classroom mobile app for students, teachers | ZDNet

The mobile version of Classroom, Lugo explained, is designed to further facilitate communications between teachers and students, namely through the addition of a teacher assignments page and the ability to archive classes.

Students will also be able to attach files (i.e. PDFs) and use the mobile device's built-in camera to attach photos to their assignments, whether they be drawings for an art class, a family tree for social studies, or diagrams and results for science experiments.

"And if they've forgotten their homework, they can ask someone at home to snap a photo, text it and then turn it in with the app," Lugo remarked. "Of course, if the dog has actually eaten it, Classroom can't help you."

My main reaction to this is a memory of correspondence-school courses in elementary school, just over half a century ago while living in Veracruz. Writing under Mom's supervision had advantages, even with the actual teachers being weeks away by snail mail. Google Classroom utilities can't replace teachers -- but they can expand the set of available frameworks for teaching.

Or then again, maybe not.

2014-15 Budget Process --- Join In!

As the Budget Calendar mentioned, our January 21 BoE meeting (which will supposedly be on Youtube eventually (see below) was largely about the budget, starting with the NYS proposed aid in the 2014-15 EXECUTIVE BUDGET PROPOSAL which had just come out a couple of hours before. It was not happy reading; Aaron commented that he had expected our Gap Elimination Adjustment to come down fairly substantially which would have led to a relatively straightforward budget process. Instead, it came down by 6%, remaining still above $500K, leaving us with a back-of-the-envelope $250K deficit. It's a big problem for many schools... as North Country Public Radio quoted What does Cuomo's budget mean for schools in the North Country?

"...it seems odd that the governor touts increasing aid to education on the one hand and fails to say that he’s taking it out of the pockets of educators with the other hand"

Of course it's not just the GEA; our insurance costs jumped sharply, more than in quite some time; apparently this is a consequence of Obamacare. (It's a surprise to me; I had thought NY to be one of the very few states where our existing mandates would make the ACA look good, except for the "narrow networks" phenomenon which may provide nasty surprises for New Yorkers who spend time in other states and expect to have non-emergency care while they're away.)

And there are mandates for equipment for simultaneous test-taking, and there's an individual property which was reassessed a couple of years ago from $1.3M to $1.7M and the appeal is almost certainly going to result in a settlement back down to $1.2M with our school on the hook for some excess taxes. Ouch.

The applicable tax cap is Whichever Is Less of 2% and the official CPI which is 1.46%, plus a local growth factor of almost exactly 1%, so income is not rising to match outgo unless we vote to override the tax cap.So...

---

Please Come To The 5:30PM Jan 29th High School Library Meeting

Bring Ideas

---

Ideas? Of course there is always sharing; the actual merger plan did not save money (long-run) because the diseconomy of scale from added transportation cancelled the economy of scale from cutting staff, but sharing doesn't have to involve large-scale transportation costs. Diana discussed doing more (mainly administrative) sharing among the 4 local schools through BOCES, and we can do more athletic sharing (girls' basketball with Madison). This will not save a lot, but every little bit helps.

Shared Admin can go pretty far, there is such a thing as a Shared Superintendent possibility; it's not obvious that this is applicable to our situation. In general, if we consult the New York State Professional Staffing Ratios" (large PDF) (we're on page 244), we might find that some other small schools do it with reduced staff and maybe we can do what they do...or maybe we can do New Things; telepresence robotics is taking off, after all, and getting lots cheaper than being there.

Smart Schools Equipment for telepresence, for distance learning (below), and to satisfy the mandate Diana mentioned for simultaneous test-taking is not just getting cheaper: it may be covered by the "smart schools allocation" at the bottom of the "BUDGET PROPOSAL", which for HCS is $409,770. It's likely that the "allocation" is intended to encourage long-term shift towards options like the Khan Academy, or simply lessons like our own Youtube channel to be used locally or shared. In the long run that's important, but it's possible that some replacement of people cost with machine cost will actually be feasible even in the fairly short term. (It's also possible that the geek writing this is overly optimistic.)

Natural Gas was discussed; my understanding of Diana's remarks is that it will save each year but that this coming year the savings is roughly cancelled by the installation cost. Ken Bausch points out by email that if if that understanding is correct, then it's a normal capital cost which should be funded by a bond issue, just as we do to amortize bus cost; in fact it's far more obvious in the case of the one-time-only natural gas cost. If indeed that's how it goes, and if the link above was correct in projecting $160,000/year savings, then we're more than halfway home right there. If.

Distance Learning is a current topic for Madison; Ferdinand sends a link to MCS bringing new instruction via distance learning through BOCES and in the long run this may be a major winner, but probably not a big issue for the next few budgets. Well, it might be.

Alumni/Community Fundraising was discussed; Amy Hurta as Treasurer reported that she had learned the day before that the Sports Boosters, like the Emerald Foundation, is in fact a tax-exempt 401(c)3 organization listed with the IRS, "and always has been." Send Money! Andrew Coddington says the Emerald Foundation is always looking for alumni donations and tries to keep an alumni list, so Send Names/Addresses! (And Money!) And there's also HCS alumni site which isn't very active--but links to a facebook page.

Sponsorship Stephanie McClintick (via email) brings up the possibility of local company sponsorship of teams and other activities, which is a common development elsewhere; the Albany Times-Union reported a year ago on Schools look to sponsors to help pay for programs - Times Union

Cuts force districts to find alternative funding

which is certainly a familiar story; from this past fall we can add This student planner brought to you by… | The New York World

New York City middle and high school students will be receiving free planners next school year courtesy of corporate sponsors, under a new city Department of Education plan.

There is an organization to support this kind of thing: Sponsorship and Advertising | School Administrators Association of New York State

The Corporate Sponsorship Program helps SAANYS to achieve its mission of continuing to provide programs and services to the school leaders of New York State - leading to greater opportunities for the students within their care. Participating in the program provides companies with many opportunities to interact with school leaders from all over the state.

Of course, there can be problems, and caution is advised; from Utah we hear High school sponsorship contracts raise concerns, but also benefit programs | Deseret News

In this piece, Amy Donaldson examines the regulatory environment surrounding these deals and how local coaches have gotten into legal trouble with respect to such contracts.

It could happen here.

Foreign Students I've written before about the possibility of tuition-paying international students and about some of the reasons why HCS might appeal to some. Astrid brought this up at the meeting and Diana replied that HCS did indeed go through the "accreditation" process with Homeland Security so we are "SEVIS-certified"; indeed we are on page 108 of last June's official list at DHS and we can accept foreign students with "F" visas, although not "M" visas. See SEVP Certification Basics and maybe Everything you need to know about Foreign Students (F-1) studying in Public Schools

• Secondary school attendance is limited to twelve months.
• F-1 secondary school students are required to pay the school the full cost of education by repaying the school system for the full, unsubsidized, per capita cost of providing the education to him or her.
• F-1 students are prohibited from attending public elementary schools or publicly-funded adult education programs.

And Clinton High School went through this in 2004 but may have dropped it, their website doesn't mention it. The idea went nowhere at HCS, beyond conversations with a company which actually offered to provide students and pay $2,000/year to HCS for their education. Not a good offer, in fact much less than is required by the second requirement above. Is the idea hopeless? I don't think so, not at all. Consider the town of Millinocket, Maine, reported in Millinocket using China program money to keep schools going in 2014 — Bangor Daily News...

Seven Chinese students attended Stearns this year, each paying about $24,000 tuition. ...
Millinocket is among several Maine municipalities hoping to offset shrinking school revenues with Chinese students but had recruiting difficulties. An informal poll of state public high schools’ Chinese student enrollments taken in February showed the most students, 12, at Orono High School. Some private schools had close to 100.

What does Millinocket have that we don't? Connections with Chinese high schools, apparently. Hmm... but we do have potential connections through Colgate faculty/students/admin, including the China Study Group. USA Today reported last July on U.S. summer camps increasingly popular overseas

U.S. summer camps are increasingly popular in countries such as China, where rising middle class can send their children to experience American life -- and possibly set the stage for going to college in the USA

The article featured Colgate rather prominently. At the wrong level for our purposes, but still -- it's worth exploring. Do we have such connections? (Carolyn?) Do we have people, preferably parents of current HCS students, who'd be hosts? (Astrid?) Of course this doesn't have to be China, but China is prominent in the F-1 high-school student visa discussions.

That's all I can think of right now. Diana wanted to emphasize that ideas need to be considered in the context of our layers of regulations, mandates, subsidies... When Ferdinand talked about transportation costs, working with local transport to save some of the $90,000/year we give to BOCES, she replied that transportation is among our highest aid-ratio costs so that much of the money we give BOCES comes back to us, and even if we found a cheaper transportation solution it's likely that the budget cost would be higher. We can't count on specific aid ratios for long-term planning, but for right now, let's talk about the next few years' budgets, with focus on next year.

Update: I didn't mention Activism, or at least Letter-Writing; note that the state's disappointing Budget Proposal is not a Final Budget. There will be a post about this, Reasonably Soon Now.

Update2:The BoE meeting is now a (long) video at ▶ Hamilton CSD BOE Meeting 1.21.14

...apologies, the next one will have better sound.

Below is the order [of] events and the times in which each Agenda Item appears:
0-10min: Items 1.0-3.6, Call to order, Preliminary Action, Consent Agenda (Business Operations)
10-11 min: Item 4, Consent Agenda (Old Business)
11-17 min: Item 5, Community Participation Part 1
17-21 min: Items 6-6.4, New Business
21-35 min: Item 6.5, Budget Sports
35-55 min: Item 7, Information and Correspondence
55-1:41 min: Item 8, Community Participation Part 2.

Hooray for open government!

Update 3 Yes, the sound is terrible. If you have LOTS of energy then

• (a) download the video from youtube, lots of e.g. Firefox extensions for that;
• (b) split off the sound track, probably in iMovie or whatever basic video handler you have;
• (c) download Audacity (free) from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
• (d) follow, e.g. http://www.podtopia.net/gettingstarted/removenoise.shtml

No problem. Well, umm, assuming you have several hours...make it a day, this is a long video and there will probably be synchronization issues when you put it back together so you may have to do it one clip at a time. And the result will not be perfect. No, I'm not gonna try, but I'll post the result if somebody else does.

Gap Elimination Adjustment

In yesterday's post I noted parts of Wanda Berry's note on NextDoor; I should also have mentioned a very important point she brings up in that note:

Whether or not the merger goes through, it is time for us to believe in democracy enough to mobilize a citizens’ effort to get the state legislature to get rid of the Gap Elimination Adjustment, which is the real threat, along with our declining school age population.

Indeed, while the proposed merger is all about promised state aid; one irony is that it is also all about previous promises of state aid being broken. More concretely:

• as often discussed, we wouldn't be discussing a merger that doesn't actually save money, if there weren't state incentives offering an average 5.3%-of-budget aid for fourteen years, plus permanent (?) reclassification of Hamilton as part of a "high needs district". But also,
• we wouldn't be discussing a merger at all if it weren't for a fiscal squeeze resulting from the "Gap Elimination Adjustment", a formula by which the state has refrained from paying millions that had been promised.

So what, and why, is this terrible "Gap Elimination Adjustment"? Basically, it's a formula by which the state says "we have a fiscal gap this year, with more outgo than income, and sure, we promised you a certain amount of aid, but here's your school district's share of the pain." And we respond with "OUCH". Here's a Vimeo video explanation:
Gap Elimination Adjustment: An Explanation from Cap Region BOCES on Vimeo.

Wanda and many others are hoping that if we all get together and say "No!" then the state legislators will say "Okay" and the schools won't be short of money any more. I sympathize very strongly, but I think we need to consider the context. What are we actually asking the state legislators to do? They want to please their voters; they already want to restore school funding. If they restore school funding, they must either reduce funding for something else, or else they can raise taxes. (Of course they can probably borrow money now, but that means that at some future time they'll be either reducing funding for something else, or raising taxes. Borrowing money now to fix it later is part of how we got in this mess.) This, of course, brings us to the Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force (PDF,page 7)

The conclusion of the Task Force is unambiguous. The existing trajectory of state spending, taxation, and administrative practices cannot be sustained. The basic problem is not cyclical. It is structural. The time to act is now.

From their point of view, the elimination of the Gap Elimination Adjustment would be a big step -- in the wrong direction. If they remove the GEA, then the painful decisions to be made get worse -- do we cut our already-underfunded pension plans, do we cut our massive health care payments, do we just let the infrastructure rust? Or -- the most obvious answer -- do we raise taxes? Hmmm... raising taxes sounds very good, doesn't it? Or does it?

Exactly how high are our taxes, comparatively speaking? That's complicated, because it involves income taxes and sales taxes and property taxes; for Alaska it also involves some weird taxes which don't actually get collected from the individual, they're based on oil movement, but apart from that we can sort of say that NY has the highest tax burden outside Washington DC in the state tax-burden chart. That's a statement that needs lots of qualifiers about what you're including and excluding; some are noted at the bottom of the chart. Some charts will put NY as low as #5 in state tax burden, but we can definitely say that a lot of New York residents and New York businesses notice, now and then, that they could be paying a lot less by moving to another state. And what happens then? Sometimes nothing. Some of us pay, and stay to pay again. For others... Income Migration: What Does It Really Mean For States? - Forbes

New Yorkers are subject to some of the highest state tax rates in the country, so it is not surprising that commentators have suggested residents will leave the state in droves. And it appears to be true. As reported by the Tax Foundation, between 2000 and 2010, New York lost $45.6 billion in income to other states. That’s far more than any other state. The next closest is California, which lost $29.4 billion over the same period.
This is a significant amount of income migration. But where did it all go? The answer, not surprisingly, is that much of the income went down south. Florida reportedly had a net gain of $67.3 billion. ...

Or as the NYT put it two years back, At 102%, His Tax Rate Takes the Cake - Common Sense - NYTimes.com

Mr. Ross said he asked his accountant what he could do. “He said, ‘Fire everyone here and move to Florida,’ ” according to Mr. Ross. He employs 10 people in his New York office.

Of course some of the migration goes to neighboring states, which do have lower state taxes; Florida has no income tax at all. But as our taxes rise, it becomes increasingly attractive for high-income Manhattan residents to start thinking: how much of this could I do on the Web, or by teleconference? As the New York Times put it a year ago Midlevel Finance Jobs Leave Wall Street as Firms Cut Costs

New York’s biggest investment houses are shifting jobs out of the area and expanding in cheaper locales in the United States, threatening the vast middle tier of positions that form the backbone of employment on Wall Street.
The shift comes even as banks consider deeper staff cuts here, which could undermine the state and city tax base long term.
“Places like New York or London will remain financial centers, but most of the players are taking a much harder look and asking whether they can move large numbers of jobs...”

When you ask the legislator to raise taxes again, you're not just being generous with your own money. You're asking that legislator to bet the state's fiscal stability on your hope that these people, people whose lives revolve around the way they care about money, will decide that they don't really care about money all that much: they'll stay, and pay again.

They might, or they might not. State aid cuts may go away, but they might expand. They might expand a lot. Ask for state aid, hope for state aid, but don't count on it.

(My inclination is to agitate for mandate relief more than increases in aid. NYS education costs twice as much per pupil per year as the national average. We should work on that.)

Boys (mostly) Won't Be Girls

Everybody's different. Sometimes one group of individuals seems substantially different from another. Stop Penalizing Boys for Not Being Able to Sit Still at School - Jessica Lahey - The Atlantic

According to the book Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies That Work and Why, boys are kept back in schools at twice the rate of girls. Boys get expelled from preschool nearly five times more often than girls. Boys are diagnosed with learning disorders and attention problems at nearly four times the rate of girls. They do less homework and get a greater proportion of the low grades. Boys are more likely to drop out of school, and make up only 43 percent of college students. Furthermore, boys are nearly three times as likely as girls to be diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Considering 11 percent of U.S. children--6.4 million in all--have been diagnosed with a ADHD, that's a lot of boys bouncing around U.S. classrooms....

Hmm....sounds like 4.8 million boys and 1.6 million girls. You wouldn't want to forget the 1.6 million by creating a boys v. girls division, but on the other hand even that might be better than what we have now. The book being described apparently sorts out results from a survey describing

eight categories of instruction that succeeded in teaching boys. The most effective lessons included more than one of these elements:

• Lessons that result in an end product--a booklet, a catapult, a poem, or a comic strip, for example.
• Lessons that are structured as competitive games.
• Lessons requiring motor activity.
• Lessons requiring boys to assume responsibility for the learning of others.
• Lessons that require boys to address open questions or unsolved problems.
• Lessons that require a combination of competition and teamwork.
• Lessons that focus on independent, personal discovery and realization.
• Lessons that introduce drama in the form of novelty or surprise.

I suspect that, in the end, we want all of those to be available -- not compulsory -- for kids and groups, some in formed in person and some by telepresence.

Or then again, maybe not.

Field Trips With Augmented Reality

This post is sort of a placeholder, for a train of thought prompted by reading Roadtrippers Redesigns the Travel Guide for Esoteric Exploration | Wired Design | Wired.com

Discover interesting places and paths through the country on the Roadtrippers app.

Field trips, or travel more generally, have always been an essential part of education, but it has recently gotten easier to see what you're looking at whether it's a rock, a bird, a building... you can look it up online while you're right in front of it. Like many people, I'm willing to sign up for a tour...but I'd be happier to sign up for a virtual tour at my own pace, taking the detours I wanted to take and learning what I wanted to learn, or just going along while one of my kids did so....I'd download a zillion video segments in advance so I could actually hear what the tour guide wanted to say. Wouldn't you? And I'd also like to take more tours by telepresence...
Well, maybe not. I dunno

Augmented Reality & Education

The Most Powerful App for Education

Bill Shribman is a photographer and a Senior Executive Producer at WGBH Public Television where he and his team create websites, games and apps for popular kids shows such as Arthur, Martha Speaks and Curious George. .... Take a tour of gesture-based games, augmented reality apps, and an app that helps kids with autism infer emotions through photos, and you may agree with Shribman that the most powerful app for education may be the camera.

The station is WGBH-TV and they blog their apps at Apps | WGBH Kids Interactive Group; I don't know that I'd say that the app is the camera, but I would say that apps using cameras (and today's tilt/acceleration/location/etc sensors along with tomorrow's everything-we-know-how-to-sense sensors) can become part of reality in a way that apps stuck with pre-defined data never could have done, and not only for the smaller kids.


Or then again, maybe not.

Networks of Imagination

Ken Bausch mentioned this last December; The Global One-Room Schoolhouse: John Seely Brown | DMLcentral

In this video, which contains the highlights of his “Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Learner” keynote at the 2012 Digital Media and Learning conference in San Francisco, he introduces the fascinating notion of “a global one-room schoolhouse through networks of imagination.”

It seems to me that this is quite compatible with Sal Khan's vision (and book) that I've mentioned a few times, but it's an interestingly different point of view. I'm inclined to see it as a mix of Khan with some of Yong Zhao's World Class Learners, but that oversimplifies as usual. I do see him as detecting and approving a trend towards tools like Scoot & Doodle | Get Creative Together, which has just received fairly major support from Pearson among others.

Google+ Hangout App Scoot & Doodle Raises $2.25M Seed, From Valley Angels & Pearson, To Get More Kids Learning Through Play | TechCrunch

Well, maybe not just kids, or just play; I'll add some emphasis in a quote from the GeekDad report on Scoot & Doodle: Makes Google Hangouts a Collaborative Playspace | GeekDad | Wired.com

essentially, it is an app that works with Google+Hangouts and lets you type, draw and engage in a visual and tactile way – as well as through video and voice. In my use of it I have found it to be really stable and offer a fluid and worthwhile experience whether with my kids or with business colleagues. Like many startups there appears to be more potential applications than you can imagine; however, kudos for both the Scoot & Doodle team and Pearson for seeing the potential of this in the education and learning space.

And I certainly approve of the idea that education works off study groups that fit in a Google+ Hangout. That works.

Or then again, maybe not.

Telepresence Now

Consumer and Education: Student Attends School Via Robot | Robotics Trends

What's most remarkable is how unremarkable this technology is viewed by his classmates. In a class of 7-year-olds raised on video games, avatars and remote-controlled toys, they don't see a robot. They just see Devon.
Just before class one recent day, a girl leaned toward the robot to tell Devon the joke making the rounds at school: Why did the boy eat his homework? The teacher told him it was a piece of cake.
While making get-well cards for him during a hospital stay last year, his classmates all drew him as a boy, not a bot.

Maybe it's the New Normal, or will be in another decade...

Or then again...

Telepresence education

Here's distance learning with style:

So you can sit or stand at home, or in the one-room classroom of your neighborhood, and go wherever the education is, interacting however you need to, flashing your screen instead of raising your hand.
Of course, the interactions will get better with time...it's possible that Franklin never asked "What use is a pneuborn baby?" but we can see changes coming:

So far, this particular robot has only learned to crawl.