[iDC] :: Deinstitutionalizing education ::

Tue Nov 16 12:24:28 UTC 2010

As usual Ted you are right on point, and let me tell you your prediction is closer to reality than we all want to think. Just watch what happens in Washington in January. The grandstanding for 2012 on education and getting rid of the Department of Education is really about to heat up and it will be all politics and standardized testing. Teaching can be ----! You can fill in the blanks. Ted, the hybrid and combination methods work based on my action research, because old school F2F makes the innovative technologies more powerful when the instructor is a skilled communicator. I challenge everyone to look at how many communications courses that most educators DO NOT have to take across disciplines. It is scary! If you want to know why we have a problem in the STEM disciplines look at the curricula and look at the Myers-Briggs profiles of people in those disciplines and you will find that these folks have not been given the communications training to make them more effective educators. No wonder kids don't want to get involved in the STEMs. We are boring them out of their minds, and the change has to occur at the micro-level first or as Ted has eloquently stated: we are doomed to have the folks in my neck of the woods deliver us edicts from Mt. Olympus in Washington.

Chris A. Heidelberg Ph.D.
Loyola University Maryland

-----Original Message-----
From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net [mailto:idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net] On Behalf Of Ted Coopman
Sent: Saturday, November 13, 2010 7:40 PM
To: Cristóbal Cobo
Cc: Diego Leal; idc at mailman.thing.net; Ismael Peña-López
Subject: Re: [iDC] :: Deinstitutionalizing education ::

All,

ICTs are just tools and tools can be used for good or ill, effectively
or poorly.

I would tend to agree that the idea of leading with the technology for
the sake of technology is not the best course. Further, the false
dichotomy between off and online or CMC vs. f2f is inaccurate and
counter productive.

A serious issue is that education institutions have not significantly
changed in decades. We are trapped by systems that are no longer
relevant and fly in the face of current pedagogical research and the
modern student. Good instructional design should look at the
affordances of different teaching modes and strategies and their
effectiveness on our particular student population because they vary
between institutions and even between programs.

Teaching should not be based on technology, tired tradition, or legacy
organizational and scheduling schemes, but on the learning objectives,
course content, and current empirical research. Sometimes that is
online, other times f2f or hybrid. We know what works, we just simply
refuse to change and incorporate it.

IMO, the system of higher ed is doomed to irrelevance if we do not, as
teachers and researchers, reform it from below before we have
something based on someone else's political and financial expediency
rammed down our throats from above.

-TED

2010/11/12 Cristóbal Cobo <cristobalcobo at gmail.com>:
> Dear all:
>
> I would like to add few more things to this conversation, basically point
> out some critical views about technology and education that could help us.
>
> I hope these sources allow us to analyse things from
> a different perspective.
>
> Even if you are sceptical to those that provide the following results (EU,
> OECD),
>
> I urge you to exchange ideas about the following question:
>
> What if we are using thechnologies in the wrong way?
>
> [Source] The use of ICT to support innovation and lifelong learning for all
> - A report on progress. European Commission Staff Working Document (2008)
>
> " The impact of ICT on education and training has not yet been as great as
> had been expected despite wide political and social endorsement. In
> particular, the transformation of business and public services through ICT
> has not yet reached teaching and learning processes..."
>
> [Source] OECD (2006). Are Students Ready for a Technology-Rich World?: What
> PISA Studies Tell Us. Paris: OECD.
>
> Governments have pursued policies to increase equity of access to computers
> at school, while the proportion of homes with computers has also grown.
> The PISA evidence confirms previous studies showing the particularly strong
> association of performance with home access and usage.
> "[T]he key issue raised here is the comparatively low performance among
> those without home computers."
> Only a minority of students reported frequent use of specific educational
> software....
>
> [Source] OECD (2008). New Millennium Learners. Initial findings on the
> effects of digital technologies on school-age learners. OECD/CERI.
>
> In the school sector, the rhythm of investments in technology, intended to
> facilitate its adoption, has generally been impressive in OECD countries.
> "The impact of computer availability at home upon academic attainment is
> clearly higher, in most countries".
> "A second digital divide emerges: it is no longer about access, but
> about differences in use".
> "Despite thousands of studies about the impact of technology use on student
> attainment [...] there is no conclusive evidence about the benefits of
> technology in school performance".
>
> [Source] OECD (2010) Educational Research and Innovation: Are the New
> Millennium Learners Making the Grade?: Technology Use and Educational
> Performance in PISA 2006.
>
> [PISA 2006].. one of the limitations of many educational ICT policies is
> that most countries have not developed holistic policies for educational use
> of ICT.
> There is evidence of a second "digital divide" emerging [...] between those
> students who have the skills to benefit from computer use and those who
> don't. Although the data do not prove a causal
> connection between familiarity with computers and performance, they show
> that better-performing students are more familiar with computers.
> Frequency of computer use at home makes more of
> a difference in performance on the PISA tests than frequency of computer use
> at school.
>
> [Source] Francesc Pedró. Is technology use related to educational
> performance? Evidence from PISA
>
> One of ICT's main strengths is its capacity to support informal learning.
> Self-learning and informal peer-learning are by far the two most important
> mechanisms for obtaining skills and competences (EU, 2008).
> Students using computers at home are likely to be more interested in ICT,
> have more scope for experimental and self-learning, and can search
> and discover the resources that are best suited to their needs (OECD, 2010).
> ICT familiarity matters for educational performance: higher performers have
> a lengthier experience of computer use, also when accounted for ESCS
> differences (OECD, 2010).
>
> Before end, please let me add two last questions
>
> Don´t we need more evidence and less utopia?
> Are We Looking in the Wrong Place?
>
> *       ICT by itself shouldn´t  be consider (anymore) a driving force in
> education.
>
> *       The results show the need for more micro-studies.
>
> *       This call for stronger links between school-works and what students
> do at home.
>
> We may need to learn how to:
>
> Raise awareness among educators, parents and policy makers of the
> consequences of increasing ICT familiarity.
> Identify and foster the development of 21st century skills and
> competences addressing  the second digital divide.
> Adopt holistic approaches to ICT in education.
>
>
>
> I look forward to hearing from you
>
> Best
>
> Cristobal Cobo
>
> http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=189
>
>
>
> El 22 de octubre de 2010 15:45, Ismael Peña-López <ictlogist at ictlogy.net>
> escribió:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> Not all of you may not know me as I am relatively new to the list. My
>> name is Ismael Peña-López.
>> Many thanks to Trebor Scholz for inviting me to share my thoughts on
>> learning on the iDC!!
>>
>> I am a lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia in Spain where I
>> work about the digital divide, specifically questions of empowerment. My
>> research asks how educational institutions change because of digital
>> media.
>> http://ictlogy.net
>>
>> Along those lines, I would like to introduce some topics on the
>> de-institutionalization of learning that have been enabled by ICTs. How
>> is this de-institutionalization being used to reach collectives that
>> dropped out of the educational system or actually never even entered it?
>>
>> Some of my reflections will be based on the "2010 Horizon Report:
>> Iberoamerican Edition" (http://www.nmc.org/news/nmc/8050), which I
>> co-authored with Cristóbal Cobo (http://ergonomic.wordpress.com/) and
>> Diego Leal (http://www.diegoleal.org/) who will join me in this iDC
>> discussion.
>>
>> Let's start like this:
>>
>> In many places of the world (especially in rural areas and in lower
>> income countries, but not only) the educational system is deficient.
>> Today, many claim against the industrialization of education, the
>> "Fordization" of learning, the failure of one-size-fits-all,  the
>> devaluation of knowledge, or the creation of workers instead of
>> citizens.
>>
>> But the truth is that, in most cases, the industrialization of education
>> democratized access to knowledge, even at the risk of a certain level of
>> commodification. The problem is that education, especially quality
>> education is increasingly difficult to scale
>> (http://ictlogy.net/?p=3405).
>>
>> Notwithstanding, digitization of content and communications have caused
>> a dire "revolution" that is transforming our society into an Information
>> Society. This digital revolution has lowered the costs of creating,
>> accessing  and distributing knowledge-based goods and services, and has
>> also lowered the  costs of interaction, intermediation and transaction.
>> http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=640
>> http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects.php?idp=1332
>>
>> Some find this revolution a threat to educational institutions -- it
>> will now be easier to circumvent them to access knowledge and experts
>> around the globe at lowest costs. Some think that it can be leveraged to
>> reach the unreached, to bring education to those that, because of time,
>> space or financial constraints, could not attend formal education in an
>> educational institution (ie. schools, universities...).
>>
>> Open educational resources allow for that quality content to reach
>> people everywhere in the world. The MIT's OpenCourseWare project has,
>> for instance, been replicated for the Spanish speaking community at
>> Universia OCW (http://ocw.universia.net), in Chinese by CORE
>> (http://www.core.org.cn/cn/opencou/), in Japanese by the Japan OCW
>> Consortium (http://www.jocw.jp/) or the ParisTech OpenCourseWare project
>> for French.
>>
>> The good news is that not only institutions can produce such materials
>> as Khan Academy has shown.
>> http://www.khanacademy.org
>>
>> Mobility solutions have also enabled people to learn anywhere anytime
>> and with the most simple devices. The Tecnológico de Monterrey or the
>> Open of Catalonia  are mobile devices. And cellphones (mind you: not
>> smartphones) are being used
>> for many learning purposes and stand for mobile and immersive learning
>> for literacy in emerging economies (ie. Sub-Saharan Africa).
>> http://www.ccm.itesm.mx/tecmovil/
>> http://myway.blogs.uoc.edu/
>> MILLEE http://www.millee.org/
>> http://ictlogy.net/?p=3556
>>
>> The m4lit project in South Africa Kenya is also worth mentioning
>> (http://m4lit.wordpress.com).
>>
>> Peer to peer learning has been definitely boosted by the Internet, that
>> has been able to create communities of practice and communities of
>> learning despite their members being scattered on wide geographic areas.
>> Red Social UIMP 2.0 (http://redsocial.uimp20.es/) to explore the new
>> potentials of ICTs in Education in SpainSpanish speaking countries,
>> Stephen Downes' page (http://www.downes.ca)
>> on education, based in Canada but with participants all over the world,
>> or the community around Uruguay's Plan Ceibal
>> (http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/) are just some examples of social networks
>> empowered by ICTs.
>>
>> Even autonomous learning has its chance after the development of
>> Personal Learning Environments, a combination of the aforementioned
>> approaches  centered on and managed by the learner.
>>
>> http://ictlogy.net/bibciter/reports/projects_list.php?filter_tag_project=ple
>>
>> And augmented reality, artificial intelligence and the semantic web
>> will, in a near future, add up to the toolbox learners can use outside
>> of educational institutions for their own benefit and learning.
>>
>> There are, of course, some dichotomies that need being addressed but the
>> gates are  wide open and the possibilities many.
>> http://ictlogy.net/?p=3430
>>
>> best,
>> Ismael
>>
>> --
>> Ismael Peña-López
>> Department of Law and Political Science
>> Open University of Catalonia
>>
>> http://ictlogy.net
>> Av. Tibidabo 39-43
>> 08035 Barcelona
>
>
> --
> Cristóbal Cobo [PhD]
> http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk
> http://grou.ps/knetworks
>
>
>
> --
> Cristóbal Cobo [PhD]
> http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk
> http://grou.ps/knetworks
>
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--
Ted M. Coopman Ph.D.
Lecturer
Communication Studies
Television, Radio, Film & Theatre
San Jose State University
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