Dangerously Irrelevant

"School is really, really boring. I hate coming here."

Civic Enterprises has released its latest study, Raising Their Voices, concerning America’s dropout crisis. What resonated with me the most was the voices of the students in the report. Here are some samples:

“To me, high school is like elementary and middle school. It’s all the same. We’ve been doing the same thing over and over again.”

“If you just fight your way through it now and get through school ... eventually it will be interesting when you get into your career field.”

“I’m going to be honest: school is really, really boring. I hate coming here.”

Issue 1: Student boredom

I hate coming here. If you just fight your way through it. The same thing over and over again. These are pretty damning words. They also are pretty common. As the report noted, many students view high school as something that must be tolerated as a stepping-stone to [something] better (emphasis added). 

When’s the last time your school organization asked its students how interesting and engaging their classes were (and then took their responses seriously)?

Issue 2: Meaningful community discussion

The researchers brought together students, parents, and teachers in four different communities to collaboratively discuss the high school dropout program in their local area. In each case, individuals remarked that this was the first time that teachers, parents, and students had been brought together to talk about any issue, including the dropout crisis (emphasis added).

When’s the last time your school organization had teachers, parents, and students (and, yes, administrators) in the same room talking candidly and safely about important issues?

Issue 3: Disconnects between groups

The report noted that:

while dropouts cited boredom as the leading cause for dropping out, many educators we surveyed did not see this as the central cause. In fact, only 20 percent of teachers saw a student’s lack of interest in school as a major factor in most cases of dropout. More than twice as many believed students were making excuses for their failure to graduate. . . .

Additionally, although students said that higher expectations would have mitigated the factors leading to their dropping out, only 32 percent of teachers agreed that we should expect all students to meet high academic standards and graduate with the skills that would enable them to do college-level work, and that we should provide extra support to struggling students to help them meet those standards.

These disconnects exist everywhere, of course. No organization is immune from them. But perception shapes reality. If students say they’re bored and teachers just think students are making excuses and don’t reflect on their own instructional practices, the problem never gets solved.

When’s the last time your school organization intentionally worked to uncover and then meaningfully address existing cognitive, emotional, and perceptual disconnects between groups?

Wrap-up

The Raising Their Voices study was conducted on behalf of the AT&T Foundation and the America’s Promise Alliance. The report illustrates the kind of conversations that can occur when you bring disparate groups of school stakeholders together. It also shows that disconnects between groups can be effectively bridged through structured dialogue and a spirit of mutual respect. The report includes recruiting instructions and a sample discussion guide to help schools set up their own local focus groups. As school leaders, we should do this more…

Happy reading!

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

Single-media schools, multimedia world

If a picture tells a thousand words, then the two images below from a recent report by the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California, San Diego are of interest. The first image shows the average American’s hourly information consumption per day. Note that the small yellow wedge represents printed text, which of course is the overwhelmingly dominant information medium in P-12 schools.

The second image shows the decreasing prevalence of printed text in our lives since 1960:

These data represent average Americans. I’m sure they would look different if we just looked at our younger generations.

It’s simple, really:

How long are American schools going to get away with these kinds of expansive disconnects between how we consume information in schools and in our daily lives?

New podcast channel - UCEA Interview Series

The University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) has started a new podcast channel and will be interviewing top educational leadership scholars from around the world about school administrator research and/or preparation.

The first live podcast will occur tomorrow and will feature Dr. Karen Seashore, who holds the Rodney Wallace Professorship for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota. Karen will be discussing the linkages between P-12 school leadership and student academic learning outcomes. As a former faculty colleague of Karen’s, I know her well and anticipate that this will be a great conversation.

• Listen live to the interview with Dr. Karen Seashore
• Download the interview afterward
• Learn more about UCEA’s interview series

We here at CASTLE have been working with UCEA to get this up and running. CASTLE is one of several UCEA centers; I also serve as UCEA’s Associate Director of Communications. Stay tuned to the podcast channel to hear future interviews and, while you’re at it, sign up for UCEA’s Twitter feed if you’re interested in more school leadership resources.

Happy listening!

Book Review - Education and Learning to Think

Here are two quotes from Education and Learning to Think, an interesting little research-based book published by the National Research Council way back in 1987!

Higher order thinking is nonalgorithmic. That is, the path of action is not fully specified in advance.

Higher order thinking tends to be complex. The total path is not “visible” (mentally speaking) from any single vantage point.

Higher order thinking often yields multiple solutions, each with costs and benefits, rather than unique solutions.

Higher order thinking involves nuanced judgment and interpretation.

Higher order thinking involves the application of multiple criteria, which sometimes conflict with one another.

Higher order thinking often involves uncertainty. Not everything that bears on the task at hand is known.

Higher order thinking involves self-regulation of the thinking process. We do not recognize higher order thinking in an individual when someone else “calls the plays” at every step.

Higher order thinking involves imposing meaning, finding structure in apparent disorder.

Higher order thinking is effortful. There is considerable mental work involved in the kinds of elaborations and judgments required. (p. 3)

The seventh item on the list, self-regulation, is one that I think is particularly lacking in many K-12 schools because the teachers “call the plays” so much of the time…

Here’s what I think is the money quote:

The goals of increasing thinking and reasoning ability are old ones for educators. . . . But these goals were part of the high literacy tradition; they did not, by and large, apply to the more recent schools for the masses. Although it is not new to include thinking, problem solving, and reasoning in someone’s school curriculum, it is new to include it in everyone’s curriculum. It is new to take seriously the aspiration of making thinking and problem solving a regular part of a school program for all of the population . . . It is a new challenge to develop educational programs that assume that all individuals, not just an elite, can become competent thinkers. (p. 7)

I liked this book. It's very short, but it made me think. I give it 4 highlighters.

 

Dr. Yong Zhao at SAI 2009

Here are my notes from Dr. Yong Zhao’s presentation, Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization, at the 2009 School Administrators of Iowa (SAI) conference…

• Dr. Zhao’s book will be out soon from ASCD.
• Thomas Friedman: “When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me: ‘Finish your dinner — people in China are starving.’ I, by contrast, find myself wanting to say to my daughters: ‘Finish your homework — people in China and India are starving for your job.’”
• When something bad happens in America, it has to do with education. When something good happens in America, it has to do with some politician.
• March 24, 1958 article in LIFE magazine comparing Russian students’ work with American students’ was very similar to the rhetoric of 2 Million Minutes.
• 1983, A Nation at Risk: “a rising tide of mediocrity” and “we are raising a new generation of Americans that is scientifically and technologically illiterate.”
• Achieve, the College Board, and ACT are writing the upcoming national standards. Ask yourself who stands to benefit from the new standards?
• 2 Million Minutes: now the ‘enemy’ is China and India. Dr. Zhao grew up in China and is back there almost every month. He disagrees with Bob Compton, the director.
• The USA continues to be the most economically competitive country in the world. We continue to be the most innovative, as measured by patents issued. And of course we are the most open, democratic.
• No other country comes close to the US when it comes to exports of intellectual property / knowledge (patents, royalties, copyrights, license fees). China dominates toy exports, not knowledge exports. China is a country built on cheap labor, not knowledge.
• If the US educational system is so bad, why are other countries (like China) trying to emulate us (see, e.g., China’s 2002 and 2005 curriculum and assessment reforms).
• Singapore is emphasizing the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills.
• The correlation between the 1964 First International Math Study test scores (FIMS) and economic output, hourly productivity, quality of life, etc. 40 hours later are all negative. Democracy, creativity, livability all have no relationship or a negative relationship with the FIMS scores.
• Recommends reading Day of Empire: How HyperPowers Rise to Global Dominance – And Why They Fail, by Amy Chua, and The Rise of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida. Diversity of talents, creativity, entrepeneurship, and passion are what allow nations to thrive.
• We are busy closing the achievement gap. Asian countries are busy closing the creativity gap.
• The strengths of American education: school talent shows (value individual talents, inspires passion and responsbility, tolerate deviation, cultivate entrepeneurship) and children are popcorn (some pop early and some pop late; respect individual differences; have faith in every child; second, third, and fourth chances)
• Creativity is fundamentally to be different. America is a society that tolerates, values, and celebrates difference.
• We do face new challenges. For example, globalization (i.e., the death of distance). Columbus took about 3 months to get from Spain to the Bahamas. Now it takes 13 hours on airplane. Electronic information, money, voice phone calls, etc. now get there instantly.
• Global supply chains: corporations can fragment their production and distribute it wherever it makes sense (outsourcing of labor). Products are now made from parts that come from a multitude of different countries.
• New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce: “Today, Indian engineers make $7,500 a year against $45,000 for an American engineer with the same qualifications. If we succeed in matching the very high levels of mastery of mathematics and science of these Indian engineers - an enormous challenge for this country - why would the world’s employers pay us more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work? They would be willing to do that only if we could offer something that the Chinese and Indians, and others, cannot.”
• Equalling China’s or India’s performance on standardized tests doesn’t differentiate ourselves, doesn’t allow us to offer what others cannot.
• Problems in other countries also affect everyone now (e.g., swine flu, poverty, violence, financial meltdowns). We no longer can keep ourselves isolated.
• Where does the new hope lie? With Madonna and eBay! Many people don’t like Madonna. But across the globe, there are enough who do for her to be successful. Globalization allows us to find the other crazy people across the world who find value in what we offer. eBay allows us to find others outside our local area who will buy our trash. Globalization expands our audiences and allows our skills, talents, products, etc. to find new places that they can thrive. What do you have that others don’t? What can you contribute to other markets? What’s your niche?
• Societal changes create new job opportunities. Right now, for example, we need people who understand other countries’ cultures, languages, politics, etc.
• Technology demands new skills (e.g., virtual designers). Virtual “gold farming” is now a $2 billion industry worldwide.
• The Partnership for the 21st Century Skills framework is too long and complex. Our problem in America is that we keep adding, we never take away.
• See Jenifer Fox’s www.strengthsmovement.com.
• We need to take technology and the digital world SERIOUSLY.
• Every child should have a personalized curriculum. This is happening in other countries (e.g., United Kingdom).
• We should think of schools as global enterprises, not local entities, and draw on global resources.
• Never send a man to do a machine’s job. Let people and computers each do what they do best.
• Slides available at http://zhao.educ.msu.edu

Gen Y: Your 'real' friends are your online friends

The New York Times reports today on a study of MySpace users from the United Kingdom. Here is a quote from the article:

The MySpace study asked social networking users between the ages of 14 and 21 (aka "Generation Y") questions about their interactions both on social networks and in their real life, too. Some 36% of the respondents said they found it easier to talk about themselves online than in the real world, leading them to share more about themselves using technology. This group also felt that their online friends knew more about them, and so, in a sense, were closer than offline friends because they all knew what was going on in each other's lives.

Outside of the social networking sites, the survey respondents overwhelmingly felt ill-at-ease in social groups. A whopping 72% said they felt "left out" and didn't think they fit into any particular group. More than four-fifths (82%) said they moved between four or more different groups of friends in an effort to find acceptance.

So is this…

1. Proof that Internet naysayers are correct that the Web is eroding young people’s ability to communicate effectively face-to-face?, or
2. Proof that Internet advocates are correct that young people are breaking free of local, geographical constraints to find affinity groups that matter to them?

In other words, are these results something about which to be concerned or to celebrate? Both? Neither? Thoughts?

Teen sexting: I failed my own information literacy test

I tweeted:

And Barry Dahl replied:

Barry’s right and I’m wrong. I failed my own information literacy test. Why? Because even though I had access to (and linked to) the original report, I didn’t critically consume it the way I should have. Instead I relied on this report from CNN:

And because I did, I made an incorrect statement that then got retweeted by others. Shame on CNN for being misleading and/or inaccurate, but shame on me too for not doing my homework the way I should have. Just because CNN is a traditional, reputable news organization doesn’t mean that I don’t need to be a critical consumer of the information it provides.

Thanks, Barry.

Manufacturing jobs just ain't what they used to be

In my never-ending quest to wrap my head around workforce data despite no background or training whatsoever, I’ve been playing around with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) web site. But first a quick look at General Motors (GM)!  [click on all images for larger versions]

General Motors has a shrinkage issue

As many of you know, GM has been in the news lately as it faces possible bankruptcy proceedings. The image below shows the shrinkage of GM’s workforce over a generation.

Combine this image with all of the other news on the U.S. automobile industry and it’s easy to see that automotive jobs in America, at least as they’ve traditionally been configured, often are a loser’s game due to lower costs and, often, higher quality overseas.

Hey, how are we supposed to make a living?

Below are two charts that I made after diving deep into the BLS Industries At A Glance data, particularly the historical trend data. The first chart shows that the number of employees in the professional and business services, financial activities, and education and health services supersectors grew substantially over the past three decades. In contrast, the manufacturing supersector has lost over a third of its employees and those job losses show no signs of slowing down any time soon. Of course the education and skills needed for these growth sectors of the American economy are different and/or higher than those needed for most manufacturing jobs. FYI, the data points are from the month of April for each year.

The second chart shows the average increase in real earnings since 1980, broken out by labor supersector and adjusted for inflation. As you can see, not only are manufacturing jobs disappearing, those that are left actually have seen a decline in inflation-adjusted earnings over the past three decades. In other words, the purchasing power of your average manufacturing employee is less than it was three decades ago. Not so for the other three supersectors in the chart. I’m no workforce expert but this doesn’t seem to make a strong argument for the manufacturing industry here in America until our companies figure out how to effectively navigate overseas competition despite higher wages, corporate health care and other legacy costs, Americans’ expectations regarding standard of living, and other issues.

I’m not completely sure what to make of all of this. Right now I’m trying to locate data and present them in ways that make sense to me because I have a sense that this stuff is pretty important. As I share this out, your thoughts and expertise are welcome!

One last thing

FYI, despite my best efforts with it, Wolfram Alpha was of no help whatsoever with this investigation. Maybe down the road as it gets more sophisticated, increases its store of data, etc.

Related posts

• Immunizing your graduates from economic downturns
• Iowa - 21st century curricula

Videos - The future of the humanities in the Internet era

Here are two presentations by Dr. Richard Miller, Chair of the English Department at Rutgers University, that are well worth any university instructor's time to watch.

The Future Is Now: Presentation to the RU Board of Governors 

This Is How We Dream, Part 1 and Part 2

Facebook, college students, and lower grades

A pilot study at Ohio State University has found that Facebook users in college have lower grades and spend less time studying. I pieced together the following chart from the news release:

Aryn Karpinski, a co-author of the study and doctoral student in education at Ohio State University, said that:

There may be other factors involved, such as personality traits, that link Facebook use and lower grades. It may be that if it wasn’t for Facebook, some students would still find other ways to avoid studying, and would still get lower grades. But perhaps the lower GPAs could actually be because students are spending too much time socializing online.

The news release noted that:

Typically, Facebook users in the study had GPAs between 3.0 and 3.5, while non-users had GPAs between 3.5 and 4.0. In addition, users said they averaged one to five hours a week studying, while non-users studied 11 to 15 hours per week.

Karpinski said it was significant that the link between lower grades and Facebook use was found even in graduate students.  She said that graduate students generally have GPAs above 3.5, so the fact that even they had lower grades when they used Facebook -- and spent less time studying – was an amazing finding.

My reaction when I started reading the news release was “They found some undergrads who aren’t using Facebook?” Then, sure enough, I found when I calculated the numbers that there were a mere 15 undergraduate non-Facebook users in the study.

I confess that I’m a little wary of some of Karpinski’s generalizations. Although she noted that other factors may be involved besides Facebook use or non-use, the ones that she hypothesized have to do with personality traits and/or predilection for online socialization.

Right now I’m not totally convinced that these findings don’t just represent the fact that about 80% of her non-Facebook users were graduate students. I think it’s safe to say that grad students generally spend more time studying than undergrads. Also, as she noted, grad students’ GPAs typically are higher.

In my mind, the overall generalizations from the study don’t seem to adequately recognize the extremely heavy skew in the non-Facebook group toward graduate students. If I saw that the data (to which she alluded) show that the lower grade trend for grad students was of equivalent size to the undergrad group, then I’d have more confidence in the overall generalizations that are being made in the news release.

Maybe Karpinski will find this post and share some more about her study. Clearly it’s a provocative topic and, if replicated at a larger scale, might provide some really useful information. While her data likely won’t curb Facebook use among college students, they might at least help us understand the potential impact of social networking on postsecondary academic achievement.

One final note: We all should look at – and think carefully about – any research findings that get reported out like this. We need to ask questions like Does this make gut-level sense? and Are the generalizations limited to the data or overbroad? and What more do I need to know to be confident in these findings?. Being informed consumers of research is critical if we are to make research- and/or data-driven decisions to benefit our students.

Immunizing your graduates from economic downturns

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

As we all know, we are in the midst of a massive economic downturn. Every month is accompanied by reports of additional, large-scale layoffs. People are losing their jobs in significant numbers. And yet, despite claims that job losses are being felt throughout all areas of the economy, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data clearly show that the impacts of this recession are being felt more heavily by some rather than others.

For example, employees with a 4-year college degree or higher are losing their jobs at a much lower rate than other workers [click on image for larger version]:

Similarly, jobs in more ‘professional’ employment sectors are being lost at a much lower rate than those that traditionally have required fewer skills and/or education:

 

And certain industries are feeling the pain of unemployment much more than others (see more detail if you’re interested):

The numbers here in Iowa parallel what is happening across the nation. For example, although our state is weathering the recession better than many, the latest Iowa Workforce Development report shows that 20,000 of the 22,400 non-agricultural jobs lost over the past year are in manufacturing.

The labor statistics over the past year mirror longer-term trends in the American workforce. As the charts below show, the U.S. is now a country in which 75% of our workforce is employed in what Dr. Richard Florida calls ‘service class’ or ‘creative class’ professions. Lower-skill and lower-wage jobs that fall outside these two categories, such as those in manufacturing, are more likely to be lost both in the short and long term.

Creative-class jobs, which now make up at least a third of the American workforce and are the only segment of the economy that is growing long-term, require different skill sets such as complex communication, critical thinking, and collaborative problem-solving. These are skills for which schools typically have not prepared most of their graduates.

So what do all of these charts tell us? Well, there are no absolute guarantees that your school system’s graduates won’t lose their jobs. But it’s fairly clear that the best way to immunize your graduates from the potential of job loss is to give them the skill sets that they’ll need to 1) acquire an advanced education, and 2) obtain jobs in professional sectors that are long-term growth areas for the American economy (and thus are less vulnerable to short- or long-term downturns). This raises an obvious question, of course: How’s your school system doing at this?

The President is calling

The President is calling:

I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

President Barack Obama, March 10, 2009

Alia iacta est. How will we answer the call?

The Iowa series - Wrap-up

I've had a lot of fun guest blogging over at The Des Moines Register this week. For those of you who would like to have a single link that you can forward to others, you can use this web address:

http://snipurl.com/iowaseries

Here are links to each of the five posts here at Dangerously Irrelevant:

• Iowa - 21st century curricula
• Iowa - A robust system of online learning
• Iowa - A computer in every hand
• Iowa - Invest in leadership
• Iowa - Better information

Happy reading!

Iowa - Better information

[This is Post 5 for my guest blogging stint at The Des Moines Register.]

Archimedes said “Give me a lever long enough and I can move the world.” This week I am blogging about 5 key levers that I think are necessary to move Iowa schools forward and help our graduates survive and thrive in this new digital, global age in which we now live. Earlier I discussed the need for 21st century curricula, a robust system of online learning, providing a computer for every student, and investing in leadership. Today’s post concerns the need for better information.

Although the Iowa Department of Education does not collect school district technology plans as many other states do, it does have other mechanisms for collecting some information about technology in K-12 schools. Much of that is reported out in the annual Iowa Condition of Education report. For example, the most recent report tells us that back in 1997–1998 Iowa school districts used to spend nearly $100 per pupil on computer software and hardware. By 2006–2007, that figure had dropped to an average of only $77. Adjusted for inflation, that figure is only $61 ($1.00 in 1998 had the same buying power as $1.27 in 2007).

In other words, our world is becoming increasingly technological but our expenditures on technology in Iowa schools have decreased substantially. Iowa public schools spent $37.3 million on technology last year. It would take a 27% increase – another $9.9 million – to get us back to the spending rates of a decade ago. Adjusted for the reduced buying power of the 2007 dollar, those figures are 48% and $17.8 million respectively.

The Iowa Condition of Education also contains other useful information, such as the state average number of pupils per computer (supposedly at 3.2) and the percentage of high schools (87%), middle schools (81%), and elementary schools (71%) that reportedly have wireless networks. The Iowa Department of Education has all of this information in its database by school and district. But as useful as these data are, there is a lot of information that the Department doesn’t collect. As a result, there are a number of questions that have no useful answers.

Here are some questions that we should be asking in Iowa:

• What percentage of Iowa schools and districts have a technology plan? For those that do, what do those plans cover?
• What percentage of Iowa schools and districts have technology teams that advise the organization on technology-related concerns? Who’s on those teams?
• What are schools purchasing with their hardware and software money? What proportion of expenditures goes to teacher-centric technologies versus student-centric technologies? What proportion goes to software that provides powerful learning opportunities for students versus software that simply focuses on drill-and-kill remediation?
• How new are the computers in Iowa schools? What percentage of Iowa hardware and software is more than 2 years old?
• How many Iowa school districts have a student information system? a data warehouse system? electronic gradebook software? electronic student assessment systems? financial, human resources, food service, special education, or other management systems?
• On average, how much time per week do students get to use digital technologies as part of their classroom learning? What proportion of that time is spent using office productivity software, doing basic Internet research, engaging in online social media environments, or utilizing other technologies?
• How many districts have a technology coordinator? Is that person also doing other jobs?
• What is the average number of technology support personnel per teacher? per student? per building or district?
• What is the average number of technology integrationists per teacher? per building or district?
• What percentage of Iowa classrooms (not buildings) have wireless access?
• What percentage of Iowa classrooms have LCD screens or projectors large enough to display a computer screen image that the entire class can see easily? speakers so that the entire class can hear audio or video easily?
• What percentage of Iowa teachers have a webcam?
• What percentage of Iowa students have ever taken an online class? For those that have, what are they taking? How many wish that they had better access to online learning opportunities? What about the same set of questions for teachers?
• What percentage of Iowa students are involved in 1:1 laptop programs?
• What percentage of Iowa schools have the Internet bandwidth and other supports to effectively implement a 1:1 laptop program?
• How do Iowa students think and feel about technology integration in their classrooms? How about teachers, administrators, parents, or school board members?
• On average, how much time per year do Iowa teachers spend in technology-related professional development activities? How do they spend that time?
• What are the technology-related training needs of Iowa teachers and administrators? the technology support needs?
• What does Internet filtering look like in Iowa schools?
• What percentage of Iowa students’ families have Internet access at home? For those that do, is it dial-up or broadband?
• What percentage of Iowa students have computers at home? cell phones? digital cameras? portable music players? video game consoles? other devices? What percentage of teachers or administrators?
• How often do students use the Internet at home and for what do they use it? How about teachers or administrators?
• and so on…

These are all questions for which I’m pretty sure we don’t have much data. Yet the answers to every one of these would be highly informative to how we think about K-12 technology policy, funding, and implementation. So we have a disconnect. And because of that disconnect, we are making purchasing, staffing, funding, and other decisions without the necessary data to inform ourselves. 

Who would collect this information? Well, the Iowa Department of Education could take on more of this. Or perhaps the Iowa State Education Association, the School Administrators of Iowa, and/or the Iowa Association of School Boards. Or even a university research center like CASTLE. But the will and the funding for this has to come from somewhere.

So, like everything else, there is a cost involved. But the bigger cost is that we’re navigating blindly because we don’t have the critical information that we need to adequately and appropriately make instructional, operational, and policy decisions. Some money and effort expended now on gathering better information could save a lot of money and effort later on…

2009 Berkman report on online safety

Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society just released a massive report, Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies. Here's a quote from the study:

Sexual solicitation and predation are serious concerns, but the image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture of the nature of the majority of sexual solicitations and Internet-initiated offline encounters; this inaccuracy leads to major risks in this area being ignored. Of particular concern are the sexual solicitations between minors and the frequency with which online-initiated sexual contact resembles statutory rape rather than other models of abuse. Finally, though some technologies can be more easily leveraged than others for solicitation, risk appears to be more correlated with a youth’s psychosocial profile and risky behaviors than any particular technological platform.

School leaders and policymakers: Read the whole report. Check out the supporting materials. Look over the other recommended resources. Educate yourself so you don’t make policy based on erroneous assumptions. Please?

Top 50 P-12 Edublogs? - Technorati shakeup

I read with great interest the other day Jeff Utecht’s post regarding his declining Technorati authority. Although I agree with others that Technorati has some deficiencies as a blogging metric, it still can be a useful tool to help monitor conversations and online presence.

Like Jeff and the handful of other blogs that he mentions, I also have seen Dangerously Irrelevant’s authority decline, particularly in the past few months. I have been attributing this to:

• my less frequent posting this semester;
• a return in late September to the blog’s appropriate level after a temporary ‘authority boost’ from an unusually popular post last March; and
• the natural competition for comments and links that results from an ever-increasing number of high-quality edublogs.

Jeff hypothesizes that another factor may be Twitter. As many of us move our conversations that direction, fewer posts and/or comments are occurring in the edublogosphere. I’m an infrequent tweeter, so while Twitter may explain The Thinking Stick’s decline, it doesn’t really explain my own. In Jeff’s comments section, Sue Waters also notes that the decreases in authority may be due to the recent changes in Technorati’s indexing methodology.

It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on here. Probably all of the reasons above and more. I wasn’t losing sleep about my own Technorati decrease, but Jeff’s post intrigued me because I hadn’t thought about the fact that others might also be having a similar decline. I found the time this morning to extend Jeff’s quick calculations to the entire list of edublogs from my post in June. Here’s what I found…

[note: I simply worked with the list from June. I did not recalculate the ‘top 50’ nor did I determine if any new blogs should be included instead of those listed.]

1. Nearly all of the top edublogs (as measured by Technorati authority) saw a decline in their authority since June.

As the chart below shows, some edublogs had quite dramatic decreases. The average authority decrease was 88; the median decrease was 62. [click on the image for a larger version]

2. Using today’s numbers, the list would look like this instead.

3. Here’s the list ordered by gain/loss in authority rather than overall authority. Only six blogs saw an increase in authority since June.

4. Here’s the list ordered by change in overall rank (again, within just this list and not the overall edublogosphere).

5. Finally, here’s a graphic that shows each blog’s change in rank since June (ordered by overall authority). Red is a decline; green is an increase; blue is no change.

Last thoughts

• Like Jeff (and unlike many of you!), I find much of this fascinating. For example, think:lab’s rank went up 11 spots despite the fact that Christian Long quit blogging there in August. That was a neat trick, Christian (and, BTW, I hope your new gig’s working out well for you)!
• The top part of the list was pretty stable. Most of the movement occurred outside of the top 10 or so positions.
• Students 2.0 had the biggest drop in the rankings. Was it so high before because we liked the content better compared to now? Or were we simply giddy with the idea behind the blog but now have realized that the content is not as relevant to many of us?
• Is the TechLearning blog’s decline due in part to its general inability to accept comments?
• The K12 Online Conference blog rankings likely are cyclical. Up in the fall just before and after the conference. Down six months later as all of the traffic regarding the conference drops off Technorati’s radar. Time will prove if I’m right or not on this one!
• Kudos to the bloggers (Angela Maiers, Jennifer Jennings, Steve Dembo, George Siemens, and Chris Lehmann) who actually increased their Technorati authority in the face of steep overall declines. Wow.

Any of you have thoughts on this fairly esoteric stuff?

SETDA's Class of 2020 Action Plan for Education

The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has been on an unbelievable tear this year. Back in February it released its annual Trends Report on NCLB Title II, Part D (Enhancing Education Through Technology, or E2T2). Previous national reports are available at the SETDA web site. You also can access state-level reports at the Metiri Group’s web site.

Now SETDA’s Class of 2020 Action Plan for Education project is releasing its reports. The first three already are available:

• Powerful broadband access for all: Breaking through the barriers
• STEM education: Achievement and innovation
• Technology-based assessments improve teaching and learning

Two more reports are coming out this month and next:

• Empowering teachers: A professional and collaborative approach
• Robust, rigorous, and right-on-time learning through online courseware

Be sure to tap into the incredible wealth of good information on the Reports, Research & Tools page of the SETDA web site [warning: it’s easy to get lost in here for hours…]. There are numerous high-quality resources available for K-12 educational technology advocates and change agents, including the 2007 report, Maximizing the impact: The pivotal role of technology in a 21st century education system.

Keep up the great work, SETDA!

2008 Education Blogosphere Survey results

I’m both pleased and embarrassed to announce that the results from my second annual Education Blogosphere Survey are now available. Pleased to finally be done and that there were 419 participants. Embarrassed that the gestation almost exceeded that of a human newborn. Thank you, Dan Meyer, for politely staying on my case about this. I hope the results are worth the wait.

Watch on the Web

• Vimeo

Downloads

• Windows Media (.wmv)
• Quicktime (.mov)
• PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) [has clearest images]
• PowerPoint 2003 (.ppt) [has clearest images]
• Acrobat (.pdf) [has clearest images]
• Excel 2007 (.xlsx) [anonymized]
• Excel 2003 (.xls) [anonymized]

Note that I didn’t do anything with the open-response items. Feel free to dig through one of the Excel files and do your own analysis (please let me know if you do!). There are lots of useful resources in the additional information in the database.

As always, these materials are available under a Creative Commons license. Let the conversation begin!

Sparking some school board discussion

Apparently I sparked a little discussion by a local school board! You've got to give them credit for asking the right questions and also being willing to experiment publicly with what to them were new technologies...

Innovation monies by state

[hat tip to Richard Florida]

UNESCO defines research and development (R&D) as:

Any creative systematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture, and society, and the use of this knowledge to devise new applications. Includes fundamental research, applied research in such fields as agriculture, medicine, industrial chemistry, and experimental development work leading to new devices, products, or processes.

Greater investment in R&D activity is more likely to result in greater innovation. Sure, you might get lucky; every dog gets thrown a bone sometimes. But more often than not, greater payoffs come to those who invest more in R&D.

Using data from the National Science Foundation and the United States Census, I compiled the following table. Industrial R&D includes all monies spent on R&D activities by the federal government, corporations, and other entities.

Iowa is 31st on the list when it comes to R&D expenditure per capita. We’re not exactly a hotbed of innovation compared to other states, primarily because the only areas that attract significant numbers of creative talent are Des Moines (state capital), Ames (Iowa State University), and Iowa City (University of Iowa).

What’s the situation in your state? Do the numbers surprise you?

Not so irrelevant 010

My latest roundup of links and tools...

By now we should be thinking about the Internet like we do water and electricity

Slate Magazine notes that

Camp McCain . . . fundamentally does not see the Internet as essential infrastructure. . . . Instead, Camp McCain dreams of a competitive market in Internet services, and so if Obama sees the Internet as a road, McCain takes it as a car: something that consumers will buy if they want it. In fact, in 2001, Michael Powell compared the Internet to a luxury car: ‘I think there is a Mercedes divide. I would like to have one, but I can't afford one.’ Any too-ambitious government project to put a fiber cable in people's homes, thinks Camp McCain, is likely doomed to failure.

All I have to say about this is that any country that doesn’t see the Internet as essential infrastructure for driving forward its national economy and societal well-being is doomed. Doomed, I tell you! [hat tip to Will Richardson]

Speaking of which…

• The Partnership for 21st Century Skills just issued a new report on education and global competitiveness. Lots of yummy statistics in there about the changing American workplace. a plum reading choice for school leaders. Visit www.tinyurl.com/jobsarechanging

Huh?

• It’s easy to find examples of why we need people to translate the world of educational research for practitioners. To most K-12 educators, for examples, paragraphs 5 through 7 of this study summary (which purports to report the instructional value of using interactive whiteboards) are complete gibberish.

The power of transparency

• I love being able to peer into the innards of Dan Meyer’s mind and instruction. How many other teachers do we know that would even be comfortable with the thought of opening up their entire classroom curriculum for critique and discussion?

The power of the aggregator

• A couple of weeks back, Doug Johnson had a great post about the power of RSS aggregators. I’ve been introducing our new principal cohort to Google Reader. Comment from last night’s class: There’s a whole world out there that I didn’t know about!

The power of prefetching

• I like the fact that FeedDemon, the software I’m using as my primary aggregator, lets me read stuff offline.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

• The ILC conference is coming up… So is the Online Teaching & Learning Conference (which, by the way, happens to be online!).

Smackdown!

• Finally, make sure you read the responses of Karin Chenoweth and Ben Wildavsky to Charles Murray’s latest book, Real Education. If you’ve forgotten, Murray is the guy who wrote The Bell Curve and believes that poor kids should just be slotted into menial (but somehow emotionally-fulfilling) educational tracks and jobs so that our schools can go back to their business of educating the elites to run the world. [hat tip to Eduwonkette]

Recommended reading - Data-driven decision-making

I often get asked by administrators for some recommended reading. Here are some of my favorite books on data-driven decision-making. If the Amazon widget doesn't load in a few seconds, here's a static picture of the list.

[Transparency disclosure: If you buy a book using this list, CASTLE gets 4% of the proceeds. Your cost doesn’t go up any. Amazon just pays us a little for the referral through its Associates Program.]

Recommended reading - Teaching and learning

I often get asked by administrators for some recommended reading. Here are some of my favorite books on teaching and learning. If the Amazon widget doesn't load in a few seconds, here's a static picture of the list.

[Transparency disclosure: If you buy a book using this list, CASTLE gets 4% of the proceeds. Your cost doesn’t go up any. Amazon just pays us a little for the referral through its Associates Program.]

The good news (and the bad) about math

The good news from the most comprehensive study ever done of gender and math performance?

‘No gender difference’ in scores among children in grades 2 through 11. [see research summary]

The bad news?

In most states [the researchers] reviewed, and at most grade levels, there weren't any questions that involved complex problem-solving, the ability needed to succeed in high levels of science and math. If tests don't assess these reasoning skills, they may not be taught. [see CNN article]

NECC 2008 - From digital divide to digital opportunities

Here are my notes from ISTE’s annual digital equity summit at NECC. There is too much information to fit in one post so I’m breaking it up…

From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities
Dr. Paul Resta, U. Texas-Austin

• Current estimate of world repository of pictures/words/movies = 7 exabytes (Library of Congress is largest in world = 20 terabytes)
• It’s not just more information. More is now different.
• UNESCO Digital Opportunity Index allows the tracking and comparison of countries in different aspects of the information society
• Essential conditions – access to…
• Basic literacy skills
• 26% of world adult population (1 billion people) is non-literate (2/3 are women)
• ICT devices, software, and sufficient bandwidth for Internet connectivity
• Most of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East has less than 10% of the population with personal computers
• High-income economies are far ahead (International Telecommunications Union, World Information Society 2007 Report)
• The top 1,000 companies in the world have over 70 million computers to dispose of
• Low-cost laptops: OLPC (600,000 orders from Birmingham (AL), Peru, Haiti, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Mexico, Uruguay, Mongolia), EeePC, Intel Classmate (150,000 orders from Nigeria, Libya)
• Cloud computing (virtual servers) means not much power has to reside on the computers themselves
• Asia and Europe both have more Internet users than North America; a near-perfect relationship between Internet use and income
• Broadband access takes up 2.1% of high-income (and 909% of low-income) yearly wages
• USA is now 15th in broadband penetration (see www.itif.org)
• Wireless access is increasing exponentially in many developing countries
• Meaningful, high-quality, culturally-relevant content in local languages
• 68% of Internet content is in English; next highest is Japanese (6%)
• 4Directions project is an indigenous model of education to create culturally-relevant curriculum resources
• Virtual museum partnerships
• Creating, sharing, and exchanging digital content
• The majority of the 7 billion videos streamed on the Internet each month are user-generated
• The number of blogs has roughly doubled every 6 months
• We need to enable indigenous voices and to use the Internat to foster cross-cultural understandings and share knowledge
• Educators who know how to use digital tools and resources in pedagogically-sound, culturally-responsible ways
• UNESCO ICT Competency Standards for Teachers
• Development of National Plans for ICT in Teacher Education
• Teacher Learning in E-Learning Age (UNESCO, forthcoming)
• Effective leadership in policy and planning
• Removing policy barriers and formulating new policy frameworks
• Broadband challenges require new thinking
• There is a need for ICTs customized to the needs of the poor in the developing world
• How do we ensure that the USA stays competitive?
• What is our role as educators to help address the global digital divide?
• From the Digital Divide to Digital Opportunities

NECC 2008 - CoSN CTO Leadership Forum

Here are my notes from Monday morning’s CTO Leadership Forum, sponsored by CoSN. The focus was on digital content and the role of the CTO (chief technology officer)…

Ann McMullan, Executive Director of Instruction, Klein ISD, Texas

Clearly, if the superintendent isn’t involved in these conversations (about digital learning], it doesn’t happen. If you don’t have your key central office personnel on board, it simply doesn’t happen.

Hmmm… that sounds familiar!

Some key resources from CoSN

• Empowering 21st Century Superintendents initiative
• Small District Technology Leadership wiki

Table activities (notes from my group are below)

When will education reach a ‘tipping point’ where digital content becomes pervasive in education? What roles should the district technology leader assume?

• It’s different for every district. In some schools it’s already pervasive; in others they’re not even close.
• I see districts that are or want to but they don’t have the bandwidth to handle it.
• Technology is increasingly becoming part of the curriculum department.
• We need to standardize on new equipment that can handle this new digital content.
• The greatest limiting factor we have is time. If we want to teach 21st century skills, it’s gotta come out of somewhere. Even when innovative 1:1 situations exist, central office still says ‘just make sure those test scores go up.’
• You don’t get rewarded for risk.
• No one’s going to thank you for taking care of today if you fail to take care of tomorrow. (Joel Barker)

What is the impact of emerging technologies and critical initiatives such as Web 2.0 technologies on the future role of the district technology leader?

• To block it. (joking!)
• If you throw it all wide open, you run the risk of one incident causing everything to be shut down.
• But we cannot be reactionary anymore. We have to avoid the ‘New York Post’ syndrome. We’re so afraid of the one bad thing that we miss all the good things that could happen.
• What is the worst consequence of your best idea? These tools give kids control of their own education!

What role does district technology leadership play in closing the gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces? What needs to change in teaching styles and instructional delivery of a school district in order to enable effective learning of 21st century skills?

• We covered this up above.
• Getting past the overwhelming emphasis on test scores.
• When are we going to stop assessing students on fact regurgitation and instead assess them on their ability to find and interpret information?
• We have to get back to trusting teachers.

If we assume that digital content will evolve from our current model of ‘electronic text books’ to newer modes of learning objects and collaborative work spaces, what does that mean for the future of student access in our supported networks?

• Textbooks are not going to go away. They will not be substantively replaced by digital content.
• Most of my group saw digital content existing primarily as a supplement to paper textbooks, even 30 to 40 years from now. [sigh]

Chris Lehmann asked me, ‘Why are people still paying for content?’ I replied, ‘So we don’t have to think about our instruction.’

The Congress on the Future of [Digital] Content

Some findings from the May conference…

• Overall vision
• Visionary leadership
• Stakeholder involvement
• Rigorous content and curriculum
• Ongoing professional development
• Assessment and data to individualize instruction
• Content that is engaging and flexible. Students are increasingly producers of content.
• Curriculum and teaching strategies: alignment, scope and sequence, assessment, 21st century skills, problem-based learning.
• Support for effective use of content: Ongoing, more money, more tech. Some vetting is still necessary.
• America’s Digital Schools 2008: 1:1 is growing rapidly!
• Barriers
• Insufficient access to technology in schools and at home
• Loack of ongoing professional development
• Insufficient funding for content
• Old curriculum and NCLB
• Vetting and adoption process
• No alternative business models
• Intellectual property rights
• Fragmentation of market
• Complexity of transactions
• The Vail, Arizona district has gone completely to digital content?
• All adoption processes should enable adoption of digital materials and promote flexibility of content selection.
• Districts in Texas are paying for paper textbooks to get the accompanying digital content. They then also pay to store the unused textbooks.
• Recommendations
• Flexibility
• Educators should be the ones driving the selection of content. They need the ability to ‘chunk’ (select only pieces of) content during the selection process.
• Professional development
• Outreach / public relations
• The public does not yet understand the need to move to a different model of instruction. We need to help them reframe their mental models of what ‘school’ is.
• In the end, someone has to pay for a different model.
• A Chicago Public Schools survey showed that 70% of its students had better technology access at home than at school.

Top 50 P-12 Edublogs? - June 2008

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Many of you know that I occasionally try to wrap my head around various aspects of the education blogosphere. In the past I’ve written about hubs and superhubs. I’ve also sometimes attempted to identify and quantify some of the most popular edublogs:

• Top edublogs? (January 2007)
• Top edublogs - August 2007

Below is my latest attempt. I made a few changes from last time, which I describe after the table. Authority and rank are from Technorati as of June 2. Clicking on each blog name will take you to its Technorati page.

	Blog Name	2008 Authority	2008 Rank
1*	apophenia	1,256	1,880
2	Weblogg-ed	897	3,222
3	Joanne Jacobs	798	3,848
4	Stephen's Web	708	4,581
5*	The Panda's Thumb	563	6,314
6	2 Cents Worth	559	6,364
7	Cool Cat Teacher Blog	550	6,527
8	Moving At the Speed of Creativity	452	8,585
9	Ewan McIntosh's edu.blogs.com	434	9,073
10	Students 2.0	415	9,601
11	Dangerously Irrelevant	413	9,650
12	The Fischbowl	402	9,999
13	Larry Ferlazzo's Websites Of The Day…	292	15,222
14	Beyond School	281	16,003
15	EdTechTalk	255	18,132
16	The Thinking Stick	251	18,485
17*	Millard Fillmore's Bathtub	247	18,889
18	CogDogBlog	243	19,288
19	Angela Maiers	241	19,497
20	Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech	233	20,369
21	Techlearning blog	231	20,603
22	elearnspace	231	20,603
23	dy/dan	223	21,531
24	Around the Corner	219	22,034
25	Practical Theory	211	23,110
26	Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy	197	25,258
27	Steve Hargadon	194	25,760
28	Half an Hour	187	27,002
29	k12 Online Conference	180	28,355
30	Mobile Technology in TAFE	179	28,551
31	blog of proximal development	171	30,308
32	HeyJude	168	30,991
33	Blue Skunk	164	31,997
34	The Education Wonks	164	31,997
35	Drape's Takes	162	32,533
36	Always Learning	162	52,728
37*	The Learning Circuits Blog	157	33,890
38	Remote Access	152	35,296
39	PBS Teachers . Learning.now	151	35,621
40	Eduwonkette	150	35,920
41	So You Want To Teach?	149	58,157
42	Eduwonk	148	36,614
43	Teach42	147	36,964
44	History Is Elementary	145	37,670
45	LeaderTalk	144	38,026
46	Infinite Thinking Machine	137	40,556
47	Creating Lifelong Learners	133	42,160
48	AssortedStuff	131	42,997
49	Connectivism Blog	128	44,360
50	think:lab	122	47,149
51	O’DonnellWeb	121	47,646
52	iterating toward openness	119	48,680
53	Teaching Generation Z	119	48,680
54	Generation YES Blog	112	52,751

Information about the table

• This time I only included blogs that predominantly post about P-12 education. No higher education blogs. No blogs that are mostly about training, software tools, or other topics with an occasional P-12–related post. No education news channels that happen to have an RSS feed. Just ‘pure’ P-12 blogs. I was on the fence about four blogs on the chart; those are marked with an asterisk. I included blogs 51 to 54 in case you think those four should not have been included.
• I gave up monitoring the several thousand blogs on my previous list. There were just too many to catalog and also too many newcomers. There are over 100,000 edublogs!
• I feel fairly confident about the accuracy of this list. I considered listing the top 100 but was not as confident about blogs 70 to 100 because I kept finding new ones in that range.
• If I missed you, I’m sorry. Please let me know for next time. If you don’t like or disagree with my selection criteria, feel free to make your own list. It would be interesting to compare yours with this one.
• The very notion of what constitutes a ‘top’ edublog is very personal and individual (see, e.g., posts by Stephen Downes and Peter Rock as well as the numerous comments regarding my last two attempts). Also, Technorati has a number of issues, but no one has yet suggested a more viable alternative. There are many, many great blogs not on this list. While a number of people are finding value in the blogs in this table, some excellent writing is occurring on blogs with lower authority. Read and write blogs for your own reasons rather than worrying about the numbers.

Other lists of top edublogs

Other attempts have been made to catalog the top edublogs. Of note are the following:

• Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Education
• Aseem Badshah’s Live Mocha list

Some stats on Alltop

Only 19 of the top 50 blogs in the chart above are on Alltop Education. Interestingly, I also discovered that at least 9 of the blogs on Alltop Education have an authority of less than 26, meaning that they have less than one inbound link per week.

Blogs with big gains in authority

Take heart, bloggers who want more readers / links! As the chart below shows, a number of the blogs on this list had large gains in authority over the past 11 months. Some of the top blogs (including Students 2.0, Angela Maiers, and Eduwonkette) didn’t even exist a year ago.

Final thoughts

As always, please let me know if you have any thoughts or reactions regarding this post. I am deeply honored that so many of you choose to read my blogs, appreciate any and all feedback, and look forward to the conversation!

1.23 million dropouts

Imagine each of the blocks below represents 1,000 students. That's how many members of the public high school class of 2008 will fail to graduate without a diploma. Be sure to see the entire Graduation Counts 2008 report from Education Week (free this week!).

Compare and contrast - Video games as educational tools

Dr. Jim Gee notes:

If learning always operates well within the learner's resources, then all that happens is that the learner's behaviors get more and more routinized, as the learner continues to experience success by doing the same things. This is good ... for learning and practicing fluent and masterful performance ... but is not good for developing newer and higher skills. However, if learning operates outside one's resources, the learner is simply frustrated and gives up.

Good video games ... build in many opportunities for learners to operate at the outer edge of their regime of competence, thereby causing them to rethink their routinized mastery and move, within the game and themselves, to a new level. Indeed, for many learners it is these times ... when learning is most exciting and rewarding. Sadly in school, many so-called advantaged learners rarely get to operate at the edge of their regime of competence as they coast along in a curriculum that makes few real demands on them. At the same time, less advantaged learners are repeatedly asked to operate outside their regime of competence.

[Video games] build into their designs and encourage good principles of learning … that are better than those in many of our skill-and-drill, back-to-basics, test-them-until-they-drop schools.

Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. [pp. 70, 205]

In contrast, here are current teachers’ beliefs (click on graph for full report):

2008 Media literacy research award

Cable in the Classroom is sponsoring its annual Media Smart Research Award:

Media literacy is a key 21st Century skill because it provides a framework and method to think critically about the media and technologies students and adults use for information and entertainment. Media literacy means knowing how to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and create media messages on television, the Internet and other outlets. It also means knowing how to use these and other technologies safely, productively and ethically.

The deadline for emerging media literacy scholars to submit materials is May 31.

The importance of educator perceptions

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Last June, during Change Week at Dangerously Irrelevant, I blogged about Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory. In that post I mentioned that one of the most underutilized aspects of Rogers’ work was the concept of perceived characteristics of innovations (PCIs). PCIs are those things considered by potential adopters that affect how likely they are to move from awareness to adoption. Rogers noted that issues of relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and usability were important when thinking about innovation adoption. The key is that the perception - what’s inside the potential adopter’s head – is what’s important.

Rogers’ work ties in nicely with another concept that I’ve recently been thinking about: technology affordances. As Gaver (1991) noted, affordances are aspects of an object ‘that are compatible with and relevant for people’s interactions.’ In the context of digital technologies, affordances are the characteristics that let us answer the question, ‘What do these tools do for me?’ For example, the digital camera has a number of affordances that a traditional film camera does not, including easier manipulation/alteration of raw images, ease of sharing, and elimination of the need to print unwanted pictures.

The idea of affordances intersects with the idea of perceptions. Gaver has a useful diagram in his article:

Quadrant B represents the situation when the affordance of a digital technology is actually there but is not perceived by educators. For example, essay grading software can do some powerful things but I have seen educators simply refuse to believe that the software works the way it does. In contrast, Quadrant C occurs when educators believe a digital technology might do something for them that it actually cannot (ever bought a technology that didn’t live up to its promise?). In an ideal world, educators would be in either Quadrant A or Quadrant D, rejecting or adopting digital technologies with full understanding of what those tools can or cannot do for them.

Of course we don’t live in an ideal world. In fact, it’s difficult for non-technology-savvy educators to have accurate perceptions about digital technologies’ affordances simply because their level of knowledge and understanding is so low. This leads to vendor pitch susceptibility, inappropriate buying decisions, improper implementation, incorrect rejection, and a host of other issues.

Those of us who are using these tools – who are often living and breathing these tools – need to internalize the diagram above. Although a tool may fall into Quadrant D for us, it may fall into Quadrant B or C for someone else. Indeed, for many, residence in Quadrant A is quite appropriate for the instructional task at hand, even when we might say it falls into Quadrant D.

So is this all a fancy way of saying ‘don’t use technology in unthoughtful or inappropriate ways?’ Maybe. Or maybe it’s a way of saying that teachers will reside in Quadrants A or B unless we help them navigate the implementation dip that’s required to get to Quadrant D. Either way, I believe that it’s a useful framework as we think about school staff and where they fall regarding the innovations we often ask them to adopt. If we technology advocates can’t both show and persuade our potential adopters that a particular digital technology falls into Quadrant D for whatever they want to do, we’re not doing our job. And it’s not enough that the technology actually would be helpful, that it actually has the affordance. When it comes to adoption, the perception is as important as the actual capability of the tool.

Citation: Gaver, W. W. (1991). Technology affordances.

Related links

• Diffusion of innovation
• Change Week wrap-up
• The aggregate impact of individual choices
• Implementation dip

Globalization and education

[cross-posted at LeaderTalk]

The latest issue of AASA’s The School Administrator is on the topic of globalization and education. LeaderTalk’s very own Dr. Terry Holliday, Superintendent of the Iredell-Statesville (NC) Schools, is one of the primary authors! Here’s an excerpt from Terry’s article:

I have been amazed at English teachers who have figured out how to get students really excited about writing by using blogs, wikis and web pages. As a musician, I am overwhelmed by the creativity of classrooms using computer-based piano labs, midi-interfaces and software to create and edit music manuscripts in minutes that used to take me days to complete. I visit our auto-tech classes and marvel at the students’ ability to perform computer-based diagnostics and read technical manuals that are well beyond high school reading levels.

I am certain many school administrators, teachers, parents and students share this inner conflict between logic and creativity. I finally figured out the answer. It’s best captured by Rick and Becky DuFour, consultants on professional learning communities, who talk about write about the genius of “and” vs. the tyranny of “or.”

Dr. Yong Zhao, Director of the U.S.-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence at Michigan State University, writes in his article about globally-aware education in an era of AYP:

As educators … we are charged with a much more important task than responding to bureaucratic requirements - the moral responsibility to prepare students to lead successful lives. People may have different opinions about what a successful life is, but it should certainly include financial independence, competent participation in community life and positive contributions to society. Schools should at least equip students with the attitudes, perspectives, skills and knowledge that will help them find and keep a job, interact with their co-workers and neighbors and understand as well as make informed decisions about issues affecting society.

The specific attitudes, skills and knowledge schools aim to cultivate should be responsive to changes in society. What was important before may be irrelevant today …

And then there’s this gem of a quote from Dr. Arthur Shostak, professor emeritus of sociology at Drexel University:

For too long K-12 schooling has lacked an emphatic and rewarding focus on the future, even though futurism should be everyone’s “second profession.” In our bold new world of ubiquitous computing, versatile electronic books, computers as wearable items, exotic virtual reality labs and Buck Rodgers-style educational aids, we are in a good position to change this.

Given the extraordinary global challenges facing all of us, school systems must do more to help young learners master the art of horizon scanning, in all of its empowering aspects.

There is lots more good stuff in the issue, including a conversation between Daniel Pink and Tom Friedman, authors of A Whole New Mind and The World Is Flat, respectively.

Oh, and there’s a great article on reining in school board chairs who are bullies!

Last chance to complete the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey

Just two days left to complete the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey. We’re currently at 382 participants. Absent a last-minute deluge of responses, I don’t think we’ll make my revised goal of 500 respondents, but maybe we can tip over 400!

A HUGE THANKS to everyone who has participated and helped publicize the survey!

Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Knowledge networks

My latest higher education article for Technology & Learning, Knowledge Networks, is now available. The article draws deeply from my previous blog posts, Linked, Scholarship 2.0, and The Future of Academic Publishing.

Here are a couple of quotes from the article:

[T]he system [of academic writing] is fairly clunky. There aren't easy ways to tell who the [top scholars] are, nor are there ways to easily find hidden nuggets of wisdom. . . . Tracking down a new resource from an existing article or book also is difficult, since readers have to first find the publication through trial-and-error searching of various databases and then either download it or track down a print version. Much high-quality writing never sees the light of day or isn't cited by anyone because it's not in the "right place." We can do better. . . .

If we can figure out how to get beyond academic publishers' revenue protection concerns, the world's body of scholarly research can be available to anyone with an Internet connection. That's a goal worth working toward.

Happy reading!

Please help publicize the 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey

The second annual Education Blogosphere Survey ends on Saturday. If you have a holiday today, it's a great time to complete the survey or publicize it to others!

We're off to a good start. Last year 160 edubloggers participated. Right now the total is 307. It looks like we'll make my goal of doubling last year's participants. Dare I strive for 500?

Please use the link and/or the graphic and help spread the call for participants. Here's the HTML code if you want to paste it on your blog / web site:

• 2008 Education Blogosphere Survey HTML code

As I noted in this year's call for participation, you can see last year's survey results to get a sense of how I'm going to report out this year.

A HUGE THANKS in advance to anyone and everyone who helps publicize this!

Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

2008 Education Blogosphere Survey is now open!

The second annual Education Blogosphere Survey is now open for business! 4 screens. 25 questions.

Please use the link and/or the graphic and help spread the call for participants. Last year 160 edubloggers participated. Let's see if we can at least double that this year?

You can see last year's call for participation and survey results to get a sense of how I'm going to report out this year.

Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas for questions and a HUGE THANKS in advance to anyone and everyone who helps publicize this!

Deadline = January 26, 11:00pm, (GMT-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

Do the math

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Update: As of May 2009, I now have about 5,000 subscribers to this blog. Alter my calculations accordingly...

According to Feedburner, I currently have about 2,100 subscribers to my blog. While that's obviously not a huge number compared to many other blogs (see my Technorati rank, which is slightly below that of the TechLearning blog), let's do the math for a minute...

Let's say I average 4 posts a week for 50 weeks a year. 4 x 50 x 2,100 readers equals 420,000 person contacts each year. In other words, through my blog I have the opportunity to have 420,000 interactions with my audience every twelve months. These are folks who have actively sought me out and are voluntarily reading what I write (which, by the way, still blows my mind). Over 10 years, that's over 4 million opportunities for me to spread my message to others, assuming that my current reader totals don't improve at all (which, obviously, I hope they do).

Now, let's compare this with a journal article. According to the information sent to me by the editors, the most prestigious peer-reviewed educational leadership research journal, Educational Administration Quarterly (EAQ), has approximately 160 individual subscribers and 1,630 institutional subscribers (i.e., libraries), for a total of about 1,800 subscriptions. Because EAQ serves folks interested in a broad range of educational leadership issues, at best only a small fraction of the individual readers will be interested in an article on technology leadership-related issues. This also is true for anyone doing a literature search for a research article or dissertation. For argument's sake, let's say that each technology-related EAQ article might have 60 readers a year, or 600 readers a decade (this is probably quite generous): a very rough ratio of one-third of the subscription total. [Note: this is obviously not very scientific. I'm engaging in some very loose back-of-the-envelope calculations here. There's probably a better way to come up with a more accurate estimate.].

Now of course faculty don't publish in only one journal. An unbelievably productive faculty member might publish 5 to 10 articles a year, each in a journal with roughly 500 to 5,000 individual and institutional subscribers. For this example, let's assume the faculty member is super-productive and is publishing in journals with the widest reach. Using the same rough ratio I used for EAQ (i.e., about 1/3 of the subscription numbers over a decade), 10 articles per year x 10 years x 5,000 subscribers x 1/3 = 166,667. Again, I think this is quite optimistic. Few faculty members are this productive and, even if true, it's pretty likely that readership of a faculty member's articles is nowhere close to this total.

Okay, let's review:

• blog = 4,200,000 person interactions per decade
• journals = 166,667 person interactions per decade

The blog wins hands-down from a numbers perspective, even assuming what I think is probably the absolute best case scenario for the peer-reviewed journal path. If we also consider

1. the ability to hear back from people via blog comments (i.e., to have a true conversation about what's written);
2. the ability to easily search the content of the blog via Internet search engines (unlike research databases, which typically allow you to only search within article abstracts, not full articles);
3. the greater availability of blogs to the public generally and educators specifically (particularly since most K-12 folks rarely read peer-reviewed journals);
4. the ability of popular blog posts to be spread through other bloggers and tools like Digg to even larger audiences;
5. the ability of blogs to handle multimedia content (i.e., graphics, audio, video); and
6. the superior connectivity of blogs compared to journal articles (i.e., direct hyperlinks to other resources versus footnotes);

the case for a blog seems even stronger.

So this raises the question... Why would anyone who wishes to actually reach educators and hopefully influence change in schools not be blogging?

Also... why haven't more faculty caught on to this?

Publications

I do a lot of other writing besides blogging for Dangerously Irrelevant. As some of you may have noticed, I recently added a Publications button to this blog (on the right below my Top Posts button) for anyone who's interested in accessing my other work.

Happy reading!

ROTW: Electronic learning growth

It's a new year and I think it's time to revive the Wednesday Report of the Week (ROTW)! I've made a public Google Notebook page for those of you who are interested in the reports I feature here:

• Dangerously Irrelevant - Report of the Week

I'll begin the new year with an Ambient Insight report that came out last November and was featured in T.H.E. Journal. The market analysis forecasts that K-12 education will have the highest demand for self-paced electronic learning products over the next five years. Ambient Insight studied six major types of self-paced e-learning products:

• IT packaged content
• Non-IT packaged content
• Custom content and technology services
• Learning platform hosting services
• Software tools
• Installed learning platform technology

Sam Adkins, the company's chief research officer, was kind enough to explain to me the different categories. Here's what he said:

• Packaged content is commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) content sold as a self-contained course (think "shrink-wrapped" as an analogy) - it has a retail price per package. It is "built once, sold many times."
• IT-based packaged content is courseware designed to teach software skills. We break it out for suppliers because in the early days virtually all of elearning content was IT courseware. Those days are long gone but suppliers still want to see the forecasts.
• Custom content is a "one-off" created for customers. Suppliers charge a service fee (usually time and materials) for it. There are many technology services as well.
• Hosting services are platforms provided to customers as a Web-based service and the customer does not own the software, per se. They pay for it, usually with a subscription fee. Lately people are referring to this as "Web 2.0" although there is no consensus on the meaning of that term.
• Installed technology is the opposite of hosted technology and customers install it themselves.

It would be interesting to see which categories will see the biggest growth for K-12. I'm hoping it's not 'drill and kill' software.

Notes

I can't emphasize enough how helpful Mr. Adkins was. Despite his belief that his company's research is "written exclusively for product suppliers and that very few practitioners or thought leaders gain much value from the data," he was gracious enough to have several e-mail exchanges with me until I understood the categories for this blog post. Thank you, Sam!

The nation's best high schools?

U.S. News has come out with its list of the best high schools in the United States. Andy Rotherham of Education Sector explains the thinking behind the list. Jay Mathews at The Washington Post, who compiles his own list each year with Newsweek, has a very thoughtful reply to the new rankings, including interviews with administrators and other experts, many of whom question the idea of even ranking high schools at all. Check out the rankings and the debate; they make for some interesting reading.

[thanks to the Principal's Policy Blog for pointing to me to these]

Dangerously innumerate

In what may be the best word play yet on the name of my blog, Tom Hoffman had issues with my previous post on GDP overachievers. Check out the conversation: the phrase 'jibber jabber' was used!

GDP overachievers

Yesterday Karl Fisch and I were e-mailed a link to a video from Shocking Economics. Although I’m neither a demographer nor an economist, the video got me thinking… (bear with me here; there’s a point at the end of all of this!)

As you can see in the spreadheet I made [.xls or .pdf], there is an extremely strong positive correlation (cell E2) between a state’s overall population rank (column D) and its overall GDP rank (column F). In other words, the more people in the state, the bigger GDP it has. California has the most people and it has the biggest GDP. This makes sense.

However, some states seem to be more GDP-efficient than others. For example, Connecticut is ranked 29th in overall population and 23rd in overall GDP, but is the 4th-ranked state when it comes to GDP per capita (column G). In contrast, Alabama is ranked 23rd in overall population and 25th in overall GDP, but is the 45th-ranked state in terms of GDP per capita. Connecticut’s GDP over/under (column H) is +19 (23 minus 4). Alabama’s is -20 (25 minus 45). Connecticut appears to be a GDP overachiever, while Alabama seems to be an underachiever. Dollar for dollar, person for person, Connecticuters are contributing more to the overall national economy than Alabamans.

As the spreadsheet shows (cells K26:K29), states in the Northeast and Pacific regions (as defined by the U.S. Census) are, on average, more GDP-efficient than states in the Midwest or South. There are moderately strong correlations between states’ over/under ratio and their overall population rank (cell E4), overall GDP rank (cell H5), and GDP per capita rank (cell H6). States with smaller populations are moderately more likely to have a higher GDP per capita rank and a better GDP over/under ratio.

So here are 10 select states [click on image for larger version or download the PDF]:

While some of the states (Montana, Maine, New Jersey, and Maryland) have overall GDP ranks and GDP per capita ranks that are congruent, you can see that there are large discrepancies in GDP over/under between the lowest states (Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Arizona) and the highest states (Wyoming, Alaska, Delaware, and Rhode Island). Florida is #4 in overall GDP but #34 in GDP per capita. Wyoming is #48 in overall GDP but #5 in GDP per capita. The lower states seem to be under-contributing to the national economy.

So how does a state like Michigan or Arizona increase its GDP per capita? Well, in today’s day and age, I think these states need to follow the lead of West Virginia (over/under of -9). West Virginia is making strategic, long-term investments in 21st century skills initiatives for its schools. To its credit, it sees that a focus on digital technologies and preparation of a globally-competitive workforce is the best solution for an anemic state economy. It’s probably no coincidence that five of the first six states to join up with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (in red on the spreadsheet) have neutral or negative GDP over/under ratios.

I don’t know if all of this would make sense to an economist, much less a ‘shocking’ one, but it sits well intuitively with me. Although the video points out that our system has worked well for us to date, it also is true that our world is transforming itself in revolutionary ways. Don’t we want our state educational systems to be proactive rather than resting on their laurels and one day waking up to find that their economic models no longer work?

Youth violence and electronic media

This arrived in my e-mail inbox yesterday:

CDC REVIEW OF ELECTRONIC MEDIA AND YOUTH VIOLENCE
Research Shows Increase in Electronic Aggression

In September 2006, experts from academic institutions, federal agencies, and nonprofit organizations gathered at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, to better understand the varied ways new media technology – blogs, instant messaging, chat rooms, email, text messaging and the Internet – influences youth aggression. The two-day meeting, "Electronic Media and Youth Violence," was held to review current research and to discuss the implications for youth, parents, school staff, and educational policymakers. Data from the review show although rates of electronic aggression are lower than rates of physical and verbal aggression, these rates seem to be increasing. In 2000, 6 percent of internet users ages 10 to 17 said they had been subjected to online harassment; by 2005, the percentage had risen to 9 percent – an increase of 50 percent. 

The complete review can found in the December 2007 supplement of the Journal of Adolescent Health. To access a complete copy of the Journal and the supporting issue briefs, which summarize the research and discuss the implications of these findings for youth, parents, school staff, and educational policy makers, please visit www.cdc.gov/injury.

A few thoughts…

1. Most parents probably don’t do near enough at home to teach and monitor children’s appropriate usage of electronic communication tools. We know that schools and religious institutions don’t when kids are with them. So why should we be surprised that some children and adolescents are using these tools for inappropriate purposes? It’s like Lord of the Flies out there when it comes to adult supervision!
2. The JAH research articles on this topic are impressive. It’s going to take me a while to read through them all. My first scan, however, is that while there seems to be a bevy of top notch, peer-review-quality research there, it’s all on the harmful effects of communication technologies and none on the empowering effects of the same. We need good, data-based information on this topic, but I’d like to see academia provide some counterpoint research on the positive aspects too, not just more fear-driven research. I want to also see a two-day meeting on Electronic Media and Youth Empowerment. We’re not going to back to a tech-less society. Why can’t we get info on both sides of the coin so that we can make intelligent decisions about this stuff?
3. ‘An increase of 50 percent’ sounds ominous. An actual rise from 6 percent to 9 percent doesn’t. Presentation makes all the difference.
4. The policy implications from the expert panel crack me up. Essentially the panel said ‘The federal government should do very little. The states should do more. School districts and schools should do the most.’ In other words, they could have just typed the word ‘federalism’ on a piece of paper, handed it in, and gone out for coffee. Nice job, folks!

UCEA 2007 - How national technology policy REALLY gets made

Friday was the first day of sessions at the UCEA convention. CASTLE sponsored a panel discussion on national K-12 educational technology policy, moderated by Drs. Sara Dexter (U. Virginia) and Matt Militello (U. Massachusetts-Amherst).

 Listen to the podcast! (73.9 Mb, 81 minutes)

Panelists

• Hilary Goldman, Director of Government Affairs, ISTE
• Dr. Mary Ann Wolf, Executive Director, SETDA
• Doug Levin, Senior Director of Education Policy, Cable in the Classroom

Some main themes

• In the mid– to late 1990s, there were LOTS of national funding initiatives aimed at K-12 ed tech – all were replaced by EETT, which is much smaller and more limited – today, EETT has declined from over $700 million to $272 million – in the past, the Bush administration has even attempted to zero out the EETT budget – Congress has saved the program but at increasingly lower levels
• There is a perception that the job is done
• Teachers have not been trained how to use technology to improve student learning outcomes
• Educators are moving slow – lots of missed opportunities – extremely incremental change in a revolutionary environment
• TPCK model – preservice teachers should not take separate ed tech classes – should be integrated with content-specific methods courses
• We are finally starting to get research that is helpful for policy purposes – for example, the eMints program in Missouri and other states
• The amount of education that people need is astounding – state and federal policymakers, education associations, the public – they make major assumptions about what is happening that just aren’t true
• Example: because nearly all schools are wired, people truly think that means that all kids have access to the Internet – far from being true – only buildings and teacher computers are wired – every student is NOT wired and connected
• Example: lots of money has been poured into student information systems – as a result, people think that teachers are getting data that informs their day-to-day instructional practice – again, this is far from true – in most districts, the data that are in these systems are not that granular
• You have to use sexy vocabulary – the terms of art – that capture policymakers’ attention – right now it is global competitiveness
• High school reform and other change efforts – technology is not specifically articulated as a component – it thus gets lost or left out
• Ed tech policy is still fairly immature - we’re in our tweens
• Groups like NEA, AFT, NSBA, AASA, NASSP, and NAESP are not knowledgeable about technology – they advocate for Title I, IDEA - they don’t advocate for ed tech
• The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is trying to change the conversation rather than trying to figure out how to fit ed tech into existing paradigms / models / laws - this is a real herky-jerky process
• There is not, and has not been, a systemic long-term research agenda, funded by policymakers, to answer key research questions about K-12 educational technology
• What kind of research is needed to further the cause of K-12 educational technology?
• Most education academics are naive about how policy gets made – don’t really understand the policy process – much educational research is not pertinent or helpful to policy conversations and the questions that are being asked by policymakers - we have to remember that ed tech is only one voice of many
• ETAN – www.edtechactionnetwork.org – you don’t have to get to DC – can plug in your e-mail and zip code and get resources and information – just 12 letters can make a difference – meeting in local offices back home also make an impact – asking questions at local town halls sponsored by legislators
• We were blessed in the 1990s with the folks that were in the U.S. Department of Education (US DOE) – there are lots of places where this can break down – there are not strong advocates there today – one place to focus advocacy efforts is the US DOE, not just legislators
• Why has school leadership been left out of the ed tech policy conversation and policy efforts? – historically, efforts were focused on affecting the classroom, not on changing the system – promising levers appear to be 21st century skills, data-driven decision-making, and cybersafety
• We could draft Title II legislation around professional development for administrators regarding technology leadership

[left to right: Sara Dexter, Matt Militello, Hilary Goldman, Mary Ann Wolf, Doug Levin]

Violent video games as exemplary teachers of aggression

Iowa State University researcher Dr. Doug Gentile studied 2,500 children and adolescents and found that violent video games do indeed foster hostile actions and aggressive behaviors. Here's the money quote:

We know a lot about how to be an effective teacher, and we know a lot about how to use technology to teach. Video games use many of these techniques and are highly effective teachers. So we shouldn't be surprised that violent video games can teach aggression.

Get the full story at the ISU News Service.

Route 21 and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

At the SETDA Leadership Summit and Education Forum, we’ve been talking a lot about 21st century skills, so I thought it might be helpful to highlight some of the work that the Partnership for 21st Century Skills has been doing.

The Partnership has been quite busy lately. In October, it announced new poll results that showed that a significant majority of voters ‘are deeply concerned that the United States is not preparing young people with the skills they need to compete in the global economy.’ Here’s an excerpt from the full report:

As I noted on my blog earlier this week, on Monday the Partnership, SETDA, and ISTE released a paper on maximizing the impact of digital technologies for 21st century learning. The document contains examples of successful programs that can be used as models, guiding questions for stakeholders, and action principles for moving forward. Plus there’s also this great (if depressing) quote:

No industry or organization can remain competitive today without making comprehensive use of technology as a matter of course in all of its operations. . . . [E]ducation is the least technology-intensive enterprise in a ranking of technology use among 55 U.S. industry sectors, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Today the Partnership released a new resource, Route 21:

[Route 21] represents the first comprehensive, go-to online resource for high-quality content, best practices, relevant reports, articles and research to assist practitioners in implementing 21st century teaching practices and learning outcomes. Route 21 harnesses Web 2.0 features to allow users to tag, rank, organize, collect and share Route 21 content based on their personal interests. Individuals will continuously update the site with relevant examples as well as share their reactions and insights on implementing 21st century skills in their state, district or school.

You can read the press release, watch the 10–minute video, or dive right into the resources and tagging tools:

Also, for those of you who didn’t know, the Partnership recently updated its famous rainbow framework in order to better highlight essential supporting conditions:

[read more about the framework]

In addition to the resources already described, the Partnership has a number of useful reports, issue briefs, and literacy maps, the latter of which are intended to give some examples of 21st century literacies in practice. Many of the Partnership’s presentations are available online, as are some nifty tools for educators and policymakers.

In short, the Partnership is working hard to help us move our nation’s schools forward. There are numerous helpful resources on the Partnership’s main site and in Route 21. I encourage you to check out what the Partnership has to offer.

SETDA - Maximizing the impact (take the survey!)

SETDA, ISTE, and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills released a document last night called Maximizing the impact: The pivotal role of technology in a 21st century education system.

Take this survey and see how you’re doing on the ‘Guiding Questions for Stakeholders.’ Due date = November 14. I’ll publish the results on November 16.

Two from The Daily Yonder

Rural School Enrollments: Diverse and Rising

After years of shrinking enrollments, rural school populations are on the rise. Minority students and English Language Learners account for a high proportion of the increase, and many of the poorest and poorest prepared children are entering classrooms in states with the fewest resources to teach them. . . . In the school year 2003-2004, nearly a half of all English Language Learners (ELL) were enrolled in rural schools.

Poor People are Moving to Already Poor, Rural Communities

There is a growing body of evidence that rural communities are poor because poor people are moving there.

2007 recipients of the Technology Leadership Research Award

It is my great pleasure to announce that Dr. Chris Gareis and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach are the recipients of the 2007 Technology Leadership Research Award. Here is the abstract from their co-authored article, Electronically Mentoring to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers:

With nearly half of all new teachers leaving the classroom within five years, schools are faced with the challenge of retaining early-career teachers while simultaneously providing them with the support they need to develop into effective professionals. Mentoring novice teachers by pairing them with experienced teachers in schools is a widely adopted practice for addressing these needs; however, face-to-face mentoring is subject to challenges. A promising complement to face-to-face mentoring may be found in the innovative use of computer-mediated communications, such as online forums. In an effort to support, develop, and retain novice teachers, The College of William and Mary has partnered with the Center for Teacher Quality to create ENDAPT – Electronically Networking to Develop Accomplished Professional Teachers. ENDAPT is an asynchronous online forum that brings together novice teachers and teacher leaders in a virtual mentoring community. This article provides an overview of the program model and presents research findings from a study of participants' postings using content analysis methodology to identify and describe the nature of professional conversations among mentors and novice teachers.

Although we can’t share the actual article with you (because it’s currently under review by a journal), Chris and Sheryl will be giving a presentation on their paper at the UCEA conference in November which we will try to make available to folks.

I would like to publicly thank the other practitioners and academics who took the time out of their extremely busy schedules to participate in the anonymous review process this year:

• Kurt Bernardo, Technology Coordinator, Orange City (OH) Schools; 2005 Ohio Technology Coordinator of the Year
• Dr. Jim Morrison, Editor-in-Chief, Innovate
• Dr. Chris Sessums, Director of Distance Education, University of Florida College of Education; Best Individual Blog, 2006 Edublog Awards
• Dr. Jon Voss, Coordinator, Northern Star Online (MN) Schooling Collaborative

The Technology Leadership Research Award is jointly sponsored by CASTLE and the UCEA School Technology Leadership Special Interest Group.

Kudos to Chris and Sheryl. I'm looking forward to the submissions for next year!

Linked

[cross-posted at the TechLearning blog]

Two weeks ago I reported on my second effort to catalog the edublogosphere, to put some shape and form to the amorphous network, to try and measure the largely unmeasurable. Some of my blogging colleagues raised various concerns and objections. Here’s my take…

1. As is described quite clearly (and eloquently) in Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, the Internet and the education blogosphere are both examples of complex, self-organizing networks. As such, they have multiple hubs of varying sizes, each connected to each other and to multiple individual nodes (i.e., blogs and web sites). [click on image for larger version]
   
   Some hubs are connected to thousands of other hubs and nodes; we might call these superhubs (e.g., A-D). Other hubs (e.g., E-H) are connected to less than a dozen nodes. The key here is that many nodes never would come into contact each other except for the hubs. For example, edublogger 1 only finds out about edublogger 2 because edublogger A highlighted and linked to something edublogger B wrote about edublogger 2’s post.
2. The hubs and superhubs are the essential connectors, the glue that holds the network together. For example, if edublogger 2 quits blogging, the only one that loses access to that voice is edublogger B. If edublogger C stops blogging, however, the rest of the network not only loses access to that person’s voice, it also loses access to the voices of those edubloggers to which only C linked. If edublogger A quits blogging, the network loses access to edubloggers E and F as well as all of the individual edubloggers to which only they were connected (at least until those nodes get reconnected to other hubs). The process is all very fluid, shifting and changing with each hyperlink.
3. There are advantages to being first, but over time quality wins out. One of the reasons that edubloggers like Will Richardson and David Warlick are superhubs is because they were some of the first ones in the education blogosphere. They had first-mover advantage and have had time to build up their audience compared to the new edublogger who started yesterday. That said, over time their advantage begins to diminish as others enter the network. If Will and David’s posts didn’t continue to be of high quality, people would link to other bloggers instead and Will and David’s audiences would dwindle. Hubs and superhubs must have ‘sticky’ content in order to retain their roles in the network. It’s a testimony to many of the top edubloggers that they’ve been able to be consistently good, as defined by their audiences, for a long period of time.
4. If you are interested in making change, the hubs and superhubs have important roles to play. Why? Because they’re the ones with the ability to reach many. They’re also the ones with the ability to bring important ideas generated out on the fringes of the network into the mainstream center of the network.

So, in response to some of the objections…

• It’s not just an issue of ‘popularity.’ Because we voluntarily visit / subscribe to blogs, content wins out over superficiality in the end. High-ranking blogs are there because others value their voices. You may not think an individual blogger is interesting, but others often do in large numbers. So Terry Freedman says, “Quality not quantity.” And Vicki Davis says “meaningful” is more important than “popular.” But as item 3 above notes, these supposed dichotomies actually are conflated.
• I see knowledge and identification of the hubs and superhubs as important for facilitating change. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach advocates focusing on impact, not just ranking. To me, impact and ranking tend to blur since I think about large-scale, comprehensive reform of schools, not just localized change. Most of us are change agents – whether our agenda is K-12 technology, home schooling, back-to-basics education, or whatever – but it’s hard to make change when no one is listening. If I want to influence the educational technology arena, I need to catch the attention of folks like Will and David and Sheryl and Terry and Vicki and also be able to point educators to them. If I want to influence the homeschooling arena, I need to catch the eye of SpunkyHomeSchool. And so, again, I believe that impact and ranking are somewhat intertwined.
• Each of us has our own reason(s) for blogging, and of course we always must respect those. I would never presume to either guess others’ reasons or judge the legitimacy of those motivations.
• Maybe it’s the academic in me, but I think there is worth in someone doing a systematic study of the education blogosphere. It doesn’t have to be me, but someone ought to be able to cite some basic statistics about what’s going on. For example, those of us who advocate educational blogging gain legitimacy from the fact that we know that there are 50,000+ education blogs rather than just a few hundred. In other words, we have the numbers to show that educational blogging is not a fad; whatever form it takes down the road, it’s here to stay. I also don’t know how else to identify the hubs and superhubs other than to do what we did. Although we may have missed some blogs with smaller audiences, I’m fairly confident that we got all the big ones (maybe not in the right ranking order).
• I personally feel that there is no better way to recognize and honor voice than to share new and powerful voices with others. When I see interesting, illuminating writing, I want to share that with others and to do my part to help those writers gain large audiences. Sheryl said “What is important is giving our students and teachers ‘voice.’ We need to focus on helping them develop as communicators and writers, not rankers, so they have a place at the policy table and can help to leave this world better than we found it.” I concur, but I disagree that ranking is unimportant. If we want students and educators to ‘have a place at the policy table,’ the inherent nature of a complex, self-organizing network almost demands that those folks become a hub or superhub in order to gain the attention of policymakers. Policymakers rarely, if ever, listen to folks who represent small constituencies, so the larger the audience we can give powerful bloggers, the better.
• I could have listed just the top few dozen edubloggers in my results, but I didn’t. Instead, I included every single URL that we found so that others could find new voices and bring them to the attention of the hubs and superhubs. I will continue to do this and encourage others to do the same. Indeed, illustrating that perhaps I was deeper in the ‘echo chamber than I suspected, I found some new hubs and superhubs that I didn’t even know existed (for example, how many ed tech bloggers knew about The Panda’s Thumb or Classical School Blog or that they were reaching large audiences?).
• Terry is right: Technorati has many issues. But until someone points me to something better, that’s the best I have. I, too, am somewhat confused by the different rankings that occur when different URLs are used for the same blog, but I don’t know what to do other than to provide an online form that people can use to fix or include their URL for next time.

So with all due respect, Vicki, Sheryl, and Terry, I understand and respect your perspectives but I don’t share them, at least not on this front. As always, I appreciate everyone’s input and welcome further suggestions for how to improve this ongoing project. Many thanks…