Tag Archives: education

Ideas and Guidelines for Interactivity and Using Technology in Teaching

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The readings this week challenged us to think about ways to design assignments using technology in ways that are interactive, reflective, discursive, and socially oriented. In considering ways to incorporate technology into the classroom, it is above all important not to lose sight of the people who are supposed to benefit from being a part of the classroom. Not to be used as a mechanism for transmitting information, technology in the classroom rather serves as means of supporting learning through collaboration, communication, sharing of ideas, fostering a community.

The examples of final projects from the Macaualay Honors College Encyclopedia show how successful the use of websites can be in the serving as a platform for presenting information from research. A collection of websites under the title “People of New York City” shows various communities within the city, each focusing on the people, culture, and history of a specific neighborhood. In developing the projects, students practiced the skills of ethnography and created the content to show dimensions of the neighborhood. The project is so inherently “people-focused” that the final products appear to be a representation of community itself. While trying to get a sense for the Macaualay Springboard site, it seems also to serve the function of supporting the initial development of different project ideas and to communicate, collect feedback, and generally reflect on the progress of projects. It is essentially a place to bring multiple ideas together.

Though perhaps considered more formal in their presentation, scholarly journals serve a similar purpose. Journals provide salient information to a community who share similar academic or intellectual interests. Online open access journals make the sharing of such information possible, and more recently, have even provided means by which community members can become more involved in the review and editing process. The article about the work of Dr. Adrienne Brundage illustrates this nicely, and shows how assignments can be structured to give students the opportunity to learn about the publishing first-hand and in so doing, learn about what is effective for scientific writing.

In thinking about how to actually orchestrate the interaction within the classroom to teach complex concepts of media, or the learning of any material that could be better facilitated through peer-interaction, Dr. Jade Davis shows how to use a system of “speed dating” to help students generate ideas and come up with a project proposal. Since many technologies can be used to broadcast information widely, it seems now more important than ever to be able to gauge the interests and needs of the community that the knowledge you seek to convey can best serve. This dispersive model of one-to-one collaboration seems like a quick and very engaging activity that allows the students to collect different ideas and settle on the ones that work best for them and their overall project goal. The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy present other assignment and project ideas. While many of the projects are specific to certain subject areas, the way that different games and other forms of media are incorporated into the lesson could be applied across a broad range of disciplines. In looking over the assignments, I became interested in the one proposed by Laura Tabor titled “Pre-Research to Create Exigence for Public Argument Essays,” which seems particularly relevant given that we are in an election year and could stimulate an interest among students the discussions that surround political debates.

In addition to incorporating online resources into the classroom, as we may already know, we can also bring the classroom online. Konieczny discusses the resources and general feasibility of designing lessons using Wikipedia and stresses some of the technicalities of using it as a resource both for teaching writing and about online communities. The article is practically a “how to” for novice users of Wikipedia who aspire to incorporate it into their lessons. Barton also discusses the use of Wikipedia as a tool for teaching and learning, with particular emphasis on how it is a community of users and has certain norms of etiquette to prevent the “tragedy of the commons” or the selfish destruction of the information and the medium.

Motivation

  1. In reflecting on the readings, were there any other common elements that you say pervasive through the different assignments that were presented?
  2. In developing your Wikipedia assignment, did you consider some of the issues that Konieczny and Barton mention in their articles on the online open-access, open-editor encyclopedia? Were there any things that you wish you had considered before planning your assignment? Is there anything that you would change about the assignments at this point?

 

 

Technology, Privacy, and the Future of Education @NYU Steinhardt

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I was able to attend the second half of this event and I thought I might share some points made by the panels.

Natasha Singer, Reporter, The New York Times; Fellow, Data & Society

4K+(?) apps are in use in K-12 education. Three cases of apps she investigated:

  • Reward/penalty system (ClassDojo)
    • The reward / penalties can be arbitrary
  • Attendance app which I forgot the name
    • This app provides an interface to the teacher, who can swipe the names in the class roster to the left (absent) or to the right (tardy; the teacher can input how late the student was). The system will then send a text to the parent.
    • The particular school which uses this app is using it alongside other measures to increase attendance such as mentorship, so it’s not like it’s out of the blue. Still, the question stands of what it means to take out of the equation direct communication to the student (as far as the app is concerned); also, the data points (app usage, attendance, graduation rate) do not show the students’ irritation
  • The third app provides students with micro-scholarships—from 10+ USD to 1000+ USD—which can be obtained by various achievements such as getting an A (or B) in a course, doing some sports or other activities, taking AP courses, etc. If I understood correctly, the app does not actually give money away but rather serves as a calculator which translates a student’s achievement into how much money that achievement might be worth in terms of scholarship.
    • One of the students who gave positive feedback said that the app is nice because it does not try to know anything about their parent’s information.
    • What is the implication of encouraging students through such a direct promise of monetary reward?

Brett Frischmann, Professor, Cardozo Law School

  • Is working on a book on what it means to be human in this technological change (w/ Sellinger)
  • The story of mandatory Fitbit for undergraduate students
    • Criticism ranged from the creepiness of surveillance to privacy issues like the lack of consent. Advocacy was also present, especially the one which noted that this is just an extension of what the school has always been doing (tracking students’ physical status)
    • Looking at this issue as a matter of consent or opt-out (which the school technically did provide), or that the argument that this is not different from the records students were providing to the school for many years, show the limits of the current paradigm.
    • Because it diverts the attention from important issues such as self-reflection, judgement and human involvement – all being dismissed in automatic collection (student’s active decision, autonomy, is not trivial) – students become passive objects in data collection.
    • Surveillance creep works both ways: gradual increase of the surveilling activity, and also of the surveilled people being accustomed to it)
    • It’s not just universities, elementary school programs are being funded

Mitchell Stevens, Associate Professor of Education and Director of Data Policy in the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University

  • The mid-20th century U.S. has built something which became the best higher education system in the world during 25 years or so. Although federal support was crucial in the establishment of research universities, these institutions were also given enough independence to effectively act as non-profit organizations, and assume agency from the “national interest”, although the latter was a big reasoning for providing federal support in the first place.
  • However, recent years are seeing a renegotiation of this cold war era-based relationship towards increased influence of private capital, partly in the form of digital education. In short, business and higher ed are becoming increasingly intimate.
  • This is in a way a continuation of what rich people like Ford, Carnegie and Mellon did in the past: achieving a huge success in their industry by using scientific management and applying the same method in education—something the Gates are doing, for instance.
  • However, as the status of universities as non-profit has been in decline along with the federal system providing capital, the relationship between the government, educational institutions and businesses are changing; governance is yet to be determined.

Elana Zeide, Research Fellow, New York University; Affiliate, Data & Society

  • Importance of local context in setting rules
  • There has been rising attention towards student privacy
  • Typical use of notion ‘privacy’ in lawmaking and parents organization, for example, focus more on the access/disclosure of data, than the usage of it. But the latter is becoming more and more important.
  • Also, in the age of big data, conventional expressions such as limiting something to “educational purposes” do not mean the same thing anymore
    • Ex) think face recognition- not being tagged is not the same level of privacy as before

Q&A, Comments

  • The ubiquity of evaluation and data collection has a substantial impact in people’s behavior; students can become more conforming to the majority’s norm, without even noticing it. Knowing more may not be for the best.
  • The tools may seem neutral, but in practice they incorporate power relations. Also, many tools now equal businesses
  • Formative assessment, summative assessment, credentialing used to be separate things. Now not only is the separation blurred, but also the evaluation is managed by third party for-profits
  • Are there studies on the effect of such classroom technologies on brain development?
  • The “science” of teaching. Pedagogy itself becoming an engineering of the classroom— Need to define what success is in education
  • Automation bias, or the tendency to act as the machine tells people to
  • Education as citizen-making (which according to Stevens is what the U.S. had systemized during the 20C) vs worker-raising
  • The right to be off (disconnected)

Teaching, Learning, Technology & You

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This week we read a range of texts focusing on the issues facing education within a digital context. From the qualitative multi-year study conducted by our very own Prof. Smale, we read about the circumstances that many CUNY students face when confronted with coursework. While indeed many students these days are extremely tech-savvy, in some situations, the availability of technology may not meet the growing need. Further, many students are capable of navigating online resources and doing research using mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, or tablets. Instructors can learn to maximize the utility and availability of these resources by guiding students through searches to find valid resources to contribute to their research and classroom-based activities and discussions. One such initiative to improve the accessibility of resources is the OpenLab at City Tech as described by Rosen and Smale.

 

In terms of online pedagogy, the presentation of instructional materials is an important consideration because it creates a platform for learning. Based on his own experience, Pelz describes three principles based on experience with online learning. The first principle states that “students should do (most of) the work.” Describing different types of online tasks, such as virtual ice-breakers and discussions of online resources, Pelz convincingly shows how online forums can be used to continue a conversation between students about course material and learning outside the confines of the classroom. Principle 2 emphasizes the importance of interactivity in learning and provides examples for creating collaborative writing activities online. Much like GoogleDocs or Social Paper, the advantages of both writing within a quiet space that free of distractions as much as possible combined with the benefits of receiving feedback from peers and instructors can be set-up online. The third and final principle stress the need for presence in online education. Presence, according to Pelz, in an online environment comes in three distinct forms: affective, interactive, and cohesive. Just as disappointing as it is finding a blog that hasn’t been updated in years, seeing that a course site is out of date is probably similarly upsetting to a student who attempts to use it as a means to access resources and communicate with others in the course.

 

While not evident in Pelz’s piece, Ugoretz brings light to a different aspect of online discussion forums in particular, highlighting the creative potential that forums have for generating digressions. Whereas in a classroom setting, the digressions can consume a large amount of class time and may not always be to the benefit of each student, digressions in an online forum can invite all students to participate in the conversation allowing it to err in any direction that the participants see fit. For those who are not interested in the digression, they may contribute to another conversation or create their own. Ugoretz provides some recommendations for setting up productive digressions – for one, by establishing very clear goals for the discussion forum.

 

If anything, access to technology and information has created a meta-space for learning that extends beyond the classroom and as educators and students, we should try to maximize this potential.

 

Motivation: React to one or more of the following

 

In line with the empirical tradition, no significant statistical difference merely indicates that you have failed to demonstrate of an effect of one variable in relation to another. That is to say, that you have not proven a relationship does or does not exist. One can neither really prove nor disprove anything. Occasionally, errors can occur where an effect is not detected and this outcome, known as a Type II error can stem from multiple issues, including faulty experimental design or simply not having sufficient power as a result of a small sample size. With that said, do you believe that there is sufficient reason to call into the question the studies in No Significant Difference?

 

How is the need for the Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age (BRPLDR) self-evident? Who is primarily responsible for ensuring that they are adhered to?

 

What were your reactions to the BRPLDR? If you were to amend the bill, what principle would you include or change?

 

The article by Pelz attempts to establish very concise principles of online learning. Do you think that they are comprehensive enough to lay the foundation for a good online discussion?

 

Digressions in an online setting can beneficial for students, according to Ugoretz, but need to be set-up by the instructor in such a way the objectives of the discussion are clear. In what other ways can an instructor enhance the productivity of a digression by setting it up?

 

React to your own experience in online education.