ASCD Inservice

NAEP Drafts Tech-Literacy Exam Framework

Last week NAEP released a discussion draft of their framework for a national assessment of technological literacy, a computer-based test to be given to a sample of students in 4th, 8th, and 12th grades in 2012.

The draft defines technology and technological literacy broadly, with the latter being "the capability to use, understand, and evaluate technology as well as to apply technological concepts and processes to solve problems and reach one's goals." Assessment targets will be divided into three major areas of technological literacy: Technology and Society (p. 44), Design and Systems (p.57), and Information and Communication Technology (p. 70). Turn to page 94 for the kinds of practices that articulate the thinking and reasoning used to respond to assessments across these three targets.

This 2012 test would be NAEP's first assessment of technological literacy, and framework authors acknowledge the challenges to getting it right (see page 34 in the draft). Limited time, resources, and the scope of what skills can be measured, not to mention trying to predict and assess future technological innovations, are some of the big hurdles.

Like other NAEP assessments, the test will evaluate technological literacy in the context of relevant social issues (see p.85). Some (see Stephen Krashen's comment on the EdWeek article) wonder how NAEP developers will keep pace with changing technology, not just new tools but unforseen contexts.

What do you think about this draft or the undertaking in general? 

Mailbag: Media Specialist as Coteacher

We love feedback, especially the kind we can learn from. A recent issue of the e-newsletter ASCD Express on the theme "The Transformational Media Center," prompted this response from Library Media Specialist Ava Biffer of Nathan Hale-Ray Middle School in Moodus, Conn.:

I'm delighted to see the articles on librarianship in today's schools. You provide excellent information which will assist my effort to constantly evaluate and improve my program.

I'm disappointed, however, in the "well-crafted" assessment document (referenced in the last bullet point of this article). It is absolutely true that the evaluative documents most of us have in place are geared toward a teacher in a traditional classroom, not a library. However, the document you cite would not meet the standards in my state.

We are moving beyond the concept of having a library curriculum and teaching lessons on discrete skills. Rather than the old methodology of teacher librarians teaching stand-alone lessons, we are embracing the concepts of co-teaching, integration, and cooperation--precisely the instruction addressed by the other portions of this ASCD Express issue. The Connecticut Department of Education's Information and Technology Literacy Framework is a document worth sharing with others, as it encompasses the guidelines of both Information Power and the ISTE standards. I would particularly call page four to your attention. It's an excellent explication of the optimum melding of the library with the greater learning community of the school.

Thank you for providing excellent information to discuss in continuing conversations with my principal and at Curriculum Council meetings.
 
How are media specialists and other teachers collaborating at your school?

Got something to share with the ASCD community? Whether it's a response to something we've published or something entirely new, e-mail us and let us know.

"The Best Resource for Me Is Other Teachers"

Today we learn from other people’s focus groups. Specifically WGBH Educational Foundation's study on how to enhance the social media functions of Teachers' Domain, a free online library of multimedia materials supporting K–12 instruction. Teachers' Domain is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Researchers asked two main questions to understand how to better support professional networking on Teachers' Domain:

1. How do teachers use social media tools in professional contexts, and for what purposes?
2. How are teachers likely to use social media tools in the near future?

#1: How and Why Teachers Use Social Media Professionally

Researchers found the typical range of social media tool use among the teachers they surveyed. Everyone from teachers like my dad, who prints out my e-mails to him and waits to respond to me in person, to Vicki Davis, who uses wikis, blogs, Twitter, Ustream, and so forth to create and share curriculum resources.

While the Vicki Davis group may be small when compared to the overall teaching population, researchers noted that these teachers have a big influence on the habits of other teachers. They are establishing online professional networks within their schools and beyond.

Also not much of a surprise, focus group participants envisioned three main purposes for social media use:

• Finding appropriate rich media resources, activity ideas, and lesson plans more efficiently.

• Learning from and communicating with other educators.

• Storing, organizing, adapting, and sharing rich media resources and related materials in one place.

Researchers found, in general, that teachers tended to be passive users of professional social networking tools. Some reasons:

Project Natal Thinking Inside the XBox

Think Facebook offers students endless way to connect with each other? Just wait until you see Project Natal, which Microsoft unveiled at the E3 Expo recently. The brainiacs at Microsoft appear to be swinging for the fences (and are apparently huge fans of Minority Report) with this new technology that essentially is hands-free and voice activated. Project Natal, which will be compatible with the XBox 360 gaming system, allows users to play video games without controllers, connect with friends on live video feeds on the internet, and, well, the possibilities aren't even fully realized yet. Plus, if Steven Spielberg is excited, then you know it is something big.

Already there has been buzz on blogs about the possibilities for medical students using it to simulate surgeries. If the technology can be used by doctors, then why not educators? First up, it is an excellent way for students to network with each other in this already social network-driven society. For students who cannot make it into the classroom or for long-distance learning, educators can connect and give lessons via the video feed. 

Professional development webinars and conferences can be conducted from the comfort of an educator's living room. And for those who support integrating video games and simulations into the classroom, it appears your argument just got stronger. With the limited amount of information Microsoft has released about Project Natal, it is hard to even fathom what can be done using the technology, but it may be wonderful for students and educators alike. Plus, when you're done with the education part, you don't even have to move to jump into a game of Halo.

What ways do you think Project Natal can be used for educational purposes?

Web Patrol

Kids aren't always aware that what they post on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter might carry consequences in the offline world. Recently, law enforcement has used social networking sites to scan kids' profiles for incriminating information and to prevent future crimes. Officers say they have arrested gang members and avoided looming fights using information from social networking sites, but many students and parents feel it is a violation of their privacy.

"It's outside of school," high school senior Sarah Steinberg told the Washington Post, "and I just don't think it should be part of the school's job to do that."

In an age where social networking sites offer the option to privatize an individual's own page and when even prospective professional athletes are being scrutinized because of their Internet activities:

Do you think authorities are overstepping their boundaries by monitoring students' Web pages? Perhaps we should, instead, teach students to be responsible community members on- and offline (like this kid, who saved her Facebook friend's life)?

Closing the Bandwidth Gap: HashCache

First there was the XO, the $100 laptop, bringing affordable computer technology to students around the world, particularly developing nations. Now there's HashCache, a technology that aims to solve what many in education claim as the real problem with access to information tech—the bandwidth gap.

Developed by a team led by Princeton's Vivek Pai, HashCache allows computers to store Web sites on their hard drives (offline) so that they don't have to tie up bandwidth.Typically, to cache a large amount of information from the Internet, computers would need large amounts of random-access memory (RAM) and hard disk space, but HashCache eliminates those needs. The users of this technology will also cut down on energy consumption, which is also often scarce in developing nations.

Watch Vivek Pai demo HashCache.

Many of the universities in poorer countries have very limited access to the Internet, and Pai sees his technology as a solution to this problem. Old and new computers can easily store information from the Web, free up bandwidth, and allow students access to a wealth of information. 

PD In Focus Named a Go-To Site

Education Week's technology trends magazine, Digital Directions, recently picked ASCD’s PD In Focus™ web platform as a “Go-To Site” for ed-tech leaders and educators. PD In Focus provides searchable, streaming video content of research-based teaching practices organized into four themed channels (Best Practices in Action, Differentiated Instruction, English Language Learners, and Literacy Strategies) and draws from the best of ASCD’s rich professional development library.

PD In Focus debuted at last month's Annual Conference, where several educators got a chance to test out the technology. “I’ve picked up some real skills,” said Barry White, an elementary school principal from Kansas City, Mo. “Now I realize that professional development doesn’t have to be just person-to-person.”

How would you use PD In Focus for your professional learning?

The e-Learning Expansion

Education Week’s Technology Counts 2009 report, Breaking Away from Tradition, was released last week. The report focuses on how online learning has evolved over the past few years, and how it has expanded opportunities for raising student achievement.

Here are some highlights. 

• Growth: The number of K-12 public school students using online courses increased to more than a million during the 2007-08 school year, a 47 percent increase from 2005-06.
• Online for all: Virtual learning is no longer just for advanced students who have the self-discipline to learn on their own or who want to pursue difficult courses that aren’t offered at their schools. Online education is increasingly being used by struggling students.
• Credit recovery: One of the biggest growth areas in online education has been in credit recovery, which is for students who have failed or not completed a course needed for graduation. A 2008 study by Evergreen Consulting Associates found that more U.S. students are now using online courses for credit recovery than for advanced placement classes.  
• State investment: Twenty-nine states have established or financed at least one virtual school, up from 25 in the 2007-08 school year.
• Barriers: The existence of poor-quality online curricula, uncertainly about how best to train and evaluate virtual teachers, and the importance of face-to-face interactions between teachers and students are potential barriers to the growth and success of online learning.

The report also graded the states on their use of technology and their capacity to use technology. The full report is available online and Edweek will host a live chat this Friday on the e-learning lessons K-12 can take away from higher ed. 

How does your school, state, or district use online learning? In your experience, has e-learning grown in recent years?

Worlds Apart, Skype Brings Teachers and Students Together

Ten years ago, Sugata Mitra set up a computer with an Internet connection in an Indian slum as an experiment. His experiment paid off. With the Internet access, children in the slum taught themselves how to become computer literate and even learned some English.

Mitra, a college professor in the U.K., recently began another experiment—using Skype to connect to classrooms in another Indian slum. Skype, a service that allows users to see each other and talk for free via the Internet, allows Mitra to teach a class in a very remote part of India to students with limited access to learning because of their location and socioeconomic status. Mitra hopes other educators will soon jump on board and use Skype to teach kids with limited or no access to quality education.

Do you think online learning opportunities will be fundamental in closing the achievement gap for students living in remote or impoverished areas?

PrezQuest Teaches Younger Students About U.S. Presidents

With the excitement and interest surrounding the election and inauguration of President Barack Obama, the recently launched free, interactive Web site PrezQuest may be a good way to keep young people interested in the history of U.S. presidents.

Bookmark This!: Fireside Chats to YouTube

Jay Mathews's recent column in the Washington Post, "Most Textbooks Should Just Stay on the Shelf," elicits opinions from educators and publishers on the continued relevance of the traditional textbook. He ultimately concludes that "like the newspapers that have been my life, textbooks are creeping slowly toward obsolescence," with a variety of new media such as podcasts and electronic books gaining prominence.

The good news for educators looking to introduce engaging documents and media into instruction is the flood of free and fascinating material being made available online. Google has begun adding cover-to-cover magazine archives to their Book Search; this effort now includes such titles as Popular Science, New York Magazine, and Ebony.

Another excellent resource I recently discovered is an extensive (though not complete) archive of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "fireside chats" to the nation, from between 1933 and 1945. The chats can be streamed and downloaded from the Internet Archive. These are especially intriguing in light of President-elect Obama's now giving weekly addresses to the nation via YouTube, as he faces international and financial challenges that invite comparison to those during FDR's tenure.

Which online documents have engaged your students?

Following Grades Like the Stock Market

The days of parents being in the dark about their children's grades until report cards come out may be over. Numerous schools have started posting grades online so that both parents and students can check them with a few clicks of a mouse. These online "grade books" allow users to receive e-mail alerts when grades are posted; calculate what grade a student needs to get on a future project to achieve a certain overall grade; and, perhaps most important, track their children's progress and intervene if one is struggling.

Most teachers said they used to post grades online every couple of weeks, but demand from parents has gotten so high that the sites are updated at least weekly. "You can get a little obsessive about it," said one parent.

Do you think grades will improve if parents have access to them 24/7 online?

Disrupting Education

Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Chester E. Finn Jr. discussed disruptive innovation in education at the American Enterprise Institute on October 27. Despite the negative-sounding theme, their discussion wasn't about wrecking the educational system; rather, they discussed how to improve it.

Horn pointed to the theory of multiple intelligences as a reason students struggle to learn in a standardized setting. He argued students learn better in a customized setting where they can learn at their own pace and through methods that work for each individual.

One talking point that the panel continuously debated was the idea of virtual learning—where high school students take online courses but are not necessarily in a traditional classroom with a teacher. Having a virtual school would allow students to take the courses they want and learn in their own manner, and because of the low cost of the "schools," more money could be spent on other educational priorities. By 2019, Christensen and Horn think 50 percent of high school courses will be online. Finn challenged this opinion, saying teachers and teacher unions are too powerful to let their job security be threatened.

Do you think virtual schools would be a positive disruption to education's status quo?

Futuristic Desks Becoming a Reality

Walk into any classroom, and chances are you'll see identical wooden desks and a teacher writing math problems on a whiteboard. A British company wants to make the typical classroom obsolete by making their interactive, touchscreen desk the norm in the classroom. The networked desks link students and teachers together, allowing peer-to-peer collaboration on shared screens and giving teachers instant access to student work via a screen that will replace the whiteboard in the front of the classroom.

Supporters see a multitude of possibilities for learning with the "Star Trek" desks and envision them being used across the world within 10 years.

Pen, Paper, Bookbag ... iPhone?

Can smartphones be the future of education? Some schools seem to think so, and colleges across the country are handing out iPhone 3Gs to students as an educational tool. For years, cell phones were frowned upon in classrooms as a potential distraction and, possibly, tool for cheating. Now some experts see them as an invaluable tool that may replace computers one day. Smartphones have access to e-mail and the Internet, and educators are using them to relay information to the palms of their students' hands—sending class schedules, podcasts, and other information. Students may soon be taking quizzes, reading assigned texts, and registering for classes on their phones instead of lugging around backpacks filled with books, papers, and laptops.

Do you think cell phones are a valid educational tool? What might be the benefits and problems of using cell phones in classrooms?