Lightning in a Bottle

After what seems like decades, Texas Instruments has announced a new line of calculators that leap to a new level of technological power. Called TI-Nspire, the new devices sport larger, higher-resolutions screens, and much more powerful software for exploring math concepts.

Graphing calculators are an interesting study in educational technology. Even though they are really small computers, in most districts they don’t seem to be considered part of the technology infrastructure - they’re math teaching tools, managed by the math staff. They’ve also been a technology that was fairly static, even as computers evolved at a rapid pace, graphing calculators just sort of ambled along, safe, secure, and effective in their little niche.

TI did two very intelligent things with this new lline of calculators. First, they will release computer software that works exactly like the calculators do (for Windows and Macs - yay!). While there have been software emulators for calculators before for teachers to use in demonstrations, this is standalone software for students to use either instead of the calculator, or in conjunction with it. It looks pretty slick.

The second thing they did is really, really smart. If you spend time around math teachers, you’ll find out that a lot of curriculum is built around the TI calculator line. No matter how powerful the new devices are, there is the inertia of the pre-existing instructional materials that use the older devices. Recognizing this, TI designed the new devices so that you can swap out the new keyboards and replace them with keyboards that match the older calculators. That’s understanding your customers!

I was distressed over the last couple of weeks to watch one of my favorite blogs (which I have referred to here in the past) basically shut down. Kathy Sierra has written Creating Passionate Users, a blog that covered business practices, customer service, adult learning, and a wide variety of related topics. She writes in an engaging way, and pulls together a variety of resources and blends them together into clear, concise, and easily understood commentaries.

Sadly, as of two weeks ago, she has stopped public speaking engagements and blogging. She became the target of such intense online harassment that she could no longer tolerate it. I won’t discuss in even vague detail the kinds of threats and vulgar material she was subjected to, but it was the kind of thing that no person should ever have to deal with.

As depressed as I am about Kathy’s decision (I spoke of her blog so often around the office that I have been accused of having a crush on her), I was even more depressed by the responses posted in some of the many online discussions about her situation. While the huge majority of people were in complete agreement with her concerns, there was a very small but very vocal minority that seemed to think she was a crybaby who was just looking for attention, and if she couldn’t handle the stress she was just a wimp and good riddance.

I refuse to accept that in the online world, which holds so much promise, must be reduced to the lowest common denominator, where the most vulgar voice in the room defines the level of discussion.

The only good thing to come out of this mess is that Kathy’s choice to go public with her situation has created an enormous amount of awareness, and has resulted in many people examining this kind of online behavior. The New York Times has an article about a new code of ethics for bloggers. I think it’s a great idea. Some people think that having a cultural norm for civil, respectful discussion is a form of censorship, but as Tim O’Reilly points out in the article,

?That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make ? believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,? he said. ?Free speech is enhanced by civility.?

Harassment is a form of censorship, too. How many other voices such as Kathy’s have been silenced by threatening, boorish behavior?

Karl Nelson of the Digital Learning Commons sent me an email after my last entry with some thoughts on the topic of online tutoring. DLC has several years experience now in working with districts, schools, and students using online learning here in Washington state, and I thought his observations were worth sharing.

On tutoring programs:

I think the real power with these online tutoring programs (and I’d
class the ones that the DLC offers, Apex’s ClassTools and Internet
Academy’s ALPs, in with this category) is in the ability to personalize
and individualize. This gets especially interesting when you’re
combining that with in-person help from a teacher. I think it can let
the teacher focus their attention on an individual student or small
group while the rest can continue learning at their own pace.

We’ve had a number of good comments about people using products like
this. See, for example:
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2007/03/coupeville.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2006/09/wasl_math_prep.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2006/04/west_seattle_hi.php

On AP courses:

Over the first three years of the DLC, 12% of online courses were at the
AP level. Looks like our stats for this year, as of a few months ago,
are about the same. So, maybe we haven’t seen a “rapid increase”, but
they are popular.

I think online AP courses are really compelling because lots of schools
just can’t offer them otherwise. Think rural and remote schools who
can’t find teachers (or money, or enough students, etc). Even more
urban schools often have priorities in other places (math WASL,
anyone?), so they can’t offer AP. Online courses are a fairly easy way
to give students the option to take courses. Our evaluations of online
courses show that the biggest reason people take courses is that a given
course simply isn’t available at the school — over 3/4 of courses are
taken for that reason.

While I’d agree that online learning might not work for everyone, we
think a *huge* factor is the support structure. Pretty clearly, just
putting a student in a course and telling them “good luck” isn’t going
to cut it. So, a school needs to set up a real support structure for
students in online courses. The good news is that the staff supporting
the students don’t necessarily need to be subject-matter experts in
order to support a student in a course (that’s what the online teacher
is for). Check out the DLC best practices page if you’re interested in
what we tell schools to do:
http://www.learningcommons.org/educators/cs/best_practices/
Or, check out some course-focused success stories:
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2007/01/courses.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2006/05/white_salmon.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2005/11/juanita.php
http://www.learningcommons.org/about/stories/2005/03/profile_on_liz.php

I think what Karl points out in the last paragraph is key. Early in the history of online learning, that subset of kids who could be successful were the same kinds of kids who could learn effectively through book-based self study. As we’ve expanded online learning and had more experience, practitioners have become more aware of and more effective in addressing the needs of the normal, average learner who still needs facilitation, encouragement, and an occasional pointed reminder to keep on task. It’s great that the state has continued to support programs such as the DLC where that kind of expertise can be developed and shared with other educators exploring online learning.

There are two interesting articles in Edweek today. The first one looks at individualize tutoring programs such as Cognitive Tutor, and the positive results that schools are seeing. It’s hard for old tech dawgs like me to get past the historic aversion to drill-and-practice software, but the reality is that in the 28 years I’ve been at this (gad!), computers have increased in power by a factor of six or seven orders of magnitude. We really do have the ability to create intelligent tutoring software that can monitor and adjust to the individual student in ways that a live teacher hasn’t the time to do. One of the newer programs discussed in the article literally watches the body language of the student - now that’s impressive/scary! And remember, this is what we can do with today’s technology. What will we see in another ten years, when computers are roughly 200 times the power of today’s devices?

The second article is about the rapid increase in participation in online AP courses. For instance, Apex has seen an almost 4-fold increase in course registration in three years. Similar increases are reported from other providers. There appear to be several factors driving this trend - AP course are all the rage right now (I almost used the word fad, but there is actual research that correlates AP course participation with improved success in college), school and home connectivity has improved quite dramatically in the last few years, and acceptance of online learning (and the awareness of parents that it’s an option) have increased as well.

It seems pretty clear that online learning doesn’t work for everyone. The experience of almost all online schools is that successful students need to be self-motivated and focused. Is this an immutable aspect of online learning, though, or a limitation of how we currently construct it? Will we figure out over time how to build systems and online interactions that will increase the success of other students? It would be troubling if we create a powerful system of learning that benefits only a subset of our students, especially when for courses such as AP, the online version is the only one available.