Lightning in a Bottle

My technology explorations over the last few weeks have been in the world of the small. I’ve been using an iPod Touch and an Asus EeePC. The iPod Touch looks just like an iPhone, and whenever I pull it out everyone is somewhat disappointed to find that it isn’t. However, it will hook up to the wireless network in my home and office without a hitch, and I can browse just about any website I want at speeds close to laptop speed. Yes, it’s a small screen, but it has incredibly crisp resolution and can zoom in and out quickly and easily. I wouldn’t permanently replace my laptop with it, but it’s amazing to be able to pull a web browser out of my pocket for a trip quick to Google.

The EeePc (which I pronounce “e pc” because it gets really tiring to say “e e e pc” all the time) weighs two pounds and has a slightly smaller footprint than a composition book. The model I purchased has 512 megabytes of RAM, and 4 gigabytes of flash memory instead of a hard drive. It has a seven-inch screen, wireless networking, 4 USB ports, a VGA out port, an SD card slot, an Ethernet port, and a built-in webcam. It runs a version of Linux, and has a OpenOffice, the Firefox web browser, Skype, and a variety of other applications built in. It’s only $400.

I love its size, portability, power and quick boot-up time. (Under 30 seconds.) It would be a remarkable machine for students to use on a regular basis. I have just two quibbles with it. First, the seven inch screen is really bright and very readable, but the resolution of the screen means a lot of scrolling up and down on some web pages. That should be fixed in upcoming versions of the machine. Second, so far the wireless network connection seems to be unable to remember networks that I’ve connected to in the past, which means I have to re-enter the security code when return to my work network (which is a really long, ugly, irrational string of characters). That’s probably something that can be fixed by someone that understands Linux more than I do.

Both devices are a peek into a future that isn’t that far away, when we will have options for incredibly inexpensive yet incredibly powerful devices that we can carry with us anywhere and keep us connected to the vast resources available on the Internet, as well as each other. There may be a lot of upsides and downsides to this, but it is inevitable.

I was talking with some teachers the other day, and the issue of training came up. As we discussed the topic, I began to realize what they were up against. With more and more network-based applications (whether Internet or from a building server), they face a situation where their software can be changed overnight without anyone touching their computer. One day, the email software will be upgraded, or the gradebook program, or their favorite educational website will sport a new interface. That’s all well and good, but suddenly they are faced with having to learn new things just to do what they were already able to do yesterday. Yes, the new software is probably more effective/productive/whatever, but the fact is the teacher’s ability to use it just went backward.

In other words, not providing professional development for technology does not mean teachers aren’t moving forward - it means they’re moving backwards. We need ongoing training just to stand in place!

Technology is one area where static knowledge can have a short shelf-life. What we learn in an ed tech workshop can start to depreciate in value the moment we walk out the door. Sure, some things have long-lasting value - how to use a TI graphing calculator, basic word processing skills, and so on. However, many other parts of this huge puzzle are in a constant, increasing rate of change. Even simple things like which menu a particular command is hidden will change from one version of a product to the next, and few people have the time or the patience to hunt around for something that just awhile ago was right there.

The Asus EEEPc that I recently mentioned has already been picked up by a school district.  According to an article in the Fresno Bee, the Fresno Unified School District is purchasing 1,000 of the little laptops. This is pretty amazing - not only is it a model of laptop not previously marketed to education, the manufacturer has never (to my knowledge) targeted education, and the Linux operating system that it uses is obviously not the product of a major educational technology company either.

This an example of where standards could have been a problem, rather than a help.  Given how new this technology is, it simply couldn’t have been on a list of approved, standardized computers that any district would be using.   The district had been looking for a small, inexpensive solution to giving students wireless access to the school network for working on and storing materials for their student portfolios.  The selection of the laptops was driven by defined user needs, not technology standards.  What an interesting idea!

I’m sure it will create new challenges for support, as I suspect the district doesn’t already work with Linux very much.  But the focus should be to pick the technology that best supports the learning process, and then figure out how to support it effectively.  It should not be driven by picking the technology that is easiest to support.

To add to yesterday’s topic, here’s another potential breakthrough product - the Amazon Kindle.  It’s an ebook reader, which is nothing new.  What is new is that it uses the e-ink technology we’ve heard about for so long that creates sharp, clear text.  What is really, really new is that it also uses a wireless technology called EV-DO, a cellular data network that provides high-speed access to the Amazon repository of books, magazines, and weblogs from just about anywhere that has cellular phone access. For free.

The genius of this is that there is no need for a computer.  You order your books through the Kindle, and they download wirelessly.  If you subscribe to one of the many newspapers or magazines available, you simply turn on the Kindle in the morning and they’re waiting for you, because they downloaded overnight. Oh, and it accesses Wikipedia, too!

For an interesting review of the Kindle, check out Guy Kawasaki’s impressions.

It’s not a device that’s ready to replace textbooks yet (questions about durability and the lack of color displays), but the trend is irresistible. Paper is costly, bulky, and obviously hard to update. This is the kind of device our students will spend their adult lives using, at least in their professional lives.

We’ve been predicting this for a long time, but it’s still kind of mind-boggling now that we’re actually seeing it. There are a variety of new laptops hitting the streets that represent a major shift in cost and size of student computers (or potentially student-used computers). Most famously, the OLPC project is finally seeing the light of day, and their little green machines are in production. Even though they ended up not costing $100 (they’re just a hair under $200), they are remarkable in what they can do for so little money. (David Pogue has done an in-depth review with a video at the New York Times if you want to learn more.)

The XO computer (the official name of the OLPC product) is not only important in itself, but it has kicked off the development of competing products. Intel has developed the Classmate PC, which is a framework for small, inexpensive Intel-based laptops for students. (You can’t buy one yet, though.) The Asus company has just released a device called the EeePC, which is a tiny Linux-based laptop with a 7-inch screen, no hard drive (all Flash-based memory), built-in wireless and webcam for $399. It has only been on the market for a week or two, and it’s already wildly popular. And if you haven’t spent a few minutes working with an iPhone or iPod Touch, take a field trip to your local Apple store and see how easy it is to browse the Internet and do your email from those pocket-sized devices. With third-party applications being officially supported by Apple starting in January, these will in essence be computers. (How are these different from Palms or PocketPCs? Screen size resolution. New devices such as these have larger and far sharper displays, so you can create much more usable screen images and text. That and a much zippier interface!)

And, as I often say, that’s what exists today. Full-powered, wireless computers with web browsing, standard applications, voice and videoconferencing (some of them, anyway), all for less cost than what I paid for my first scientific calculator in college. What will we have available in five years? For that matter, what will the average student be using next week - outside of class, anyway?

I had a long discussion with a teach yesterday. It’s not about the technology itself, it’s about the societal, cultural, and economic changes the technology is bringing about. Changes in how people view information, how they communicate, and how they use technology simply to live their lives. These changes are taking place at an increasingly rapid pace, and I don’t sense yet that schools are figuring out how to address these changes. It’s hard to respond to, and there are an awful lot of unknowns involved, but not dealing with the changes will at some time cease to be an option.

Michael Welsh and 200 of his students at Kansas State University created the this video about college students and how their lives relate (or don’t) to college. It’s a great discussion starter for a staff or board meeting! (I’d also love to see someone create a high school version of the project.)

John Kelly from ESD 123 alerted me to Pop!Tech, another cool online conference that’s starting Wednesday, October 17. The theme is The Impact of Technology, and while the actual conference itself is in Camden, Maine, all of the sessions are being broadcast live on the Internet. Many of the previous sessions are available to be viewed online or downloaded. The topics are varied, wide-ranging, and very interesting.

And don’t forget that the K-12 Online Conference is under way!

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.

I had planned on blogging while at the Northwest Council for Computers in Education conference last week, but it’s hard enough to find time at the conference to be at the conference, much less blog about it! (I know I should blog from the sessions, but I always forget to ask permission before they start, and I don’t want to typety-type away in the back and look like I’m doing email or playing Scrabble or something. Being a presenter is hard enough without worrying about participants surfing the web.)

All that being said, it was a great conference! For instance, here are just a few things I learned about Wikipedia -

• The whole Wikipedia system is a lot more complicated than I ever realized. There are multiple levels of participation Readers, Editors, Admins, Bureaucrats, Stewards, Root, ArbCom, and Board of Trustees. The bandwidth of Wikipedia now peaks at over 3 gigabits per second
• There is a gigantic, active social structure among the registered users of Wikipedia that reinforces the goals of the project.
• There are teams of editors that work to undue vandalism on a constant basis. “Vandal bots” constantly monitor edits, and if certain terms pop up the bot emails the editors to check the new contributions and fix any obvious problems.
• If you want to cite a Wikipedia article exactly as you are viewing it at this moment, click the link on the left of the page that says Cite this page. Not only will it give you a bibilographically correct citation, it will also cite the version you are viewing, rather than whatever version is currently active in the future. This prevents embarrassing moments when a page has been vandalized, and also makes certain that the citation reflects the information you want, regardless of future edits.

I have uploaded some pictures of the conference at my flickr page. Videos and podcasts from the event are now up at the new, updated NCCE website. I should be tired, but I’m already getting psyched about next year!

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