Education 2.0
The internet has certainly transformed the way humans create, communicate, and consume information. We are still on the steep part of the curve, in fact, and the world of information continues to go through rapid change and experimentation. This is being brought about partly by software applications and websites (such as WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, etc) that provide tools for communication. The transformation is also being driven by hardware advances – it is now routine for many people to carry around smartphones, which are essentially hand-held computers that provide anytime communication, access to the internet, and a variety of applications.
And yet it feels as if the promise of the internet has not yet adequately penetrated areas that were thought 10-20 years ago to be low-hanging fruit. This includes, in my opinion, education. By now I would have thought that computers would dominate primary education.Yet their footprint remains modest.
Thirty years ago while I was in high school and computers were still incredibly primitive, I thought I was given a glimpse at the future of education. One of our science teachers (who, of course, also ran the computer lab) was a savvy computer user, and incorporated some educational computer programs into our classwork. I specifically remember a program that taught chemical nomenclature. You could play with the program like a game, and you received immediate feedback and correction for all of your answers. After about an hour playing with this program I felt I had truly mastered at least the basics of nomenclature – far faster than if I had studied the same material from a book or received a lecture.
To the 1980 version of myself it would likely seem incredible that thirty years later computers have still not been thoroughly integrated into education. The software and hardware technology is more than adequate. So what’s the problem.
Before I go on, I am sure that most people reading this can provide numerous examples of how computers are being used in their education (at whatever level). I am aware of all this. I bought plenty of educational computer games for my children, and many of them were quite good. My younger daughter virtually learned how to read playing with internet-based reading programs. Many schools have computers in the classroom, have smart-boards instead of blackboards, and students are encouraged to use computers to do some of their school projects. There is increasing educational information on the internet, and at my medical school students are increasingly relying on podcasts instead of lectures, and get all their class notes online.
I am sure there are many more examples as well, and this is all good. It is just far far less than what we could potentially have by now.
I am reminded of this by a recent survey of computer use in primary education. Dr. Jon Altuna, in his PhD thesis, explores the many advantages of internet learning in primary education, but also explores the limits of its use:
Despite its educational possibilities the researcher warns that there are numerous factors that limit the incorporation of Internet into the teaching of the curricular subject in question. These involve aspects such as the time dedicated weekly, technological and computer facilities, accessibility and connection to Internet, the school curriculum and, above all, the knowledge, training and involvement of the teaching staff.
That is in line with my experience – computer and internet use is largely an afterthought. Schools do it because they know they should, but there is a certain lack of vision for how computer technology can really transform education. This is not to suggest that computers should take over the role of the teacher or displace all other teaching methods. There are some things teachers are optimal for, and other teaching tasks that are best done with physical hands-on experience. Sometimes cracking open a book is the best option.
But there are certain learning tasks for which computers are vastly superior – like providing instant feedback, keeping the difficulty at the optimal level for the individual, individualized pacing of learning, and maintaining active attention for long periods of time. Dr. Altuna also points out that internet learning allows students to explore more, become more active (rather than just passive) in their own learning process, and for student to learn from each other.
For education 2.0 to become a reality, the use of the internet and computer technology in primary education needs to become more than an afterthought – more than just an obligatory added layer, and more than just teaching students computer skills themselves. We need a massive effort to develop a digital infrastructure dedicated to computer and internet-based learning. We need schools and teachers to experiment more, to find what computers will do best, and what they are not good for. Primarily, I think we just need the development of dedicated programs and content for education. We need the equivalent of Facebook and Twitter for primary education – killer apps, the kind that are so effective that after their incorporation people will look back and wonder what they did before the application was available.
This will take dedicated resources. But as we look to take our educational system into the 21st century (at least our politicians say they want to do this) we need look no further than this vastly untapped resource. Education 2.0 is overdue.
Two words: Teachers’ Unions. The Web could make teachers and school as we know it obsolete. It already has done so for the millions of families who have taken to homeschooling. Once parents discover that they can educate their own kids better and more cheaply than the state-funded curiosity and intelligence suppression centers we have now, the teachers will have to get real jobs.
I love how supposedly skeptic people often throw that mantle out the window when it comes to education. Homeschooling is some sort of magic formula for intelligence and creativity, whereas the education system is a malevolent tool for suppressing that potential. Please.
And I suppose your idea of “real job” is sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours and day and scrupulously carrying out all the higher-ups instructions? I would like to see one of these “real” workers try to teach a class of 10-year-olds for a day, and see how they do.
Hmm… Homeschooling? Really?
Of course Larkin puts it best:
They f**k you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. …
As a teacher, this is bullshit. I’ve been advocating for laptops for every kid for years. The major hurdle is school boards and government. Government wants to throw money at “technology” and school boards don’t want to freak parents out with the fact that their kids might accidentally see something inappropriate on the internet. So instead, all of this money gets wasted on ridiculous programs like reporting software,(for which an Excel spreadsheet would be better suited) attendance software, (for which email works perfectly) even teacher’s collaboration software that no-one uses because googling information is easier (but doesn’t cost literally millions.)
It might be that it’s the equipment that’s the problem. Perhaps those who run schools – who treat the teaching of young’ns as a procurement issue (staff, books, materials) – consider the technology as being much too volatile. Used to be that kitting out something like a language lab or a gym was something you did not enter into lightly, and that it would have to last at least ten years. To some extent this would also have to be true of the books (this waa always a pretty daft idea for science books, but for art, history, poetry etc it was fine). You can’t make that kind of long term capital investment in machinery any more. The technology changes every six months and – after a year or so – kids would be using stuff at home which might be way ahead of what was being used in the school.
You are correct that Moore’s law would prevent schools from making long term investments in technology, but I believe the recurring costs would be offset greatly by reduction in other expenses, namely teacher payroll.
To put it in perspective, I spend around a grand every 3 years on PC parts, and when I do I purchase parts that are 6 months old. By doing this I ensure that my hardware stays satisfactorily up to date at a cost of approximately $350 per year.
If a school did away with one teacher’s position at a conservative 30k salary, their budget would afford them 80 systems that always stay current. That is a hell of a lot more learning power than could be provided by any individual human.
I don’t see how moores law apples to teaching. For example I’ve got a system that is a few years old and that is fine for most people who are not playing Halo or other games like that.
Moore’s Law may not have as great an impact on education systems than, say, gaming platforms, but it has an impact none the less. Most high-end business applications have much more stringent demands on cpu than their predecessors.
All that aside, I think you misunderstood. I was actually refuting the OP, not reinforcing his point. The weight of Moore’s Law varies depending on the application. There are quite a few large corporations and institutions (like NASA, for one) that still employ legacy applications such as AS400 simply because they continue to perform as intended and have an unparalleled track record of reliability. Most current PC components have a realistic life expectancy of about 5 years, compare that to IBM mainframes that have been in constant operation since the 70’s.
I suggested that Moore’s law doesn’t apply much, because for basic programs like word processing and email an old computer is just fine. I’m guessing that educational programs might be ok too.
Prehaps, but you’d still need a human teacher to guide, direct, and moderate that learning. Computers are a great tool but they’re an enhancement to, not a replacement for, teachers.
They cannot replace live teachers entirely, but just as in any trade, having the right tools can empower one person to do the work of several. Tools like the pulley, the abacus and the printing press all had a dramatic impact on the amount of labor required to complete the respective tasks for which they were designed.
We’re already at a limit of how few teachers you can have. The vast majority of students are not self-directed learners, which would be required of any internet-directed program. After about 30 kids per class, maintaining order and evaluating what students actually know breaks down severely. I truly wish all of my students could learn simply by reading and researching independently. They can’t. They don’t have the motivation. Some of them have difficulty reading. Some of them have difficulty typing or writing. I have to test multiple ways to figure out what a kid knows and doesn’t know. A laptop can’t do that.
Coming from a computer background myself, I can say that there are ways around that. Instead of having a PC Lab, students can be required to buy cheap laptops that they carry home. Subsidize it by the school, state, board, etc, and it can be rather cost effective to put $300 ruggedized laptops into students hands. Instead of buying pencils and crayons, buy a laptop. One of those can last 2 or 3 years. Its also a lot lighter then the books I used to carry home daily.
There are other methods too, like virtualization, where you can run 30 or 40 students from a single machine that is connected to by 5 or 10 year old “thin” clients that cost a few hundred a piece.
Kids don’t need to be gaming. Most educational software runs just dandy on older hardware as well.
It is not just the Unions… there are also the textbook publishers to consider, as well as the curriculum standards. It is not as though it would be technically challenging to create a framework that teachers and educators could populate with questions, answers, essays, and guided learning; but no individual teacher or school has time enough to devote to populating such a resource.
It could be jump-started from the educational resources that book publishers prepare to go with their books, but they have every incentive to keep those proprietary, to help them when multi-state contracts against their competitors.
And when every school is in contract with some publisher or another, and said contract includes the ancillary materials such as test questions, quizzes, study guides, answer keys, etc, there is little incentive to devote extra time to building a national resource.
The curriculum standards are a separate issue, since they press against the concept of a national resource (and less than a national resource is not likely to have enough contributors to become worthwhile in a short enough time), since the standards vary by state, in what facts and areas have to be covered by what age.
Certain areas are already well-covered in terms of available materials, particularly in math, geography, and similar areas where knowledge is more well-defined, and less subject (absent certain isolated cases) to disagreements about what should be taught. For example, purplemath.com, the first site on a google search for ‘online algebra resource’, appears to have quite a collection of explanatory texts for a full range of algebra topics; a few lines down the page, the College of the Sequoias has a complete intermediate college algebra text online.
Geography not only has innumerable resources from National Geographic available for free online, it also has Google Earth, or Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, both of which support the display of overlaid data on a globe, allowing all sorts of data to be interacted with directly. In addition, there are a number of geographic based flash games that challenge players to identify every nation in an area of the globe.
Biology has an immense availability of material online; much of it is not usable in a lot of schools because local school boards seek to suppress evolution, and to somehow teach biology without admitting that evolution is what ties it all together, while most online resources don’t try to hide from it. (Though there is actually a fair amount of ‘sanitized’ material of exactly this sort available online, made by and for home-schoolers; unfortunately, much of it is produced by people who go beyond ignoring evolution to outright denying it, and are frankly full of misinformation.)
Social Studies, assuming they still study that in schools, certainly should benefit from the immense availability of political commentary from the vast majority of nations online.
However, much of this online material has the problem that it has not been vetted or approved by the local school board, the state board, the curriculum committees, etc; it does not focus specifically on what will be on the standardized tests.
So for the time being, even in those schools that have managed to provide a computer or laptop for every student, the majority of online or computer-mediated activities will continue to be those provided for by the book publishers as ancillaries to their mandated texts; and the school book approval process will continue to approve texts that are riddled with errors.
Right now, the most prominent impact of computers on schooling is NOT in the classroom, or in the actual education of the students… it is in the purchase, sales, and trading online of homework questions, answers, essays, book reports, and even term papers.
Howard
@Trimegistus:
Blaming teachers’ unions is a red herring. Leaving aside your apparently low opinion of teachers, who would probably be better paid if they had “real” jobs anyway, computing resources could easily be phased in as teachers retire. Unions may have an effect on keeping already-hired teachers in their jobs, but they don’t determine whether teachers who leave are not replaced. Oh, and when you find those parents the time to guide their childrens’ learning 6-8 hours a day, you let us know … unless you think a better plan is letting kids use the internet unsupervised to find out whatever they might?
@Howard:
Textbooks and curriculum standards are side-effects of the real issue, which Trimegistus sort of hits a glancing blow: Schools have little choice but to make education a bit too much like an assembly line. Every one of the learning tasks Steven rightly points out are handled better by computers, is one that encourages *individual* learning, at the individual’s own speed and level. Schools as presently organized are entirely unsuited to that; they have to keep most of the students progressing in mostly the same way so that development can be measured by comparison to the other students and so the presented materials remain relevant at each stage.
Maybe computer-aided learning can shift us into a new paradigm, but until there’s a plan to break us out of the old one it’s going to be a slow slog. I certainly haven’t come up with an organizational idea for public education that works better than the one we have.
Development is compared to curriculum standards, not to other students. You could argue that the curriculum is based on what the majority of students of a certain age are capable of doing, but evaluation is never on the curve in K-12 education.
I think this is a great point that doesn’t get made often enough. The only thing more frustrating than being ahead of the class and having to wait for everyone else to catch up, is being behind the rest of the class and watching them leave you behind. (I’ve been on both sides at one time or another.)
Do anyone know what research has been done on to what extent investing in computers really improves student performance? I know there have been some studies questioning the correlation between increased school spending and increased student performance. (See http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-child-left-behind/8310# for example.) But AFAIK, that research didn’t specifically look at availability of computers.
I’m not saying computers are a waste of money – Steven’s argument makes sense to me. But that could just be my own biases talking, so I’m curious what the data says, if there is any?
I think you hit the nail right on the head. Right now, computers are being used as little more then glorified typewriters and encyclopedias.
But I don’t think you are going far enough. I see this problem in businesses as well. People don’t see computers as an integral part of the world, but instead, as an extension of decades (or centuries) old technologies, such as typewriters. The internet isn’t a giant encyclopedia, although that is one very simple function it provides.
But, I think education is the first step. As you said, its rather obvious that computers can work very well as an educational aid. Once children have been exposed to the power a computer can have, outside of being a faster encyclopedia, they will bring that vision to wherever they work.
New York’s School of One is trying to take our educational system into the 21st century.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/education/22school.html
I don’t know if it works or not, but I think that Asian and European countries outscore the U.S. in literacy not because their education is high-tech and fun, but because of greater discipline and a culture that considers illiteracy shameful and pathetic.
I’d bet a cool dollar that rap music isn’t a part of those cultures.
There are many problems with using computers in school, especially at the elementary level. First, there is the influence of the computer companies, Apple vs. everyone else. Too many schools are caught in the bind of choosing Apple over an IBM-style PC as the standard. This often changes as students mover from elementary, to middle school, to high school and then on to college. Secondly, the software on the computers is not always compatible with what the student has at home, or will have once they move on to the work environment. My child was not able to work on school projects started in one place (home) at the other (school) due to incompatibility. Also, too many of the school computers were infected with viruses that would transfer to home via a flash drive. Finally, (and there are more examples) no one at school has time to verify that all web pages accessed by students have accurate content. At most my child was told to ignore Wikipedia since it is too loose with contributor submissions. However, I found many sites that my child accessed that were full of inaccurate information, particularly about the Holocaust, evolution and anything having to do with current political events. Do you really want your child accessing fundamental Christian sites for information about evolution? Be careful what you wish for!
Cloud computing can get around incompatibility and viruses. For example, anyone can use Google Docs and watch videos on YouTube.
Obviously, the “University of Google” has a lot of misinformation, so students will need a portal to approved educational materials.
What is an “approved” Internet site for “educational materials?” To my knowledge, no teacher, no school, no school district and no state reviews or “approves” any Internet site for educational purposes. There is no one determining if specific Internet site content is truthful or valid for educational purposes. In fact, my child’s teachers have provided links to Internet sites that have misspelled words, bad grammar and very evident factual errors. The use of computers basically allows for more mistakes to be made in less time. I use computers daily in both my business and personal life, for students, however, there is not enough time spent in providing guidelines for determining the truth from the propaganda.
I’d imagine that educational web portals can be designed by textbook publishers, libraries, maybe even search companies, and approved the same way textbooks are approved, but hopefully faster.
For example, the following website promises “links to interactive activities, instant access to Web resources, and easy-to-use search functions.”
http://www.glencoe.com/ose/
I can’t access it though, so I don’t know if it’s any good.
I write educational resources for a living, primarily in science and technology. My main publication is an e-newsletter, a format chosen for reaching a wider audience who might not have access to faster internet (an issue in Australia), however I’ve also worked on other internet based educational materials.
The key issue is that technology currently changes faster than society. As an educational resource (or a category of resources), information technology is applied with a variety of skills by teachers in the classroom, from those who use it consistently and appropriately, to those who refrain from using it at all. To get those to use it well requires time and funding for professional development – which many seem to think isn’t acceptable to provide for teachers. After all, it means they’re not teaching kids for a day, or devoting more tax money etc.
The good news is that society does move on. Today’s students will be more tech savvy than their elders and will become teachers who see where IT can be used well in the classroom. They will be taught not so much by their teachers, but by their immediate community of peers and family members, or through improvements to intuitive technology interfaces that allow self learning, however they in turn will teach others.
What is useful for teachers and students is for useful IT to be made easily and cheaply available. I find it hard to recommend good websites, for example, as many have inappropriate content for children (even if it’s simply a link to a gambling site or an advert for a dating site). Or the sites are made with good intentions but a poor understanding of pedagogy or educational standards.
There are solutions. The right way of approaching them is with an informed view on how education works. The wrong way is to blame the system and think one has the answers without bothering to understand the real issues.
Let’s not overcomplicate – does anyone remember “Agent USA” >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_USA or “M.U.L.E” >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.
Educating, fun, and most importantly – simple.
Vergil Den
FYI, there was a great TED talk posted today on this topic, with a workable solution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTFEUsudhfs
Good stuff. I definitely need a pause button when watching lectures, because I start thinking about something in the lecture and miss everything that follows.
Exercises with computer scoring, however, can’t test everything. I can’t imagine how it would score mathematical proofs or projects like designing an experiment.
There’s a big report on online learning.
“Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in
Online Learning”
http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf
A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 50 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education).
I think learning is still a very social and personal experience. You can learn from computer all you want, but there is something about learning from a real person. After all, we are all social beings.
I think the current education system is way too bloated. Making Changes is hard with all the red tapes to go through. A friend of my is making a Course Content Management software, apparently it takes 2 years for a university to order these softwares. That’s why the education softwares in school all suck. The same way enterprise software suck.
On the other hand, tutors can benefit from the latest technology. They are more likely to pick up what technology has to offer. My startup is Learningfy. We aim to make tutoring more accessible and convenient.
First, a podcast IS a lecture. It’s just a digitized one. Which is related to my point. There is not enough of “what works” going on in the classroom in general, whether it be technology-intensive or not. Lecture and direct instruction are important sometimes, sometimes it is better to use more indirect methods. And instant feedback is all fine and dandy, but it depends on really really good questions. A multiple-choice or true/false test (two of the few techniques that computers can adequately provide instant feedback) are only helpful if the questions are good. I just started one of the de-mystified series (like the such and such for dummies series) and the end-of chapter quizzes and tests were horrible. Technology or kicking it old school – instructional decisions should be made based on what we know about how people learn.
Before I get called a luddite, let me assure you, I’m not. I am a firm believer in the use of technology in the schools. But, as with anything, their use should be made with pedagogy in mind first. Many classrooms aren’t designed this way even without technology.
On the practical of computers in class and studies of the effectiveness of online learning:
Firstly, remember that any new approach will show a significant improvement over standard class approaches because (1) the test situation motivates the school (2) the change motivates the students (3) the teachers involved are often true believers and (4) the classes using it are often selected from enthusiastic schools. Well measured efffects, fading a couple of years after general introduction.
Secondly, the comments seem to assume students who want to learn and are willing to read (or equivalent per prog. used), and will ask for help if needed. Imagine the realities with 30 students of which 20 are alienated to start with – and with 15 hypercritical parents desperate to ensure “the best” education for their sprogs though with 4 different ideas of what “the best” is.
Thirdly, freeing dedicated students from the “wait for the class’ to catch up” tedium is a very strong point. However, related to Jerry’s comments, somewhere along the line we have to teach them to accept that they have to delay gratification to meet others’ slower learning / thinking (the increasing problem of small-family offspring not learning patience, self-control, consideration for others – also arrogance of some gifted students – may make emotional charge to add to natural divide between thinkers and lumpenproletariate.)
There are several potentially good ideas and valid concerns in these comments. Take a look at Shermer’s latest blog post for how the solution may eventually materialize. Although it would require a radical change in the way we educate our kids, why not allow all of these ideas and others to compete in a free marketplace so that the most effective teaching techniques might emerge from the bottom up. Those methods that show the most promise or are proven successful might be adopted by other schools. Allow parents to choose to send their kids to those schools that employ the most effective educational techniques. As more schools implement these and other innovative methods, they might draw more and more students to them. In order to attract the dollars, other schools would need to respond with something better or something equal yet cheaper. This competition would likely facilitate the development of other better techniques. Yes, some ideas may be bad, and some people may be adversely affected. But overall we would be better off in this kind of free market for learning. If schools were forced to compete, we’d likely employ IT and other pioneering techniques in spades.
Our current system won’t allow for this though. So for now we continue to implement the teaching standards that bureaucrats and elected officials think are best.