Deborah Wells-Clinton: Technology in education and society

Subject Headings, Keywords, or ??

Sun, 15 Aug 2004 21:33:35 GMT

Search Tool Hopes To Make Key Words Obsolete. A new search tool has eliminated the need for keyword searching. Blinkx recently launched a free beta version of its search application that uses self-learning algorithms to search the Web and a user's PC. [InternetWeek]

Weblogs for Literacy

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 21:55:14 GMT

David Huffaker's research, as documented in an article called "The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote Literacy in the Classroom", in the online journal, First Monday, has received some coverage by the BBC. I'm glad to see weblogging getting some attention in terms of its educational potential.

Grab Them with IM

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 15:29:31 GMT

100 Questions that Might Otherwise Have Gone Unanswered. numbers "Today I received my 100th question via AIM. Obviously I was a believer in the program to begin with, but I must say that it has exceeded my expectations.... For no cost not only have we become more available, but I've helped patrons that otherwise wouldn't have been helped. I've done more Young Adult Readers' Advisory in the past 2 months than I have in the previous 2 years. YAs have sent me messages asking about the library's hours, and prizes for... [The Shifted Librarian]
This entry comes through Jenny, one of my favorite librarian bloggers. The originator of the entry sounds as though he is looking at just the kind of issue I have been trying to talk with my colleagues about ever since before I started this blog, i.e. the attraction of new technologies for young people and how we in libraries and education need to respond and take advantage of that attraction.

Kids will listen if the right medium is used. Television is no longer a cutting edge way to get kids to pay attention, it is to be expected. IM is the new TV in this regard. It is interesting and funny to me that a "hot" medium like TV or film is perhaps no longer as captivating to young people as simple text is. It is the interactive nature of this special text, I'm sure.

Librarians in an Online Society

Mon, 21 Jun 2004 23:05:43 GMT

Old Search Engine, the Library, Tries to Fit Into a Google World. Librarians have increasingly seen people use online search sites not to supplement research libraries but to replace them. By Katie Hafner. [New York Times: Technology]
It's good to see an article about the positive steps librarians are taking to respond to the huge changes in society's information needs and habits.

What Students Want

Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:35:45 GMT

'Ultra-communicators' demand more eMail access, better software
This article summarizes a report put out by NetDay after that organization surveyed 210,000 U.S. students in grades K-12. The findings of the report are not at all surprising to me -- technology, especially communication technology, is so embedded in the lives of today's students that the limited and restricted use offered at school is more of a hindrance than a help.

Every Book Digital?

Fri, 12 Mar 2004 16:48:58 GMT

Book Scanning Machine. There is a neat article in USA Today about a book scanning machine that scans 1200 pages an hour without damaging the book. From the article, "This process is actually gentler on books than the human hand." Article is here. [LISNews.com]
This article caught my eye because I marveled at this machine when I saw it at ALA in January. It's an amazing piece of engineering, and I'm not surprised that the Library of Congress is considering buying one, as the article claims. It seems that it would be useful to any institution that is concerned about preserving fragile and decaying ancient documents. What worries me, however, is the other part of this article that refers to Amazon digitizing all the books in its inventory. Here we go again with the idea that printed books will soon disappear. On the other hand, I recognize the potential for research. So what bothers me about this? Maybe it's the trend toward letting computers and search engines do all the thinking for us -- all the information is there and just needs to be gathered up. That's a very seductive trend for young people who should be learning to think carefully and critically on their own.

Print vs. Web in School Libraries

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:22:01 GMT

The January issue of From Now On, one of the ezines from Jamie Mckenzie, has a good article on school libraries.

Update the Argument

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 11:29:52 GMT

Experts Speak Out Against Computers for Youngsters.

Experts Speak Out Against Computers for Youngsters - this short article relies on studies dating back several years to make the point that computers damage the social and intellectual development of children. I disagree. Computers used as a tool to achieve intended tasks are very effective. When they are used as an end in themselves (i.e. many administrators have brought computers into schools simply because "everyone's doing it", without a real idea of how they will be used to contribute to learning), they aren't effective.

[elearnspace blog]
I agree with the comment here. I was surprised to see an article like this published now, citing studies and articles from four and five years ago. I have my own reservations about computer use with young children. Whether we like it or not, however, computers are a big part of our society, and children are probably better off learning to use them as tools for creativity and productivity from early on. In my experience, teachers are doing better at using computers with young children appropriately. I would be more concerned about parents who don't encourage reading over TV or video-watching.

Preparing for Today and Tomorrow

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 12:40:15 GMT

An excellent article in the most recent Educational Leadership magazine outlines what and how we should be teaching our students. Stanford Professor Elliot Eisner argues we can best prepare students for the future by enabling them to deal effectively with the present. "Only if we refine their capacities for judgment, critical thinking, literacy, collaboration, and service will we prepare students for the future."
One of the ideas that especially struck me was one that I have commented on often in this blog in terms of technology.

The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in school, but to help them do well in the lives they lead outside of school. We ought to focus on what students do when they can choose their own activities.

More generally, Eisner cahallenges educators to question the subjects they teach. It's' a challenge I would love to struggle with and debate, if there were any teachers on the front line who actually had time and energy to engage in it.

What I desire is an education process that is genuinely meaningful to students, challenging them with problems and ideas that they find both interesting and intellectually demanding. I want to assess that process by the depth of its engagement in students' lives.

[From ASCD Smartbrief, Dec. 5, 2003]

Arthur C. Clarke on Information Pollution

Thu, 11 Dec 2003 10:26:46 GMT

In the way it often happens, I followed a link on the blog pointed to in the posting below and ended up at this article, an interview with Arthur C. Clarke that ranges over many aspects of technology in modern society. I agree with McGee that this is a good quote:

We are now faced with the responsibility of discernment. Just as our ancestors quickly realised that no one was going to force them to read the entire library of a thousand books, we are now overcoming the initial alarm at the sheer weight of available information [^] and coming to understand that it is not the information itself that determines our future, only the use we can make of it.

Ethics in a Digital Age

Sun, 07 Dec 2003 11:16:26 GMT

The Winter 2004 issue of Threshold: Exploring the Future of Education includes an excellent article by Hilarie B.Davis that looks at plagiarism and cheating from the perspective of society and the learning community. The subtitle is "Beyond honor codes and punishment: Inspiring ethical behavior when it's so easy to cheat." I would love to have a discussion about the article with a group of teachers and/or students. It would make a great class session for a TOK or ITGS class. And it captures exactly what I've been thinking and reading about in terms of the changes in society impacting our teaching and learning.

To determine what is blameworthy in the digital age, it seems to be time to change our lenses; to understand that individuals both reflect and invent their social interactions, and that our responsibility to "turn all our cards face up" does not change, even as the milieu does. The technologies we create cause us to reinvent ourselves. They create opportunities for rule-making as well as rule-breaking. And in a democracy, they provoke discussion about what we value. One would hope that as emerging technologies become ubiquitous, teachers and students will create policies, practices, and cultures to support a civil society in which we know how to "be digital" with freedom and integrity.

Computers Are Not the Answer; What's the Question?

Mon, 01 Dec 2003 21:30:10 GMT

Despite great promise technology is dumbing down the classroom. Interesting One From SFGate.com that says This past year, as San Francisco school officials were dealing with budget cuts by laying off teachers and librarians and closing school libraries, spending on city schools was increasing in another area: classroom computers. Throughout the country, computer technology is dumbing down the academic experience, corrupting schools' financial integrity, cheating the poor, fooling people about the job skills youngsters need for the future and furthering the illusions of state and federal education policy. [LISNews.com]
Another interesting quote from this article:

One of the most common selling points for computers in schools, even in first and second grades, is to prepare youngsters for tomorrow's increasingly high-tech jobs. Strangely, this may be the computer evangels' greatest hoax. When business leaders talk about what they need from new recruits, they hardly mention computer skills, which they find they can teach employees relatively easily on their own. Employers are most interested in what are sometimes called "soft" skills: a deep knowledge base and the ability to listen and communicate; to think critically and imaginatively; to read, write and figure, and other capabilities that schools are increasingly neglecting.

Of course, the article was written by Todd Oppenheimer, the author of The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved, who seems to be following in the footsteps of Clifford Stoll. We need people like this to suggest that maybe the emperor has no clothes.

Library Websites, too

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 14:16:12 GMT

The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines.

The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines...mostly common sense...most items are applicable to elearning design (though at a very basic level)

[elearnspace blog]
Most of these apply to library websites as well. We should always be constructive criticism of our user interface.

Online Generation

Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:44:04 GMT

A Generation of Shifted Kids Growing Up. Studies: 90 Percent of Kids Use Computers "About 90 percent of people ages 5 to 17 use computers and 59 percent of them use the Internet -- rates that are, in both cases, higher than those of adults. Even kindergartners are becoming more plugged in: One out of four 5-year-olds uses the Internet. The figures come from a new Education Department analysis of computer and Internet use by children and adolescents in 2001. A second report from the agency, based on 2002 data, shows 99 percent of public schools have Internet access, up from 35 percent eight years ago." ... [The Shifted Librarian]
TSL quotes a Salon article. I second the good comment at the end.

Information Overload

Thu, 30 Oct 2003 21:07:05 GMT

Information Overload. A recently released report from UC-Berekeley informed us that the world produced twice as much information in 2002 as it produced in 1999. [TechnoBiblio]
This post goes on to ask why, in the light of this report, are libraries losing funding and being forced to close? And I add the question, why are schools doing away with trained librarians just when it is most critical to teach our students how to deal with this huge amount of information?

Full-Text Search at Amazon

Sat, 25 Oct 2003 22:07:27 GMT

Breaking News: Amazon Debuts Full-Text Search For 120,000 Titles The new service (online today) is called "Search Inside the Book" and allows you to search the full-text, over 33 million pages from over 120,000 titles. CBS Marketwatch reports that over 190 publishers are participating including Wiley, Time Warner Book Group, Simon & Schuster, Inc., Random House, Inc., Publishers Group West, Incorporated, McGraw-Hill Professional, Holtzbrinck Publishers and HarperCollins Publishers. Of course the full-text from 120,000 titles can have enormous research and reference value. However, Amazon's primary motivation for offering this service is to sell books.[ResourceShelf]
I'm a few days out of date here, since I've been busy attending and presenting at the AASL conference. I haven't had time to check my news aggregator since Thursday, obviously, since that was the day this news about Amazon broke. Gary has a lot more details in this entry at the ResourceShelf, including some of the ways this service doesn't work and some other full-text services that are offered through libraries.

Playing at Politics

Mon, 20 Oct 2003 09:17:10 GMT

NationStates is a simulation game based on ....

NationStates is a simulation game based on Max Barry's novel, Jennifer Government. "You create your own country, fashioned after your own political ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture them. It's really up to you." There are more than 72,000 nations in the NS World, but not one called Libraria! We'd start one up, a country run like a library, but we don't want the responsibility of being a ruthless dictator. [The Laughing Librarian -- Library Humor and Stuff]
The middle school boys at my school are constantly playing this on the library computers. (They're not allowed to play anything that really looks like a game.) I've pointed it out to teachers, especially in social studies, but none of them has followed up on it. It seems as though it could be a teaching tool, but maybe that would ruin its attraction as a game. I think I should probably buy and read the book,

Students and their tech gadgets

Wed, 15 Oct 2003 13:04:37 GMT

For Techies, School Bells Mean 'Let the Games Begin'. Cellphones, PDA's and other gadgets have become magnets for in-class mischief and distraction, but teachers don't seem to realize it. By Ian Urbina. [New York Times: Technology]
Here's another one of these articles about kids getting ahead of the teachers in their use of new technologies. It's not a revolution, it's a fast-rising flood, and we'd better start building boats.

Libraries and Student Achievement

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 11:29:51 GMT

Look it up: High-quality school library programs lead to better achievement [From eSchool News]
This is an extensive report on the research about the connection between school libraries and student achievement. It includes lots of quotes and anecdotes from "information specialists" and administrators from around the U.S. It's a good overview and a source for data on this subject.

Classroom Gadgets

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 11:15:08 GMT

Schools grapple with rules on classroom gadgets [From eSchool News staff and wire service reports October 3, 2003]
Here we are back at at one of my themes -- how are we (teachers, librarians, parents, adults) dealing with the emerging technologies that our students are embracing so quickly? This article says that some schools still have a complete ban on cell phones! I admit that I send kids out of the library if their phones ring, but only to try and be consistent with my "keep the noise down" rule, not because I think they shouldn't have them. (I do wonder, though, who is calling them in the middle of the school day.) PDA's, phones and calculators with wireless connections are all here and being used. How do we incorporate them in the classroom, and how do we set sensible guidelines for their use?

Wed, 01 Oct 2003 10:54:56 GMT

Learning communities and learning networks.

Courses are artifacts of a learning model that is becoming obsolete. Courses work in an environment when knowledge/information is fairly static and developing slowly. The more rapidly information develops, the more quickly courses cease to serve the needs of learners. The information is outdated before the ink is dry.

.... As much as society and technology have changed, it seems odd that how we learn is still modeled on an environment that no longer exists. I think we are at the beginning stages of rapidly accelerating adoption of (and creation of tools and methodologies for) communities and learning networks.

[elearnspace blog]
This might sound a little extreme, and it is talking about higher education, but I think it has definite implications for secondary education as well.

Search Engine Robot

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 10:50:39 GMT

Wanted: a search engine that feels our pain. Anna sends along this interesting piece from from the Albany (NY) Times Union. In lieu of learning effective search strategies, students want search engines that will read their minds and give them the results they're looking for. The story specifically looks at results that were returned from students searching for Holocaust information. "Students don't want to go to the library anymore, they want to go to the computer and have it act like a librarian. But a librarian wouldn't put a book about white supremacy on the bookshelves, presenting it like it's an argument." [LISNews.com]
Another quote from the article:

"We're still a little way off from when the Internet can be your co-worker and where you can talk to it and have it bring you all the right information," he said. "Hopefully, it will happen in our lifetimes." In the meantime, honing our genuine intelligence (and computer literacy) may be the best way to get the Internet to respond in kind, ... Learning to ask the right questions, when it comes to search engines, is a start.

On the other hand, humans are generally pretty lazy. If we can get a minimal result from a minimal effort, we'll go with it, or so my students seem to think. :-)

Policies for Mobile Devices

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 10:56:26 GMT

Schools tackle PDA problem.

Schools tackle PDA problem. Student adoption of technology is out-pacing instructor/organizational adoption. This article looks at the issues of text messaging, cell phones, and PDAs in schools. I don't see how it can really be regulated. The best policy listed in the article relates to: "use it as long as it doesn't interfere with the class environment". I have a similar policy...but I have noticed (generalization) that students most involved in texting also produce lower quality work...

[elearnspace blog]
I just wish I could get someone at my school to even talk about things like this. I see the gap between the teachers in the classroom and the students in their "real lives" widening every day. Maybe it's because I see the students outside the classroom, and my space and my educational concerns have to do with bridging that gap.

A Culture of Copying

Sun, 14 Sep 2003 14:27:49 GMT

Beyond File-Sharing, a Nation of Copiers. Like file-sharing, cutting and pasting from the Internet is just one part of a broader shift toward all copying, all the time. By John Leland. [New York Times: Technology]
This article pulls together many of the issues of use of technology by today's young people into what it calls a "culture of copying." From the article: "In the culture of copying, technological considerations have trumped ethical ones: if you upload it, they will download." This makes me want to talk more with my students about these issues, not shaking my finger at them and saying "naughty, naughty," but more in the way I attempt to understand any of the cultures my international students come from. "International Citizens" is one of our main goals at my school, and I see more and more that beyond each student's country and family culture are some other cultures that have grown up in the whole world around and because of the technologies that have been developed in my lifetime.
Is anyone out there talking about this? I'd like to get in on the conversation, not just to identify the phenomenon, as this article does, but to discuss how to deal with the "culture shock" of my generation, and how to address ethical issues with the next generation.

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 11:02:42 GMT

MIT Everyware [Wired] [Library Link of the Day]