The Medium is NOT the Message

A million years ago a girlfriend sent me a letter, in beautiful schoolgirl script which I could not possibly read, with lyrics she found special...

"Children behave, That's what they say when we're together, And watch how you play, They don't understand, And so we're, "Running just as fast as we can, Holdin' onto one another's hand, Tryin' to get away into the night, And then you put your arms around me, And we tumble to the ground, And then you say, "I think we're alone now, There doesn't seem to be anyone around. I think we're alone now, The beating of our hearts is the only sound."

In return I gave her a very crudely-made mix-tape that I think included music ranging from the Stones' Sweet Virginia to Al Green romantic classics.

Which of us was violating copyright? Which of us was committing plagiarism?

Stick with me here for just a bit, but think about that question while you do. And add in this... what if instead of a letter she had sent me a You Tube playlist. What if I had shared digital music files with her - perhaps (gasp!) across a computer network at an American university.

Let's put it another way. What if the United States government decided it would open mail being sent to US citizens. No, not all mail. Just all the mail sent to the US from foreign nations. And what if - well, they were just scanning it for keywords and patterns, you know, not really "reading" that letter from your girlfriend vacationing in Algiers - just "scanning" it in order to improve "national security" - no warrants seen as necessary.

Yeah - you'd be outraged. Of course. (The US government has never admitted to doing anything like that, though during World War II they did ask the Brits to do it for them with any mail passing through any British territory.)

But you are less sure - clearly you are less sure - if the same thing is done with emails or mobile phones. You probably (if you read my kind of opinions) think the government is wrong to do that but you're not upset in quite the same way. You are not (perhaps, for example) bashing down Hillary Clinton's Senate office door because she thinks it is ok for the US government to do that.

What does this have to do with education?

Here's a side story. In university classroom after university classroom I see many students carrying print-outs of texts provided to them digitally. Articles, book chapters, powerpoints - all of which have been provided by faculty in digital form or which have been accessed from digital library files - are converted into "ink on paper" because the student "is more comfortable" with that format - they find it easier to (choose one or more) hold, carry, read, highlight, refer to, file. And all of them do that without getting special permission. Not one student who does that needs to bring personal psychological evaluation records to a "disability office" and receive special permission. But - yes, here we go - any student who wants to do the reverse - that is to convert paper text into electronic form and use it in the classroom, needs to give up all of their privacy rights, and often a large chunk of their dignity, in order to be afforded the same "media switching" privilege.

Two things brought this into new focus for me in the past week. First, I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret - the brilliant winner of the Caldecott Medal by Brian Selznick. More on this in a moment.

Second, The Economist began a new debate: "Security in the modern age cannot be established without some erosion of personal privacy." (appearing there again as "PostColonialTech"). Neil Livingstone, in arguing this proposition (and the inherent goodness of it) includes this quote in his mid-debate rebuttal, "This includes the use of surveillance cameras, access to major databases, telephone and email intercepts, and various methodologies for authenticating identity." Notice - he does not suggest the widespread opening of mail, nor the use of general listening devices which might - for example - allow the military to (warrantlessly) survey his living room conversations with his wife, though, in truth, terrorist intentions can - and clearly have - been passed through these "more antique" communications systems.

In other words, Mr. Livingstone is not interested, really, in either privacy or security. What he is worried about is a technological communications grid that he does not (truly) understand.

Because, let's face it. If I post a blog I have no more expectation of privacy than if I write a letter to the editor or publish a newspaper. But if I send an email or call someone from a non-public location, my expectation should be that it is every bit as private as the "snail mail" letter I send. These are the same forms of communication no matter how different the format is. But neither Mr. Livingstone (who NBC declares "an expert"!) nor schools nor employers nor the governments of the US or UK understand this.

Which is why this is an educational issue and a disability rights issue.

Let's go back to the top and Tommy James and the Shondells - a group so fundamentally unhip that Hubert Humphrey wrote the liner notes for one their albums (just had to mention that with real apologies to "Katie"). The letter from the girlfriend was inaccessible text, but was, in the rationalised assumptions of modernist educational and political philosophies, a perfectly legitimate method of quoting (as long as she indicated source and copyright, of course). My mix-tape cassette response was far more accessible (in terms of content delivery if not emotionally), but those same rationalised assumptions struggle with whether I am allowed to do what I did. Shift it to the far more accessible You Tube or to a file sharing system and everyone over 35-years-of-age now calls it "illegal file sharing."

In other words - the media which work for Mr. Livingstone or for your typical teacher or Minister of Education, well, that's protected, sacred, good, safe, etc. The media which work for me, well those are in an opposite category.

Post-Medium-Specific

Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, named the most distinguished American picture book for children this [2007] year, (yes, back to that) emphasizes this. Mr. Selznick has made a film - about that there is no doubt - but the film is presented as a bound book. Instead of sitting in the theatre, though, or in front of your TV, you turn the pages, rapidly in fact, to take in the tale at the speed of film. Which forces one set of global questions: What does "book" mean? What does "reading" mean? How is "reading" different than "listening," or, specifically, "watching"?





It also raises some personal questions. Since the world of post-graduate education is so caught up in format rather than content, since my university has far more rules about how to bind a thesis than how to make it accessible, could I create a thesis that was a series of drawing as long as I bound it properly for dust-collecting storage in the basement of the library?

I thought of that because in the same week as I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret a professor told me that she considered quotes without cited page numbers to be "plagiarism." When I noted that those of us who utilise alternative formats do not always get accurate page numbering she said, "I never thought of that," but she didn't back down. In education format rules still consistently trump content and communication. And this, as The Economist Debate reveals, is true in government laws too.

But for most of us - we are moving into a "post-medium-specific" world. Brian Selznick puts a film on paper. Amazon puts books on Kindle. Audiobooks make books into podcasts. Television shows appear on your computer. Japanese readers read novels on their mobiles. We have reached a point where we can pick the content and the medium, making it our own in crucial ways.

And that benefits - in massive ways - the huge percentage of the world that has always struggled with "classic" content delivery.

But let me say this - it has both always been this way (at least in one direction). I've seen many teachers of English who ask their students to read Shakespeare (clearly separating content from medium). And Homer, after all, is just a written version of something always intended to be heard. It is like those who print out online PDF documents, or those who read press conference transcripts, we grab for the medium which serves us best.

This does not mean that authorial intent goes out the window. No one is suggesting we eliminate any formats, or that we shouldn't embrace the diverse ways of knowledge available through different formats - a brief digression to "read" from the blog of London design student Gregory Stevenson on Hugo Cabret: "An interesting upside of the imaginative constraints that come with reading a picture book is that it gives the author more control over what the reader sees in their mind’s eye. If a novelist just uses words, the ‘visual story’ created in the reader’s mind will be particular to them – and, for example, a character is likely to appear differently to each of them. Where there is an image of that character, there is no room for interpretation, and no need for conjuring. So, in Hugo Cabret, when we read the text passages what we imagine is likely to have visual continuity from Selznick’s pencil drawings. It’s often said that featuring a protagonist on the cover of a novel is a no-no, because of this very fact – it stops them from imagining their own. But in some instances, maybe this would be useful to an author. An imagined example: some small detail of a character’s appearance is important to the plot. By showing it to us, it becomes fixed in our memory – and in a different way from how we see it in our minds as we race over the text. In Hugo Cabret, another function of the image sequences is in moving the action along at a cracking pace – at least halving the reading time of a book describing the same action using text. This probably explains why I didn’t tend to luxuriate in the pictures, studying the details, as I’d imagined I would. It would have been like freeze-framing a film in the middle of an action scene to admire the colours and composition. It was only when I’d finished that I flicked back to enjoy the pictures as pictures."

Now, think of the ways altering the medium can alter perception and processing. Go back up in this post... if you don't know Tommy James and the Shondells or their song I Think We're Alone Now this medium offers you instant access - right-click on the link and say "open in new tab" and you have it - a "live citation" - the kind that, for my professor friend, makes APA Style and its page numbering requirements not only a quaint anachronism, but a fourth rate method of conveying information.

Or take either the new illustrated version of Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf or the 2007 film. Both alter format to deliver content in ways far more accessible than those "old" versions.

The trick is that now, to a significant extent, we can put the power to switch media in the hands of each student, in each human. We can celebrate content and content delivery over the orthodoxy of format. Yes, that is challenging. It pulls the power away from teachers, instructors, and traditional publishers. It requires new thoughts on copyright, on ownership of intellectual property. It surely involves new risks - to everything from "national security" to the transmission of facts. But those are risks we must take.

We must take these risks because the new post-medium-specific world is too important. It is vital to the liberation of so many from the tyranny of the "favoured format." It is essential to expansion of education and human communication. It is necessary, in these days when miscommunication is both so easy and so dangerous, for the likely survival of humanity.

I write mostly about students with "disabilities," but this goes far beyond that. We have too long frustrated human freedom and human learning with arbitrary and nonsensical allegiances to format. Use a number 2 pencil, or this type of pen. Make sure you double-space. Read this edition. Write in this "blue book." Make sure you use "APA" style (or MLA style, or whatever). Sit in that seat. Take this course at this hour. And all these rules have done is limit and exclude and separate and impoverish.

Even if our technology was not what it is we should know better - Brian Selznick needed nothing "21st Century" to put a film on paper - but our current technology wipes out all of our excuses. So let us stop the tyranny, and embrace media choice in a very real way.

- Ira Socol

Essential Blog Alert! - Over at jamessocol.com a three part series on web accessibility. Part one explains the issue, part two helps you analyze, part three helps you design, If you have any educational website this is vital information that you must read...

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

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Interactive Digital Reading... from the start

Bad news and good news.

"This week, LeapFrog pulls the wraps off the LeapPad’s successor, the Tag," says a New York Times article, "a thick, white and green plastic stylus that turns paper books into interactive playthings. LeapFrog is betting that the $50 Tag, which will be available this summer along with an 18-volume library that includes children’s classics like “The Little Engine That Could” and “Olivia,” will be the hit it badly needs. It calls the Tag its “biggest launch ever.”

"The Tag, officially called the Tag Reading System, works a lot like the LeapPad. Children can tap a word with it and the stylus reads the word, or its definition, aloud. They can tap on an image to hear a character’s voice come alive. Interactive games test their reading comprehension. At its simplest, the Tag can also act as an audio book and simply read a story from beginning to end.

"But while the LeapPad system required spiral-bound books to be placed on a clunky, laptop-sized plastic console with a pointing device attached to it, LeapFrog has put all of the Tag’s smarts into the inch-and-a-half-thick stylus. It works on books whose pages are imprinted with invisible dots that allow a small infrared camera at the tip of the Tag to recognize words or images on the page. That makes it far more portable and easier to use than the LeapPad, says Jeffrey G. Katz, the chief executive of LeapFrog."

What's good? If "Tag" catches on it will prove what many of us have been saying all along - that digital reading software belongs everywhere in education, including at the beginnings of literacy.

What's bad? Parents will pay for this stuff. Schools will pay for this stuff, rather than utilizing the technology that would already surround them if they simply opened their eyes (and took their ridiculous internet filters off). Instead of training students for life, parents and schools will (once again) waste a fortune on one-shot toys.

"Jane O’Connor, author of the best-selling Fancy Nancy series (Two of her titles are being adapted for the Tag), who described herself as “not a very pro-technology person,” was a skeptic at first, but has since come around.

'“Sometimes it might be easier for a child who is struggling not to have a parent breathing down their neck,” she said. “You get stuck, you tap a word. The only expectation is coming from you, the kid.”'Yes, of course. As anyone who has joined the Firefox Browser with Click, Speak and right-click definitions (and translations) already knows (all completely free and cross-platform). Or as anyone who has used Microsoft Reader already knows (completely free, Windows only), or even as those who have used Natural Reader (completely free, Windows only) already understand.

We also understand that, for less than the cost of a "Tag" you can add a Canon LiDE scanner to your computer (which comes with a "lite" version of OmniPage) and convert any of your child's (or students') books into digital form.

What these systems do - and the "Tag" does less well, at high expense, is allow all readers to get the support they need. Whenever an "issue" arises in the text, be it new vocabulary, a confusing word, an un-understood word - for whatever reasons, inexperience, dyslexia, second-language acquisition, cognitive problems, or simply "reading above your knowledge level" - students can turn to digital supports. Right-click and hear the word. Or right-click and have the word defined. Or right-click and have the word translated. It allows literacy to expand while independence expands.

What these systems do - and the "Tag" cannot do at all - is grow with your child. Leapfrog thinks new vocabulary acquisition matters while reading The Little Engine that Could. But I suspect it will matter just as much when we try to read Dickens, or Tolstoy, or Joyce, or perhaps your physics textbook.

If "Tag" succeeds, it will prove that what digital reading does is essential to young readers. But it will also prove that Americans, and their schools, are always happy to spend more and get less when it comes to educational technology.

- Ira Socol

Blog Alert! - Over at jamessocol.com a series has begun exploring true web accessibility. If you have any educational website this is vital information that you must read...

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

Social Networking and Education-as-we-know-it

"A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, idea, financial exchange, friends, kinship, dislike, conflict, trade, web links, sexual relations, disease transmission (epidemiology), or airline routes. The resulting structures are often very complex."

The Economist debate on Social Networking Systems has concluded, though final thoughts can still be posted. And I wanted to suggest a few things I have learned so far.

First, here is the complete proposition:
"Social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom: Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have now become a ubiquitous part of many students’ lives. The value of social networking has been defined, in one sense, as the collective power of community to help inform perspectives that would not be unilaterally formed – e.g. the best thinking comes from many not one. Others argue that significant time spent on social networking platforms actually distracts students from their studies. So a question emerges, could the introduction of social networking tools be useful in a formal classroom setting? Additionally, is the concept of social networking a progressive, but legitimate, form of student-to-student and student-to-teacher collaboration?"

In the debate many themes appeared. It began with Ewan McIntosh providing significant evidence of the transformative power of these tools in and out of classrooms in Scotland.

"I've been fortunate to work with thousands of school children and hundreds of teachers, creating mini social networks based around a rather traditional 'social object': the classroom. Students have been empowered to publish not just their best work, but the many drafts it takes to get there. They've received feedback from 'real' people outside school and, surprisingly often, the occasional expert has paid a visit (my personal favourite: the professional diver that corrected one student ended up being invited to visit the school to demonstrate the various bits of kit that go into a marine biology dive).

"And even if it's not happening in schools, learning is about far more than what happens behind the school gate. Lifelong learning is the policy du jour, and rightly so. We are all learners, all the time. Ubiquitous social technologies help us connect to those who can help us learn when we're outside the domain of formal education. One of the biggest iTunes success stories this past year has been Coffee Break Spanish, run by a teacher from his home in a seaside town on the West of Scotland. "You've got Spanish native speakers learning French with Coffee Break French, helping out those from around the world learning Spanish on the Coffee Break Spanish blog," says Mark Pentleton, the 'teacher' whose 21st century remit is closer to that of a living breathing social network for a band of young and old learners of foreign languages."

Dr. Michael Bugeja, expressing the "Con" side, was deeply concerned about power, authority, motives, and "time-honored standards."

"Interfaces that access social networks present a host of problems, depending on the device. Motives also vary by brand. The interface of an Apple iPhone differs from that of a Dell laptop. If we use handhelds to access social networks, odds are we will purchase digital music, videos or ringtones; or else, those devices query us daily on whether we might sample such merchandise. If we use laptops, we cope with software downloads or peripherals that also solicit online orders. We deal with these factors so often that we accept them without complaint.

"Technology has made us compliant.

"We must analyze use of social networks in education with a high degree of skepticism to ensure time-honored standards. Otherwise we may realize belatedly that those standards had value—social rather than financial—and that we inadvertently shortchanged our students who above all need to think critically and interact interpersonally to succeed in a diverse, multicultural world.

"Social networks advertise access to this diverse world while simultaneously confining users to affinity groups so as to sell, sell, sell.

"I, for one, am not buying."

Though the arguments wandered over many areas as this "Oxford-Style" debate went on, these essential themes never changed. On one side there are those (including myself) who see expanding communication technologies as new opportunities to connect, relate, study, and learn, and who are willing to take risks to explore how best to guide our students through this gathering world. On the other side are those more concerned about the risks than the benefits. As commenter Neil Shrubak said at the end of the conversation, "The Proposition argues that social networking signals a dawn of a new age of learning that will allow us to discard the baggage of old, stifling educational systems. Out with the old, in with the new. Hmm… This is the oldest rhetoric in the world. In the last 5,000 years it has not created much, but bloodshed. The more utopian the vision, the more blood spilled because of it. Don’t call this a conservative or a retrograde approach. My position is, indeed, as liberal as they get. Evolution over revolution. Cheers to Bacon, Newton, Darwin. Down with Mao, Stalin and both Kims."

The rebuttal to those fears goes like this - as I noted in my ("PostColonialTech") last comment, "SNS alters students' expectations of learning and truth, making it more collaborative, less hierarchical, perhaps less bound to certain "centres of learning." Yet that does not mean that it makes knowledge acquisition easier - it may, indeed, make it much more complex, much more difficult. But - here's the thing - I am not sure that in learning "easier" (as in "simpler") is the better thing. It is simpler to hear either Dr. Bugeja or Mr. McIntosh lecture and accept (whomever) point of view. It is more complex, yet to me richer and more rewarding, to participate in this SNS conversation - even if you cannot see whatever credentials I might have hanging on my wall. And even if you - or I - lack the credentials which might, under older systems of technology ("the lecture hall") allow us major roles in the debate. " and Jon Pincus adds (from his blog), "...social networks can also make a huge positive impact on some underlying issues in the education field. Start with the exclusion and marginalization of a lot of voices and from debates held in the halls of power. Again use this debate as an example: no current or recent students in The Economist’s roster; the speakers, Moderator, and guest participants all currently occupy positions of (relative) privilege; and the tone is often condescending towards practitioners (as opposed to “experts”). Social networking technologies make it easier to broaden the conversation, with people bringing their friends and acquaintances in environments that are more inclusive – and creating opportunities to network together, creating connections among existing networks that didn’t exist before."

So, while there are many issues, including questions regarding the understanding of history (Dr. Bugeja at one point takes time to blast Gutenberg, who, "printed a few Bibles but was better known in his time for disseminating the junk mail of the 15th century—indulgences."), and questions regarding an understanding of technology (Dr. Bugeja makes an explicit distinction between "tools" - such as a chalkboard - and "technology," - "why technology is not a tool like a ruler or chalk board but an autonomous system that changes radically anything it touches without itself being changed much at all" - while I think of chalkboards, books, even lecture halls and classrooms as obvious forms of technology), and a brief, if esoteric, argument about what is and what isn't a "Social Networking System," I still find myself believing that where you stand on this issue relates principally to questions of power, and thus fear.



If you believe that education, as we have known it over the past two centuries - that is, formalized, structured, hierarchical, and occurring in a specific setting, has generally worked well - for yourself, your family, and/or the world, then you will likely find the idea of social networking as an educational strategy disturbing, because, by its definition, it slices through hierarchy and alters authority. But if you see the world as needing a dramatically more flexible, more collaborative, more open form of education as we attempt to reach across the huge chasms of difference in human experience, you will likely find the idea of social networking as an educational strategy so powerful as to be worth the investments in time, money, training, as well as in terms of the risks which come with any change.

One of the critical things about Social Networking Systems is that authority is a flexible idea. Braha and Bar-Yam (2006) found that "authority" (the "highly connected nodes") in a social network changed day-by-day, even when participants were much the same. [1] Contrast that with a lecture hall (one highly connected node that is constant through the semester) or the traditional classroom (with one primary highly connected mode - the teacher - and a few lesser-connected nodes - the "top" students, again as constants). The structure of the technology of the lecture hall or classroom literally works against the acceptance of distributed expertise. It is hard, very hard, to stand up from the back row and declare that the central authority might be mistaken. It is very hard for a fourteen-year-old to demonstrate knowledge on a topic superior to that of the teacher. And it is almost impossible for either of those "interrupters" to pull in the expertise (via human interaction or data) that would prove their point. Also impossible to instantly reach outside that room to ask questions from a larger library of data.

SNS reverses these issues. On a social networking site it is difficult to maintain authority. I can challenge Dr. Bugeja in ways I would never think of doing in a classroom. Everything he says can be loudly doubted, assaulted, even insulted. He can no longer control the discussion. But, I can easily bring my expertise in. I can (often) easily track the experiences of those making agreeing or disagreeing statements. I can look up data and put it where everyone can see it. I do not need credentials to enter, but, in ways unique to the structure, I must quickly establish my credentials. It is indeed messier, more complex, in many ways more difficult. But I would argue that it can also be richer, more inquisitive, and in many ways, far more human.

At the end, debate moderator Robert Cottrell brings up one commenter:
"As we move towards the close, I am going to pull out a line from JOHNNAUGHTON that I think merits reflection.

"Social networking, he says, is "intrinsically non-hierarchical and largely uncontrollable. It's therefore a poor fit with our hierarchical and tightly-controlled educational institutions—at every level from kindergarten to university. Social networking could conceivably have beneficial effects in education—but only if the social structures implicit in our educational system adapt to accept it."

"It seems to me that if Mr Naughton's first sentence is correct, then it is revolution, more than an adaptation, which is required, for social networking to make its way in education. And I am not sure that the proponents of the motion have made that clear."

I hope I have made this clear. I believe that I and others, like Ewan McIntosh, come to be proponents of SNS systems in education because we believe that a revolution is necessary. I know that I look at schools every day and wonder at the cruelty and meanness of the environment, of the way learning and creativity are limited and stifled, of the high percentage of students for whom our "time-honored" systems do not work. That is not to say that SNS systems should be our only form of learning environment, but it does suggest that there is a reason that you often have to drag children to school, while having to drag them away from their computers and mobiles.

To the question: "could the introduction of social networking tools be useful in a formal classroom setting? Additionally, is the concept of social networking a progressive, but legitimate, form of student-to-student and student-to-teacher collaboration?"Part A: Yes, useful and transformational. Even the temporary alteration of the power structure in the classroom engages different students in different ways - opens possibilities - alters both self-perceptions and world understandings. Part B: Yes, progressive AND legitimate, and again, transformational. Used properly, "teaching will never be quite the same," Nor, I might add, should it be.

- Ira Socol

[1] D. Braha and Y. Bar-Yam. From Centrality to Temporary Fame: Dynamic Centrality in Complex Networks. Complexity 12: 59-36, 2006.

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 on Amazon

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

The Fear

"Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, "Alright, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance." so says, Henry Drummond - the Clarence Darrow character in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's play Inherit the Wind. He continues, speaking directly to the jury and, of course, the audience

"Madam, you may vote, but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder-puff or your petticoat. Mr., you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline." Darwin took us forward to a hilltop from where we could look back and see the way from which we came, but for this insight, and for this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis."

Despite the fears of some religious extremists, today it is not "the pleasant poetry of Genesis" which is threatened, but certain "norms" of information transmission. Yet the fear described by that play, and by the Scopes Monkey Trial itself, is a real thing.

In a changing world, it is not surprising that people are afraid. It is, of course, least surprising that the people for whom the 'old world" has worked really well, will be most afraid. No one wants to be relegated to the old "dustbin of history," surely not those for whom status (as opposed to say, great wealth or great power) is the key to their identity. The current debate at The Economist's web site reminded me of this.

"Many would argue that online education is currently exacting such a price. Critics are already lamenting what is lost, particularly from interpersonal relations in the classroom, but the real test of online education will be what is on balance gained," says Douglas F. Johnson of the University of Florida in his chapter "Toward a Philosophy of Online Education" (in Developing Faculty to Use Technology, Programs and Strategies to Enhance Teaching, edited by David G. Brown). Posted on Stanford University's "Tomorrow's Professor" Blog.

He continues, "Creating a flexible leaning process and an environment that incorporates online technologies can attract more students and improve their access to learning opportunities while enhancing their understanding and retention of new information about both the process and the content of education. Such a learning environment can best target specific and rapidly changing educational needs.

"These changes do not mitigate the rationale for the traditional liberal arts curriculum, as many fear. In fact, they reinforce it, for what can be of greater value in a just-in-time, needs-driven world than a broad base of understanding, a demonstrated ability to learn a wide variety of subjects, and a proven track record of learning how to learn? Online education presents important opportunities o reach a mobile population, but it must be structured on clearly conceived concepts so that the cherished and time-tested educational purposes of the past may continue to add value to the learning needs of the present."

If you read the "con" comments in the debate (in which I appear by the nom de keyboard PostColonialTech) you will see the fear. There is a sense of lost control - Social Networking, it is charged, will somehow replace the art of teaching, it will destroy literature and received knowledge, it will turn content over to capitalists in pursuit of nothing but profit, it will replace face-to-face interaction.

All of these complaints assume two things - first, that everyone benefits from the "pre-technology" system - in this case the delivery of content in "teacher-controlled contexts" through books, lectures, and controlled dialogues. Second, that internet-based social networking cannot co-exist with other forms of human communication.

Both assumptions are wrong. Education must change, becoming far more flexible and far more learner-controlled, because it has not worked for most of the world. Not only do most students do "poorly" in school - that is, they get less than they need from the process - but much of the world suffers because so much of our "received wisdom" comes unexamined and untested against realities outside of the narrow experiences of academics. This does not place us on that "slippery slope" to where "nothing is true." Instead it means that we need to integrate, and challenge, a far more diverse group of voices than schools traditionally have done, and we must deliver content in many more ways than schools have done. And the technology of our age allows us to do both things - we can connect students in Kentucky to students in South Africa, and we can offer content via a wide choice of delivery systems - authentic voices, authentic experiences, real challenges - joined to content provided in a way which allows the highest degree of personal comprehension.

But yes, technology systems for education must exist within an educational context. So we must teach and model on-line behavior. Obviously we must teach on-line searching, and navigation, and discernment. We must encourage critical thinking in social network interaction, and we must demonstrate interactive expansion - from network form to Skype video conference in (how many?) deliberate steps... These are not "natural skills" - but they are skills our students must know if they are to succeed, to flourish, in the future.

So, it is ok to be afraid. Teaching will need to change. Teachers will need to learn new things. And the world will change. Nothing will ever quite "be the same." But fear is not a reason to stop progress. Fear is something humans overcome in order to progress. Social Networking, like mobile phones and web-based news delivery, will change education - and if we use these technologies well, if we teach them well, they will change education for the better.

Anyway, come read, and come join the conversation at The Economist.

- Ira Socol

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

Stop Abusing Children!

If you listen to the educational researchers who currently hold sway in the United States - including those advising every current presidential candidate - Republican and Democratic - no one in the Scandinavian nations or in Germany learns to read - "it is impossible," they imply, to learn reading without explicit instruction at the youngest ages. Of course years of moving this instruction down have done nothing to improve reading among adolescents - in fact, evidence is that these tactics help few and damage many - a tough set of facts hidden within the statistical fictions of large studies conducted by people with curriculum systems to sell.

Now the "No Child Left Behind" disease has jumped the Atlantic, and now infects the British Labour Party. And now 3 and 4 year olds are threatened with the nightmare of age inappropriate reading lessons which will likely exacerbate dyslexic conditions and teach young children to hate books and reading. It is a disaster in the making which may only be stopped by concerted political action. If you are a British citizen, please read the petition below, and sign it if you agree.

- Ira Socol

Dear All:

Please, please, please . . . if you have a problem with 3 and 4-year-olds having to learn to read and write (outrageously, this becomes law in the UK in 9 months time for all nurseries – not just state-funded nurseries), then please sign the following Downing Street petition: just click on this link and follow the instructions
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/OpenEYE/

They (the gov't) just haven't got it. They think the sooner a child starts something, the better it will be; the notion of age appropriateness doesn't seemed to have crossed their mind. There is masses of evidence (e.g. formal schooling in Germany starting age 6/7, etc) demonstrating that delaying formal learning and letting children learn through just playing is no hindrance to later literacy. In fact it helps.

If you want to sign the petition, please do it today, as to get over 1,000 signatures in a couple of days apparently gets 'registered'. Current total 469 !

Full text of this Downing Street Petition:

We, the undersigned, petition the Prime Minister to commission an urgent independent review of the compulsory Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) policy framework, and to reduce the status of its learning and development requirements to `professional guidelines'.

We recognise the government's good intentions in its early-years policy-making, but are concerned about the EYFS legislation, which comes into force in England next September.

Our concerns focus on the learning and development requirements, as follows:

1. They may harm children's development

2. They will restrict parents' freedom of choice in childcare and education

3. Their assessment profile requirements may place an unnecessary bureaucratic burden on those who care for young children

4. Recent evidence suggests that government interventions in education generally may not be driving standards up and may be putting too much pressure on children

5. There is significant evidence to suggest that introducing formal education too early is damaging to some children in both the short and the long term, especially to boys. Consequences may include the development of unpredictable emotional and behavioural problems, unwarranted levels of stress, damage to children's self-esteem and erosion of their enthusiasm for learning. Research has shown that 5 year olds drilled in reading and writing were outstripped four years later by children whose first year at school was more socially interactive and stimulating. Such evidence suggests that in practice (notwithstanding the reassurances offered in the legislation) the approaches to teaching that will be encouraged by broad-brush EYFS targets - such as that by the age of 5 children should "begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation" - are likely to be those which may be harmful to young children.

6. The EYFS will be mandatory across all settings – childminders, nurseries, playgroups, schools (including independent schools). We appreciate that the Government's intention is to ensure the same high standards everywhere, but we believe that this could be better achieved by investing the necessary resources in comprehensive staff training across the field. We do not accept that the EYFS encapsulation of child development reflects the views of professionals worldwide, nor do we accept that it is acceptable to mix developmental milestones with aspirational outcomes.

We note that the law allows for the Government to make regulations regarding exemptions to EYFS. However such exceptions are to be made only at the request of individual parents, and it will therefore be impossible for parents to find a childcare or educational setting which takes a different approach to the EYFS and therefore does not teach to its learning and development requirements. This is an unprecedented restriction of parents' freedom to choose how their children are cared for and educated. It may actually increase the use of informal care, with accompanying lower standards in some cases.

7. The EYFS profile demands that carers assess children against 117 different assessment points. With less than a year to go until implementation, arrangements for carers to receive training and ongoing support are seriously inadequate. Without such training and support there is unlikely to be any consistency of assessments and random "box-ticking" is a real probability. Even once trained to do it, assessment and recording will add significantly to the workload of those who care for and work with young children. It may skew the way staff observe and interact with those children, and the paperwork required will certainly take up valuable time that could otherwise be spent with them.

8. Recent evidence – including the reports of the Cambridge Primary Review, and the latest OECD PISA report (the "international league tables") - suggests that government-driven changes in education have been largely ineffective in driving up standards and may at worst be adversely affecting both educational standards and the quality of children's educational experiences. We see no reason to believe that the EYFS learning and development requirements would break this pattern.

In conclusion we believe that this unprecedented legislation could lead to harmful long-term consequences and therefore contradicts the responsible "precautionary principle" which should surely be exercised in all early-year state policy-making.

http://openeyecampaign.wordpress.com/

The Mobile Scanner

I've set up many university students with what I call "the backpackable scanner" - the LiDE series of flatbed scanners from Canon which sell cheaply (typically US $35-$75), weigh under two pounds, need no electrical power (just a laptop's USB connection), and come with a great "lite" version of OmniPage. With that scanner carried along they can create instant conversions of any printed text to a digital form usable by text-reading software almost anywhere they find themselves (classroom quizzes, in the library stacks). It's a great solution, but still, we're at "almost anywhere."

Now, "almost anywhere" becomes "anywhere," with a digital camera and an online service called ScanR.

ScanR allows you to turn your mobile phone [with 2-megapixel or better camera] or digital camera into a full-service scanner. Take a picture of a document or even a whiteboard, send it to ScanR directly from your mobile or your computer, and they will convert it into a PDF file (like Adobe Acrobat) or a text-file and deliver it back to you. ScanR is free for very limited use (5 conversions per month) or fee based (US $2.99/month) for unlimited use.


Now, there's one more essential reason to have mobile phones in the classroom - ScanR just made the phone the best notetaking support possible. But think of all the other uses - a dyslexic student or worker could quickly convert print into text for a screen-reader wherever they might be. Attention-challenged students could grab the whiteboard information even if they had needed to escape the room for a few minutes. Literacy-impaired students can make substantially better use of print libraries. I can also see great uses of this for senior citizens who might need to alter text into more readable forms - and, of course, it already seems well on its way to being an essential business tool.

- Ira Socol

Empowering - Accepting - Developing Students' Futures

Guest Blog:

The Internet can be empowering in schools

By MÓNICA GUZMÁN
P-I REPORTER

The scene: a high school classroom. Students gaze into their laptops. They might be taking notes like good little boys and girls. Or they might be passing the time on MySpace, quietly playing a Web game while their teacher thinks she has their undivided attention.

It looks like a teacher's worst nightmare. But it's the future. If we're smart.

The best thing about the Internet is the power it gives. Power to have a voice in civic government, power to learn on our own terms, power to share our lives. But that power isn't allowed in the classroom. Not yet. And that's a mistake.

Schools all over the country lock their computers away in a lab or a library. That's the situation at Garfield High School, where the district's Web filter blocks access to sites like MySpace and YouTube and occasionally some blogs teachers want to use in class.

The filter saves everyone a lot of trouble and worry. Students are curious and schools are scared. Filters are the easiest way to stop young minds from wandering where they shouldn't -- whether it's a mindless online game, a profanity-filled blog or worse. Schools need to be careful. So they hold back. They stay safe.

That's the wrong way to go.

Giving the Internet a place in the classroom would cost teachers some control, but the perks are worth it and teens deserve it -- not just to make use of their skills in the classroom but to take make full use of the technologies available to them.

Consider the situation at the University of Washington's medical school, where laptops are required gear and no one walks around the class to see what students are doing on them. "We could be checking e-mail," said first-year student Kristina Rudd. "Many of us are."

But they do other things, too. The second an obscure term escapes the lecturer's lips, someone in the classroom will look it up in Wikipedia or medical journals, dig up a relevant article and send it to the class. Suddenly, the influence of the lecture no longer relies on the effectiveness of the lecturer.

That's empowerment.

And it can happen in high school.

At the private Lakeside School, 14-year-old Janelle Dy hands in almost all her work by e-mail. When she's allowed to use her laptop in class, she makes the most of it.

"When I took notes on paper, sometimes I'd have difficulty understanding what the teacher was talking about, due to vocabulary," she said. "But now I have a dictionary on my laptop I'm allowed to use at all times. Also I can get to other Web sites, like Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica."

Not everyone in her class is as dutiful. Some students find ways to distract themselves, and a few, making use of their tech savvy, bypass the school's Web filter and go where they shouldn't.

That will happen. But to base all students' technological access on the behavior of an irresponsible few is not only lazy, it denies them an opportunity to learn integrity.

Granted, many schools are not equipped for this. Besides the obvious financial barriers, too many teachers are unaware of all the ways technology can supplement their lessons and few schools have the technical prowess to keep Internet rebels in check.

But there's something else holding educators back: fear of losing control.

Clearly, teens have a fluency with the Internet most teachers can't match. Bring this technology to every desktop and teachers are put at a disadvantage. We can continue to play it safe, or we can take some risks and give teens some power. Who knows? They might surprise us.

And the nightmare scenario might be a dream come true.

P-I reporter Mónica Guzmán can be reached at 206-448-8381 or monicaguzman@seattlepi.com. (c) 2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

and, also from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Ban Wikipedia? No Way!

My heart just about stopped when I saw the headline on today's Seattle Times site: "School officials unite in banning Wikipedia."

Surely not!

I am a Wikipedia junkie--it's my starting point for everything from determining what direction the Deep Fork River flows in Oklahoma, to keeping track of Kid Nation TV show developments, to figuring out what's up with a trend in some cities with kids using bicycles without brakes. I have a close friend who's using Wikipedia to learn about the potential new owners of the corporation where she works. On the Save Seattle Schools blog, contributers reportedly consulted Wikipedia to learn more about McKinsey & Co., the outside consulting firm that Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson is using to help craft a strategic plan.

Is Wikipedia the final, definitive source of all information? No. But I don't agree with those crotchety librarians in the Times article who complain that, "we don't see it as an authoritative source," and subsequently block the site from students.

With today's technology, information flow has become much more fluid and immediate. Just because it can't be found in a bound book doesn't necessarily mean that it ain't so. Indeed, there's a tremendous amount of subjectivity that goes into what is printed as the "truth." Of course, just because someone posted a statement online doesn't necessarily mean that it is true, either.

It's a shame that the teachers and librarians quoted in the article didn't take advantage of the situation--finding inaccurate information on Wikipedia--by having their students revise the Wikipedia site with their own research, or engage in broader discussions about how authority and truth will be staked out in new media (a battle that's raging right now between traditional journalists and bloggers).

Do you or your kids use Wikipedia? Do you think it has a place in schools?

Posted by Denise Gonzalez-Walker at November 26, 2007 5:45 p.m. (c) 2007 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Not fearing the future...

"Children, go where I send thee..." the Rev. Jennifer Browne of Grand Rapids' (Michigan) First United Methodist Church brings this hymn together with my column on mobile phones in schools (see below) to create a powerful sermon. I don't often ask you to join me in church, but if you like, you can watch the whole Sunday service from the ninth of December, 2007 here - the topic appears about 25 minutes in...

http://www.grandrapidsfumc.org/videos/2007/20071209.htm

not You-Tube - you must click on the image or the link
and the church's site will load and the video will play

No comments yet from any of the school "leaders" who ban these devices without understanding the damage they are doing. But then "Education Mayor" Bloomberg (of NYC) has never responded to any of my earlier posts.

- Ira Socol

Don’t Hang Up on Your Students’ Futures

In today's (8 December 2007) Grand Rapids (MI) Press I have an opinion piece protesting mobile phone bans in local schools. Well, not protesting, simply suggesting that if we cannot figure out how to teach with a tool this powerful we are surely failing as educators. Of course, in this topsy-turvy communications world, it is the print media which required a 1,300 word story be cut to 750, while here, on-line (or by feed to your mobile phone) you can read the whole thing...

In a classroom with sixty future teachers I tried an experiment. “Everybody have their mobile phones?” I asked. They looked surprised. “OK,” I told these Michigan State University students, “you have fifteen minutes to receive a text message. The message must say (1) where the person is, (2) what they ate for lunch today, and (c) what decade were they born in.” Then I offered extra credit if the text response came from outside the US, and more extra-credit if it was both from outside the country and in a language other than English. Instantly the room was filled fingers flying across tiny keypads, and within fifteen minutes we had far more responses than students. “What could we do with this information?” I asked. “Could we graph it? Map it? Analyze it for information on diet? Work on translating the French, German, Spanish, and Urdu messages we received?”

This wasn’t an original idea of mine. A friend had emailed me an online video on best practices in education and I had grabbed this assignment from that. But it was a powerful lesson. Just the week before another instructor in education at MSU had been quoted in a New York Times article complaining about cell phones in the classroom and I had forcefully argued that this was the wrong tack to take. Mobile phones are potentially the most powerful communication and information device ever created, I had suggested, and they are already everywhere. How blind, I asked, must we as educators be if we cannot use such a remarkable tool? If we cannot teach with such a remarkable tool? If we cannot help students see how this tool will impact their lives in amazing ways as they go forward? So I went into the class wanting to show future teachers one more way to embrace the technology of the 21^st Century rather than fearing it.

My ideas about mobile phones in education are not original either. Around the world educators are utilizing this technology. Phones deliver content via text, they allow intra-classroom communication (students using Bluetooth to text answers to their teachers), they provide sophisticated handheld calculators, they take photos which document experiments, they act as digital voice recorders, they play podcasts of pre-recorded lessons, they support second language acquisition, they support and encourage writing, and where the phones connect to the internet, they give students handheld access to the world’s greatest library. Researchers and teachers in Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Israel, Portugal, Germany, Spain, Singapore, South Africa, Japan, Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Kenya and dozens of other nations are developing and supporting “mobile learning” initiatives. In the United Kingdom the government just supported the publication of a remarkable book (available as a pdf download) from the Institute of Education at the University of London, Mobile Learning – towards a research agenda, which looks at the many cognitive interactive effects of this new educational context. TeachersTV in the UK – an online training tool, produced a half-hour video this fall on the power of mobile phones in the classroom.

Having excited my class with the phone lesson, and having met with them again to investigate all the ways that new technologies and electronic devices can support diverse learners – including the students they will mostly work with, those with learning, attention, and behavioral “disabilities,” I came home on Tuesday night, watched House, and then the local news. And on the local news I heard a top story about East Grand Rapids Schools blocking cell phone use and prohibiting iPod use. The story went on to say how this new policy was similar to those in Holland and other West Michigan cities, but less restrictive than the Grand Rapids Public Schools which, if the story was correct, prohibited all student electronic devices. Why? I asked myself, why, in a state so desperate to prepare our children for a new global economy, would we be so reluctant to actually begin to do that?

Educational researcher Alan November called American schools, “reality free zones” in the June 2007 issue of Technology and Learning magazine. “If we could get past our fear of the unknown and embrace the very tools we are blocking (which are also essential tools for the global economy),” he said, “then we could build much more motivating and rigorous learning environments. We also have an opportunity to teach the ethics and the social responsibility that accompany the use of such powerful tools.” He went on to discuss how today’s students have “information and communication containers” different than those of past generations – mobile phones, iPods, blogs, computers, instant messaging, video games. These technologies are certainly different than the 16^th through 19^th Century technologies comfortable for those who run the schools in West Michigan (pens, paper, printed books, notebooks, chalkboards), but they are no less valid, just as those old technologies are no less fraught with potential problems.

“Yes,” I have told teachers, phones in school can cause problems. Then I hold up my right hand, still scarred from where a friend stabbed me with a pencil in fifth grade. “The school, for some reason,” I say, “did not choose to ban pencils because of my injury.” I could point out that the school did not ban pencils (or paper either) when students were caught using them to write notes to friends, or to cheat, or to graffiti the boys’ room walls. Instead, the schools kept those technologies in place in the classroom, and taught both with them and the appropriate use of them.

For today’s students, who will graduate into a world dominated by digital technology and instant communication, the mobile phone (along with November’s other “containers”) will be at least as essential as all the technologies those who make school policy learned “back then” – pens and pencils, books and paper, card catalogs and library organization, typewriters and the old-style telephone. Right now students who are not experienced with their iPods will be at a disadvantage at many of our best universities (Duke and Stanford for example) and will likely be behind in language classes everywhere. Students who cannot search information quickly and effectively online will be unable to do college-level research or function at all in graduate school, or – and this is increasingly true throughout the economy – hold most jobs. Students who cannot communicate well with their employers by email and text-message will be in trouble in many ways. Yet with all that, our K-12 schools resist, using technology in the most limited ways – restricting the function to that of antique forms – the computer becomes little more than a typewriter or – with PowerPoint – a filmstrip projector.

The lesson I gave my students in instant text-message research is just one of many I try to provide. I encourage laptops in the classroom, and ask students to look things up for me, to check on the things I or other students say, and to communicate the results quickly to their classmates via email. I ask them to keep their mobile phones on their desks – that way – if they’ve forgotten to silence them and they do ring, we are all not listening while everyone searches their backpacks. I talk about the etiquette of taking important calls. I strongly encourage email conversation and debate. I expect use of Google, Google Scholar, Wiktionary, Wikipedia and talk about the best ways to use those essential tools. In the classrooms so equipped I use the Interactive White Boards (“SmartBoards”) not with PowerPoint but with on-line resources. I want these future teachers to know that they cannot fear these technologies in their classrooms, because their students must learn to use them.

New technologies scare and confuse people raised in the past. They scare and confuse schools. I recently found a series of articles from an 1842 educational journal explaining to teachers how to use the newest technology – the chalkboard – and reassuring them that “this new system” would not “replace books.” 2,500 years ago Plato feared literacy would destroy students' memorization skills and the quality of spoken language. So the fears we see around computers and mobile phones are simply part of a long pattern. But we cannot afford to simply train our students to be “just like us.” We must help them to navigate the world that is their future, and we cannot do that if we keep the technologies which will define that future out of our schools.

- Ira Socol

The essential iPod for college (The New York Times)
tshirtia - books for your mobile phone
Books in My Phone
Mobile Books
Japan: books written on, and delivered via, mobile phone.
Academic Papers
SMS in the Classroom - "Pls Turn Ur Mobile On" (Ireland - Open Access)
SMS in a Literature Course (Germany)
SMS messaging in microeconomics experiments (Australia - Open Access)
Testing using SMS messaging (New Zealand)
Cell Phones in the L2 Classroom (Korea)
Instantaneous Feedback in the Interactive Classroom (Singapore - Open Access)

The Drool Room by Ira David Socol, a novel in stories that has - as at least one focus - life within "Special Education in America" - is now available from the River Foyle Press through lulu.com.

US $16.00 direct via lulu.com

Look Inside This Book

Where is the future?

Kansas State University's Digital Ethnography Project offers an array of thought-provoking videos, blogs, and more. If you have not been watching, you might learn exactly how different the world your students will graduate into is from the world you are teaching them to be prepared for.



- Ira Socol

What part of this world do you want to leave your students out of?

While still fighting his own bizarre little war against the mobile phone in school, New York's "Education Mayor" ("scare quotes" added) Michael Bloomberg nevertheless wants to give mobile phones to students so they can be used to encourage education. Certainly a bizarre moment even for an American politician. "...focus group research showed that cellphones were the primary means of communication for many teenagers, and that reaching them through a concerted campaign of text messages or through the Internet was far more likely to be effective...But Mr. Bloomberg...made it clear that the phones would not be allowed in schools," stated the article in the relentlessly anti-technology New York Times.

But making fun of these two powerful New York institutions can only get us so far. I can laugh at them, or I can watch Sergei Brinn and company (the company is Google) introduce the future.



Watching this, I find myself forced to ask: Exactly how bad an educator must you be if you...
(1) Do not want your students to have this technology?
(2) Cannot figure out how to use the unbelievable information and communications capability of this device educationally?
(3) Do not appreciate that one more legendary drop out from an American university is using a technology all your training dismisses (You Tube) to explain how the future will be delivered via another technology all your training dismisses (the mobile phone)?

What part of this world, I want to ask all the technology resistant educators out there, do you want your students left out of?

Enough asked...

But I'll close with a lecture on possibility, and risk, and living life well... the celebrated Randy Pausch "Last Lecture" at Carnegie-Mellon University... because it is important, even though it will take up well more than an hour of your time.



- Ira Socol