The Goldilocks effect: getting information JUST RIGHT

The Goldilocks epic hinges around the struggle for humanity to get things 'just right' (and living with bears). Many of us are having this struggle with managing information. The internet is delivering better and better access to more precisely targeted information which presents us with the problem of processing all this great stuff. Our eyes are bigger than our ability to process it all.
For a brief moment it looked as though rss would solve all this. But it just delays the problem. Once my rss feeds were set up there is the nagging pressure to sort through the feeds, and then of course go and look at a selection of the material that lands on you plate. Otherwise, why am I browsing it?

This problem presented itself nicely quite recently when I started using echalk, the very lively WA based discussion list in edna. Half a dozen or more interested emails plonked in my inbox, which is irritating because I then had to click on each and scan the contents to see if it was interesting. The irritation disappeared when most turned out to be interesting. The processing options are simple: read, or skim, or delete, or mark for later attention, or follow a link to further detail. If archived, I can search for remembered topics later on.
Then along came a message saying that email is for the elderly - a tired and inadequate format to the really information literate. A group of echalk people have set up an alternative and potentially richer site to share information: a Ning social networking site.

So off I went to this new place, and rapidly became overwhelmed by the detail and clutter and numerous options. Should I add to the blog, should I attach myself to 'friends'. So I set up an rss feed to keep track of the echalk Ning site. The list to the right is what the rss told me: not terribly exciting or informative, so I had to go to Ning to see what was there of interest. So I am left wondering how much is enough. How much information is 'just right'. The people in Ning echalk are the same people as those on the email list, in the main, so the suppliers of information are not changed. It is the time taken to find out whether their contributions are interesting to me that is the question. There are a lot more tools and opportunities on Ning than I have tried out yet, so can't decide yet what is best. But I am not writing off email yet. It is simple, but it works. Do I want information or do I want a relationship?

It all depends.......

* Image: flickr DaveC71 Glodilocks

Computer literacy/illiteracy Year 6, 10 National Test

The national ICT Literacy Years 6 and 10, 2005 assessment was conducted by ACER and completed in July 2007, but was not published until Jan 2008. Media reports describe almost 50% of students being "computer illiterate", a term not actually used in the report. The full report can be downloaded from here.

The assessment attempted to move beyond a simple measure of skills related to operating the software and hardware.

A sample of Year 6 and Year 10 students did hands-on tasks that set up a number of meaningful tasks involving common computer tasks such as searching and choosing information, creation of a presentation and so on. Students were then assessed against these and placed in one of 6 profile levels illustrated by the graph below. [click to enlarge image]



The profile standards expected for Years 6 and 10 are marked on the graph, with a large proportion of students from both year level assessed at Profile level 3. [click to enlarge image]




I have not read the report in detail but it seems that the writers have made their best estimate at expected year level proficiency and divided the students into a small number of profile levels. It is striking that there is such a large overlap between the year 6 and 10 students at level 3.

Do/will computers make a difference?

Kevin Donnelly, The Australian’s curmudgeonly education commentator, is inspired by the government’s Digital Education Revolution to broadly dismiss yet another dastardly innovation in education - computers! He writes again [Dec 23] that there is little if any evidence that computers have any benefit in schooling. I must sadly point out that there is no evidence that fountain pens, ball point pens, three ring binders or photo copiers have improved educational outcomes either. It is how you use these tools that makes a difference.

Looking for firm evidence that computers improve learning is a generally futile.
“While it would be convenient to be able to make a direct connection between the use of ICT and learning outcomes, most reputable educational researchers today would agree that there will never be a direct link because learning is mediated through the learning environment and ICT is only one element of that environment.” P16 Newhouse 2002

So while the computer might be a potentially powerful learning aid, achieving better learning will depend on half a dozen other elements being in place. That should not be a discouragement, but a reminder of something that even Mr Donnelly might agree with: that it is the quality of the teacher that is at the core of improvement.

We are seeing this demonstrated in the introduction of Interactive White-boards. It is what the teacher does with it that matters and there are many examples of these expensive tools inspiring great learning, but sadly, there are plenty of instances of the IWB being just a fancy blackboard.

As for the plan to provide all senior secondary students with a computer on their desk, I think this is an inspired initiative. Look at what happens in the so-called real world. Virtually all white-collar workers have a computer on their desk. It is more than a little strange that students who’s daily (and nightly homework) is the gathering, processing and production of information they are lucky if they have the use of a computer for more than two hours a week during their time at school. But it would be a very silly employer who expects that simply providing a computer will make the employees productive.

Most of us take it for granted that a computer on one’s desk at work is a basic essential for effectiveness, and surely this also applies to most students. But let’s not make the illogical leap to imagine that the benefits will be automatic.

Children, sex and safety on the internet

There was an excellent program on Australia’s Radio National recently titled Sex on the Net about child safety. In the style of this program it is a very sensible and thoughtful perspective and in 45 minutes goes into considerable depth. The link allows you to listen or download the audio and there is a transcript.

In short, the program says: there are serious issues at stake, there is no need to panic and the issues are complex. As usual, there are no simple answers and there is a lovely section in the program where a man who has been working for years in an educational program for children with one message - don’t give out your personal details, who realises that it is probably a useless approach.

It is a topic that school administrators and teachers need to know a lot about, and many of the ‘expert’ on this program said that they don’t really know what is happening.

Professional Networking with me.edu

me.edu.au is now in testing mode in preparation for launch by the middle of December. The video below shows some of its features. If you would like to explore me.edu in its test form, visit http://me-uat.edna.edu.au and log in with your edna login, or register. Note, any content added to the test mode will not be retained after the launch.
The initial service includes:
Profile - who I am, what I have done, qualifications
Interests - my professional Interests
Communities - each Interest forms a Community of Interest with whiteboard, links.
Colleagues - people I keep track of
Minifeeds - my selected RSS feeds and those of my Colleagues


New features will be added progressively with the next major release due in March 2008

Multimedia Simplicity in VoiceThread

The more I use VoiceThread the more I think it is a breakthrough application. It is so simple and clean and feature-packed - three attributes that are hard to combine. The following example shows one of its capabilities, as a quick and powerful instruction and information tool.

An introduction to LibraryThing



This is a small embed to fit into the limited space on this blog. But it easily generates a bigger presentation. And click on the image and it enlarges, click and it shrinks!

The fact that the interactive features of VoiceThread, including the ability to add voice and text memos to a presentation like this one makes it unusually good at fostering two-way communication. Feel free to add your voice memo.

R/evolution

I have just been watching another fascinating video, Information R/evolution by Prof Michael Wesch from Kansas State University in which he tells another fast moving and engaging story about the revolution or evolution of information management that is taking place. It is a worthy follow up to his spectacularly popular The machine is Us/ing Us. With thousands of fast moving images it tells a frantic story of how the old fixed information in shelves, books, catalogue cards is being replaced by indexed searchable online resources of a much greater quantity. It is well worth viewing.

A lot of people viewing it, like members of Classroom 2.0, are the in-group with new technologies, and we tend to smugly nod and say, yes, it is a revolution and it is transforming the world, and for the better. And we can all think of colleagues we feel a degree of pity for who don't get it, who are largely oblivious or dismissive of the changes that are taking place, and the impact on education.

But like most revolutions, the outcome is not clear. I suspect that the direction of the revolution will depend a lot on how schools react to the challenges and opportunities. The trouble is, the technology is evolving faster than our ability to come to terms with it.

There are two big pot-holes on the road to technological progress in schooling. The first is that it is often easy to learn how to use a tool but darn hard to work out how to use it effectively and appropriately. Take searching. It is very easy to conduct powerful searches but there is a wide and deep range of skills needed to be able to search wisely and skillfully. That's where smart teachers come in. The second pot-hole is that it is not much good just teaching the old stuff in new ways (to paraphrase Mark Prensky). For example, if students have access to a mountain of information, it is not adding much value to their learning if they are sent off to find the information that used to be in their old text book. Much better to learn how to genuinely investigate, then evaluate information buried in the information mountain. Better still if that investigation is a collaborative task using some Web 2.0 tools. If there has been a revolution in information then maybe there needs to be a revolution in teaching goals and methods.

But from what I can see, most school systems are tentative, ill-informed and more than a little paranoid about the new learning environment. We hear denunciations of the use of information from Wikipedia and other informal information sources that are quite detached from the reality of what smart people are doing in the wider society. But it is a tradition of education systems that they tend to be very resistant to change.

So I think it is up to well informed people like members of Classroom 2.0 to not wait for evolutionary change, but to support the information revolution become a teaching and learning revolution.