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ILET PresentationsRichard Noss is a mathematician at the Institute of Education. Dr. Noss spoke with us about his interest in how digital technologies allow people to think differently. In particular he emphasized the importance representational modeling of abstract things. Regarding the learning of mathematics, he noted that the point at which that the interest of a lot of kids wanes, occurs "when they need to get through algebra." He said that algebra is a beautiful way of expressing dynamic things with a static medium. However, many children stumble when they don't easily make any kind of logical connection between reality and the algebraic model. To help kids past this stumbling block, "we need to get everybody comfortable with models." We should be (as Papert suggests) "teaching children to be mathematicians rather than to do mathematics." He pointed out that "the world is full of really stunning applications for education." Notable among those applications are Geometry Sketchpad, and NETLOGO (Northwestern University). More information can be found at www.londonknowledgelab.ac.uk Stephen Pickles is a librarian at the Institute of Education. He shared with us some information about education search engines in the United Kingdom. Social Sciences Information Gateway (SOSIG). He pointed out that a challenge common to libraries everywhere is that the price of journals is increasing faster than libraries will be able to maintain. Because of this increasing gap between costs and resources, he said that we must find alternative ways to make scholarly works accessible to researchers. One way of doing this is for authors to retain electronic publishing rights for published works. Some journals may be more receptive to this arrangement than others. Christina Preston, founder of MirandaNet shared information and insight into the aim of that organization. They use technology (including multimedia and other e-communication tools and practices) for lifelong learning, bridging the gaps that otherwise might divide nations, and cultures. Resources Magdalena Jara was an ILET participant who was with us for most of the Summer Academy activates. She provided some insight into the mission and activities of the Learning Technologies Unit at the Institute of Education. Included are priorities of making courses at University of London responsive and relevant to the changing needs of students, ensuring accessibility, and broadening the range of teaching strategies. LTU also works to increase flexibility by offering support to develop technology materials. The implication is that education can be more responsive if it is flexible in terms of time, content, entry requirements, instruction approach, resources, delivery, logistics, location, program, types of interactions, forms of communication, and study materials. LTU work includes development of processes, consultancies, resource development, and staff development. There are both some similarities and some differences between the nature of the mission and the scope of activities between the LCU and my department, the Instructional Technology Center at Iowa State University. http://k1.ioe.ac.uk/schools/mst/LTU/index.htm Harvey Mellar is the Distance Education Coordinator for all of University of London Schools. He thinks e-Learning is ideally suited for Masters level and above. His department makes lots of money, and then uses that money to develop new e-Learning programs (£600,000 to develop new Masters Program for total distance delivery). http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=4381&4381_0=5006 Sara de Freitas is with the London Knowledge Lab and Birkbeck at University of London. She talked with us about educational technology in higher education in the U.K. In addition to working towards a governmental target of 50% of the population under 30 to participate in higher education, she noted several other trends. These trends include more workplace learning, lifelong learning, a widening participation, and a globalization of education. Correlated with these trends is a growth of corporate and online universities, resulting in greater competition for learners and an increased use of the internet for learning. She noted the digital divide must be addressed as these trends continue to help ensure accessibility to educational opportunities. There are currently several governmental programs and priorities for addressing the facilitation and the implications of these trends. There are many similarities among e-learning trends in the U.K. and U.S. These include a growth in the use of multimedia e-learning materials, and changes in pedagogic approaches and models. Birkbeck uses WebCT. In 2003/2004, 24% of students are using WebCT. Resources Norbert Pachler heads up the Master of Teaching Program at the Institute of Education. We talked about how to extract learning from online discussions. One obvious suggestion was to divide large class (100 students) into smaller groups with a tutor. Each student does reading on an issue, and then writes reflections, to which all other students respond. It was pointed out that DFES generally tends to regard ICT as delivery media. But newly qualified teachers are required to demonstrate competency in some hundred or so standards in ICT. I think the most salient point was that much more than being a delivery medium for instruction, we can use technology to amplify individual's experiences. Resources Andrew Brown of the Institute of Education, was with us throughout our Summer Academy in London. He shared with us his insight into the nature of higher education in the U.K. We were asked to identify three things:
While some differences were discussed, it was not immediately obvious whether any specific difference was better or worse within either overall systemic context. We broke up into smaller groups, each matching a couple of faculty with three or four students, for a discussion on student research interests. Richard, Vanessa and I had similar interests. The part of our discussion that I found to be most relevant was about just how best to select one's research focus. Because I was at a stage where I felt like I was not yet ready to really focus on one topic, and expressed the desirability of continuing to explore options, we, as a group, came up with a model for the process of choosing a topic: . Resources Jose Luis Rodriguez of the University of Barcelona talked with us about eBooks. His focus was his interest in digital literacies and electronic reading. LEKTOR is an eBook application he is building. It is designed more towards comprehensive reading as a cognitive process. "Our approach with LEKTOR is to redesign eBooks for education." It is both an end-user tool and a research tool. LEKTOR lets the teacher design the reading experience and assess and respond to student interaction with the activities. Scola is the module within LEKTOR for integrated activities. It lets the reader/student highlight, add multimedia, make annotations, etc. The application provides a sophisticated word search, and can compile data, such as frequency. Resources Elsebeth Sorensen of Aalborg University in Denmark, was with us throughout most of our activities. She spoke with us about virtual portfolios as both a learning tool and a way to chronicle learning. Learning is a social, interactive (communicative) process. As such there must be a strong focus on collaborative knowledge building processes. Learning is also a process over time that is situated in a context. The virtual portfolio, by creating a format for learners to purposefully select and document and reflect on their learning, becomes a structure over time, context, and consciousness. By assessing, documenting, and communicating one's cognitive development, learning can become more concrete. Compiling a virtual portfolio can also lead to the "discovery" of connections within the learning over time and context. Sara Kajder, doctoral student at the University of Virginia presented a hands-on workshop on Digital Storytelling. She presented a couple of examples and guided us through an examination of several of the key features of effective digital storytelling as exemplified in what we experienced. Components of effective digital storytelling include:
Due to time constraints, we probably didn't spend as much time on the underlying learning and communication theories as she was prepared to. So we jumped right in to learning to use the tools. Her tools of choice were Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere. While several students were at least somewhat familiar with Photoshop, few had any experience with Premiere. This unfamiliarity, together with very limited access to the lab, required us to abandon our initial plans to assemble a digital story about our London experience while still at the Institute of Education. We decided to finish them up after returning to our respective home universities. I questioned the appropriateness, or rather, the limitations of the linear format and unnecessarily large file size relative to the quality of image inherent in the digital movie format. I remain convinced that at this point, an application such as Macromedia Flash allows greater flexibility, better quality, more potential for interactivity, results in a product that is smaller in file size relative to image quality, and is more readily deliverable via current web technology. Glen Bull of the University of Virginia also spoke with us about digital storytelling, and provided some guidelines and links to resources. He said that the most important thing in digital storytelling is "voice" (make it your own). So as it is your own voice, it needs to reflect a point of view. Keep it 2.5 to 3 minutes, and wrap it up with a resolution/conclusion. Someone mentioned that the British Museum has an exhibit on memory and cognition. I did find some time later to visit the museum and saw many relevant examples of the preservation of cultural memory. Andrew Burn of the Institute of Education spoke with us about Digital Narratives and Self-Representation. He referred to Irving Goffman's "Presentation of Self in Everyday Life". He emphasized the point that people are "performing" when they interact with others. In doing so they play different roles for different relationships (audience segregation). For some subjects, situations, relationships, the performance is familiar, sometimes planned and "routinized". He also covered what he referred to a "semiotic resources for training in performance of self." This led into presentation and analysis of a digital video performance of a poem. The discussion covered multimodality, multimodal literacy, and the moving image. Important to understand interplay of improvised and planned performance, social motivations, and authorship Gunter Kress of the Institute of Education covered a topic that is very relevant to my interests. He talked with us about images as a representational resource for communication and their relationship with mode, media, knowledge and learning. An important concept underlying his focus is that meaning making is transforming – making something new by bringing one's own principles to it. He contrasted text and speech, which is temporally/sequentially oriented (fit into event structures), with images, which are by nature spatially oriented. Often, images are able to represent and communicate more effectively than text. He spoke about the nature of text as temporal and images as spatial, and while I understood his point, I felt that neither text nor images are necessarily solely temporal or spatial. Text does rely on sequentiality for (relatively) consistent meaning-making. However, by offering a variety of temporal and spatial pathways, multimedia, hypertext, and other e-learning components can allow for a blurring of those spatial/temporal distinctions, which can lead to greater flexibility in bringing relevance to the meaning-making of different individuals. He did bring up the subject of online games and interactivity, which did seem to be an example of blurring distinctions by offering a variety of pathways that depend upon the users choices, reactions, and responses. |
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Rex Heer | Iowa State University | October 1, 2003 |
