This is Rob Reynolds’ weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week’s recap touches on Live Mail, Microsoft’s e-publishing partnership with the New York Times, and other technology news related to FaceBook, Yahoo, eBay, and Sony. From the education world, Rob mentions posts abot the blogging/wiki session at the Milken Institute, as well as Clarence Fisher’s reflections on his experiences with classroom blogging this past year.
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This is Rob Reynolds’ weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week’s recap touches recent developments in video gaming and provides an overview of reports o blogging and podcasting from Technorati, Feedburner, and Arbitron. This presentation also provides updates regarding the mobile phone trends and goings on in the social networking space. From the education world, Rob treats discussions related to censorship and Web filtering by schools, and mentions ongoing memes such as “Telling the New Story.”
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Click here to download the transcript
View article links for this podcast on del.icio.us
Click here to download MP3 file
You would think that with all the amazingly cool gadgets, smart computers and incredible machines and ideas floating around these days, people could come up with a better way of measuring a high schooler’s intelligence than standardized tests. The ACT and the SAT are, in theory, good ideas. No one can tamper with the tests and since they’re all the same, they have to be fair…right?
These standardized tests are supposed to be “super tests” but they can be beaten easily by a good test taker and a small amount of study time. The answers are actually fairly predictable — for example in the English portion the shortest answer is almost always the right one. They may say that the triangles and rectangles are not drawn to size, but they really are. And, since colleges base admission off of these tests, it pays (literally) to be a good test taker even if you don’t have the best grades. Unfortunately, that’s bad news for the people who may be brilliant but who process information differently or who can’t take a test well to save their lives.
I scored a 32 out of 36 on the ACT and consider myself a good test taker so I have nothing to complain about. But it’s the principle of the idea. People who read slowly or who are precise and thorough in their thinking are generally penalized with a time limit on the test. While they may have an IQ of one hundred and thirty, they might not score above a twenty on the test because they don’t have time to fully read the questions or process their thinking in the allotted time period.
Some very intelligent people just don’t take tests well. I’ve sat in class before and watched perfectionists take tests. They will sit and agonize over every single question narrowing down the answers one by one until there are only two left, and then they’ll bubble in one answer. But wait! That wasn’t the right answer. So they take out their erasers (yes they have erasers and the erasers always look very worn) and they erase the first bubble and begin to bubble in the other answer. Midway through this exercise they change their minds again and have to erase. Often there isn’t much of an answer sheet left after the kid has practically erased holes in the sheet. Not that it matters — the time limit has passed and they won’t score well at any rate.
The real problem is that these standardized tests don’t really measure your intelligence — they just test your ability to test.
There may not be a quick answer to fixing standardized tests. If you take off the time limit some people will abuse that. And, adding more time to some will just let them triple check their answers and increase their test anxiety. Regardless of how we try to fix these test, however, the fact remains that a student’s entrance into college should not be determined by one measly test to begin with. Personally I think each student should be evaluated on an individual basis, with letters from each of his or her teachers. That would give a better insight into a student’s real ability. Of course that would be a lot of extra work for teachers and colleges. The colleges I’m not worried about. They definitely make enough money to invest in such a system. And, while they’re spending some extra money, they can always throw a little in the teachers’ direction.
Problem solved.
Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.
The discussion regarding Internet filtering and censorship continues with Doug Johnson posting his ideas about how to address the problem. Yes, he says, a little civil disobedience in the short term might have some effect, but the long-term solution is to attach the process of district policy making. Miguel Guhlin, the original rabble rouser, responds to Doug’s post with a philosophical take on winning through surrender. Bud Hunt also added his take with a nice podcast on filtering conversations, but in the end, I think I like Tom Hoffman’s take the best: “It seems to me that the people with the choke hold on the web filters in our
schools aren’t educators, and often are largely unaccountable. On the whole, ed-tech seems to be subservient to IT. How the hell did that happen?”
D’Arcy Norman has a great description of the Un-Keynote presentation he did in Vancouver with Stephen Downes and Brian Alexander. The three of them roamed the audience, forced collaborative discussion, and instead of a PowerPoint presentation beamed a back channel chat session on the screen. D’Arcy’s description relates the difficulty and anxiety associated with the session, but it also gives nice insight into how this kind of thing can be done and why it can change the way we do presentations in general. Kudos to these pioneers.
Vicki Davis riffs on a Kathy Sierra post and creates her own Typology of Cognitive Pleasures for the classroom. Her list includes Discovery, Challenge, Narrative, Self-expression, Social Framework, Cognitive Arousal, Thrill, Sensation, Triumph, Flow, Accomplishment, Fantasy, and Learning. Worth the read!
Here’s our take on news that matters for Friday, April 21. Today’s theme is onward and upward!, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.
- Gaming — BusinessWeek has this good overview of the money that is being made from Second Life. And, speaking of making money, Sony has decided it wants to increase sales of its aging PS2 console. That means a lower selling price. Get yours today for only $129.
- Blogging, mediacasting, and online creations — Renee Callahan over at Corante has an insightful article about Blogging as a form of open source knowledge management. Good stuff here.
- Handhelds – Nokia’s global share of the handheld market has increased form 32% to 35% thanks to strong sales in North America and Asia. Strategy Analytics said total mobile phone sales worldwide could top one billion in 2006 for the first time. Bill Gates sees a world in which Tablet PCs replace textbooks for students. Well, he and I agree on the fact that textbooks will go the way of the DoDo bird, but I’m not sure Tablet PCs will be the winning answer.
- Social Networks – AOL is continuing to make noise about becoming a major player in the social networking space. Scripting News has a rumor that AOL is getting ready to launch a new site aimed directly at MySpace and Facebook. Time will tell. Also, Mashable! gives its take on a couple of new social networking sites. Check out Yuku (a slickly designed MySpace competitor with cool AJAX scripting) and SocialPicks. Finally, according to Om Malik, Skype continues to grow but not at a rate that will help eBay make back its $2+ billion investment anytime soon.
- Technology Talks — Well, it looks like Microsoft is going after the consumer storage space as well with a new product called Live Drive. The goal is to connect everything Microsoft as well as all out our personal items. Google and Microsoft are as hard to differentiate as the men and the pigs these days.
(This is a text summary of the He Said She Said podcast from April 20, 2006. This is a weekly podcast that deals with a wide range of topics on Education and Educational Technology. The show’s host is Rob Reynolds and he is joined by Susan Smith Nash. A new He Said She Said podcast is available every week on XplanaRadio.)In this podcast, Rob and Susan discuss the Long Tail of educational publishing. New markets are opening up along with new publishing alternatives and the means of production and distribution have turned every professor into a content provider. Rob and Susan discuss the possibilities due to Google Books, Lulu.com, BookSurge, and other on-demand print or distribution and e-commerce solutions. They also talk about the effects of social networking on this new publishing world and Rob touches briefly on the potential of projects like Sophie.Broadcast Informationpodcast feedi-podder
Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.
Will Richardson chimes in ont he censorship discussion and even adds a wiki where others can post what is being blocked by schools. Mark Ahlness also weighs in with his observations. If you’re late to the debate, Will’s article will get you up to speed. Tom Hoffman responds to Miguel Guhlin’s original post with his own critique of the situation and offers up specific suggestions for coping. Miguel Guhlin responds to some of Tom’s comments.
Meanwhile David Warlick continues his Flat Classroom theme with this post on blogging in the flat classroom. At the same time, Brian Crosby puts out his plea for real working models of “messy learning” that can help create the necessary groundswell for reform in education. This is a lengthy post but there’s some good stuff here. Particularly challenging is this thought: “We hear about “
href=”http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2006/03/15/telling-the-new-story-2/” target=”_blank”>The New Story,” or “The Read/Write Web in the Classroom,” but who else but the choir reads, hears or cares about any of it?”
Dan Visel over at if:book has an interesting article on how the new text models created by the Web are challenging us to come up with new ways to read. This is an insightful critique of Wikipedia as well as other text phenomena related to the Web.
In the miscellaneous category today, D’Arcy Norman has kindly posted the audio from his Intro to Podcasting session. Also, Alan Levine gives this interesting summary of a NMC staff meeting in Second Life. Finally, Christopher Sessums has an informative article on personality types and how they affect learning.
Here’s our take on news that matters for Thursday, April 20. Today’s theme is now that’s something I needed! , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.
- Gaming — A new study from the Consumer Electronics Association says that there are many more women gamers, ages 25 to 34, than men because of games like solitaire and Tetris. Also, expect in-game advertising revenue to increase dramatically in upcoming years. The Yankee Group “predicts that in-game advertising is ‘poised for explosive growth’ and will reach $732 million by 2010, representing more than five times the current value of the in-game ad market.”
- Blogging, mediacasting, and online creations — In the “extremely useful” category — Feedburner has launched a new service that provides blog feeds via e-mail.
- Handhelds – Gas prices are on the rise but it looks like Apple iPod’s will cost a bit less in the coming quarter. I can do without my car but my iPod? C’ mon! And Palm has released it’s first update for the Treo 700w. This update includes push email capability for wireless synchronization of e-mail and calendar information.
- Social Networks – Social networking sites may indeed be a dot com fad but they are certainly attracting lots of money. New deals are made almost daily. Facebook has raised $25 million in its latest round of funding from venture-capital firms. Also, Mashable! has a nice take on how, if you can’t beat MySpace you should definitely think about joining them.
- Technology Talks — The latest Pew survey on Internet life has some interesting information on how Americans rely on the Web. “Some 45 percent of internet users, or an estimated 60 million Americans, said
the internet helped them make big decisions or face a major moment in their life
during the previous two years.”
Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.
George Siemens posts this 10-minute podcast –
href=”http://odeo.com/a/l05hNuHu36d68eZjtx8Q4ig4XaV052uH3EUxg0Hk” target=”_blank”>Restructuring our Structures. “Essentially, two changes are driving everything: 1) the breakdown of centralized
structures (and move toward network models), and 2) the increased capacity for
“quick connectivity” - i.e. the ability to for connections with ease.” In a related post, Clarence Fisher asks if perhaps we shouldn’t focus more on where (environment) we are learning than how (process). “But schools and classrooms are not structured to best support that learning. We
need to understand how learning happens, but mostly we need to deeply re -
examine the environments we create in classrooms and begin there.”
Ben Vershbow gives us his take on Pulse, a “networked book” from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Taking the book for a spin in cyberspace — attracting readers, generating buzz, injecting it into the conversation — is not at all a bad idea, especially in these
href=”http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/04/the_age_of_amphibians.html” target=”_blank”>transitional times when we are continually shifting back and forth between on and offline reading.”
Also, Wesley Fryer has a posted a nice discussion of the online composition-grading tool in use at Texas Tech University — Topic. This is an online tool designed to provide standardized and consistent feedback, and to make composition classes more efficient and, thus, allow students more time to actually write. Having taught composition fro many years, i have worked with several similar programs and approaches. What I like about Topic is a hybrid approach of technology and people. I also like the emphasis on having students write more and listen to instructors less.
Finally, David Warlick has begun formalizing his work on Telling New Stories in education. His latest post puts forth three types of stories and some basic descriptions for each. Vicki Davis picks up on David’s post and talks about the importance of stories over simple facts and the need to make our stories understandable to others.
Here’s our take on news that matters for Wednesday, April 19. Today’s theme is me too!, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.
- Gaming — A University of Miami study shows that playing video games does actually help people burn calories. Okay, don’t take this too far. This is in no way a substitute for the exercise derived from walking back and forth to the refrigerator. Also, a new study shows that a continued increase in cell phone ownership could lead to a majority of people browsing the Web via handheld. Finally, Xbox developer Kevin Bachus opens up about the upcoming console wars in this interview.
- Blogging, mediacasting, and online creations — It seems like everyone wants to get in on the act of putting content online. This time it’s PBS.
The company is considering making its television shows available on the Internet or portable devices like MP3 players. And, Yahoo is continuing its world-domination ways, this time by acquiring most of DVR company Meedio. From the article:
“Earlier this year, Yahoo made a big splash with the introduction of its Yahoo
Go initiative, whose goal is to extend the access to Yahoo online services and
content beyond the PC to other devices. The TV portion of Yahoo Go isn’t
available yet, but Yahoo has said it will allow access from TVs to photo albums,
online radio stations, music clips, as well as search for video on the Web.
Yahoo does have an existing agreement with TiVo Inc., the popular provider of
DVR devices and services, to let TiVo subscribers access Yahoo services through
the TiVo TV-based interface.”
Feedburner is currently tracking approximately 45,000 podcasts and the number is growing at 15% monthly.
This compares with the 6,000 podcast feeds the company was managing at the time of its last report in May 2005. These podcast numbers exceed the total number of radio stations worldwide.
- Handhelds – Are you having trouble keeping up with all the new Web 2.0 companies? Me too! But, never fear, there is help in this article as it lists some great directories that can guide us. Also, with the growth of the cell phone market and the evolution of handheld functionality and speed, a new study predicts that cell phones could become the dominant device for accessing the Web, particularly among certain age groups.
- Social Networks – Another reason TV companies should worry about YouTube — the online video distribution site is attracting marketers. ”
Nike, Warner Bros., MTV2 and Dimension Films are among the firms
seeding the site with commercial clips. Now, along with consumer-made
videos of newborn babies, weddings and teens pulling pranks, is a short
of soccer star Ronaldinho in his new Nike sneakers.” Also, this is the introduction to Sabifoo’s site: “Sabifoo makes it easier than ever to publish to the web. By combining
href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging”>instant messaging with RSS (Really Simple Syndication), a whole new publishing infrastructure has been born. Now publishing to the world is as simple as sending a message.” There are lots of possibilities here. Beyond publishing to RSS via your IM client, this could lead to some interesting mashups that would make desktop publishing take on a whole new meaning in the office space. Finally, BusinessWeek has this article about Visible Path, a company bringing the power of Social Networking to the corporate environment.
- Technology Talks –
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