TechEd News

Teacher takes students around the world through technology
By Brian Bullock, Mansfield News Journal

Students at Richland Academy School of Excellence travel around the world and through the pages of history -- all without leaving the classroom.

Middle school teacher Dan Jones uses green-screen technology to transport his social studies students to the places they study.

I can take them on location to Egypt and they can do a presentation in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza," he said.

The technology, made by a company called Yoostar, allows his students to appear on a computer screen, in real time, as if they are somewhere else. It is one of many different high-tech tools Jones uses to compliment his instruction.

Using technology in the classroom, he said, gets students excited about learning.

"It's a lot more interesting for them and it makes them want to dig deeper into a project," Jones said.

Jones was selected to speak about integrating technology into the classroom at the National Middle School Conference in Louisville, Ky., last month. He said he was honored to give a presentation at the conference, noting very few applicants are accepted. Jones invited representatives from Yoostar and Microsoft to discuss educational technology during his presentation.

Jones, who is in his seventh year of teaching, said every teacher can find creative ways to use technology in class. He said he picked up most of his strategies by experimenting with a variety of online tools.

Read more: http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20111213/NEWS01/112130315/Teacher-takes-students-around-world-through-technology

7 key questions to ask about ed technology, online learning
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post

The outcry against exploitative online for-profit education is growing at roughly the same rate as the clamor for increasing amounts of educational technology — laptops, tablets, smart boards — from preschool to life-long learning. Unfortunately, a lot of the conversation is sliding into the “pro” and “con” mode of contemporary punditry. What we most need right now is to pause before we pontificate and to patiently untangle the many intertwined strands in the arguments for and against ed tech. By separating out different threads in this conversation, we can make better decisions about if, when, and in what situations we can really learn effectively online.

Here are seven key questions designed to help any parent or student sort out the competing interests that currently drive technology into our schools — or keep technology out of some other schools.

1. Who profits from the online learning? 

If online learning is being championed because it enriches knowledge, we then have to ask if it really does.  However, if it is being championed because it enriches shareholders, then we have to raise an entirely different set of concerns.    This is one of most fundamental educational questions of our moment. Until we know the benchmark for success in any given situation—whether we are measuring student success or a healthy bottom line for the company’s owners--then the question of technology or no technology is basically irrelevant.   Since so much online education is also for-profit, it is important not to blur the method with the motive.  

2. What is the cost-cutting motive behind using technology?

This is a less cynical variation of the profit question.  For public schools or even non-profit private schools, the issue often isn’t who gets rich off the students but whether or not using technology will save money, presumably by hiring fewer teachers. Here again we have to ask if the benchmark is student success.   There is evidence that replacing a teacher with an online course can save money; there is no evidence that students taking an online course perform as well on either standardized testing or in subsequent retention tests for the content. 

3. Is there innovative thinking behind a school’s adoption of technology in the classroom?

If the institution (whether non-profit or for-profit) is simply dropping expensive technology into the classroom without rethinking  pedagogy — teaching methods, rules, models, content, and modes of student-teacher interaction — then students are not getting their money’s worth.   Parents should not ask what devices are available to their students but how the devices are being used to enhance learning.

Learn more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/7-key-questions-to-ask-about-ed-technology-online-learning/2011/12/14/gIQAZ8XouO_blog.html

Bringing Speech Recognition to Reading Instruction
By Marilyn Jager Adams , Education Week

As everyone who follows such things knows, U.S. students, as a group, do not read very well. Yet, if you are among those who have read about this—indeed, if you are among those who are reading this Commentary, then you (and most of your friends, neighbors, relatives, and colleagues) are very likely a member of that subset of Americans I would term the “hyper-educated.”

By “hyper-educated,” I do not mean extraordinarily highly educated, though many are. By “hyper-educated,” I mean that you accept that becoming educated is part of the fabric of life; you never questioned that your children would be educated, and you raised them accordingly from the start. In fact, most of the children of hyper-educated Americans read quite well; that is good. Not so good, however, is a resulting tendency for too many of the hyper-educated to think of children with reading difficulties as the exception.

To the contrary, among U.S. students, it is good readers who are the exception. As documented yet again by the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, report on reading for 2011, only one in three U.S. students is able to read and understand grade-level material. Still worse, this statistic holds across school grades and has barely budged over as many years as NAEP has tracked it. Moreover, the degree of the literacy deficit is tightly correlated with the extent to which children depend on school (as distinct from home) for their formal education. The irony, of course, is that the fundamental mission of public schooling is to offer educational opportunity—including laying the foundation for reading well—to all children, regardless of what their homes might offer.

Lots more of this article here: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/11/29/13adams.h31.html?tkn=TOCFt6GJBisoYEWrd%2FhtqZYnHYeeegEhT3bL&cmp=clp-sb-edtech

More Than Half of U.S. Districts Have Students in Distance Learning Programs
By David Nagel, T.H.E. Journal

A majority of public school districts in the United States have students who participate in distance education courses at some level, according to data released by the National Center for Education Statistics. But the most of those districts aren't delivering the education themselves.

The report, "Distance Education Courses for Public Elementary and Secondary School Students: 2009-10," indicated that a full 55 percent of districts have students who were enrolled in distance education courses in the 2009-2010 school year (the latest full school year for which such information is available). Half of those districts reported that students were participating in distance courses provided by a higher education institution, 47 percent from independent vendors, and 33 percent from state virtual schools.

Three-quarters of those respondents indicated that all distance courses in which their students were enrolled were developed by organizations independent of the district itself.

Student Enrollments
Of those districts, 96 percent reported they had students at the high school level enrolled in distance education programs; 19 percent at the middle school level; and 6 percent at the elementary level. Another 4 percent reported enrollments of students at combined or ungraded levels.

The total number of public students enrolled in distance education courses, however, was significantly less than half, with about 1.82 million course enrollments, all told (with multiple enrollments counted individually for students enrolled in more than one course). The total population of public school primary and secondary students was approximately 49.3 million during that period, according to ED's published statistics.

Read more: http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/12/01/more-than-half-of-u.s.-districts-have-students-in-distance-learning-programs.aspx