Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0

The world has become increasingly “flat,” as Tom Friedman has shown. Thanks to massive improvements in communications and transportation, virtually any place on earth can be connected to markets anywhere else on earth and can become globally competitive.

Compounding this challenge of demand from college-age students is the fact that the world is changing at an ever-faster pace.

Few of us today will have a fixed, single career; instead, we are likely to follow a trajectory that encompasses multiple careers.

Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0

As we move from career to career, much of what we will need to know will not be what we learned in school decades earlier. We are entering a world in which we all will have to acquire new knowledge and skills on an almost continuous basis.

It is unlikely that sufficient resources will be available to build enough new campuses to meet the growing global demand for higher education—at least not the sort of campuses that we have traditionally built for colleges and universities.

Nor is it likely that the current methods of teaching and learning will suffice to prepare students for the lives that they will lead in the twenty-first century.

Creator/Author(s): 

John Seely Brown is a Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at the University of Southern California (USC) and Independent Co-Chairman of a New Deloitte Research Center.

He is the former Chief Scientist of Xerox and Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Many of his publications and presentations are on his website (http://www.johnseelybrown.com).

Richard P. Adler is a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and Principal of People & Technology, a research and consulting firm in Cupertino, California.

License: 

This is protected under the following Creative Commons License.

Publication Date: 

July 27, 2011

U.S. Department of Education Launches Digital Media 'Learning Registry'

The U.S. Departments of Education and Defense have announced the launch of “Learning Registry,” an open source community and technology designed to improve the quality and availability of educational media resources in education.

The launch is an important milestone in the effort to more effectively share information about learning resources among a broad set of stakeholders in the education community.

 PBS LearningMedia, which is home to a library of 16,000+ digital curriculum-based resources and tools for PreK-12 grade educators, will offer school initial access U.S. Department of Education's Learning Registry.

Under this relationships, a collection of resources, including photos, video, and audio files from federal organizations including NASA, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives, will now be easier to find, access and integrate into educational environments.

PBS' online media-on-demand service combines links to resources from the Learning Registry with original content from public broadcasting producers and programs like WGBH, Nova, Frontline, American Experience, Sid The Science Kid, and The Electric Company, all in one place. 

Rather than creating an alternative destination to existing websites, Learning Registry is a communication system that allows existing educational portals and online systems to publish, consume and share important information about learning resources with each other and the public

Infographic: How The Internet Is Changing the Way We Learn

via mashable.com

Exchange 2.0: The Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration

The Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration was developed to help teachers use the Internet to "reach out" globally. 

In his address to the Council on Foreign Relations in May 2010, Secretary Arne Duncan stated:

“We must improve language learning and international education at all levels if our nation is to continue to lead in the global economy to help bring security and stability to the world and to build stronger and more productive ties with our neighbors….We have never been more aware of the value of a multiliterate, multilingual society, a society that can appreciate all that makes other cultures and nations distinctive, even as it embraces all that they have in common.”

This Guide has been prepared as part of the Department of Education's effort to expand global awareness through collaboration between students and teachers in the US with their peers around the world.  

On these pages, teachers will find many projects and suggestions to begin or expand classroom projects that reach across the globe and enable students to learn WITH the world, as well as about it.

In each section of this Guide we have also provided links to elementary, middle and high school projects and links to organizations that are involved in international education via the Internet and Web 2.0 tools.

• Learn More about Exchange 2.0 and Connect All Schools on Facebook

Speak Up National Findings 2010: How Students Are Leveraging Technology for Learning

Earlier this month 2011 Project Tomorrow released the report “The New 3 E’s of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered – How Today’s Students are Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Learning” at a Congressional Briefing held in Washington, D.C..

The Speak Up 2010 project surveyed almost 300,000 students (along with 43,000 parents, 35,000 teachers, 2000 librarians and 3500 administrators) from over 6500 private and public schools last fall about how they're using - and how they want to be using - technology for learning.

Key findings:

• 67 percent of parents said they would purchase a mobile device for their child to use for schoolwork if the school allowed it, and 61 percent said they liked the idea of students using mobile devices to access online textbooks.

• 53 percent of middle and high school students reported that the inability to use cell phones, smart phones or MP3 players was the largest obstacle when using technology in school.

• Additionally, 71 percent of high school students and 62 percent of middle school students said that the number one way schools could make it easier to use technology would be to allow greater access to the digital content and resources that Internet firewalls and school filters blocked.

• Parents are increasingly supportive of online textbooks. Two-thirds of parents view online textbooks as a good investment to enhance student achievement compared to 21 percent in 2008. However, E-textbooks are still a relatively novel concept in the classroom. Slightly over one-third of high school students report they are currently using an online textbook or other online curriculum as part of their regular schoolwork.

• Nearly 30 percent of high school students have experienced some type of online learning.

Speak Up National Findings 2010

Infographic: Ken Robinson on Changing Education Paradigms

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

 A visionary cultural leader, Sir Ken led the British government's 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, a deep look at human creativity and education, was published in January 2009.

 

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.

Gen Y, Social Media, and Learning in the Digital Age

I'm happy to announce that my book chapter that I co-wrote with Dr. Mercedes Fisher is now officially published!

Chapter Title: "Social Media, Gen Y and Digital Learning Styles."

Author(s): Derek E. Baird ; Mercedes Fisher

Pages: 2023-2044 pp.

Book Title: Social Computing: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications

Source Author(s)/Editor(s): Subhasish Dasgupta (George Washington University, USA) Copyright: 2010

Abstract

In this chapter we outline how educators are creating a “mash up” of traditional pedagogy with new media to create a 21st Century pedagogy designed to support the digital learning styles of Gen Y students.

The research included in this paper is intended as a directional means to help instructors and course designers identify social and new media resources and other emerging technologies that will enhance the delivery of instruction while meeting the needs of today’s digital learning styles.

The media-centric Millennial values its ability to use the web to create self-paced, customized, on-demand learning paths that include using multiple platforms for mobile, interactive, social, and self-publishing experiences.

These can include wiki, blogs, podcasts and other social platforms like Twitter, Emodo and Facebook. New media provides these hyper-connected students with a medium for understanding, social interaction, idea negotiation, as well as an intrinsic motivation for participation.

The active nature of today’s digitally connected student culture is one that more resourcefully fosters idea generation and experience-oriented innovation than traditional schooling models.

In addition, we describe our approach to utilizing current and emerging social media to support Gen Y learners, facilitate the formation of learning communities, foster student engagement, reflection, and enhance the overall learning experience for students in synchronous and asynchronous virtual learning environments (VLE).

Related: Derek E. Baird > Publications

Global Youth: Africa is the Future

The youth and branding Africa

View more presentations from G. Kofi Annan. (@G. Kofi Annan)

This presentation looks at Africa not as a place, but as a brand and calls on African youth to make a change. With 60% of the population under 25, the role of young people in the developing a new Africa is immense.

Thanks to Three Billion for the heads up on this excellent presentation!

Teachers vs. Texting: School Embraces Mobile Phones [Video]

This is a really good report by CNN reporter Deborah Feyerick on how teachers are embracing mobile phones and using them as a learning tool in the classroom.

So many educators spend so much energy fighting against technology and trying to limit its use in the classroom. There is a digital disconnect between how students use technology in the classroom and how they use it out in the real world.

Instead of pushing forward with the "the internet (along with social networking and mobile phones) are bad" mantra that is all too prevalent in American schools, why not focus on the positive benefits of emerging technologies and find ways that they can be integrated into the classroom curriculum?

Related: Joan Ganz Cooney Center Study on Mobile Learning

Weekly Wrap: Augmented Reality 101, Social Gaming Monetization, Gossip Girl vs. NYU, Facebook Bullies, Media Literacy Resources, DARE the Movie & More!

Explaining the Hype Around Augmented Reality: Tech circles are abuzz about augmented reality and the future of mobile utility and marketing. AR, as it's called, marries real-time video and digital information. On phones, it uses GPS coordinates and the mobile camera to activate additional text, photos or hyperlinks relevant to a location. [Ad Age]

Gossip Girl Makes NYU Look Like a State School: All in all, NYU officially owns Gossip Girl, and the show will now only drive up the rate of bratty midwestern teens lusting after an NYU degree because they think it means glitz and glamour instead of $200,000 of debt. [NYU Local]

How age impacts social-gaming monetization: New data released by Gambit, a micro-transaction platform provider, illustrates the complexity of both customer targeting and analyzing micro-transaction buying patterns. The major takeaway: older players seem like a good target market until you dig in to find out that they don't spend a whole lot. [CNET]

Social Sites & Video Games Can Raise IQ: After two months in the program, a group of "slow-learning" students aged 11-14 in the Durham area "saw 10 point improvements in IQ, literacy, and numeracy tests," and some who were at the bottom of their class at the beginning finished the program near the top, according to The Telegraph. [NetFamilyNews]

A Virtual Revolution is Brewing for Colleges: Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive. [Washington Post]

Tweet O' The Week: "Zombie community leader angrily denies Twitter reports of zombie attacks during the #SydneyDustStorm". via @darrylmason

Americans Serious About Casual Game Play: Solitaire may be as sticky as World of Warcraft. While users of casual electronic games (card games, puzzles, etc.) spend less time per session playing them than those playing non-casual games (role playing games, shooter games, etc.) they are just as likely to return to them months later. Read the Executive Summary. [Nielsen Wire]

Back to school with RIAA-funded copyright curriculum: With a new school year in full swing, Ars takes a look at the RIAA’s newly updated copyright curriculum. Your kids could be learning from it—so what does it say? (This is a total #FAIL) [ArsTechnia]

E-Reader Wars Heating Up: We believe that Apple will be in an excellent position to capture these younger customers due to its overwhelming success in capturing this market with their IPod and other products. Not only is Apple a Generation Y (and to some extent Gen. X) brand of choice, but many of these younger potential e-readers will be disdainful of Amazon’s proprietary, or “closed,” format (thanks Ypulse!). Also related: A Kindle in Every Backpack. [Seeking Alpha] [Barking Robot]

MySpace Beats Facebook with Twitter Sync: MySpace began rolling out new functionality today that allows users to sync their MySpace status updates with a Twitter feed. [HypeBot]

Speed Round: The DARE movie trailer debuts on Access Hollywood, BullyingUK offers tips for teens being bullied on Facebook, stats on mobile phone coupon usage in Japan, there's a new version of the Journalists Guide to to Multimedia Proficiency, media literacy tips for parents from Knowledge Essentials, parents & school leaders who are uneasy about youth and online spaces really need to listen to danah boyd (mp3) and finally....which augmented reality start-ups are most ready for market?

A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools

A concept paper published in July by former members of the Obama-Biden transition team, titled A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools, suggests we consider an innovative plan to spread eTextbooks around the country, rapidly scaling up employment of the technology so that we can learn, adapt, and perfect its use quickly. It describes the case for an eTextbook system in three parts.

In Part One, the report discusses the multiple reasons why eTextbooks like Amazon's Kindle are a much better approach for our nation’s students. The reasons they are superior include the ability to update eBooks relatively cheaply and easily, environmental and health benefits (such as reducing loads on young backs and shoulders), and the enormous opportunity to make texts more exciting and interactive—like the other tools children use today and that compete for their attention.

In Part Two, this paper discusses the economics of this approach. Cost estimates in the education world are notoriously sketchy and often self-serving, but it seems clear that over time an investment in these tools would produce big savings.

Finally, in Part Three, this paper outlines how we could implement such a plan, and why there could be broad-based support for it.

Also of interest is an article in the September/October 2009 issue of Scholastic Administrator Magazine titled, "Will the Kindle Change Education?" The article does a really good job of weighing in on both the pros and cons of using the Kindle in the classroom.

A lot of education folks have focused on using the mobile phone as the primary device to usher in the age of mlearning (mobile learning).

But perhaps we should be paying more attention to e-book devices like the Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook or the (rumoured) Apple tablet as the more viable mlearning option to delivering media rich and digital content to kids at school.

A lot the current research shows that when kids go to school they are disconnected from how they live outside the classroom. Either way, what's important is that we take a look at and try using any resource or tool--including e-books--that gets kids' more engaged and invested in their education.

Related: Amazon's Jeff Bezos Gives Away Kindles To His Alma Mater, Asks For Feedback

myGuide: Helping to Close the Generational Digital Divide

The Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) in the UK has launched an innovative and free e-learning course for adults and those who work with children to help them beef-up their digital web skills.

The easy to navigate site has a self-directed "interactive guidance course and quiz to help families manage the risks while enjoying the benefits of the web."

The primary goals of the myGuide initiative is to address many of the top parental concerns about the web, including phishing and spam, as well as chat rooms, music file-sharing, and safety filters.

The site stresses the importance of open family discussions and where to go for additional information and help. At the public launch of the new resource, Children’s Minister Delyth Morgan said:

“Today’s generation of children and young people are often much more computer savvy than their parents, something that can be of great concern as mums, dads and carers look to keep their children safe online without restricting their enthusiasm for and exploration of the Internet.

The free myguide service is designed specifically for people in this situation. The new Family Internet Safety guide will help people become more knowledgeable about the risks and how to manage them.

Thanks to DK, over at MediaSnackers, for the heads-up on the myGuide program.

Related Links

• Emotion, Reason & The Web Makes Me Feel
• Building Parents' and Carers' Confidence Online
• Girl Scouts of America & Microsoft Launch Online Safety Program

Weekly Wrap: Boys Dig Disney XD, German Video Game Ban, Unigo's Advice for College Freshman, The iPod is Dead, Parents on Facebook & New Moon Clothing Collection

Disney XD Targets Boys & Scores Big Ratings: While Disney Channel targets tween girls with female-centric shows like "Hannah Montana" and "Sonny with a Chance" and movies like "Princess Protection Program," Disney XD is giving the boys what they want. According to the latest ratings figures, the boys are tuning in. [All Headline News] [Ypulse]

Online Petition Stalls German Video Game Ban: German government plans to ban violent video games will have to be put on hold, after a successful internet petition by German gamers. [Guardian]

What I Wish I'd Known: Our friends over at Unigo have compiled a bunch of video from their community who offer advice for incoming college freshman on everything from what to do with that high school boyfriend, dorm life 101, keeping tabs on your academic advisors and other essential college survival skills. Also congrats to Unigo on making Mashable's list of 'Top 10 Social Networks for Gen Y.' [Unigo] [Mashable]

Tweet O' the Week: "IBM is afraid of Microsoft who is afraid of Google who is afraid of Facebook who is afraid of Twitter who is afraid of whales." (via @jowyang)

The iPod is Dead. Long Live the iPod: The iPod as many of us have known it is on the wane and giving way to a more feature-rich family of devices that in time will bear little resemblance to the trailblazing digital music players that helped Apple capture 70% of the North American market. [Yahoo! Finance]

How Social Networks Will Transform Marketing: Consumers will still use Facebook, LinkedIn and such, as they do today. What's different is that OpenID and similar capabilities will enable consumers to traverse the web, and have their networks flow with them. [MediaPost]

Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook: This site gives teens a chance to get back at their parents for taking away their "public privacy". They understand that Facebook is a public place, they just don't want their parents on it. Sort of like teens not wanting their parents to hang out at the mall at night. [Examiner.com/LA]

Speed Round: A preview of Nordstrom's new The Twilight Saga: New Moon Collection, are we informing ourselves to death, here's a list of teachers who use Twitter with their students, more on social media ROI, how to translate your tweets, Indiviz is a video community for student made films, here's a real doozy on "Teaching The Entitled Generation", cops show up when they see an old man hanging out with a 2-year-old at McDonald's (ooops!) and finally....7 iPhone Apps that can save a life. [Yahoo! Shine] [FrostBytes] [GoogleDoc] [Social Media Today] [Mashable] [Converge] [SFist]

Emotion, Reason & The Web Makes Me Feel

"The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions." - Donald Calne

Last week, for those of us who work in the youth digital media space, a big chunk of everyone's attention was focused on the 'Youth Media Consumption' memo written by an intern at Morgan Stanley.

While many folks were debating its merits and findings, a much less publicized event took place that asked teens not "how" they use the web, but instead focused on the emotion behind "why" they use the web.

The Web Makes Me Feel (TWMMF) is a project headed up by MediaSnackers, a leading UK youth media consultancy, that explored the emotional responses to the social web among 13-19 year olds living in the UK.

Why focus on emotion?

Emotion is a very persuasive hook that, sometimes even more than logic and reason, influences the choices we make, what we buy, or where we go on the web.

Emotion can also drive user adoption and/or motivate people to use (or not) certain types of technology (think iPhone or Kindle) or social networking sites (think Twitter and Facebook!) and in an e-learning environment, emotional resonance is the glue that holds students' attention and fosters student retention.

As part of the TWMMF project, the MediaSnackers team distributed 500 postcards to 13-19 year olds and asked them to describe in one word how the web makes them feel. Respondent's were then given one additional line to explain the reasoning behind their choice. In all, MediaSnackers collected over 143 different emotions.

The TWMMF website contains an aggregation of all the emotions collected (over 431 cards) and, here's the really slick part, allows users to explore all the responses and dig deeper by drilling down to look at the results for each word by age and/or gender.

Some of the key findings:

• Top 10 Emotions: Happy, Connected, Good, Excited, Free, Entertained, Bored, Interested, Socialble and Independent.

• Gender: Compared to males, the web makes females feel just as positive, negative and neutral as men.

• Age: The web makes youth feel more positive about the web at 13 years old than they do at 19 years old.

• Positive/Negative: Overall, the web makes youth feel more positive than negative, with over 56% of feelings expressed classified as positive.

• Blurred Lines: Our emotions, combined with the social web, are having an impact on our 'real' lives. The line is quickly being blurred.

The TWMMF project and website were rolled out on July 15th at an event held at NESTA and attended by both participants, researchers and other members of the social media community.

At the launch event, the MediaSnackers team asked several of the attendee's 'How Does the Web Make You Feel and Why?' The responses from the video interviews mostly seemed to dovetail with the results of the postcards.

One response, in particular, caught my attention.

When asked the question, this gentleman responded that the web makes him feel guilty. At first I thought this was an odd response. He went on to explain that the web made him feel guilty because at times he felt an internal conflict between his offline and online life.

Ahhh, there it is--the perfect summation of what this project is all about! He felt conflicted because he had made the same emotional connections in his online relationships as he had in his offline life.

Beyond metrics, demographic research, user-experience design, usability studies and other measurable (rational) aspects--in many cases what actually drives our use of the web is emotional resonance.

Many times parents, educators, media and government types draw conclusions about Millennials, social networking and their 'always-on' lifestyles using a methodology based on rational facts and data crunching, failing to give the social and emotional dynamics of teens and technology any consideration.

This project also confirms what the Millennials having been trying to say about the social web all along: it's not about technology, it's about relationships.

Perhaps it's time we started listening.

Related Links

• MediaSnackers
• Students Link Emotional Learning to Better Grades
• Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab
• Study Looks at the Psychology of Facebook
• MJ > The Way You Make Me Feel

Weekly Wrap: Social Media, TV & Michael Jackson, Captain EO, Video Game Tips for Parents, Teens Leaving Facebook, Bruno & MySpace, Adam Lambert on Michael Jackson

Social Media, TV, Michael Jackson & Saying Goodbye to the 'King of Pop': Michael Jackson's  memorial service garnered huge numbers on TV, but it also did big numbers on the social web. Facebook and CNN teamed up again to provide a live stream of Jackson's memorial and allow viewer to simultaneously share their thoughts on Facebook. Also worth a read is John Morton's post on 'The Passing of Michael Jackson & Mass Media.'

Over on Ypulse.com, Ypulse Youth Advisory Board member Nina shares who 'Michael Jackson was to Today's Teens.' In other related news, Disney may re-release the 3D Jackson space fantasy multimedia experience/film 'Captain Eo' and American Idol alum Adam Lambert shares his thoughts on Michael Jackson. [TechCrunch] [eWeek] [SuperGeekery.com] [Ypulse.com] [Examiner] [YouTube] [Rolling Stone]

Declaration of Independence from Social Media (For One Day): "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to dissolve the digital bands which have connected them with all of their friends they haven’t seen since preschool, and to assume a life away from the computer for one day, a respect for other Internet users requires that the person should declare the causes which cause them to separate from social media for that day." (Very clever and worth reading!) [Examiner]

Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter & CNN: According to Compete.com, Bing was able to amass 49.57 million unique visitors in its first month as Microsoft’s official search engine. Bing’s traffic trumps that of Digg 38.96 million) Twitter (23 million), and CNN (28.54 million). We want to note that this focuses on U.S. visitors, since Compete does not track international visits. [Mashable]

Tweet of the Week: "If Google bought Twitter, it wouldn't get a new feature for 3 years. If Apple bought it, tweets would be .99 but you'd get a 10 character preview." [@DanielFlorien]

Raising a Healthy Gamer: Parenting is always a tough job, and video games are a tricky subject in today's families. Ars offers a no-BS guide to dealing with gaming and your children, and their advice is simple: you know your children better than anyone else.

Also be sure to check out video game parenting tips from the folks over at Microsoft & XBox 360 along with safety tips from Yahoo!, Disney and AOL. Just keep in mind that your kid is probably smart enough to hack your parental controls. [ARS Technica] [Yahoo! Safely] [AOL Parental Controls]

How to connect to Today's Millenials: Shop-Eat-Surf has a recap of a presentation given by Michael Wood, the Senior VP of Syndicated Research at Teen Research Unlimited (TRU), at the SIMA Boot Camp on understanding today's millennials. Hat tip to Group Y Sports for the heads up! [Shop Eat Surf]

Kids, Video Games, Learning & Health: The Center on Media and Child Health (CMCH) has a good analysis of the Game Changer: Investing in digital play to advance children's learning and health report released by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. [CMCH]

One Last Thing: Check out this mashup of the Michael Jackson classic 'Billie Jean' by Soulwax (great, great stuff!), Julia Fallon offers advice for educators Lost in Web 2.0 Cyberspace (pdf), a must-read article with fantastic ideas for teaching kids about media literacy & body image (thanks @tandrusiak!), as grandpa & grandma join Facebook--teens begin to bail, according to new research from BabyCenter 39% of moms report that they make 'net time' their quiet time, Crain's New York Business wonders if Bruno can save MySpace, and finally...don't tell Al Gore, but the environment is not the number one social cause among college students (pdf). [YouTube] [Princial Leadership] [MyHighPlains.com] [Read Write Web] [Crain's New York Business] [SurveyU]