Education Musings

Symphony of Science – SmartBean

2011-01-07T18:47:00.000-08:00

Symphony of Science – SmartBean

The Symphony of Science is a musical project headed by John Boswell, designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form.

Seven videos have been created so far. Here's my favorite one. If you like it, check out the others on SmartBean.

We Are All Connected

Computational Thinking, Programming…and the Google App Inventor – SmartBean

2010-08-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

What were Papert’s views on children, computers and "powerful ideas”? Are they relevant today? Why should we introduce our kids to programming and how? Find out all the answers to these and more in this article - Computational Thinking, Programming…and the Google App Inventor that I recently co-authored with Charles Profitt, leader of the NY State Ubuntu Local Community.

(Incidentally my older son was at the Googleplex in Mountain View recently for a 3-week "Computational and Programming Experience" camp for 14-year olds that is designed with similar goals in mind..)

Of iPhones, iPod Touches, Games and Mobile "Casual" Learning

2010-03-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

With fresh inspiration from a course I just finished here at Stanford on "Casual Learning Technologies for the iPhone" in which we designed casual apps for kids and adults, I've authored a 2-part article for Smartbean. The first is a brief discussion of research on the power of learning through games (including Gee's principles on "good learning" with well-designed games) - Of iPhone Apps for Kids and Learning Through Gaming – I,
and the second part is a fairly exhaustive list of some of the best iPhone apps for kids (ages 3 - 13) categorized by subject (art, math, science, languages, puzzles, and such) - Of iPhone Apps for Kids and Learning through Gaming – II

Back to my Stanford course on iPhone Apps for casual learning... I partnered with a couple of grad students to design and program an app to teach boolean logic while playing a fun robot shooter game; the only difference being that that our "guns" were logic gates, and the bit that the player had to shoot based on 2 random 1/0 input bits was the bit that matched the "rogue bot" moving towards the gate "gun". The idea was to select the right logic gate, to shoot the right bit, and get the bot before it got you.

The motivation for this app was the big push for STEM by the Obama administration and the belief that “computational reasoning is the core of all modern Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines and is intrinsic to all other disciplines; it is a fundamental skill for everybody, not just for computer scientists. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child's analytical ability.” (Jeannette Wing, Head of the Computer & Information Science and Engineering Directorate at National Science Foundation) So in a sense our app could be described as "STEM meets James Paul Gee." :)

The course was a pleasant deviation from my usual courses here at Stanford. I enjoyed programming the app, and the 2 guys from Apple who taught us to program for the iPhone were awesome! It was my most enjoyable course thus far; and the fact that the app received such positive feedback was just icing on the cake :) Here are some screenshots of the app and people playing with it...

Sparking Innovation…The Wallace & Gromit Way - SmartBean

2010-03-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

Remember Wallace and Gromit in ‘A Grand Day Out’, and ‘The Curse of the Were Rabbit’, and Wallace’s ingenious gizmos that were so fascinating to watch? Those zany inventions became so popular with fans of W&G that creator Nick Park actually followed up his early movies with Cracking Contraptions – a series of ten Wallace and Gromit stop motion animations in which each episode featured one of Wallace’s new inventions and Gromit’s skeptical reaction to it. These “cracking contraptions” are as much a part of Nick Park’s valuable contributions to the world of clay animation (”claymation”) as the beloved man and dog duo and their adventures.

To read how parents and educators can inspire kids to be inventors and creative innovators, read the rest of the article at SmartBean.

Thirsty? Reach For The Tap

2010-03-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Thirsty? Reach For The Tap – SmartBean

That’s the message – loud and clear – in The Story of Bottled Water released today, March 22, 2010, which also happens to be World Water Day.
(Watch this amazing video on SmartBean)

10 Ways To Help Your Child Embrace “Green Living”

2009-12-17T13:49:00.000-08:00

10 Ways To Help Your Child Embrace “Green Living” – Part 1 – SmartBean

Well it's actually a list of 5 (since this is part 1), but 5 really simply but effective ways to help your kids, even little ones as young as 4 and 5, become conscious of their eco-footprint and environmental issues. Raising our kids to be "green" is indeed one of best things we could do for plant earth - "the only home we've ever known" (Quote from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" video - linked in the article - it really hits the spot...).

Parents Playing a Larger Role in K-12 Education – SmartBean

2009-11-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

Parents Playing a Larger Role in K-12 Education – SmartBean

An interesting look at where things appear to be headed, especially in the US. If you are a parent actively involved in your child's learning, add your comment or write to SmartBean.

2009-11-15T14:29:00.000-08:00

Cross-posted on SmartBean - What are 21st Century Skills?

"21st-century skills", "21-century learning" "21st-century education", "21st-century learners"... These phrases are all around us. They even feature as themes in the SmartBean Magazine and Resources. What do they mean? What's different in this century? Why are they necessary? Who decides what these are and how they should inform K-12 learning? SmartBean hopes to answer these questions briefly.

Expanding the Technology Curriculum to Include Foundational Elements of Computer Science for K-8

2009-11-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

[Cross-posted on SmartBean]

What started as a germ of a idea over a year ago in this post titled - The Ideal Technology/CS Curriculum for Middle School and caught the eye of ISTE's Anita McAnear, editor of Learning and Leading with Technology (L&L) and national program chair of NECC, has now appeared as a full length article in the November 2009 issue of L&L. (Yes, it does take that long for the submission, review, approval, editing, and final publication process at L&L. I first submitted the article in November 2008, it was approved in Jan 2009, sent to me for revisions in April 2009, final edited version sent to me for review in August 2009 with a promised publication date of November 2009!!) Thanks Anita, ISTE & L&L!

Computer Science Not Just For Big Kids

It is sad more than surprising that computer science, which has been a bona fide discipline for over half a century now, has found little to no space in K-12 curricula. As a result, most students go through their school years naively equating computer science to simply computers or computer programming. As the Dutch computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra said, “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.”

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation. Given the amount of exposure students get to the science of the physical, living and non-living world, it does not make sense to completely ignore a science that governs much of the technology and the nature of the “form” in which we transact information on a day-to-day basis in our techno-saturated lives.

In addition to a basic understanding of the essential definition of what computer science is, students can and should also get exposure to some of the foundational elements of the science of computing which gel well with the broader goals of 21st-century learning. These elements include algorithmic thinking, Boolean logic, functional abstraction, and data organization and management. Problem-solving, critical thinking, and information organization and management can be reinforced through delving into these aspects of computer science. The wonderful thing is that most of these concepts of computer science build on mathematics, and some of them on school-level mathematics.

The advantage of this early exposure to the fundamental elements of computer science is that it will give high school students who opt for courses in programming a more solid foundation of algorithmic thinking and data structures—the basic nuts and bolts of the mechanics of computer programming. Additionally, it will give students a better sense of their own interest in this field, supported by a better understanding of the science itself.

Here are a few ways to incorporate these concepts into the curriculum.

Algorithmic Thinking

Simply put, an algorithm is a well- defined set of steps required to complete a task. It is essential to understanding how and why information technology systems work as they do.

Detailed task breakdown is an important aspect of algorithmic thinking. In my robotics workshops, I usually devote a session or two to algorithmic thinking before I introduce students to programming. One fun exercise involves writing a set of detailed steps in plain English to guide a blindfolded student partner to perform a certain task. I often weave ideas of exception handling, iterations, and conditional actions into this exercise. Writing “pseudo code” in this manner also helps expose students to an essential skill that programmers often employ when they embark on a new program that requires them to think through the algorithm before they start to code the program.

Fortunately, we have access to programming environments that make it easy for teachers to drive these ideas home. For example, Alice (www.alice.org) is an excellent tool to support the development of algorithmic thinking, as is Scratch from MIT Media Lab (scratch.mit.edu). The visual feedback that students get from Alice and Scratch allows them to relate the program to the action they see on the screen and helps them refine their programs, an essential part of problem solving and programming. Earlier environments such as LOGO also helped achieve those goals in addition to allowing children to easily experiment with ideas of repetition, functions and subroutines, parameter passing, and even recursion.

Algorithmic thinking helps students make that step from problem to program. This involves being able to define and state a problem clearly; break the problem into smaller, more manageable subproblems; and describe the solution in a well-defined set of steps. . This is an important skill that students can transfer to problem-solving situations in other subjects too.

Boolean Logic for Critical Thinking

Boolean logic (or Boolean algebra) is a form of symbolic logic that is the basis of the arithmetic of computers. George Boole’s pioneering work in this field was published in the book An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, which describes how the logic of human thought can be reduced to a few simple, general, logical “operations” (much like the basic operations of mathematics).

Students can be introduced to the idea of logic in language arts or mathematics. Premises, conditional sentences, denials, and drawing inferences from sets of everyday sentences can form a soft introduction to the idea of logic even before introducing symbols and operations. Here is an example:

If the Giants beat the Dodgers, then the Giants win the pennant.
If he is out, then the Giants beat the Dodgers.
He is out.

What is the conclusion?

The beauty of Boolean logic lies in the simplicity of its operations: and, or, and not. When I was first exposed to the ideas of symbolic logic, I remember thinking that this was a mighty useful way for people of any age to learn how to think and argue logically as well as to find fallacies not only in political arguments but also in day-to-day arguments with parents, siblings, friends, and peers. This could certainly be one way to teach children to think critically and analytically.

Data Structures and Databases

Data structures go hand in hand with algorithms as an essential aspect of programming. Simply put, data is the stuff that is manipulated or worked on by operations and expressions in a program. To enable this process of manipulation, computer scientists organize this data in structures known as arrays, lists, trees, tables, stacks, queues and “heaps.” A database, similarly, is an organized collection of data, usually stored as records in tables.

Fortunately, we have access to spreadsheet software such as Microsoft Excel and database management software such as Microsoft Access that could be used to introduce students to the fundamentals of data structures for organization and management. Free or low-cost alternatives of such software are also available.

Spreadsheets can teach students how to organize data in simple, intuitive ways for easy access and retrieval. Children should be encouraged to use spreadsheets often and for a variety of data-organization tasks. For example, students could list and organize websites they visit for a school project or while researching a topic. Have students add keywords or tags to another column in the spreadsheet. They can organize the website data in separate worksheets for different units in a subject so that the organization helps delineate data that doesn’t necessarily belong together while still keeping related materials together. Spreadsheets can also be used for storing and organizing data for planning field trips or events, or for data collected in science or social studies projects. Google Spreadsheets allow several students to work on the same spreadsheet.

Teachers should also use spreadsheets to introduce students to the idea of sorting and ordering data. When does it make sense to sort or order data, and when is unordered data just as useable? Will sorting help future storage and retrieval? If so, how should the data be sorted? Such questions will get students thinking about the basics of organizing data in ways that make manipulation easy.

Students in middle school who have been exposed to spreadsheets could graduate to databases with a database management tool like Microsoft Access. Through the process of database design, students learn to analyze the information they are working with and identify the underlying dimensions of the content to organize it for meaningful search and retrieval. They learn to identify relationships between different types of data. Through the act of simple database querying, students can bring to bear their knowledge of Boolean logic and constructs such as and, or, and not while getting a sense of how the process of Internet search is conducted.

Teachers can get their students to engage in simple projects with clearly defined goals. A database that helps retrieve children’s books in the library by genre is one example. Such a project would require students to analyze the nature or elements of the data to be organized, design the database, populate the tables with data, and, finally, formulate and run simple queries. Database design also helps students build analytical, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills.

At a time when we all grapple with a surfeit of data and information, being able to classify and organize it for sense-making as well as easy and intuitive access and retrieval is certainly a skill that children of this Information Age should develop early in school.

All three skills and concepts described above—algorithmic thinking, Boolean logic, and data structures— could be easily integrated into the elementary and middle school math, language arts, social studies, science, and technology curriculum, and would work well to expose students to a few basic ideas of the “science of computing.”

Shuchi Grover is an educational technologist with graduate degrees in computer science and education. An alumnus of Harvard University, she is currently pursuing a PhD in the Learning Sciences and Technology Design Program at Stanford University.

Reprinted with permission from Learning & Leading with Technology, November 2009, Vol. 37 No. 3; Copyright 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education).iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.

Kids programming environments mentioned in the article:

Idle Mind A Devil’s Workshop? Au Contraire!

2009-10-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

[Cross posted on SmartBean - Idle Mind A Devil’s Workshop? Au Contraire! – SmartBean]

Ever wonder why Archimedes got his “a-ha” moment while lounging in his bathtub? Or why Newton unraveled the secrets of gravity while daydreaming under an apple tree? If recent research is to be believed, it may well be because the wandering mind is fertile ground for creative problem solving!

The findings of a couple of separate studies (finally) legitimize the preoccupation of choice for most of the human race – good old fashioned daydreaming. These studies focus on the type of activity that goes on in the brain during mental drift – a cognitive state that can occupy as much as one third of our waking lives.

“Mind-Wandering (or, mental wandering, wandering mind, drifting, daydreaming) is a cognitive phenomenon in the brain wherein one’s attention becomes distracted from the task at hand and one’s mind strays into unrelated thoughts, often for long periods of time. Thoughts can include reliving or regrets about the past, fantasizing or worrying about the future, or simply enjoying imaginary moments away from whatever task one is supposed to be carrying out.” (Source: Neuro-sculpting.com)

One study reveals that when the mind drifts, the temporal lobes — which are associated with processing long-term memories — become busier. So when one floats off into a reverie, there’s some important data-storage work going on. Another study has reached an even more interesting conclusion – that the idling mind is likely doing deeply creative work, tackling hairiest long-term problems. This theory is supported by scans that have found that the wandering mind utilizes the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that’s involved in problem-solving.

So the next time you’re struggling to solve a complicated problem, you might be better off switching to a simpler task and letting your mind wander. And if you find your child indulging in some unfettered mind wandering, refrain from the usual “don’t just sit there daydreaming, DO something!” Who knows, that brain might just be addressing some knotty big-ticket issues.

[See the referenced articles at: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090511180702.htm and http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/st_thompson]

10 Reasons Your Child Will Love Astronomy

2009-10-24T11:19:00.000-07:00

10 Reasons Your Child Will Love Astronomy – SmartBean

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy and marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope. From October 22-24, the Galilean Nights Project is sponsoring events around the world to encourage amateur and professional astronomers along with the general public to point their telescopes to the objects that Galileo observed.

In parallel celebration, SmartBean offers 10 reasons why your child will love to learn about astronomy. An awesome post with links to fantastic resources (and great pictures too!).

I Lego NY – Simplicity, Inspiration and Constructionism – SmartBean

2009-10-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

I Lego NY – Simplicity, Inspiration and Constructionism – SmartBean

"Although Lego dutifully sells a plethora of kits accompanied by detailed instructions for creation of specific and intended objects, which are becoming increasingly big - in size and complexity, the greatest benefit perhaps is to be derived from allowing children to be completely unburdened and simply indulge in open-ended and free format creation and construction. The result would most likely be experimentation that draws from the world around the child in what the experts call "constructivism" and "constructionism". Like these incredibly simple, creative and cute artifacts."

Introducing your Child to Linux and other FOSS tools

2009-10-16T17:49:00.001-07:00

Introducing your Child to Linux - SmartBean

The Linux operating system offers an excellent learning opportunity for children, whether for educational software and games, programming, or general computer skills. Charles Profitt, a K-12 systems administrator, shares the nuts and bolts of introducing kids to Linux, Ubuntu, Edubuntu and other exciting FOSS tools. His guidelines for the why, what and how of getting going with Linux and open source computing at home are lucid and helpful.

5 Highly Overrated Skills Your Successful Child Can Do Without - SmartBean

2009-10-15T22:15:00.001-07:00

5 Highly Overrated Skills Your Successful Child Can Do Without - SmartBean

Hilarious! A must-read for all parents and educators!

Motivation & "Flow": Engaging Teen Learners - SmartBean

2009-10-14T17:44:00.001-07:00

Motivation & "Flow": Engaging Teen Learners - SmartBean

Using Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's ideas of "flow" and "optimal experience" in the context of learning.

Redefining "Success" to Raise Healthier, Happier Kids ? SmartBean

2009-10-07T20:13:00.001-07:00

Redefining "Success" to Raise Healthier, Happier Kids - SmartBean

This is such an important issue that parents in India need to give some attention and thought to...Kids 13 and up are stressed out and burned out by the time finish their 12th grade exams and college entrance exams. Their lives for those 5 years is a blur of books and tutors, and extra classes and tests and exam prep. Help kids reclaim the joys of their teen years. Their health and happiness is at stake...this madness must stop!

The Google Internet Bus Reaches Hindi Speaking States

2009-10-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

After its successful tour of South India, the Google Internet Bus is now touring small towns in the Hindi heartland of India.

Silence that idiot box! - SmartBean

2009-10-01T19:49:00.001-07:00

Silence that idiot box! - SmartBean

A scathing article on the deleterious effects of TV on kids.

Defense Against the Dark Arts: Teaching Kids to be Critical Consumers of Media - SmartBean

2009-09-18T14:53:00.001-07:00

Defense Against the Dark Arts: Teaching Kids to be Critical Consumers of Media - SmartBean

A very important message indeed! One that all parents and teachers must make a point of sharing with their kids and students..

Media Alert! Dangers of Media and Guidelines for Safe Media Consumption - SmartBean

2009-09-18T12:35:00.001-07:00

Media Alert! Dangers of Media and Guidelines for Safe Media Consumption - SmartBean

Very useful ideas on guidelines & tips for parents/teachers on media usage by kids, in addition to research on effects of media overexposure. Must read!

Disrupting the Traditional Classroom - SmartBean

2009-09-11T12:55:00.001-07:00

Disrupting the Traditional Classroom" - SmartBean

My former advisor Chris Dede talks about his views on using all the technology tools we have at our disposal today, online learning tools in particular, to personalize the learning experience for every child. This is in response to a question about Clayton Christensen's new book - Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

Media multitaskers pay mental price, says Stanford study - SmartBean

2009-09-01T16:30:00.001-07:00

Media multitaskers pay mental price, says Stanford study - SmartBean

Think you can watch videos, make cell phone calls and send e-mails all at once? Stanford experts say even trying can impair your cognitive control.

With many educators touting multitasking abilities of digital natives as a plus, where does this study leave us? Do you think 21st century skills should include learning to resist the urge to multitask and the ability to focus on a task in the face of a zillion distractions?

Stanford's Thriving Online High School - SmartBean

2009-08-31T17:46:00.001-07:00

An Authentic Dawn for Online Private Schooling - SmartBean

A sign of the direction in which things are moving?

A Vision of K-12 Students Today - SmartBean

2009-08-21T06:00:00.001-07:00

A Vision of K-12 Students Today - SmartBean

Great perspective on the future of education!

Recommended Fiction for Tweens (9-12 year olds) - SmartBean

2009-08-19T22:22:00.001-07:00

Recommended Fiction for Tweens (9-12 year olds) - SmartBean

Awesome reading list for 9-12 year olds - favorite authors and series. Must check out if you are a parent or teacher or tweens!

Hey! Parents! Leave them kids alone! - SmartBean

2009-08-17T19:41:00.001-07:00

Hey! Parents! Leave them kids alone! - SmartBean

Five Competencies for Adapting to a Changing World - SmartBean

2009-08-05T16:03:00.001-07:00

Five Competencies for Adapting to a Changing World - SmartBean

(Shared via AddThis)

A very interesting series of videos for parents and educators on SmartBean on the general theme of 21st century competencies and how new technologies will impact the future of education.

Moving About in Class Helps to Prime the Brain for Learning.

2009-04-21T16:40:00.000-07:00

This article on SmartBean comes as great news. My younger son is one of those who just cannot sit still and needs to move about all the time. He was often censured in his classroom in India for not conforming to the inane rule of sitting/standing still while talking or doing other activities in class. Knowing him as well as my husband and I do, we can actually see his brain at work, absorbing every little detail, even when he is seemingly not paying attention and just walking about on those rare occasions when we're reading to him (rare now since he is a voracious reader himself). I can see so clearly how physical activity primes this kid's brain for processing information and learning.

Google India takes the internet to the masses

2009-02-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

On Feb 3rd, Google launched the "Internet Bus Project". Simply put, this is a campaign to take the internet - quite literally on wheels - right to people in the smaller cities in India who are still not participating in what is now part and parcel of our lives in urban centers. The campaign has been launched in Tamil Nadu where the Bus will visit 15 towns in the next 45 days.

An interesting, and noble, aspect about this initiative is that the focus is the Internet and not Google, per se, as is evidenced by the videos that have been uploaded to the Internet Bus Google page as well as the internetbus channel on youtube (and are shown to visitors on the Bus as well). The video on "Internet for Communication" for example, shows facebook and Yahoo IM as means of social networking and communicating in the same breath as Orkut and Google Talk. Similarly, several sites and online services that work well to make day-to-day life easier for Indians - from online news (in Indian languages in addition to English) to cricket to matrimony to jobs to railways to e-gov - and are showcased in the videos, have nothing to do with Google.

Another worthwhile aspect being highlighted by the Internet Bus is the Indian-language Internet. Communication via the internet, as well as creation and consumption of content in Indian languages, such as Tamil, Hindi, and several others, is possible, but not a well-known feature among certain demographics in India, who perhaps view the internet as a service and convenience that can be enjoyed only in the English language. How many of us have visited the Hindi or Tamil wikipedia (which now has thousands of pages in at least 10 Indian languages, the highest number being in Telugu!)? [On a side note, this 'list of wikipedias' is an interesting page to study.]

The internet is being presented to the Bus visitors in 4 themes - Internet for --

Information
Communication
Education
Entertainment

Also showcased are the tools and services for accessing the Internet for information via mobile devices, for example maps, sms, and local services.

With access (computer hardware as well as connectivity) becoming cheaper by the day, and more and more Indic content as well as Indic language tools being made available to Indians (by Google and others), it just does not make sense for the large percentage of Indians in smaller towns to not avail themselves of the affordances of the internet, and to remain marginalized from the global revolution that is the internet.

Go Google! Go Internet Bus! Go India!
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Here's some press from the launch event in Chennai on Feb 3rd -

Official Google India Blog - India Internet Bus Project rolls in
The Hindu - Google rolls out the 'Internet Bus'
Techtree.com - Google Internet Bus Comes to India
IBNLive.com - Google Internet Bus Project Kicks Off in Tamil Nadu

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A Vision of K-12 Students Today

2009-02-03T07:42:00.000-08:00

(Cross-posted on educatorslog.in)

Kids today are often referred to as “digital natives” (an idea that has been described here and here on this blog). They enjoy being able to express themselves through the many digital technologies that they are so facile with; technologies that they would enjoy putting to use for the purposes of learning (and school work) as well.

This video was created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills and be better prepared to succeed in the century. It is just as important for parents to understand, and sync up, with their digital kids.

‘A Vision of K-12 Students Today’ was probably inspired by an earlier video ‘A Vision of Students Today‘ made by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University in which they share similar views (in similar fashion too) about their affinity for, and desire to use, digital media in higher education. This earlier post discusses Michael Wesch, his work on studying mediated cultures, and his popular channel on youtube.

Can India seriously pull off a $7 (or Rs. 500) laptop?

2009-02-03T07:07:00.000-08:00

[Cross-posted on educatorslog.in]

In case you have not caught this on the news wire, India is all set to launch a $7 or Rs. 500 laptop. If India does manage to pull it off, it'll be quite a response to the OLPC $200 (originally the $100 laptop)!

"It forms part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology, India’s new scheme to boost learning in rural areas through the internet." I do wonder about the fate of a project that has the Indian government behind it - I'd have bet on a private sector initiative to meet with better success, but there are some elite partnerships that are making this possible -

"The laptop is the result of cooperation between several of India’s elite technology institutions, including the Vellore Institute of Technology, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the Semi-conductor Laboratory that forms part of India’s Space Department. Private companies are also taking part."

Clearly, introducing a machine such as this and even flooding rural schools with it is not the answer to providing better education. The key is in training teachers and developing appropriate applications and curricula that will leverage this tool for better teaching and learning in the millions of classrooms that form part of the abysmal public school education system in India.

That said, I do hope that this machine makes it out the door - as a testimony to Indian engineering, if nothing else. Perhaps other details like the "how" of putting it to good use in classrooms will follow in due course. (I'm feeling strangely optimistic today :))

[Update: The spate of negative press that followed this news piece is disheartening, to say the least. It seems like the $7 or $10 was just a figure thrown up out of nowhere with no concrete details. See the links below. Even if it turns out that the government is hugely subsidizing this, I suppose it is alright, as long as in the end it is truly affordable for rural schools to use this....India could've done without egg on her face, though.]

'Education and Technology' Podcast in Science Magazine

2009-01-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

In this Science magazine special podcast on education and technology, Professor Chris Dede of the Harvard Graduate School of Education talks about "immersive interfaces for learning." In the podcast, Dede explains what educators mean by "immersive interfaces" and the idea of leveraging a digital immersive environment for educating the "iKids" of today.

The companion article in Science (requires a subscription to read the full text), which Dede says is "about a set of opportunities that a particular type of interface represents and the opportunities [it presents]," explores his research on the intersection of education and virtual worlds through HGSE projects like River City and Harvard Augmented Reality Project (HARP).

Research in education on immersive interfaces like River City and HARP could potentially have a profound impact on the use of video and other multi-user virtual gaming environments in the context of ubiquitous learning in the coming decades.

This particular podcast also covers a story on how a new home e-learning system is leveling the educational playing field in Korea.

What is Education For?

2008-12-09T00:57:00.000-08:00

This is one of those timeless pieces. Although it was written by David Orr in 1990, it is a valuable perspective - as valuable today as it ever was and ever will be. I had my 12 and 10-year olds read it and discuss it in the wake of what happened recently in Mumbai, and in the light of daily commentary on global warming and climate change.

I think high school children - old enough to debate global issues, participate in Model UNs and what not - should deliberate on the message in this speech. Although it was made as a commencement address to students graduating from college, I think kids should leave school - not college - with this message, so that it can shape what they study and do with their lives - and more importantly, how they do it.

One does not have to necessarily agree with everything David Orr says in this essay. It is enough that every citizen of this earth give this question deep and quality thought. When I look back on my studies in education at Harvard I feel that the paper on "What is the purpose of schooling?" was one of the defining moments of that academic sojourn. It was at once the most difficult and the most fulfilling exercise. I would give this question higher billing, and go a step further to contend that deliberation on this question could well be a critical part of human development, and must in some form or fashion, be part of every academic program - not just one on education.

Connectivism and The Networked Student

2008-12-08T02:29:00.001-08:00

I spend much of my time reading, writing, discussing, and blogging about ideas around the broad theme of 21st Century learning. More specifically, what should 21st Century learning look like? How can social networking technologies be harnessed in learning spaces? How can emerging technologies truly, meaningfully impact the future of learning? How do we prepare our students and teachers for the challenges and opportunities of the 21^st century?

This video on Connectivism and The Networked Student resonates with many of my views on the subject, and answers in part some of the questions raised above. No surprise that the video has a connection to the person some refer to as the "father of e-learning 2.0" - Stephen Downes.

"The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during Fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century." (Description of video on youtube).

Love the 'Paperworks' style of the Common Craft videos ...

Spore: Experiencing Evolution

2008-11-28T03:46:00.000-08:00

A hugely anticipated PC game, Spore - was launched worldwide in September this year. This game has not only enthralled many kids and adults alike around the world, but also got educators talking about the value of this game in education - to help children learn about the concept of evolution, survival, migration, city development, trade and trade routes, and design of creatures and spaceships (among other things). The best part of Spore is that this learning is not overt - it just happens as kids play this immensely enjoyable (and addictive for some) game.

You can read about the accolades it has received and also visit the official spore website for more info, including an amazing demo of how you can nurture the creature your create through five stages of evolution: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space.

Here's a write-up my 12-year old son Sidhanth wrote on his Spore experiences. He's enjoyed creating and uploading videos of his Spore creations to youtube - a cool feature that is integrated into the core functionality of the game.

Check out this Spore Ad video from the Spore youtube channel:

Chat Widget for Blogs

2008-11-24T17:44:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting tool that was shared on educatorslog.in yesterday - a live discussion widget that can add a chat feature to any blog or website.

It is of particular importance to India, as it incorporates the Google's transliteration API for typing indic scripts for Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. It requires one to be signed in with their Google (gmail) account to make sure that only the signed in users leave comments.

It integrates with Google Talk as well so that people can see their "friend" lists and "presence" cues (online/offline/busy/other status).

I can potentially see a class gathering online for a discussion around a blog post that a teacher has posted as an assignment, or even groups of friends meeting online at a designated time to discuss homework on a class blog. I guess blogs and blogging need to become part of mainstream educational use by teachers and students before tools such as this can be leveraged for collaborative learning.

A neat idea and potentially useful tool nonetheless!

SKID: Dr. Arun Mehta's open source software innovation for children with disabilities

2008-11-24T10:32:00.001-08:00

[Cross-posted as a 'spotlight' on educatorslog.in]

India, sadly, presents a very hostile environment for disabled people in general, and children in particular – not just for missed opportunities for learning and education, but for participation in several normal activities that most regular children enjoy. Many children with disabilities have serious communication issues, and the disability is compounded by this inability to communicate. Children in India who cannot communicate rarely get access to education, due medical attention or even basic human rights. In the case of autism, for example, the inability to communicate is the primary problem. “If we could find a way for the child to communicate, she could go to regular school, instead of compounding her disability with illiteracy” was the belief that propelled Dr. Arun Mehta of JMIT, Radaur, Haryana to innovate solutions to help such children. “Children with autism – like other kids – love computers. A computer is an excellent communications device: so why don't they communicate through computers?” The need to address the communication needs of the disabled early, and a role for computers to solve the problem has kept Dr. Mehta busy for the last few years.

A few weeks ago Professor Arun Mehta showcased a new software to provide free of cost communication support to children with special needs and all those who have difficulty with the keyboard and mouse. The software is called Skid (short for Special Kid). skid.org.in is home to a large group of software modules that children can use from any PC or mobile phone with access to the web. It is also a unique platform for learning web programming. The first module which has recently been made available online is co-designed by students from JMIT, Radaur, and allows special kids access to Wikipedia. (The more technically inclined would be interested to know that Skid has been developed on the open source web framework Ruby on Rails)

Skid has won Dr. Arun Mehta and his colleague Vickram Crishna, the 2008 Manthan Award for e-Inclusion.

The Skid initiative (documented at arpitblog.wordpress.com) is only a modest beginning in affording communication opportunities to large numbers of children with special needs, in that it is a process for developing such software on an ongoing basis, in an inclusive, participatory manner. In developing the words module, for instance, the team has tried to work with the dyslexic, to make a smarter spell checker that allows dyslexic kids to work with sounds and pictures in selecting the right word.

Dr. Arun Mehta and his colleagues have conducted 3 workshops in Dehradun and Bangalore over the last 3 years, involving over 30 children with autism and their care givers, in collaboration with the Autism Society of India, Inspiration, the Spastic Society of Karnataka, the Anil Karanjai Memorial Trust, and Radiophony. (One such workshop in Bangalore has been described in detailed in this article that I authored for indiatogether.com). These workshops provided feedback on the use of existing open source software in this domain. They also inspired Skid, which has since been tried out with children with autism in the workshop organized in July 2008 in Dehradun. Early versions of the software were taken through their paces by children with cerebral palsy at AADI.

Given diverse kinds of disability, even within autism, cerebral palsy and dyslexia, and the different ways in which children might wish to use computers, there is an ongoing need to keep adding modules, and finding imaginative new ways to combine them. To address this need, the Skid initiative invites college students who know a little programming to undergo free of cost summer training in which they write software that doesn't just gather dust, but is put onto the web. Not only do they have the satisfaction that thousands of kids from around the world are benefiting from what they wrote, they also receive public credit on the page they helped design. ===================================================================
Dr. Arun Mehta has a B.Tech from IIT Delhi (1975), a Masters from SUNY Stonybrook, USA, and a PhD from Ruhr University, Germany. At the request of Professor Stephen Hawking, he wrote eLocutor, free and open source software that allows severely disabled people to write and speak. He volunteers as a programming instructor at the National Association for the Blind. In 2000, he co-founded Radiophony.com with IIT batchmate Vickram Crishna. Their current passion is software that might make communication easier for children with autism, cerebral palsy and dyslexia.

TN Gives Reason to Cheer and Cause for Hope

2008-10-05T04:25:00.000-07:00

The Government of India launched the Sarva Shikhsha Abhiyan (Education for All) program in 2003. I remember the launch as it came soon after I had concluded a research project at the behest of the Center for International Development at Harvard U, which was essentially a pilot study on the state of primary education in the vastly different districts of Madurai and Villupuram in Tamil Nadu. While there were some surprise findings in the study, much was as expected - a dismal state of education suffering from chronic issues like high drop-out rates, poor quality of teachers and teaching, and lack of adequate infrastructure.

Much hope has been reposed in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) since its launch. It is Government of India's mammoth, flagship programme "for achievement of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) in a time bound manner, as mandated by 86th amendment to the Constitution of India making free and compulsory Education to the Children of 6-14 years age group, a Fundamental Right.

SSA is being implemented in partnership with State Governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1 million habitations"

SSA's ambitions notwithstanding, most of us in India are painfully aware that the country, unfortunately, has a very long way to go still before it can boast universal education for all, and those chronic issues mentioned above still continue to plague the system. The pedagogy too, sadly, is still largely textbook-driven rote learning that rewards rote memorization and does not nurture understanding or questioning.

It was therefore a very pleasant surprise to come across a couple of videos - on YouTube, no less, that describe in detail an innovative pedagogy called Active Learning Methodology (ALM). ALM, which was designed as part of the outreach activities of the Krishnamurti Foundation School in Chennai, is based on research on brain-based learning and is being implemented as part of the SSA scheme in schools across Tamil Nadu. The videos are well made and provide some very good, concrete ideas to any teacher who wishes to employ an "active learning" pedagogy in a largely textbook-driven classroom environment (as is the case in much of India). The visuals are heart-warming - focusing as they do on female students - a demographic that is often deprived of an education in many parts of India.

There are other pointers too that Tamil Nadu seems to be doing well with their implementation of the SSA. TN certainly gives cause for cheer and hope - and a lesson for other states in the country.

Here are the 2 videos on the "Active Learning Methology" being employed by SSA teachers in TN...

Think Different (courtesy Apple)

2008-09-10T23:52:00.000-07:00

Just love this video! I don't necessarily agree with their choice of people in the video - but I guess this was made for American audiences. The words and the message, however, are simply brilliant! Truly inspiring stuff...

Cool Science

2008-09-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

If you want to get an idea of what the (Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment is all about - I've found this basic intro on Alice, CMS, Altas, LHCb and the Grid to be very well presented and organized.

Here's "Rock-star physicist" Brian Cox explaining the LHC on TED.

Prophecies of doom notwithstanding, this certainly sounds like a very exciting experiment - a hugely collaborative effort that will hopefully unlock some of the dark secrets of the universe. Here's the coolest science video I've come across :)

And if you want to get really spooked, check this one out...

But after that watch this one to be reassured - "YOU WON'T FEEL A THING!"

Why do School Curricula Ignore the History of Computing and the Internet?

2008-09-08T03:32:00.000-07:00

I was struck by this question at a recent visit to the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, CA. Kitty-corner from the famed headquarters of Google in Mt. View, this museum currently proudly houses the Charles Babbage Difference Engine in addition to countless other artifacts that help the visitor trace the timeline of computer history and are a testimony to human ingenuity and inventiveness in the field of digital technologies through the last 6 or so decades.

The 2 hours my sons and I spent tracing the history of computers and computing (and the Internet to lesser extent) were mesmerizing - not just for me but my sons (aged 12 and 9) as well. There is obviously that thrill of watching the sizes (and prices) of computers go down as their computing power and storage capabilities shoot up exponentially; but the stories behind the early innovations are fascinating as well. (I think the kicks I got may have had a little to do with the fact that I have programmed the DEC VAX in my early days as a programmer and used the PDP-11 in my undergrad days at BITS, Pilani. The sight of punch cards brought back waves of long-forgotten memories - of their use as flashcards for memorizing GRE word lists :))

(Incidentally there are several awesome videos on the history of computers on CHM's channel on youtube).

I was reminded of my question once again yesterday when I chanced on a video of Ethan Zuckerman explaining the history of the Internet in about 5 mins - see below. (I think this one betters the earlier history of the Internet video I posted on this blog about half a year ago).

Agreed - the fact that I have always been fascinated by the history of Computers, Computing and the Internet may have a little to do with the fact that I have used computers for about 25 years now - I did my undergrad in Computer Science from BITS Pilani in the mid-eighties, and then was exposed to the Internet in the US in the BBS, usenet and gopher "pre-browser" days of the early 90s. (I remember following the 1992 Cricket World Cup sitting in my little apartment in the US - ball-by-ball on rec.sport.cricket. Why I was a member of rec.sports.gymn in 1991-92 I have no clue!).

That said, given how pervasive these machines are in our lives today, I think everyone, and kids especially, would be just as fascinated by the history of how computing, computers and the internet crept into our lives - starting with the code breakers used by governments during WWII; the work of research universities such as MIT; DARPA; the big mainframes; the pioneering work of organizations such as IBM; the birth of personal computers; Microsoft, Apple; supercomputers (the slideshow above has some pictures of the Cray as well); and finally CERN, hypertext, the World Wide Web and Google; iPods; video games; and seemingly limitless data storage capabilities...

Children are taught about many important discoveries, inventions and innovations in the course of their regular curriculum in Science and Social Studies. The rationale being that history teaches us about what man has done and thus what man is; and also helps kids understand change and societal development. Computers, Computing, the Internet and the World Wide Web rarely ever get the billing they deserve in school curricula today, despite that fact that these kids' lives are so hugely influenced by the use of computers and the Internet. I am convinced that our kids who are so familiar with names like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Google, Yahoo, Sun (to a lesser extent), Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergei Brin; so familiar with the idea of computers and with the use of computers deserve to know and be aware about innovations in computers, the evolution of these technologies, and the people and organizations that laid the foundation for the work of Gates, Jobs, Page and Brin.

And while they're at it, I think they should also learn the basics of boolean logic, binary number systems and why silicon valley is christened thus :)

Anyway, here's Ethan Zuckerman's entertaining video on the History of the Internet...Enjoy!

Listen to the Digital Natives, Sync Up With Your iKids

2008-09-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

Purely by coincidence, the day after I wrote the post on Marc Prensky and Born Digital, I came across an article by Prensky which appeared as the cover story of Edutopia some weeks ago. The story is titled "Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner: How tech-obsessed iKids would improve our schools." I believe that at the core of this issue is again the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants that I talked about in the previous post.

The article to me is less about what kids would like their school education to look like, than about the simple but so very important act of listening to kids; and not just about what they feel about their learning and how they would like to learn, but everything that concerns them and their lives. It seems so ironical that we attempt to shape our kids into responsible, questioning, independent-thinking human beings, but do not allow them to question or have a say in how they would like to learn and be taught; about how they would like to spend those countless hours in the classroom through those dozen odd years that we keep them in school.

If you did ask, you'd find out that kids of today are BORED, BORED, BORED by plain old chalk and talk (See some quotes below from the article). Think about how they spend their time outside the classroom and during their vacations, and contrast that with how we expect them to sit - hour after hour and day after day in the classroom - with none of the technology that they are so fluent and happy with outside of school - listening to teachers who are so clueless about how to engage them. Can we blame them if they find most of their classes mind-numbingly boring and have this to say ? --

"I'm bored 99 percent of the time."

"School is really, really boring."

"We are so bored."

"Engage us more."

"[My teachers] bore me so much I don't pay attention."

"Pointless. I'm engaged in two out of my seven classes."

Prensky calls "unacceptable and untenable" the fact that "Unlike in the corporate world, where businesses spend tens of millions researching what their consumers really want, when it comes to how we structure and organize our kids' education, we generally don't make the slightest attempt to listen to, or even care, what students think about how they are taught.", and he likens this to the treatment of women before suffrage.

According to the article - "Students universally tell us they prefer dealing with questions rather than answers, sharing their opinions, participating in group projects, working with real-world issues and people, and having teachers who talk to them as equals rather than as inferiors. Hopefully, this is useful information for teachers and other educators -- and it is important that educators realize just how universal these opinions are."

Prensky concludes the article with -- "After hosting dozens of these conversations, I realize one thing: We just don't listen enough to our students. The tradition in education has been not to ask the students what they think or want, but rather for adult educators to design the system and curriculum by themselves, using their "superior" knowledge and experience.

But this approach no longer works. Not that the inmates should run the asylum, but as twenty-first-century leaders in business, politics, and even the military are finding out, for any system to work successfully in these times, we must combine top-down directives with bottom-up input. As the students have told me on more than one occasion, "We hope educators take our opinions into account and actually do something!" Until we do, their education will not be the best we can offer."

(Image copied from Edutopia; credited to David Julian)

BORN DIGITAL Attempts to Make Sense of Digital Natives

2008-08-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago, Marc Prensky authored a seminal article titled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants- in which he coined and used these now-famous phrases to describe (respectively) the students of today who are “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet; and those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many new technologies. (Marc Prensky still continues to do some exciting work - his latest research is on kids, gaming and learning. I had the pleasure of interacting with him at BLC07 last year).

Prensky's powerful observations (and terms) have been used in the years following 2001 to make a case for the use of digital technologies in education in a manner that will serve these digital natives well. But it has been a tough sell, and so far I think, most digital immigrants still don't get it!

Anyway, coming to the book that prompted this post. Born Digital is an initiative of the Digital Natives project, an interdisciplinary collaboration of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St. Gallen. The aim of the Digital Natives project is to understand and support young people as they grow up in a digital age. (They're a pretty active group on facebook - I'm a member but have not been able to participate in any of their events so far).

Although the title and sub-title of the book are self-explanatory, here's the blurb that describes the book on the Born Digital website -

"The first generation of “Digital Natives” – children who were born into and raised in the digital world – are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed.
But who are these Digital Natives? How are they different from older generations – or “Digital Immigrants” – and what is the world they’re creating going to look like? In Born Digital, leading Internet and technology experts John Palfrey and Urs Gasser offer a sociological portrait of these young people who can seem, even to those merely a generation older, both extraordinarily sophisticated and strangely narrow.
Based on extensive original research, including interviews with Digital Natives around the world, Born Digital explores a broad range of issues, from the highly philosophical to the purely practical: What does identity mean for young people who have dozens of online profiles and avatars? Should we worry about privacy issues – or is privacy even a relevant concern for Digital Natives? How does the concept of safety translate into an increasingly virtual world? Are online games addictive, and how do we need to worry about violent video games? What is the Internet's impact on creativity and learning? What lies ahead – socially, professionally, and psychologically – for this generation?

A smart, practical guide to a brave new world and its complex inhabitants, Born Digital will be essential reading for parents, teachers, and the myriad of confused adults who want to understand the digital present – and shape the digital future."

I have not read the book, but would appreciate reactions from anyone who has.

Can Kids Teach Themselves?

2008-08-30T18:43:00.000-07:00

Sugata Mitra (of the Hole In the Wall project) hints at an answer to this question in this talk delivered at the Lift Conference which was added to TED.com recently. (My inbox received no less than 5 emails over the last 24 hours from various people with the link to the TED.com video! It was also added to educatorslog.in yesterday).

Sugata Mitra is convinced: "Children will learn to live together and learn together. They will come to know how to evaluate different points of view. Self-organizing learning systems will continuously evolve their own curricula and learning methods".

Mitra talks about the idea of self-organization. Examples of systems that are self-organizing are galaxies, molecules, cells, organisms and societies (these are "natural" systems), and traffic jams, stock-markets, terrorism, and internet-based self-organizing.

The BIG take-aways from his talk at the end (although I feel that these didn't jell completely with the rest of what he spoke) --

Remoteness affects the quality of education (duh!)
Educational technologies should be introduced in remote areas first (will this ever happen? Even the OLPC XO machine - despite best intentions - ended up being sold in the US market to "raise funds" for the project!)
Values are acquired; doctrine and dogma are imposed (duh! again)
Learning is a self-organizing system (small a-ha!)

To address these issues, he urges the design and development of educational technology and pedagogy that is digital, automatic, fault-tolerant, minimally invasive, connected and self-organized.

He leaves the audience with the question : Can "outdoctrination" be the goal of educational technology in the future? (That was a bit off at a tangent from the rest of the talk, I thought).

More Powerful Geo Education: Google Earth in the Classroom

2008-08-29T08:08:00.001-07:00

This is a continuation of the thread on technology tools for Geo Education initiated in the previous post where I discussed Google Maps in the classroom. (I have talked about Google Earth as well in some earlier posts that I will link to this one shortly).

Imagine being able to look at a zoomable image of the earth as an observer from space - a view of the Ganges meandering through the Northern Indian plains and then joining the Brahmaputra to form the world's largest delta before it empties into the Bay of Bengal, or a video of the 3D view of all the Olympic locations in Beijing as in this rousing youtube video, or a bird's eye view of the the city you live in and find out the actual lat/lon for your home or school! I've tried it - and it's a thrill, believe me! Just following the Ganga to where it meets the Yamuna to locate my home town of Allahabad and then zooming in to explore the part of this land where I grew up - in a way that I have never done before was truly amazing! I've even sat with my kids and explored Bangalore and located our home and the school they used to go to, and noted the lat/lon coordinates of all these locations - it was a lot of fun! (but don't take my word for it - try it for yourself :-))

With Google Earth, you can do all this, and much, much more.

The potential of this tool to make geography (and many other subjects) so much more engaging and interesting and meaningful is undeniable. The Google of Educators site has a superb introduction to the features of this tool in addition to a listing of ideas for the classroom -

"Google's satellite imagery-based mapping product puts the whole world on a student's computer. It enables users to "fly" from space to street level to find geographic information and explore places around the world. Like a video game and a search engine rolled into one, Earth is basically a 3D model of the entire planet that lets you grab, spin and zoom down into any place on Earth. Now, with Google Earth 4.3, you can tour distant cities with Google StreetView, view photo-realistic 3D buildings, and even show your students sunset around the world with the new Sunlight feature.

From literature to environmental science, Google Earth can help you bring a world of information alive for your students. You can use Google Earth demos to get your students excited about geography, and use different Google Earth layers to study economics, demographics, and transportation in specific contexts. For instance:

you can use real-time coordinates to demonstrate distance calculations and verify the results using our measurement tools;
view tectonic plate-shift evidence by examining whole continents, mountain ranges and areas of volcanic activity;
study impact craters, dry lake beds and other major land forms.

Students can also use Google Earth to explore topics like the progress of human civilization, the growth of cities, the impact of civilization on the natural environment, and the impact of natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Using Google SketchUp and historic overlays, students can recreate entire ancient cities. The only limit to Google Earth's classroom uses is your imagination.

Don't limit your imagination to our lonely planet, though, launch your student's imagination with Sky in Google Earth. And if you prefer to explore the night sky from your browser, you can now try Google Sky on the web. Whether you stargaze, explore Hubble telescope images, or check out current astronomical events, you'll capture the wonder of the universe without leaving your classroom.

Here are some other ideas for using Google Earth in your classroom:

Biology: Track routes of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Forest. See the Jane Goodall Institute Chimpanzee blog here.
Environmental Science: Have students check Alaska's global warming problems. See how the Sierra Club used Google Earth to depict this problem here.
Geology: Find images, links, and descriptions, with information about thousands of volcanoes around the globe, thanks to organizations like the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program.
Global Awareness: Study the Crisis in Darfur with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's unprecedented project.
History: Explore Tutankhamun's Tomb.
Humanities: Have your students scout film shoot locations like this teacher did with The Golden Compass.
Literature: Bring class or contemporary tales to life with Google LitTrips.
Math: Explore distance, velocity, and wave properties of tsunamis."

Many of the examples described above can be contextualized for the Indian curriculum.

Unlike Google Maps, Google Earth needs to be downloaded and run on your computer. Here's a video on the latest version of Google Earth --

Map Your World: Google Maps in the Classroom

2008-08-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Imagine a History assignment where a student must submit a write-up on Mughal Architecture (or the form it takes as an oft-asked question in exams - "the contributions of Shah Jahan to Indian Archtecture"). Or a "project" on the temples of India. Think of the way this is usually done - a hand-written write-up with pictures cut and pasted into the notebook. Or in schools where students have access to computers this would take the form of a Word document with text and images or perhaps a powerpoint presentation with text and images. While the latter may be much more appealing as an exercise and as a product, and uses technology for collating and presenting the information, it pales in comparison to the use of some of the coolest new tools on the Internet that would make all the sense for use in such an assignment, and result in much more meaningful and engaging learning - and of course, the end product would be way more cool too!

I'm talking about the use of Google Maps - Google's powerful but really easy-to-use mapping tool accessed at http://maps.google.com. These maps are very well developed - with comprehensive information on local businesses too - for countries such as the US; they're fairly decently developed for Indian metros, and developing - slowly but surely for other parts of India too (thanks to mapmaker.google.com). In addition to local maps and landmark information, Google Maps also provides terrain maps, satellite imagery, and for some places (mainly in the US) a photographic “street view” of the real world. Using the “My Maps” feature anyone can create their own custom maps by adding new annotations or markers for just about any spot anywhere for which maps exist with some level of detail. These placemarkers can have a title and include text (which can be formatted like any Word document - with bullets, fonts - style and size, and other usual text formatting). What's most exciting is that it's also possible to include images, web links and video. These personalized maps can be saved, emailed and embedded (using the unique web address that each of these maps is given), and more than one person can collaborate to create one!

Now envision a work product for that history assignment - a map of North and Central India with placemarkers for all the monuments built during the Mughal period, with factual information such as dates, materials, architectural features and other details, along with images and videos from youtube. Not only is it visually more informative with the text, images and videos associated with each monument, but the location-based information conveys so much better the history, the spread and impact of the Mughal Empire in India.

I'm sure some of you may have tons of ideas already buzzing around in your head about the tremendous possibilities of the use of these in any subject or context where maps of the world have meaning. Here are some more ideas of the use of this tool -

in geography (maps with geological information; and for developing spatial and directional skills),
in literature and language ("literary field trips" on google maps),
in science (animal and plant habitats around the world),
in social studies (map neighbourhoods and local communities),
or simply have students document their field trips or holidays with their personal photographs and narratives (a great language arts activity).

If you and your students have access to the Internet, it does not make sense to ignore the potential of Google Maps as a learning tool. If you're enthused enough to give it a try, here's a video from the Google channel on youtube that'll help - it explains well how to create personalized maps --

If you were a teacher with access to the Internet, what would you do differently?

2008-08-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

This is more a stream of consciousness dump at this point. I plan to organize it better after I get all my ideas in --

If I were a teacher with access to the Internet, how would I use it?
(If my students also had adequate access to the Internet, that would change things dramatically - see second list following this one)

Bring the world into my classroom - quite literally! With videos and images from every part of the world available on the Internet, think of how much more real the Amazon or the Sahara would feel to the students? Play the Roja song to give a sense of the Himalayas. With tools like Google Earth, we could look at the earth in as real a way as we possibly can. Look at physical features of India and the continents and all the parts of the earth. The study of the co-relation between the growth of early cities, civilizations around rivers and water bodies would be so much more meaningful while looking at the earth on Google Earth. Study of Lat/Lon.

Use Google Maps to teach spatial and directional skills. Get the kids to study their neighbourhood; map their trips and holidays; create holiday and field trip logs on My Maps; learn about the planning of cities and neighbourhood;

Bring History alive in the classroom using Youtube videos and images from around the Internet. Footage from real events in History like Nehru's speech from the ramparts of Red Fort on 15th Aug 1947, or Gandhi's Dandi Marck, or Google Videos of Doordarshan 's 13-part series on the History of India by historian D.D. Kosambi.

Use animations and simulations from the many free science sites on the Internet to explain concepts of Science in a manner that I cannot demonstrate - the water cycle, the various human systems (like the circulatory system, the way the heart functions, nervous system and such). Find good lesson plans for ideas on conducting science experiments - even low-cost ones suitable for India.

Use the many Maths websites to get Free worksheets, and exercises for drill and practice. tutorials and animations for advanced algebra and calculus. Use free graphing tools available online to explain concepts of algebra (such as functions).

Teach kids how to search for information and make sense of the unweildy amounts of information available on every topic
Learn and teach foreign languages and cultures from the various free language learning sites

Access free books and poems to use for Language Arts

Communication and Collaboration: Use the many tools for authoring and sharing information like Email, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Wikis (Google Sites), Blogs.

Connect with people from all over - Connect my students with others around the country or world through Email, Wikis, Google talk, Skype

Stay abreast of current news from all around the World through sites like Google News, Rediff, and others. Use these sites to get kids to relate classroom content to real-world happenings.

Use tools like Google Spreadsheets teach students about data gathering and data organization, for keeping student records, lesson plans, and organize all types of data

Use Picasa to upload and organize pictures of my students at work, class field trips, student work and performances so I could share them with my students and their parents.

Classroom Central: Create a classroom website using a tool like Google Sites to centralize information sharing between me, my students and their homes - to make announcements, share with my students materials like homework & reading lists, maintain my classroom calendar, plan activities with my students, and share pictures of field trips.

If my students also had adequate access to the Internet, that would be truly transformative- it would essentially make my students active creators and producers of digital content on the Internet rather than mere passive consumers.

Podcast created by me for my students (use class time for discussions and project work); created by my students as products of their learning
Blogs
Videos
Personalized Maps

Learning would be most certainly be more personalized and collaborative at the same time.

The Rig Veda in Hindi

2008-08-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

A new and unique translation in Hindi of the ancient Indian Rig Veda (ऋग्वेद) has recently been published - the first volume of a four-part series. This covers the third, fourth and fifth mandalas of the sacred text and is generally dedicated to Agni - the sacred fire. This volume also includes the sacred "Gayatri Mantra".

This translation published by Lokbharti Booksellers and Distributors, Allahabad, is unique in that it is the first time that a translation appears with explanations on literal and spiritual levels, in addition to the original Sanskrit text.

The translation and explanations have been written by Professor Govind Chandra Pandey, a renowned scholar in multiple disciplines. Prof. G. C. Pandey has been the Vice Chancellor of Jaipur and Allahabad Universities, he was the Chairman of Indian Institute of Advance Studies, Simla, the Chairman of Allahabad museum Society and the Chairman of Central Tibetan Society, Sarnath Varanasi.

A book such as this is truly valuable as it makes these ancient sacred texts much more accessible to the general reader and provides deep insight into the foundations of Indian culture. It would be a valuable addition to any library, especially in an institution of higher education that studies Ancient Indian Languages, Archeology, History and /or Culture.

This book has been covered in the blogosphere in these posts as well:

ऋग्वेद
Published by: Lokbharti Book Sellers and Distributors
15-A M.G.Marg,
Allahabad - 211001
Tel: 91-532-3295870/ 2427210
email: lokbhartibooksellers@gmail.com

MWesch's Take on the Culture of Youtube

2008-08-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

Michael Wesch (mwesch on youtube), he of the The Machine is Us/ing Us fame, spoke at length on the anthropology of Youtube in an entertaining and enlightening lecture delivered at the Library of Congress about a month ago. This delightful one-hour long video titled 'An anthropological introduction to YouTube' is up on youtube - naturally :)

Wesch's channel on youtube is truly worth subscribing to. He and his students (he is a professor of Cultural Anthropology and Media Ecology at Kansas State University) have created some eye-opening videos that explore the impact of web 2.0 on human interaction, like this telling video titled The Vision of Students Today on what the 21st century student looks like and what education should look like to cater to the needs of such a student.

So if you missed the Numa Numa wave on youtube, now is your chance to catch up, catch on and enjoy :)

New York Times Essay Takes an Optimistic Look at Technology in School Education

2008-08-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

This is an article written for the New York Times by a self-professed techno-optimist (I think I too could call myself that), about the coming of age of technology use in classrooms after years of bumbling and trying and testing.

The context is US schools and quite different from the average school in India in terms of access to technology - "The ratio of computers to pupils is one to one. Technology isn’t off in a computer lab. Computing is an integral tool in all disciplines, always at the ready." While India is nowhere near there in terms of access, there are learnings for schools and teachers in India - to leapfrog to using technology in ways that make sense today - that these schools in the US have realized after decades of attempting to make technology work. For example,

"Until recently, computing in the classroom amounted to students doing Internet searches, sending e-mail and mastering word processing, presentation programs and spreadsheets. That’s useful stuff, to be sure, but not something that alters how schools work."

[How many schools in India are investing in technology just to get their students to be doing this? That money is better spent elsewhere, in my view. Kids are going to learn these tools anyway - and with much more ease then teachers, I should add.]

"The new Web education networks can open the door to broader changes. Parents become more engaged because they can monitor their children’s attendance, punctuality, homework and performance, and can get tips for helping them at home. Teachers can share methods, lesson plans and online curriculum materials.

In the classroom, the emphasis can shift to project-based learning, a real break with the textbook-and-lecture model of education."

The biggest take-away for me from this article -

"..while computer technology has matured and become more affordable, the most significant development has been a deeper understanding of how to use the technology."

Is Cuil Cool(er)?

2008-07-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

Cuil (pronounced "cool") - is all the buzz since its launch yesterday.

A new, and purportedly "better" search engine than Google, started by ex-Googlers, has received much press (odd term to use in the context of the Internet, I guess) in the past 24-48 hours.

Here are a few links -

BBC - Search Site Aims to Rival Google
WatBlog -Ex-Googlers Launch ‘Cuil.com’ - They Claim Its Bigger.. Better than Google!!
Huffington Post - Cuil: The Latest, Baddest AntiGoogle Looks Like A Magazine
and Ouch- Cuil Dominates Google Trends (IMAGES)

I will reserve my own comments until I have tried it out some more. I do like the look of the results pages, if only because they are a welcome change from the usual style of results pages on Google and other commonly used search engines.

A search on "Isaac Newton" (well, yes, my son was sitting next to me at the time) - threw up interesting results and interestingly laid out as well. The very first result is a german site! There were of course tabs that organized the results and the neat "Explore by category" widget on the right. Check it out...

On the other hand - a search on "cuil" on both Google and Cuil was super interesting. The search engine did not feature anywhere in its own search results, whereas it was top of the heap on Google! Go figure!

By the way, I do believe Cuil's claim that they crawl through more of the Internet. Why? Well, I came across an academic publication (that has my name among the authors) in the archives of University libraries that I had never seen in Google searches before (yes, I did compare how my "vanity search" results stack up :-))

Randy Pausch Lives on in Alice

2008-07-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

[Update: I blogged about this originally on April 10th, 2008, but wanted to promote this to the top of the heap today as Randy Pausch passed away a few hours ago.

Here are a couple of great lines (lessons?) from his famous 'last lecture':

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people.

RIP Randy Pausch...]

-------------------------------Original Post (from April 10, 2008) ---------------------

Or I should say "Randy Pausch will live on in Alice".

55 minutes or so into his now famous "last lecture" (more on that lecture later), Randy Pausch (47-year old terminally ill star professor of Virtual Reality at Carnegie Mellon) states

"To the extent that someone can live on in something, I will live on in Alice."

Well a post on Alice belongs in this blog, since so many posts have been devoted to talking about programming environments that help kids be creators rather than consumers of cool stuff like games, and digital stories and 3D worlds in cyberspace. These environments make it easy for kids to program i.e. make possible what is inherently pretty tough to do. In the process, they also teach kids to problem-solve and learn concepts of computer science like algorithmic ways of thinking and ideas like "messaging" and "objects" and "behaviours" or as Pausch calls it - the classic "head fake" - where you learn stuff without realizing that you're learning stuff (a great way to teach kids stuff that they think is too hard or beyond their reach).

So, what is Alice?

"Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment designed with middle and high schoolers in mind, that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience."

There's a wealth of material on the website on how Alice can be used to teach computer science to Middle and High School kids through creating story-telling and 3D-gaming environments (with characters from the popular PC game 'Sims').

Randy Pausch says of Alice "To think that millions of kids are having so much fun learning something that is so hard (programming)...that's pretty cool ... that's a legacy I can live with".

Of the lecture here's all I will say, it's a must-see for parents, teachers and children (old enough to internalize the import of his lessons on life and living), delivered with the clarity of thought and passion that only comes from knowing that you have but a few months to live, and by a man who has obviously accomplished plenty, lived a rich life, and had a lot of FUN doing all the things he's done. Here it is....

The Human Side of Moore's Law

2008-07-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Really enjoyed reading this article by journalist Bob Cringely (shared by Vishu Singh on educatorslog.in).

Cringely asserts that while the performance of personal computers has increased a millionfold over the last 30 years (following Moore's Law), it takes about as much time (30 years) - one human generation - for waves of technological innovation to be completely absorbed by our culture.

He goes on to talk about the impact on education of the "empowerment" that these technologies have brought about among today's younger generation.

"We've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools."

A few more interesting excerpts that resonate well with what I figure is going on in education today the world over, at varying speeds - in India perhaps slower than in others, but happening nonetheless.

"Google is the best tool for an aging programmer because it remembers when we cannot. Dave Winer, back in 1996, came to the conclusion that it was better to bookmark information than to cut and paste it. I'm sure today Dave wouldn't bother with the bookmark and would simply search from scratch to get the most relevant result. Both men point to the idea that we're moving from a knowledge economy to a search economy, from a kingdom of static values to those that are dynamic. Education still seems to define knowing as more important than being able to find, yet which do you do more of in your work? And what's wrong with crimping a paragraph here or there from Cringely if it shows you understand the topic?
This is, of course, a huge threat to the education establishment, which tends to have a very deterministic view of how knowledge and accomplishment are obtained - a view that doesn't work well in the search economy. At the same time K-12 educators are being pulled back by No Child Left Behind, they are being pulled forward (they probably see it as pulled askew) by kids abetted by their high-tech Generation Y (yes, we're getting well into Y) parents who are using their Ward Cleaver power not to maintain the status quo but to challenge it.

This is an unstable system. Homeschooling, charter schools, these things didn't even exist when I was a kid, but they are everywhere now. There's only one thing missing to keep the whole system from falling apart - ISO certification.
....
Well reputation still holds in education, though its grip is weakening. I know kids from good families who left high school early with a GED because they were bored or wanted to enter college early. Maybe college is next.

MIT threw videos of all its lecture courses - ALL its lecture courses - up on the web for anyone to watch for free. This was precisely comparable to SGI (remember them?) licensing OpenGL to Microsoft. What is it, then, that makes an MIT education worth $34,986? Is it the seminars that aren't on the web? Faculty guidance? Research experience? Getting drunk and falling in the Charles River without your pants? Right now it is all those things plus a dimensionless concept of educational quality, which might well go out the window if some venture capitalist with too much money decides to fund an ISO certification process not for schools but for students.

The University of Phoenix is supposedly preparing a complete middle and high school online curriculum available anywhere in the world. I live in Charleston, SC where the public schools are atrocious despite spending an average of $16,000 per student each year. Why shouldn't I keep my kids at home and online, demanding that the city pay for it?

Because that's not the way we do it, that's why.

Well times are changing."

@ NECC - 4: Education 2.0 in India

2008-07-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

From my session on educatorslog.in at NECC 2008 - Education 2.0 in India: Community and Sharing through Blogging and Tagging...

More on Shirky's Here Comes Everybody

2008-07-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Having just returned from the NECC where there were buttons any direction you looked, I feel that the book cover of the UK version of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations is so much more interesting and apt.

Talking about the idea of the "WE over I" - the name iPhone seems rather inappropriate, especially when you see people constantly conversing, communicating, collaborating over those sleek devices... wePhone would be so much more apt - or maybe wiiPhone! Not having one myself made me feel quite the outcast at NECC - a fact underscored by a remark Will Richardson made in jest - "Oh! You're SO 2007!"

Shirky's book was also at the center of an interesting session at EduBloggerCon 08 (see previous '@ NECC' posts); and here's an interesting post on the book on Jeff Atwood's blog Coding Horror.

Finally, here's a 42+ minute video of Shirky talking about his book at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School in Feb this year.

(My own distant connection with Shirky - if it can be termed "connection"...I wrote a letter of recommendation for a design student in Bangalore when he was applying for the Graduate Program at the ITP at NYU in 2005...he did get admission, and went on to take Shirky's course(s?) at ITP :))

@ NECC - 3:The Collective Over the Individual

2008-07-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

It's not about YOU or ME or I today, it's about US, and what WE can accomplish together.

That seems to be the big message out at NECC that concluded today. Here's a video of the opening keynote address by James Surowiecki author of Wisdom of Crowds who described several examples that demonstrate time and again how the decision-making ability of a diverse group of people is more effective than that of individuals (even 'experts').

It was great that I had my session on educatorslog.in soon after the keynote, since the philosophy of sharing resources on educatorslog.in is much the same - that the knowledge of the collective is greater that that of any one individual who is a member of the online community.

As mentioned in my previous post, Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody - about how web2.0 is revolutionizing the social order - also garnered a lot of interest especially at EduBloggerCon 2008.

@NECC 2008 - 2: EduBloggerCon 08

2008-07-02T18:27:00.000-07:00

A few words about EduBloggerCon 2008 - the "unconference" or rather "collaborative conference" at NECC pulled together by Steve Hargadon. For more on the idea of an "unconference" - check this post by Steve.

I was unable to attend the various sessions as I was busy taking care of some snafus related to my session the next day and had to make a desperate run a few miles out to get some printing done. I did however enjoy the one I was able to attend - outside in the Second Life space late morning. I liked that it had an informal, unconference feel - in terms of the space especially and how everyone was sitting on couches and chairs, on the floor...some even standing around the periphery, but participating nonetheless...

I also enjoyed the discussions around Clay Shirky’s new book - Here Comes Everybody - The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Many quotable quotes in there, but here's one I'll add here--

"Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new technologies - it happens when society adopts new behaviors"

We're clearly waiting for such a revolution in education.

It's always a pleasure for me to step out of the blogosphere and meet f2f with the active edubloggers from around the world who are shaping web 2.0 in education.

Thanks, Steve, for organizing this. Here's to more such open, collaborative exchanges in the future that help bridge the virtual blogging world with the real world.

A short video put together by Dean Shareski --

@ NECC2008 - 1

2008-06-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are - some 15,000 educators - all passionate (to varying degrees) about technology in education - at National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) 2008 of the International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE ) in scenic downtown San Antonio, TX. A small percentage of us more passionate than most others about web 2.0 in education met up at the EduBloggerCon earlier today.

It's great, as always, to convert online connections to f2f ones every once in a while...Here's to convene * connect * transform at NECC 2008.

The Swedish Model

2008-06-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

A recent article in the Economist with the same title as this post was shared on educatorslog.in recently - it's about Sweden's "Knowledge Schools" where students

"do much of the work themselves....(through) the Kunskapsporten (“Knowledge Portal”), a website containing the entire syllabus. Youngsters spend 15 minutes each week with a tutor, reviewing the past week's progress and agreeing on goals and a timetable for the next one. This will include classes and lectures, but also a great deal of independent or small-group study. The Kunskapsporten allows each student to work at his own level, and spend less or more time on each subject, depending on his strengths and weakness. Each subject is divided into 35 steps. Students who reach step 25 graduate with a pass; those who make it to step 30 or 35 gain, respectively, a merit or distinction."

So many of us have been talking for so long about personalizing the learning experience by leveraging tools of the new web, creating hybrid learning spaces - online and offline, with individual and group work, and each child moving at his/her own pace...Well, here is someone finally doing it, and succeeding, on a large scale!

Lessons to be learned, to be sure.

ZAC Browser for children with Autism

2008-06-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

If you have not already come across this browser (and the related story of a grandfather who developed this browser for his autistic grandson), here is some info on and link to the ZAC (Zone for Autistic Children) browser.

"ZAC is the first web browser developed specifically for children with autism, and autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and PDD-NOS. We have made this browser for the children - for their enjoyment, enrichment, and freedom. Children touch it, use it, play it, interact with it, and experience independence through ZAC.

ZAC is the zone that will permit your child to interact directly with games (a LOT of games) and activities (focused on MANY interests) that cater specifically to kids who display the characteristics of autism spectrum disorders, like impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, restricted interests and repetitive behavior. ZAC has been an effective tool for kids with low, medium and high functioning autism.

ZAC focuses on the children and their interaction - But we also provide an excellent forum for parents, caretakers, teachers, and others to share their experiences, tools and resources and to unite as a caring, compassionate, and extremely knowledgeable community. It is said that "it takes a village to raise a child", and that is exponentially true for raising a child with autistic spectrum disorders. The power of your experience yesterday is going to be instrumental in helping someone successfully tackle the circumstances of today."

Parents and caregivers of kids on the autism spectrum, please do share your views and your feedback on this...

Marc Andreessen's Guide to College and Career Planning

2008-05-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

I doubt that in all these years I have ever come across a more useful piece of writing to guide students on higher education choices, and skills development for a successful life than Marc Andreessen's Guide to Skills and Education (Part 2 of his guide to Career Planning). The fact that it resonates so well with all my beliefs and life learnings may well have a lot to do with the high points I am giving this article, but students will do well to heed a lot, if not all, the suggestions of this admirable man, who could be called the "father of the Internet Browser".

Marc Andreessen's Mosaic (which later became Netscape) browser, was probably one of the biggest early web innovations (that incidentally came out of Illinois and not Silicon Valley!) and it revolutionized how we interact with information on the World Wide Web. Those of us who have used the pre-Mosaic web can truly appreciate how Mosaic changed life for the better :)). He recently co-founded Ning - a social networking platform that many of us are familiar with. Marc A is clearly one of Silicon Valley's most successful entrepreneurs.

So parents and teachers, do read it and share your reactions to Marc's Guide to Career Planning Part 2: Skills & Higher Education. If you are a student wandering through here, this piece is a must-read - it may well change your life (for the better, I'm sure :))!

[Cross-posted on educatorslog.in]

The Ideal Technology/CS Curriculum for Middle School

2008-05-13T20:10:00.000-07:00

This post is inspired by a curriculum question raised on educatorslog.in by a 'Computer Studies' (CS) teacher (an alternative moniker for a 'Technology' teacher in India).

So, what should kids aged 10-14 be taught by way of technology apps/tools in schools?

I think the question is better answered if we rephrase it to - What skills can kids aged 10-14 develop through technology apps/tools? In my view the 4Cs provide an excellent guideline to develop the curriculum - thinking about which technology tools will help kids with the following -

Communication
Collaboration
Creativity &
Critical Thinking

I’d like to preface my list of candidates tools and/or specific applications that could be considered, by underscoring the need for embedding the learning of specific technology tools in authentic tasks and integrating it in projects/assignments/artifacts that are part of the curriculum of core subjects such as Science, Language Arts, Maths and Social Studies. Technology taught stand-alone as a separate “subject” is neither necessary nor beneficial. The idea that technology is a “tool” can only be impressed on students when it is taught as a tool to achieve a larger purpose.

The other thought that I’d like to voice for consideration is the need to include elements of computer science and computational thinking rather than simply restricting the Technology/Computer Studies curriculum to the learning of software applications. This would mean exposure to the ideas of algorithms, data structures and data management. Ideas from CS like multitasking, time slicing, recursion and redundancy are sort of like life skills in some sense, and how cool would it be for kids to see applications of these in computers and operating systems. Programming is of course an important part of this, but programming alone is a very narrow piece that does not cover many of the elements of computer science that children could get exposure to, even at an early age. Such instruction should ideally be cleverly designed and appropriately disguised (a la Randy Pausch’s “head fake”) so that kids have fun learning relatively difficult concepts.

Enough rambling, and on to specific themes/tools... (Note that there are free alternatives to almost all proprietary ones that I mention here). I will try and organize this into a table at some point.

Google Docs, Sites (Communication, Collaboration)
Blogging & Podcasting (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity)
Wikis (Communication, Collaboration)
Publishing - Publisher (Communication, Creativity)
Photo/Video uploading & sharing ((Visual) Communication, Collaboration)
Audio Editing- Audacity (Communication, Creativity)
Image Editing - Photoshop, Fireworks (Communication, Creativity)
Movie making/Digital Story Telling - Movie Maker, PhotoStory, iMovie (Communication, Creativity, Critical Thinking)
Concept-Mapping - CMap, FreeMind, Inspiration, many others (Critical Thinking)
Presentation tools - Open Office Impress, Powerpoint, Google Presentations, Slide Share (Communication, Collaboration)
Programming - LOGO, Star LOGO, Scratch, Squeak, Drape, Alice, Visual Basic/C++, C, (Critical Thinking, Creativity)
Web Design, including HTML (Collaboration, Creativity)
3-D Modeling - Google SketchUp (along with Google Earth) (Creativity, Critical Thinking)
Game Creation- Game Maker, Scratch, Squeak (Creativity, Critical Thinking)
Animation - Flash (Creativity)
Spreadsheets - Google Spreadsheets, Open Office Calc or Excel (Critical Thinking)
Databases & Information Organization - Open Office Base, Access (Critical Thinking)

I think this is a fairly exhaustive list. These tools can be taught at the appropriate grade level and even in multiple grades through some sort of a spiral curriculum (building on basic skills taught in an earlier grade).

Web of Possibilities with Indic Tools for India

2008-05-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

Barely 2 weeks ago I blogged about my brush with Indic Language Support in Blogger - a post which garnered several comments from the Hindi blogging world - with most of the comments being in Hindi. Most of the Hindi bloggers who left comments maintained solo blogs while being on several group blogs as well. One such group blog - Buno Kahani (Weave a Story) is an interesting attempt at collaborative story writing by a group of Hindi bloggers!

Clearly, that one post did much for my appreciation of a phenomenon that I was simply not (consciously) cognizant of - how a large percentage of India's populace is enjoying access to the several Indic language web tools that allow them to express themselves in an Indian language of their choice.

In the comments was also one by priyankar who urged me to take some time out to write a similar blog in Hindi - share my thoughts on education and technology in a language that will serve the Indian Hindi speaking and reading population as well -

"आपके शैक्षिक और तकनीकी अनुभव का कुछ लाभ हिंदी के माध्यम से भी देश के लोगों को मिलना चाहिए . इसके लिए थोड़ा समय निकालें - यही अनुरोध है"

Well, thankfully, Google's new English-Hindi-English translation tool obviates any extra effort on my part to make this wish come true! See the "Read this blog in Hindi" link on the top right of this page? Thanks to Google, an automated Hindi translation of this blog can be produced at the click of a button. Go ahead and try it - right here, right now!

Even though the translation is nowhere near perfect yet, the potential for this in India is HUGE! Think about it! Any page on the web in English hitherto inaccessible to someone who cannot read English, is now available in Hindi as well. Imagine what this could mean for education in parts of small-town and rural India where there is Internet penetration, but where English is neither spoken nor read. Vast amounts of educational content on the Internet in English were until now out of the reach of the non-English literate population of India. Not anymore!

Google's Translate toolkit toolkit also has a text translator which allows any text to be translated from English to Hindi or vice versa. For more information on all the capabilities of the toolkit - check out the Google Press Release - Google aapki bhasha mein (Google in your language).

Here's a snapshot of the educatorlog.in home page in Hindi. As you can see, the translation is not quite perfect, but still, one can get the gist of the text.
It's enough to get my head buzzing with ideas and possibilities :)

More on FOSS (aka Muft and Mukt Software) for Schools

2008-05-03T17:16:00.000-07:00

Is it just my imagination or is the FOSS movement for schools truly gathering momentum? Anyway, just wanted to share some more on the idea of FOSS and the rationale for its use, especially in schools.

The first is the much-talked about article by Richard M. Stallman ("rms" - the father of the GNU project) - Why schools should exclusively use free software - in which he lists the following reasons (in brief) -

Cost - obviously the first good reason to go with software that is truly "free" (and not "donated" like some proprietary software is which has hidden costs and other strings attached)
"School should teach students ways of life that will benefit society as a whole."
Free software permits students to learn how software works. This is especially useful for older kids, and proprietary software rejects this thirst for knowledge of how things work.
"To teach people to be good citizens and good neighbors—to cooperate with others who need their help. Teaching the students to use free software, and to participate in the free software community, is a hands-on civics lesson."

The second is an argument (in favor of FOSS) that I will borrow from Why Free Software by Nagarjuna of gnowledge.org (and the Free Software Foundation of India). I think he explains it really well--

"The argument can be best understood if we focus on what happens when we digitize any document, whether text or other kinds of media. Digitization uses a computing model to write (encode) the data, and when we try to retrieve the data, the computer reads (decodes) it for us in a human readable form. Normally, we expect that the computing model used for encoding and decoding is part of computer science, and so we rely on it.

However, since code is by nature arbitrary, each company can invent (mind you an arbitrary invention is not necessarily an innovation) its own model of digitization and provides a computing service to its customers. The arbitrary computing model they use is protected under the various forms of IPR, and the current Governments not only respect this but also protect and promote the interests of the companies.

Free Software Movement (FSM) identifies this as the root cause of betrayal that happens in the digital society in various forms. The computing model used must be published, just as any scientific or technological models are published for use by the society. More important than providing access, by publication, is the freedom to use the computing model by other agencies. In addition to this, FSM also seeks the freedom to modify the model, as well as the freedom to republish the model either without any restrictions or with the restriction that other users cannot transform them into private property.

Considering that computer science is a strange mix of deep theory as well as sophisticated technology, it is very vital for any society to use this transparently. Else, we will let some agencies become monopolies. This is a serious danger to digital society because, the data that is digitized belongs to you and me, and not to the company. But, in reality today, our data has been handed over to the proprietary companies, since they alone have the license to decode our own documents. This will create a possibility for computer crime, which is happening all around our eyes. We let this happen."

(By the way, I've heard the expression "Muft and Mukt Software" to describe FOSS in India. I love the way it rolls off the tongue - it means Free (Muft) and Open Source (Mukt) Software in Hindi/Urdu.)

FOSS in Schools in India

2008-05-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to highlight the Kerela story here that has also made it to the latest educatorslog.in Spotlight - Kerala Blazing the Trail for FOSS in Schools. I posted the story on a google group of people deliberating ICT in Education in India, and received some comments on the story from Anivar Aravind who is an information architect, in addition to being a self-proclaimed "hactivist, campaigner, FLOSSopher, initiator, and occasional writer", who also happens to know the inside story of the Kerela FOSS movement. I have embedded his comments (in quotes and in green) in the story just as he shared them in the googlegroup. Thanks, Anivar, for sharing your insights....

KOCHI, MARCH 4: Richard M Stallman—global free software guru, VS
Achuthanandan’s darling and almost a freewheeling adviser of sorts to
the Kerala Government—may now have more reasons to break out into
that jig that he abruptly did while being given a somberly
reverential welcome in Kerala a few weeks ago.

Kerala is all set to become the first state in the country to
completely banish Microsoft and allow only GNU/Linux free software to
be used in the mandatory IT test at the state SSLC examinations that
half a million students will appear for from next week. Till last
year, they could take the exam using either free software or the
Microsoft platform. Not anymore.

"Kerala selected free software because in the syllabus committee meeting
85% of the teachers opted for it (after 2 year experience of on the
platform & trainings and support by free software advocates - no state
help at till that point) But Because of it was a Anti-MNC position and
left-ruled Govt Media used all juicy stuff. Govt also captured the
mileage from it."

A few weeks ago, the Government formally ordered that only free Linux-
based software should be used for IT education in high schools, using
new the Linux text books developed by State Council for Educational
Research and Training and the Free Software Foundation of India.

"It was an old decision, on the starting of the academic year. Not few
weeks ago. This report was appeared just before RMS's visit to Cochin,
on March, end of the academic year "

The hardline Left’s familiar anti-MNC, anti-proprietory planks apart,
another major plus of abandoning Microsoft, claim state IT Mission
officials, is plainly the cost factor. “Going for a massive Windows-
based infrastructure cost a lot. Linux can bundle all applications
with the operating system facilitating a single installation kit”.

"Some official IT Mission has nothing to do with IT@School which is under
Education department. Kerala's IT policy clearly states the logical
reasons for Free software adoption of Kerala. And I think this Official
never gone through the content in text books"

The logistics for making Kerala the country’s Free and Open Source
Software (FOSS) destination—one of Achuthanandan’s pet Red obsessions—
may be daunting, but the state is coping with it. Since last
September, some 15 lakh students have been busy training on or
migrating to free software on 40,000 computers put up in 2,832 high
schools watched over by over 60,000 IT trained school teachers (some
86 private training institutions train the teachers) besides 161
master trainers and 5,600 school IT coordinators. “We checked. It’s
the world’s biggest mobilisation of its kind,” says K Anwar Sadath,
executive director of the state government’s IT@Schools mission.

Every high school in Kerala, including the over a thousand government-
run ones, will be wired to high-speed broadband Internet by this
July, which will be another first in India. All, of course, will use
nothing but free software. “We are now moving from IT education to IT-
enabled education in our schools, using only free software,” asserts
Education Minister M A Baby.

When Stallman, who fathered the GNU project and developed text editor
Emacs, flew down to Kerala for the first time in 2001—in his old
patched jeans, long beard, free flowing hair and crumpled T-shirt—and
told the curious who hadn’t heard of him in Thiruvananthapuram that
he was, really, “Saint iGNUcious of the church of Emacs”, the then
Congress-led Government was already busy getting the state’s IT drive
on keel, drawing in Intel and Microsoft. Achuthanandan, then
Opposition leader, was quick to demand that both be got rid of, and
launched a particularly vocal campaign against Microsoft being
allowed to train Kerala school kids, calling it “exploitative”.

The then A K Antony Government had not overly warmed up to Stallman,
who opened Asia’s first centre of his outfit, the Free Software
Foundation-India, in Thiruvananthapuram. But Achuthanandan was keen,
even when CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan originally favoured
the Microsoft idea. Stallman then began regularly dropping down to
Kerala. Two years ago, Achuthanandan, after vainly ordering Pepsi and
Coca-Cola out of the state, declared that all schools will go the
FOSS way.

Last year, in its state IT policy, the Left Government vowed to use
only FOSS in all e-governance projects and declared it would even
incentivise companies developing free software. Government
departments, beginning with the state Secretariat, soon began
switching from Microsoft to Linux. “There were some initial fears and
some understandable resistance, but things have been smoothing out
faster than we thought.” says a a senior state IT official. The
migration is at various stages in key Government arms now.

"First of all Kerala had a silent adoption history of Free software
solutions. I did a study&documentation on successful free software
project on public Enterprises for SPACE-KERALA in 2005. An Interesting
result we found is more than 95% of successful projects in all
e-governance are using Free Software solutions. (book is available at
http://www.space-kerala.org/downloads/foss-lr.pdf) IT policy is a result
of various civil society movements , adoption histories, their success ,
and awareness on bureaucratic & Politicians level. We welcome such good
initiatives from state. I mentioned it to point the errors in juicy
reporting "

Technology and Education - Prof. Yashpal's Perspective

2008-04-26T21:16:00.000-07:00

[Although a bit dated (6 years old), these views of renowned Indian Scientist and Educationist, Prof Yashpal, may well be a reflection of the dominant perspective of several contemporary thinkers at the helm of the Indian Education System. As I prepare to leave for Delhi to be part of a consultation to draft a National Policy on ICT in School Education, I feel that the biggest challenge in drafting such a policy will be to strike that balance between doing what will continue to propel India into the Global New Economy of the 21st century, while not undermining India's rich cultural and regional diversity and languages (my previous post being a case in point); and keeping in mind the vast economic spectrum that India represents, as well as social issues such as gender discrimination, caste and communal bias.]

Technology and Education

Prof. Yash Pal
Schoolnet Lecture Series, India Habitat Centre. June 2000

I am a bit at a loss as to how I should constrain the scope of my remarks. You can say so much on science as also on education. Should one speak of ‘science in education’ or ‘education in science’ or about science and education quite independently? Since the constraints have not been explicitly stated I will go by the antecedents of the people who have organized this affair. As I understand they seem to believe that education, including that in science and technology could be tremendously improved if the infrastructure for delivery could be more technological. Besides improving the pedagogy of transaction, information from the world would become accessible to our students and teachers. And then we will be on our way to becoming a world superpower. Let me try to lend some perspective. I hope this is not seen as too censorious in respect of our present enthusiasm about information technology.

I am an enthusiast about information technology – have been for more than a quarter century. My enthusiasm has not been only passive. I have worked centrally on all the three aspects – technology, systems and the pedagogy of education and communication. In the last two of these engagements I have vested a great deal of effort and passion. There have been many successes but there have also been heart breaking failures, because the social forces and forces of vested interests have been much too strong. I do not want to oppose the use of modern technology but I do maintain that if we proceed on the basis of importing, not just technology but also the environment in which the curriculum is formulated and anchored, we will do great damage to our society. I wonder how much of this due to the fact that, like the flashy adds on our television, it is glossy and sexy looking. Also it is all in English, the rootless tongue of our rootless middle class (sorry about this bit of exaggeration). It is also not surprising that many affluent private schools (it is strange that we still call them public schools in our country) resonate with this enterprise because the parents also see excellence in terms of affinity with the external, the Western, the global.

Fertility of information increases if it can be seen to operate on intimate perceptions and observations, in dealings of people, in the state of the land, the price of vegetables, the manner in which the fruit vendor or kabariwala bargains, the arguments in the street, the problem of playing cricket on the road, the non-availability of drinking water, the smell of the earth after the first rain, the sudden buoyancy of spirit after the first rain of the monsoon , the scents of the mango season, the quality of chikoo, the grape, watermelon, banana, apricot, lichi, pomegrenate and so many things that make the summer not only bearable but also awaited with expectation. Instead of this we keep talking of April as spring when the temperature is 42 degrees, we talk of the fall when in many places most of the trees do not shed any leaves while in others this happens in the beginning of May followed by a flush of colourful flowers on the trees. It may seem that all this is only peripheral to the process of education. It definitely is not.

Severing the mind of children from life as it is can have two consequences. One that there is no need to observe, interpret and understand the world around and two that our life is somehow inferior and no worth while problems of great science or technology can possibly emerge from there. Both these are disastrous. De-coupled education and de-coupled science both tend to be sterile. The major problem of our formal system is that such de-coupling has been built in as a virtue. This hope can be belied in two ways, both of which seem attractive to many who are currently active in media education:

First is that great temptation to use packages considered excellent merely because they come from distant industrialized countries. We have some fantastic efforts in our own country. Why should we not learn from what grassroot organizations like Eklavya have done?

The second danger is partly in what I have mentioned above but needs re-emphasis. The dotcom education enterprises also have to make money ultimately. The venture funding implies that they will be nudged in this direction. This might be done through a version of e-commerce in which toys, equipment, software and other material will be pedaled or by concentrating on quiz mania and coaching activity demanded by our examination system. My friend Raju has heard me say, half in fun, that any good that IITs might have done to the country has been more than taken away by their impact on school education. Good schools concentrate on training athletes of information storage not on understanding or education. Some of them start this training right from the primary school.

I have been struck by another trend which might prove disastrous. Information technology is just a technology – not even like technologies of yesteryears. By itself it does not create new science, learning, insights or wisdom. It can enhance those who learn other things. It is becoming a replacement for learning every thing else. That way we might end up training only technical babus. The fact that such babus are in demand, in our country and abroad, does not mean that we should push our best brains in that direction only.

I would finally draw attention to a major factor that many of us in education tend to over look. Education is not an independent variable. I had stated this while forwarding our report Learning Without Burden (baste ka bojh). Most educationists still agree with the analysis in that report. But not much happens. Many State Governments have been more progressive than the Public Schools in which children below 4 years are admitted and made to struggle with reading and writing in a language which no one in their home speaks and in which they find impossible to express the concepts discovered over the most productive years of their learning life. This as anti education as you can be. This is also anti science, anti math and anti development. Learn all the English you want, but start it four years later. The Danes start it after the age of 10 or 11, without undue damage to the science and technology they do. The dominance of English will further stratify our society.

My Brush with Indic Language Support in Blogger

2008-04-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

नमस्ते! (Namaste! in Hindi script)

Blogger (and some other Google products) have had Indic language support for a while now, but only today did I, for the very first time, really read a Hindi blog post on the very interesting Hindi blog of Mr. Gyan Dutt Pandey titled GyanDutt Pandey Ki Mansik Halchal.

It all started with an email I received from Mr. Pandey, who blogged about his (blog-worthy) meetings with my father, Dinesh Chandra Grover (of Lokbharti fame), a doyen in the Hindi (print) publishing world in India. (See this and this post of Mr. Pandey's as well).

I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that (given my background) this was the first blog post in Hindi that I read, comments and all (and there were many comments - this blog clearly has huge readership!). That said, going through the blog was a huge eye-opener for me...

Like getting a sense for the number of bloggers in India blogging in Indian languages (I'm sure Google has the figures); phrases used for the Search, RSS feed buttons, "Posts by categories" - "इस ब्लॉग पर सर्च का जुगाड़", "कृपया ब्लॉग-फीड सदस्यता लें", "लेखों का वर्गीकरण" respectively; options to read the blog in your favored script- choices were English, Gujarati, Bangla, Oriya, Gurmukhi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam & Hindi (Indic to Indic online transliterations done courtesy girgit.chitthajagat.in, embedded slideshows in hindi (hosted on Zoho) and much much more....

A subsequent gmail exchange with Mr. Pandey (in Hindi script!) revealed that for composing his posts, he is in fact not using Google's online transliteration tool, but Baraha and Microsoft's Indic IME offline tools instead.

I cannot remember the last time a single blog post led to so many 'a-ha's!

iGoogle. Do You?

2008-04-25T20:07:00.001-07:00

Add an Education Musings or educatorslog.in gadget to your iGoogle homepage

2008-04-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

(Playing around with iGoogle gadgets :))

I've added an 'Add to Google' button on the top right of this blog. Feel free to click it to add an Education Musings gadget to your iGoogle home page or Google Reader.

Click this button to add an educatorslog.in feed gadget ...

The Truth is Free...

2008-04-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

(...as are so many things on the web these days (or at least seemingly so :))

Thus readeth the tag line of this amazing site for free documentaries that a friend shared last night. Freedocumentaries.org has about 125 documentaries that are also categorized by themes and regions of the world.

I spotted some well-known ones like those by Michael Moore and the Century of Self series from BBC, but there are several others that I know I will be watching over the coming days (and nights). WE: Arundhati Roy seems promising, as also this one titled The Slow Poisoning of India (it's all about one's context, isn't it?) -

"a 26-minute documentary film depicting the effects of modern pesticide use on local farmers. India is one of the largest users of pesticide in Asia and also one of the largest manufactures. Farmers often use the wrong chemicals, while others overuse."

Most of the documentaries load from Google Video or youtube (the shorter teasers/trailers) so I guess all this site does is point to all the freely available documentaries already up on Google Video. (Just an educated guess that it was not the other way around - it wasn't these guys that put up the stuff on Google Video and then pointed to it from here...)

Which made me curious about the rationale behind freedocumentaries.org (on their 'About Us' page) -

"a site where anyone with an internet connection can watch a movie to educate themselves or simply explore another perspective whenever they please. These movies aren't just for education but are also for entertainment.

As a secondary objective freedocumentaires.org allows independent filmmakers to have their message heard by viewers that they may not normally reach.

Our goal is to have everyone that watches a film at freedocumentaries.org learn something; whether it be a new perspective on a topic, simply understanding a conflict, or being more accepting of a certain belief system. We are proud to say that the vast majority of people that watch our films are glad they did so. In fact many people become addicted to watching documentaries after seeing a movie on our site."

Whatever the rationale, I'm glad for this effort, and hope teachers and parents will use it to educate themselves, their students/kids, and use these to trigger discussions and debate....

One Planet Life: A One Minute Message This Earth Day

2008-04-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

What would you do if you were given 45 seconds to send out an Earth Day message? Think about it, try it out...

See what the Global Footprint Network did with their 45 secs - here's One Planet Life...

Digital Storytelling using Microsoft Photo Story

2008-04-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

I've talked a fair bit about getting kids to engage in creative storytelling using the myriad digital tools we have at our disposal today. For the Digital Storytelling workshops I conducted for middle school kids this past academic year, I decided to go with Microsoft Photo Story (freely downloadable) instead of Windows Movie Maker (also freely available). The school does not use Macs else iMovie would've been my hands-down choice.

Photo Story is a simple, easy-to-learn tool that puts together images, with transitions, and background sound which could be music or even voice-overs recorded in Photo Story itself.

Even though the kids spent some time picking up a little bit of Adobe Photoshop (which now has a free "express" web version...yay!) for basic cropping and image manipulation, and Audacity for sound recording and mixing (also an open source free Audio Editor :)), in the end all the students used Photo Story alone to put together their images, cool transitions, music and voice-overs to produce (with very little effort) some fantastic digital stories.

Powerpoint is passe, people, movies and digital stories are the new forms of show-n-tell!

Don't just take my word for it ... see for yourself one 11-year old 6th grader's sweet digital story....

Animoto for Education

2008-04-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

I've been going a little crazy sharing the animoto videos my son Sidhanth and I whipped up in a matter of minutes (that's what's so cool about animoto) a couple of days ago. I put them up here (see the last few posts), on educatorslog.in, on classtroom 2.0, as well as my facebook profile!

When you stumble upon a good thing, SHARE IT, I say!

Receiving family videos made by my sister soon after I posted mine was such a thrill! Anyway, the best news at the end of all this came in an email from Rebecca Brooks of Animoto...they have just launched Animoto for Education whereby they're offering FULL-ACCESS to educators (the free version restricts videos to 30 secs)!

Which brings us to the use of Animoto videos in the classroom. How could teachers use this tool? It would be a neat way to introduce a new unit with a snapshot of all that a teacher intends to cover. Videos made by students could be part of culminating activities at the end of a unit. It's a great way to capture a field trip or a workshop or an event or the highlights of an academic year to put up on a school website, teacher or student blog.

Since the videos are so fast paced, I guess they cannot really replace traditional slideshows for teaching even if the background music did have a voice-over by a teacher or student. The great thing is the no-entry-level-skill-barrier which means that kids as young as 7 or 8 could put these together, or teachers who are not too tech-savvy, and would otherwise never venture out to make videos or even slideshows.

Empowering Children - Where to draw the line?

2008-04-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

Varni posted this thought-provoking parenting question on educatorslog.in that applies to many of us who are parents, especially of kids in their tweens.

She also posted a link to a fantastic TED Talk by Gever Tully (of the Tinkering School) in which he talks about 5 dangerous things we should allow our kids to do. A must-see!

Would be great to hear what others feel about how protective we should be of our growing kids, and how far we should go to empower our children to experiment with (potentially dangerous) stuff and venture out on their own. Please feel free to post comments on educatorslog.in.

Sid n Sam's E-Waste Efforts

2008-04-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

My sons Sidhanth & Samarth (who've just completed 7th grade and 4th grade resp.) have been pretty active this past year spreading awareness about e-waste (what is e-waste? why is it harmful? what can ordinary citizens do?) in their neighbourhood (Sadashivanagar) as well as their school here in Bangalore. (Read it in Sidhanth's own words on his blog).

Sid and Sam spoke to every class about it. Sid made posters and set up collection boxes in school - one in the Elementary and one in the Senior school, and Sam co-ordinated collections in the Elementary school.

They have connected with a local voluntary organization that co-ordinates e-waste collection in Bangalore called Saahas, for dropping off the collections from the neighbourhood and their school. Saahas even invited them on a field trip to e-Parisaraa - Bangalore's only e-waste re-cycling center.

Here's a short video Sidhanth made on Animoto that describes in 30 seconds their E-Waste Efforts. Way to go, boys!

Ryan International School Workshops (Taking ANIMOTO for a whirl)

2008-04-15T07:45:00.001-07:00

Are We Ready to Leverage 1-1 Computing in Schools?

2008-04-09T01:17:00.000-07:00

Looks like HP is the latest entrant in the "classroom laptop" market. With the "Mini-Note", HP joins Intel (Classmate PC), the OLPC (XO Laptop), and Asustek (Eee PC) to bring lightweight, functional computers in the hands (laps?) of children in classrooms around the world. At $500, the Mini-Note seems moderately more expensive than the ClassMate PC (which costs around $350), the Eee PC and the XO (both of which cost around $200).

It won't be long before these hit the Indian market too in a big way. [They are already being used in pockets where Intel and others are funding some initiatives.]

According to the article -

"HP also says it plans to provide free, online professional development courses designed to help teachers engage students' interest and improve their achievement through the use of technology."

Unlike the OLPC which was criticized for not paying enough attention, at least initially, to teacher preparation (see this link suggested in the comments in response to this blog post), HP clearly knows to say right thing with regard to teacher preparation! Fortunately, today there is wide-spread cognizance of the fact that none of these initiatives will fly unless teachers in the classrooms are on board, comfortable with the use of these machines, and aware of how to use them to meet their teaching-learning goals!

And what about curriculum? Most teachers around the world are used to delivering canned syllabi and curricula which essentially means following prescribed textbooks. Who is developing curricula that effectively integrate 1-1 computing in the teaching-learning process, and effectively replace textbooks and blackboards & chalk-n-talk with individual computers for students in the classroom?

Furthermore, how well are instructional designers doing to meet the learning needs of children in different parts of the world where contexts and cultures are so dissimilar to those of the US where the makers of these machines are headquartered?

Lastly, even if good curricula are being developed, are teacher PD programs like HP's preparing teachers to meet the demands and needs attendant to the use of these new curriculum? Or are they just familiarizing teachers with these machines, not unlike the mammoth Intel and Microsoft teacher training programs that have simply "trained" millions of teachers in the developing world on the functional aspects of PCs and the use of the Microsoft Office suite, without paying attention to how teachers will leverage these machines and software (all software, not just MS Office), for meaningful learning in the classroom.

Unless these issues are given the attention they deserve, the idea of Intel already selling "tens of thousands" of Classmate PCs since they went on sale last year and OLPC putting "hundreds of thousands of XO laptops" in the hands of children, even before a single Mini-Note has sold, does not give much reason to rejoice...

25 Most Significant Events in Post-Independence India

2008-04-07T06:42:00.000-07:00

Someone alerted me to the Breaking News Online blog, and more specifically to their 1000th post titled Breaking News Online 1000: 25 Most Significant Events in India (After Independence) which lists out what are in their view the 25 most significant events in India post-1947. It reads much like one of those India Today issues around 15th August, but below is their list (in chronological order), with more details on each in the original blog post.

Would you agree with this list? Any additions/deletions?

In any case, this looks like an interesting exercise to try out in a History class - see if the students feel any different...

Accession of Kashmir to India - 1947
2. Mahatma Gandhi's Assassination - 1948
3. Birth of Indian Constitution - 1950
4. Liberation of Goa - 1961
5. Indo-Pak War - 1971
6. Pokhran Nuclear Test - 1974
7. India launched its first Satellite - 1975
8. General Emergency - 1975
9. India's World Cup Cricket win - 1983
10. Rakesh Sharma in Space - 1984
11. Assassination of Indira Gandhi and Anti-Sikh riots - 1984
12. Mandal Commission Report - (1990 - 1991)
13. Economic Reforms in India - 1991
14. The Securities Scam - 1992
15. Babri Demolition - 1992
16. Pokhran II Nuclear Explosion - 1998
17. The Kargil Conflict - 1999
18. Indian Women winning all three International Beauty Pageants - 2000
19. Militant Attack on Indian Parliament - 2001
20. Godhra Tragedy and Gujarat Riots - 2002
21. Taj Mahal as Numero Uno among New 7 Wonders of the World - 2007
22. Pratibha Patil became the fist Woman President of India - 2007
23. India's Twenty20 World Cup Victory - 2007
24. BSE Sensex hit 20,000 Mark for the first time - 2007
25. India not qualifying for Olympics Hockey - 2008

The Mahatma's Marksheets

2008-03-31T03:23:00.000-07:00

[This article, authored by Ramachandra Guha, was email to me by Arvind Gupta recently. I later found it on the internet as an article that appeared in the Hindu a few years ago. With the stress on grades and exams these days, it is refreshing to read that one of the most influential men of the 20th century was a very mediocre student in school. A lesson for all of us, or have times just changed too much?]

The Mahatma's Marksheets

Ramachandra Guha

Once, while I was in college, I picked up the autobiography of a man who, at various points in his career, had served as vice-chancellor of the University of Delhi, governor of the Reserve Bank, and finance minister of the Government of India. Curiously, his memoirs had as many pages on his achievements in school and college as on his experiences running central banks and devising union budgets. He first reproduced his matriculation results: the marks listed by subject, never less than 96 per cent. We then learnt of how, in his intermediate examination, he set a record that stood for years in the Bombay Presidency. As if this was not enough, a statistical proof of his gold medals in the B.A. and M.A, followed. Later, as I read more such works, I came to regard this as characteristic rather than curious. When they came to write their memoirs, famous professors of sociology and high officials of the Indian Civil Service alike seemed to single out, above all other high-water marks, success in school examinations. Then I came across an exception: the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi. The Mahatma claimed: 'I was not regarded as a dunce in high school', before—in the spirit of truth with which the work was conceived— speaking of the difficulty he once had with Sanskrit and, for a time, with Euclidean geometry.

Gandhi spoke in general terms, but his somewhat vague recollections of life at school were to be given a devastating specificity in a book published in 1965. It is called Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, and its author, J.M. Upadhyaya, had been principal at the high school in Rajkot where the Mahatma had spent seven years.

Upadhyaya's book packs a great deal into its seventy-four pages. The boy Gandhi, we learn, changed several schools before he reached the age often. At times his attendance was noticeably lax: a mere 110 days out of 238 in standard III, for example. His marks at the annual examinations normally averaged between 45 per cent and 55 per cent. In junior school he was always comfortably beaten by one Tribhuvan Bhatt, who in the manner of 'coppers' of the time ended as a babu, albeit an elevated one. (His last job was as chief minister of Rajkot state.) The one early sign of the young Mohandas's superiority to his fellows was that his elder brother Karsandas was a less distinguished student still. Karsandas lost two years, and ended up in the same class as his sibling, where he usually logged lower marks.

Things turned worse in middle school. Mohandas's attendance slipped again, as he attended on a sick father and a newly wedded wife. Asked to repeat a year, he bucked up and for once 'grew quite serious in studies'. He achieved 8th rank in class, with a (for him) remarkably high overall score of 66.5 per cent. The momentum carried over into high school. Outside the classroom, his life was rich in incident—he played the 'lustful husband', experimented with meat, and tried unsuccessfully to sell some of the family gold to payoff a debt incurred by brother Karsandas. Yet, despite this, his attendance at school was 125 days out of 125, and he came fourth in class, with an average in excess of 60 per cent. In Upadhyaya's words, 'he could no longer be described as a mediocre student.'

This judgement was put sternly to the test in the third week of November 1887, when Gandhi travelled by train to Ahmedabad to take the matriculation examination of Bombay University. This was his first visit to a city he was to later make his own. In a lovely detail, Upadhyaya notes that Gandhi's examination number was 2275. There were 3067 candidates in all. Of these, 799 were successful. Gandhi's rank was 404th, and his marksheet was as follows:

English 89/200

Gujarati 45-5/100

Mathematics 59/175

General Knowledge 54/150

The total, 247.5 marks out of 625, comes to an average of about 40 per cent. Mohandas K. Gandhi could once again be described as a mediocre student.

Mahatma Gandhi as a Student is a work that bears testimony both to the author's industry and to the Gujarati respect for old records. And it contains much more than marksheets. We learn here that despite his rather ordinary performance in examinations, Gandhi's middle-school teacher marked his conduct as 'very good', whereas the best any other student achieved was 'good'. Upadhyaya's reproduction of the English paper that Gandhi answered in his matric exam seems to give certain clues to his later development. For 45 marks, he was asked to 'write an essay of about forty lines on the advantages of a cheerful disposition.' Could not this answer have helped encourage him to become that rara avis, a politician who was never known to have lost his temper? For 25 marks, he was asked to paraphrase a poem which described how Jesus would reveal himself only to the poor peasant, not to the rich men whose chariots went contemptuously 'whirling past'. Might not this exercise have stoked a precocious awareness of exploitation and injustice?

We must also consider the significance of the sociological snippets that Upadhyaya so casually throws our way. Consider this: Mohandas's best friend in high school was a Muslim, while their headmaster was a Parsi. The school building was constructed with a gift of Rs 63, 000 from the Nawab of Junagadh. In his last years in school, as Mohandas's marks percentage climbed into the upper fifties, he was given a scholarship of Rs 10 per month, this award being in the names of two Kathiawad nobles, one Hindu, one Muslim. Should we not consider this as part of an early training in multiculturalism, as essential preparation for the making of the inter-religious Mahatma?

But, the cynic will say, we can't finally gel away from the mark sheets. Byway of apology and, indeed, justification, let me then remind the reader of the career of one Albert Einstein. Nothing, writes one biographer, 'Nothing in Einstein's early history suggests dormant genius'. The boy was able to speak fluently only at the age of nine. When Albert's father asked the headmaster of his elementary school what profession he thought his son should prepare himself for, he got the answer: 'h doesn't matter; he'll never make a success of anything.' Later, at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, Einstein was 'still slightly backward' and failed to complete his diploma. Later still, after he had moved to Zurich, Einstein failed the entrance examination to the university. 'The accepted reason for his failure is that although his knowledge of mathematics was exceptional he did not reach the necessary standard in modern languages or in zoology and botany.'

Such, in summary, were the academic records of the two men commonly regarded as the best, the wisest, and the most influential individuals of the twentieth century. Long ago, in the 1930s, the Bombay journalist D.F. Karaka wrote a biography of Gandhi entitled Out of Dust, He Made Us into Men. The reference was to the countless nationalists whose heroism and self-sacrifice was a direct consequence of the Mahatma's influence. Without him, these Indians would have been content being ordinary lawyers, teachers, brokers, and clerks or, perhaps, even black-marketeers. One knows what Karaka meant. So did J.M. Upadhyaya, except that he added a meaningful caveat: 'Gandhiji, it has been well said, could fashion heroes out of common clay. His first and, undoubtedly, his most successful experiment was with himself.'

[Cross-posted on educatorslog.in]

Indian Edubloggers Directory

2008-03-28T02:19:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm getting serious about this. To gather data that will back my claims (made in the previous post), or prove me wrong, I have created a wiki in an effort to compile a list of all edubloggers in India, who blog on individual blogs or group blogs/forums.

edublogger n. A person who writes entries in, adds material to, or maintains a weblog on education

So if you are an Indian edublogger i.e. a blogger in India who blogs about education -- any level, and of any kind - where you express your views/opinions on education, share experiences as teacher/educator, raise concerns about education, suggest teaching ideas and resources, head this way, please, and add your name and other relevant details (like your blog URL). Thank you!

Helpful Hints:

If you have not edited a wiki page before, now is as good a time as any to start. Clicking on 'edit this page' at the top of the content on a wiki page is usually a good place to start :)

Please read the instructions on the wiki home page as well.
If you don't want to go through the trouble of going to the wiki and doing the needful, please add a comment to this post, with your name, blog name, blog URL, and how long you have been actively blogging. Thanks!

Indian Edu-blogger - Wither Art Thou?

2008-03-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

Indian educators are conspicuous by their absence in the blogosphere! It struck me about a year or so ago when I was going through the wiki for a blogger meet (barcamp or some such) somewhere in India (Delhi/Chennai/Bangalore), and 'education' did not even exist as a category for Indian bloggers! Several moons, and millions more new blogs in the blogosphere later, the India edu-blogger still remains a non-existent entity in the blogosphere.

This has been borne out in recent weeks by a couple of other stark indicators. One, the International Edubloggers Directory which now has hundreds of edu-bloggers listed from around the world, has only 3 from India! Second - a google search on "Indian bloggers" took me to a list of the "Best Indian Blogs". The list, which has hundreds of bloggers divided into about 35 categories did not have an 'education' category (surprise, surprise!) until I suggested my blog and urged them to create this category. [This blog has now been listed - thanks Amit! - and more importantly, an 'education' category has been given its due place at the bottom of that long list!] Two other blogs, besides mine showed up in the education category, but my hopes were dashed when a cursory scan through both revealed that they concern themselves only with guiding students applying abroad for higher studies - helping them navigate issues like visas and financial aid! Not edu-bloggers per my definition.]

I enjoy reading and participating in discussions and debates that rage on issues of education, in general, and 21st century learning, in particular, on the blogs of edubloggers like Will Richardson, David Warlick, Karl Fisch, Wes Fryer, Ewan Macintosh and many others, most of who are based in the US. I believe such communication and discussion benefits any community that is working towards a common goal.

I reckon that there are several (read hundreds of thousands) educators - teachers, school leaders, policy makers - who surf the Internet, especially in urban centers in India. I reckon that many (read thousands) of them are fairly comfortable with written communication in English. I reckon, no, hope, that they have views and opinions that relate directly, or even tangentially, to education. What then is keeping them away from expressing and sharing their views with other educators?

My guess is that the answer lies somewhere in anthropology and HCI and information science.

More on this, and educatorslog.in (an attempt to create an open group blog for educators in India), later...

[This issue has been bothering me for a while now, so even though this post is only half-baked, I decided to get it out there. I'm quite sure this is only the beginning of a lot of questioning/conjecturing/researching on the subject!]

Shikshantar & Udaipur As a Learning City

2008-03-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

Many among us who are parents and teachers often wonder about the meaning of education and the purpose of schooling, and whether we can reconcile our philosophy of education with the current systems of formal education. Most of us (for various reasons) simply don't act on our instincts to step away from the mainstream to give our children a better, meaningful education.

An increasing number of parents, however, are opting for alternative schools or home schooling in order to better meet the needs of their children; and then there are those very few who are actually taking concrete steps to support their children in real shiksha or natural learning (not simply alternative schooling) which is in keeping with their philosophy of sustainable and just living. One such family and organization is that of Manish Jain, who with his wife, Vidhi, has decided to adopt a unique approach to the education of their daughter Kanku. Through their unique organization called Shikshantar: The People's Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, Manish, Vidhi and a band of "learning activists" are also transforming the face of education in the "learning city" of Udaipur.

educatorslog.in recently shone its 'spotlight' on Shikshantar and Udaipur As a Learning City (ULC).

Here's a youtube video on ULC that Manish shared with me recently --

Hope Springs Eternal

2008-03-24T02:19:00.000-07:00

[The links to the following 2 stories about the proliferation of technology in rural India were forwarded to me by my friend, Uma Chandru, a cultural anthropologist, environmental designer and educator, who recently concluded a fellowship at the Smithsonian where she researched democratic policies and practices that accord respect to and foreground the values and agency of indigenous visual artists and artisans in India with a view to safeguarding tangible and intangible cultural heritage.]

The first was about FM radio stations in Bihar schools, and the second about 100% broadband connectivity to the Internet in Gujarat (every village is now connected!)

Here's the note she attached to the first story -

For those interested in educational technology and design in state
schools in India---

The Bihar government has some lofty aims in its plans to set up Frequency
Modulation (FM) radio stations in schools

- to make education more effective and user-friendly.

- use information technology in schools for easy access to knowledge

- to provide entertainment

- to educate and inform students about community development, health and
disaster management

what I find most interesting is the aim

-- to help revive local and folk music and art and provide opportunities
to local people to generate employment, particularly in the rural areas.

It is interesting how state policies in the education arena are getting so
technology centered-and also to see such ambitious plans on what can be
achieved through introducing FM technology in schools.

Not clear if they have the people trained for this in such schools and who
will generate the content and how govt school teachers will utilize this
in their teaching and whether this will do good or make things worse for
the children in such schools or the bearers of the "folk" art and music
traditions.

While I am all for appropriate technology and content, given 4-5 hours of
such FM programming which will also include entertainment, to be aired
each day presumably during school hours, what will the govt school
teachers do during this time? Will they be capable of choosing and
integrating appropriate content in their classroom and facilitate new
and meaningful learning through this technology ?

Or will it merely become a substitute for the teacher who hardly comes to
the school anyway, at least in govt schools in rural areas.

I may be wrong on this, but the state officials also seem to be over
estimating the costs of the equipment etc-I thought I had read somewhere
that they cost much less these days.

Big Question is - Will the ministers and the technology company that is providing these FM radios and some mega content generation company benefit more from this more than the teachers, students or the culture bearers?

Good questions, Uma. Unfortunately, one cannot help being skeptical, given Bihar's poor track record in development. One also wonders about how Gujarat villages and schools will leverage broadband connectivity, what with so much electricity shortage!

That said, such stories make my heart soar. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, and one looks forward to an India - and not just urban India, but rural India as well - that has truly turned a corner with respect to access and connectivity, and subsequently leveraging the Internet and other technologies to better the lot of the average Indian, not just with respect to education, but quality of life in general as well.

U.S. Wants YOU! (If you're a Hindi teacher, that is)

2008-03-23T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hindi is the new Mandarin. Just as Mandarin is being learnt by youngsters all over the world to give them a strategic advantage with the emerging China, Hindi too is being sought after as the language of the other Asian tiger.

Some schools in the US have decided to introduce Hindi as a foreign language with staples like French, Spanish and German.

"We're going to teach our kids how to speak important languages. We will welcome teachers here to help teach our kids how to speak languages," US President George Bush had said during a National Security Language Initiative in New York"

This excerpt from an article titled India Shining: US Headhunts Hindi Teachers.

Hindi is considered a "critical foreign language" in the US, hence this need to hire Hindi teachers and teach Hindi as a foreign language in schools.

Unfortunately the remark above - about Mandarin being learned by children all over the world to prepare them for China - does not apply to India. No school in India that I know of is offering Mandarin as a foreign language. Why do Indians not consider it important to prepare their kids to compete globally in the decades to come? Are we too smug in the knowledge that the world is "preparing itself for India" - like in the series of TV ads being aired these days?

With this kind of thinking and attitude, India won't be "shining" for too long.

[Cross-posted on educatorslog.in]

Arthur C. Clarke & Wiki - pedia & phobia

2008-03-21T21:42:00.000-07:00

Another insightful look at the Wikipedia culture on Ewan Macintosh's blog post - Arthur C. Clarke - proud of his Wikipedia legacy or late to his own party?

While on the subject of wikipedia, check out reviews of 3 books that analyze the web 2.0 wiki culture - Wikiphobia and Web 2.0

Remember the pre-Google days?

2008-03-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Lest we forget what web 0.5 or web 1.0 looked like - what with the speed with which the Internet has burgeoned over the last decade, and the growing clamor around web 2.0 (and web 3.0 seemingly around the corner), here's a video that takes you back to the early-mid 1990s. Great piece of history that we were witness to - usenet, newsgroups, IRC, gopher, mosaic, lycos...

Imagine a world today without the Internet! Enjoy (courtesy waxy.org)...

educatorslog.in, Slideshare & Web 2.0 for education

2008-03-15T01:40:00.000-07:00

A good slideshow on slideshare - W(e) e(ducate) b(etter) 2(gether).0 - talks about several specific tools available in the web 2.0 arena that can be used (appropriated?) by educators...and guess what! in slide # 23 titled "Global Network Connections", educatorslog.in has been listed (along with Classroom 2.0 and Wikieducator)!

The slideshow has been created by Cheryl Capozzoli, an Instructional Technology Specialist in the US. Thank you, Cheryl!

Custom Searches for Educational Content

2008-03-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've been playing around with Google's Custom Search Engine tool, and am currently experimenting with CSEs for Math resources on the internet. I've created a couple of them - one for elementary and middle school level Math and another for high school math. You may follow the links or use the boxes on the top right of this blog.

These are still works in progress, so please do try them out and let me know how well they work (or not).

History Comes Alive in the Classroom! (Courtesy YouTube)

2008-03-11T01:13:00.001-07:00

If I were a History teacher today, I would probably be spending every spare moment on YouTube scouring the collections for videos relevant to my curriculum, to make History truly come alive in the classroom. I would probably teach history through watching those videos and discussions before and after.

[In case you don't have (convenient) access to the Internet in your school or classroom or if your school has blocked youtube, see my post here on Anytime, Anywhere Access to YouTube Videos so you can download & burn the videos for sharing with your students.]

Take the Social Studies curriculum in middle/high school in India, for example. The broad themes deal with -

Indian History - Ancient (Indus Valley, Guptas, Mauryas, Alexander), Medieval (Muslim & Mughal Empires) & Modern (British Rule & post-independence)
European History - Ancient (Roman & Greek empires), Medieval (France, Byzantine, Crusades, Renaissance), Modern (Nationalism in Europe, and the world wars
(Rest of the World) History - Asia (Mongols, Indochina, Vietnam War, China, Russia), America (Discovery, colonies, Independence, Civil War)

For almost each of these topics, YouTube has a wealth of videos made from credible sources (although that may be open to debate, perhaps in a Social Studies class itself!) such as BBC, History Channel, Discovery Channel, and others.

I've been building a pretty comprehensive database, and will share it as a Youtube playlist sometime in the not-too-distant future. For now, here's a sampling of topics on which I have found great material on youtube -

* Indus Valley (Harappa, Mohen-jo-daro)
* Mughal Empire (including separate episodes on Babur, Akbar & Shah Jehan)
* The last Days of the Raj & Partition
* Real footage from the days of the British Rule (including 15th August 1947)
* Alexander in India
* Ancient Eygpt
* Huns & Mongols
* South Indian Temples
* American Civil War
* The Crusades
* Byzantium
* The French Revolution
* World War I & II

21st Century Teachers & "Technological Literacy" (or as I would prefer it - "Technological Fluency")

2008-03-06T19:23:00.000-08:00

John Norton's Are Teachers Ready for 21st Century Learning? and Karl Fisch's question in what was voted the "Most Influential Blog Post" in the 2007 EduBlog awards - "Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?" raise some questions that are obviously very near and dear to my heart. These are questions that are being raised and discussed, in the context of India, on educatorlog.in as well.

My stand on all of this is pretty categorical, and obvious, but I see a link - and perhaps it's only a tangential one - to this issue of technological (or digital) "literacy", (as opposed to "digital fluency"), and fundamental questions that are being raised even today about the role of technology in improving education!

I have long maintained that digital "fluency" is what is needed for teachers to use technology meaningfully and effectively in the classroom. While digital "literacy" is a necessary step on the road to digital "fluency", mere"literacy" will never cut it, if the goal is to leverage new technologies meaningfully for better learning.

Here's what I mean by "digital fluency" and why questions about technology's impact in learning will continue to be raised if teachers who are trying to integrate technology in education are simply digitally "literate" (lifted from my response to the 2 aforementioned questions) -

"Just as fluency with a language takes one beyond mere literacy and helps one understand the nuances of a language, digital fluency also helps one handle the unexpected when it comes to technology – which, as it turns out, is quite often the case. This does not mean that teachers need to be trained computer professionals. It does mean, however, that teachers should move beyond viewing the computer or any other piece of hardware as a mysterious object that only the very exalted can handle. They should be able to playfully explore a piece of technology (be it a digital camera or a new piece of software) without fear or intimidation. Unless they achieve this comfort level with technology, they will constantly be faced with situations where they have to abort a technology-based lesson due to a problem that they could have handled with some fearless ‘poking around’.

Mere digital literacy will also keep teachers from moving beyond naive (or even gimmicky) uses of technology in their classrooms - (powerpoint presentations, superficial use of the Internet for topical research and such). In today’s networked world, digital fluency also means teachers harness the power of technology (the internet in particular) for communications and collaboration through the many, varied, mostly free tools of the new web (blogs, wikis, podcasts, in addition to good ole' email and e-groups).

A good teacher who is also technologically savvy will know when good old fashioned teaching techniques will work, and when a tech tool will serve the teaching and learning process better. She will always use technology as a means to an end, and not and end in itself. She will appreciate the value that pedagogies like Waldorf bring to a learning environment, but she will also be aware of tools like Scratch that aid problem-solving, creativity and collaboration and sharing.

It is not necessary to use every new tool out there, and not all the time either. A technologically "fluent" teacher will be able to strike the balance and mix it up and design the learning experiences effectively with appropriate technology tools, or without any technology tool at all, depending on the particular learning situation and need. I doubt that a teacher who is only digitally "literate" will be able to do that. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the teachers who use technology in their classrooms, probably all over the world, fall in the latter category.

I believe that that is a big reason why questions are still being raised about whether technology can truly impact learning!"

The Story of Stuff

2008-02-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

If you have not seen this already, The Story of Stuff is a must-see amazing, entertaining, informative 20 minute animation video by Annie Leonard.

"From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever."

Here's a teaser from YouTube---

To F2F, or not to F2F,..or how much (or less)... that is the question...

2008-02-14T03:51:00.000-08:00

As an educational technologist, my livelihood depends on spreading the gospel of the advantages of leveraging technology for better teaching and learning. "Technology as a means to an end...and not an end in itself" is of course, the mantra that I impress on teachers and schools, but I have spent a large part of the last couple of years touting the advantages of web 2.0 tools for communication, collaboration, and community experiences.

Every now and then, however, one is faced with a viewpoint that counters or questions the usefulness of the pervasive trends of 24X7 online interactions, and raises concerns of where things may be headed if they continue in the current vein, and cites the dangers of interaction that is only restricted to typing on a keyboard as opposed to talking - face to face (F2F) or over the phone.

One such viewpoint was offered by Greg Philo in the Guardian article titled "Let's take the digit out of digital" who writes "Facebook is not the same as face to face and, as our virtual skills increase, I wonder if our ability to communicate using speech is on the decline". The article unfortunately digresses into a condemnation of excessive use of Powerpoint and OHPs in conferences and inside classrooms, to support his assertion that "The ability to communicate face to face and hold the attention of others is a vital human skill. Beware of a technology in which the speed of our fingers is more important than the quality of our voices."

I found this observation particularly fascinating -

"The great tragedy, of course, is that the phone was invented before the computer. If it had been the other way around, internet forums would now be buzzing with the exciting news: "Have you heard (type, type, type)? There is this amazing new gadget (type, type). Now you can talk directly with people (type, type, type). And they can, like, hear your voice. Without all this flipping typing."

Relentless marketing would do the rest and colleges would be rushing to develop new courses in telephone skills."

School Admissions Redux - Homeschooling an answer?

2008-02-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

There has been a spate of articles in the international media in recent days about the sorry state of admissions to private schools in India and the attendant stress for the Indian parent due to an extremely warped demand-supply equation. Sample these 2 from the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

About a year ago, really early in the life of educatorslog.in, Beena Babu wrote an elog that generated a lot of discussion among the members of this forum. It was titled Grey areas of school admission policy- A search for new assessment ideas and it took an educated look at the what/why/how schools should assess young children during the admissions process - if they should be "evaluated" at all!

A massive movement in the US and the West, homeschooling in India is still in a very nascent stage with numbers probably only in a few hundreds or thousands (not counting children with disabilities who are home schooled due to lack of educational institutions that cater to their needs). If issues with school admissions continue to grow at the current rate, I personally feel that a lot of educated parents may look to home schooling their children as a viable, even sensible alternative. Given the increasing violence in schools and the pressures of regular schooling today (I could list out several - just commuting to/from school in the metros has become a source of stress, fatigue and ill-health for many urban kids), homeschooling and alternative education may make sense for a variety of reasons for many urban families.

Thoughts?

Try Podcasting!

2008-01-11T03:42:00.000-08:00

I'm all fired up after creating my first podcast on a session from the High School English seminar at Mallya Aditi International School, Bangalore. It's now up on iTunes too!

It was such a thrill to create one; and with teachers asking me about what podcasts are, their relevance in an educational context, and how they could go about creating their own, I've been thinking about sharing some basics on Podcasts and Podcasting - what it is, and how teachers can get started with this fairly simple technology for sharing audio artifacts - interviews, personal reflections, seminar sessions - with students and the world at large. The great thing is that one can do this with minimal technology investment (an audio recorder is probably all you will need to spend on if you do not have one already. Most laptops come with a built-in microphone).

Fortunately for me, just as I sat down to write this article, I stumbled upon this fabulous site that contains all the information one needs to get started - from a simple, easy-to-read-and-comprehend article on what podcasting is, to a step-by-step guide, and several other relevant links thrown in for good measure, such as those on "Podcasting in Education", and "Podcast for Teachers".

If you do take the time to go through the articles and links on the site, and give podcasting a try, please do share your thoughts and experiences.

Science 2.0

2008-01-11T00:38:00.000-08:00

Yet another space that admits to a web 2.0 avatar is Science!

Here's an amazing Scientific American article I came across this morning - Science teachers, please take note! It's called 'Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?' which is not just an article but a web 2.0 "experiment" in "networked journalism", since the article itself will be re-written with views of all those who comment on it. Probing the role of open, collaborative technologies such as blogs and wikis within an inherently "secretive" research communtiy, the issues that the article is urging readers and contributors to look at (in the context of scientific journalism) --

What do you think of the article itself? Are there errors? Oversimplifications? Gaps?
What do you think of the notion of "Science 2.0?" Will Web 2.0 tools really make science much more productive? Will wikis, blogs and the like be transformative, or will they be just a minor convenience?
Science 2.0 is one aspect of a broader Open Science movement, which also includes Open-Access scientific publishing and Open Data practices. How do you think this bigger movement will evolve?
Looking at your own scientific field, how real is the suspicion and mistrust mentioned in the article? How much do you and your colleagues worry about getting “scooped”? Do you have first-hand knowledge of a case in which that has actually happened?
When young scientists speak out on an open blog or wiki, do they risk hurting their careers?
Is "open notebook" science always a good idea? Are there certain aspects of a project that researchers should keep quite, at least until the paper is published?

Creative Web 2.0 Learning

2008-01-08T19:01:00.000-08:00

[I posted this on educatorslog.in and hence the rather long drawn-out intro to Web 2.0]

Web 2.0 is a buzzword that many of you may have come across in your wanderings around the Internet. In fact educatorslog.in, too, is using Web 2.0 technologies like blogging and tagging, to facilitate bringing people together to discuss issues, share and organize (through tags and categories) resources, and participate in a common space.

Among the common Web 2.0 technologies are blogs, wikis, RSS, tag-sharing (folksonomies) tools like del.icio.us, mashups (bringing together information from various sites to create a more "unified" or "integrated" experience, like in Google Maps). Social networking sites like Facebook & Orkut, and video/photo sharing sites like Flickr & YouTube which bring together elements of the aforementioned technologies are all part of the "Web 2.0" revolution.

Probably the most important "affordances" of Web 2.0 are sharing, collaboration and the ease with which anyone can create/publish content (text, audio, video, or a combination of these) on the internet. This new generation Web is a great leveler, in some sense, where one does not have to be a web developer or geeky programmer to publish his/her thoughts, stories, artwork, stories, photos, video clips, on the Internet.

(You can find tons of information on "web 2.0" on the Internet, including videos on youtube. I found this slideshow and this one interesting, although someone completely unaware of the concept may find it hard to get it without any accompanying commentary or notes, but they may be worth a viewing, anyway).

After that rather long drawn-out introduction, I guess I should come to what I really wanted to share - an interesting slideshow titled "Creative Web 2.0 Learning" which focuses on the idea of "Library 2.0" but also describes in several interesting slides the meaning of web 2.0 technologies in education.

Slide #8 is referring to this impressive youtube video - The Machine is Us/ing Us which provides a definitive look at the web 2.0 interaction paradigm. I think slide #16 is a good description of web 2.0, and slide #24 provides a wonderful look at where education is, or should be, headed in this century, especially when we have at our disposal these great technologies of the "read-write" web (another way of describing "web 2.0") --

* Formal Learning Spaces --> Informal Learning Spaces
* Mass Learning --> Personalized Learning
* Competitive (or I would call this "Individual") --> Collaborative learning & assessment
* Restricted & Constructed --> Creative & Extended
* Instruction --> Personal Author & Innovator
* Content --> Knowledge & Understanding

Podcasting with Purpose

2007-12-10T21:04:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking of venturing into the realm of podcasting for a while now. I even created an account on a podcast sharing site called PodcastPeople about 6 months ago. When the English Language department head at Mallya Aditi International School approached me to document the High School English Seminar held on Dec 10 and 11th, I was presented the perfect opportunity to give podcasting a try.

I worked in Garageband to add a jingle and a short 'podcast-style' intro to the audio recording of the first session of the seminar, and created my first podcast 'episode', which I then uploaded to PodcastPeople.

Check out this episode in which high school students discuss the issue of rising violence among affluent youth in urban India....

On PodcastPeople.com: MAIS High School English Seminar - Session 1 Podcast

On iTunes: MAIS High School English Seminar - Session 1 Podcast on iTunes

India Video Portal

2007-11-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

Another source for excellent videos that can be used in the classroom - this one specifically on videos of India.

indiavideo.org is a 'Video Encyclopedia' on India created by Invis Multimedia in association with United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), New Delhi Office. "The site is an online culture atlas with professionally made high quality video clips and movies of the life, culture, heritage, festivals and traditional art forms of India. Well researched texts and useful India information and content are the unique features of this leading India website. The site has got tourism, travel and tour related films."

The videos I saw were rather short, although well-shot. There are ratings, tagging and comments features although I saw no videos that have been rated or been commented on, and the tag cloud is pretty sparse - maybe it's early days yet. Videos have been classified into various categories like Architecture, Art, Festivals, Heritage, flora and fauna, land and people. Each video has a paragraph of text describing the video - a very useful feature.

Currently the only states that seem to have been covered are Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir. Hopefully the project will continue long enough to cover the rest of the country as well :)

Perhaps the videos could have used some high-quality voice-overs instead of the soothing Indian elevator music that became quite tedious to listen to after a few videos!

Here's a link to one on the Southern Hill Myna. Enjoy!

Education Musings

Symphony of Science – SmartBean

We Are All Connected

Computational Thinking, Programming…and the Google App Inventor – SmartBean

Of iPhones, iPod Touches, Games and Mobile "Casual" Learning

Sparking Innovation…The Wallace & Gromit Way - SmartBean

Thirsty? Reach For The Tap

10 Ways To Help Your Child Embrace “Green Living”

Parents Playing a Larger Role in K-12 Education – SmartBean

Expanding the Technology Curriculum to Include Foundational Elements of Computer Science for K-8

Computer Science Not Just For Big Kids

Algorithmic Thinking

Boolean Logic for Critical Thinking

Data Structures and Databases

Recommended Reading for Teens/Young Adults (Ages 13 & up)

Idle Mind A Devil’s Workshop? Au Contraire!

10 Reasons Your Child Will Love Astronomy

I Lego NY – Simplicity, Inspiration and Constructionism – SmartBean

Introducing your Child to Linux and other FOSS tools

5 Highly Overrated Skills Your Successful Child Can Do Without - SmartBean

Motivation & "Flow": Engaging Teen Learners - SmartBean

Redefining "Success" to Raise Healthier, Happier Kids ? SmartBean

The Google Internet Bus Reaches Hindi Speaking States

Silence that idiot box! - SmartBean

Defense Against the Dark Arts: Teaching Kids to be Critical Consumers of Media - SmartBean

Media Alert! Dangers of Media and Guidelines for Safe Media Consumption - SmartBean

Top 100 Reading Recommendations for Early Readers (4-8 year olds) - SmartBean

Disrupting the Traditional Classroom - SmartBean

Media multitaskers pay mental price, says Stanford study - SmartBean

Stanford's Thriving Online High School - SmartBean

A Vision of K-12 Students Today - SmartBean

Recommended Fiction for Tweens (9-12 year olds) - SmartBean

Hey! Parents! Leave them kids alone! - SmartBean

Five Competencies for Adapting to a Changing World - SmartBean

Moving About in Class Helps to Prime the Brain for Learning.

Google India takes the internet to the masses

A Vision of K-12 Students Today

Can India seriously pull off a $7 (or Rs. 500) laptop?

'Education and Technology' Podcast in Science Magazine

What is Education For?

Connectivism and The Networked Student

Spore: Experiencing Evolution

Chat Widget for Blogs

SKID: Dr. Arun Mehta's open source software innovation for children with disabilities

TN Gives Reason to Cheer and Cause for Hope

Think Different (courtesy Apple)

Cool Science

Why do School Curricula Ignore the History of Computing and the Internet?

Listen to the Digital Natives, Sync Up With Your iKids

BORN DIGITAL Attempts to Make Sense of Digital Natives

Can Kids Teach Themselves?

More Powerful Geo Education: Google Earth in the Classroom

Map Your World: Google Maps in the Classroom

If you were a teacher with access to the Internet, what would you do differently?

The Rig Veda in Hindi

MWesch's Take on the Culture of Youtube

New York Times Essay Takes an Optimistic Look at Technology in School Education

Is Cuil Cool(er)?

Randy Pausch Lives on in Alice

The Human Side of Moore's Law

@ NECC - 4: Education 2.0 in India

More on Shirky's Here Comes Everybody

@ NECC - 3:The Collective Over the Individual

@NECC 2008 - 2: EduBloggerCon 08

@ NECC2008 - 1

The Swedish Model

ZAC Browser for children with Autism

Marc Andreessen's Guide to College and Career Planning

The Ideal Technology/CS Curriculum for Middle School

Web of Possibilities with Indic Tools for India

More on FOSS (aka Muft and Mukt Software) for Schools

FOSS in Schools in India

Technology and Education - Prof. Yashpal's Perspective

My Brush with Indic Language Support in Blogger

iGoogle. Do You?

Add an Education Musings or educatorslog.in gadget to your iGoogle homepage

The Truth is Free...

One Planet Life: A One Minute Message This Earth Day

Digital Storytelling using Microsoft Photo Story

Animoto for Education