Edging Ahead…

I’ve blogged about this before.  Of course, at the time, we were looking at Online Safety. But the rationale is the same. Standards, like Safety, have to be embedded in the very Fabric of what we do. It’s everyone’s job. Swap out “Standards” for “Online Safety” and you get;

Essential Question: Who’s job is it to teach the NETs and AASL standards to students?

It’s Everyone’s Responsibility (if we decide that NETs and AASL standards are what we aspire to, that is).

• Everyone
• Everyone teaching
• Everyone teaching kids
• Everyone teaching kids to standards
• Everyone teaching kids to online standards
• Everyone teaching kids to standards
• Everyone teaching kids
• Everyone teaching
• Everyone…

So who’s “everyone”? Everyone is;

• the classroom teacher who faces the kids day to day)
• the special-subject teacher (Health, PE, etc, who meet the kids at intervals)
• the support specialist (Technology, Information Literacy, who largely support teachers)
• the counsellors, who support the kids in meeting teachers’ expectations
• the administration (who oversee those who meet the kids f2f)
• the parents, who trust the schools to set “the standards”

And that, of course, begs the question, “Who’s job is it to SET the standards?”

But that’s a question for another day.

 How has the explosion of web-based video changed the teaching and learning landscape?

In a nutshell, the explosion of web-based video is literally ejecting the teaching and learning landscape into a whole new trajectory: and it’s like an unstoppable, solid-rocket boost rather than a jet’s vigorous thrust, a turboprob’s gentle urging, or a prop-engine’s noisycajoling its payload forward.

The new  teaching and learning environment, in which lessons, examples, experiments and speculative meanderings are all freely available, in equal measure, to both teacher and learner, puts education on a laissez-faire footing not seen since Socrates schooled his charges.

It may be that technology is finally able to help bridge the divide between the teacher and the learner. For the one billion lucky enough to have access to the tools that brought us web-based video who are truly interested in being learners, there is no limit to what they might achieve.

Frankly, though, at the real interface of teaching and learning, where 20th-century schooled and trained teachers still guide “digital-native” students, the story is a bit more mundane.

Examples?

United Streaming

Three years ago, we licensed United Streaming, just as is it was becoming Discovery Streaming.

The promise of Discovery Streaming was seductive. In 2007, The International Society for Technology in Education completed review of the Discovery Education unitedstreaming and determined that the program clearly supports the implementation of the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for Students.

Combined with the size of the video database (40,000 videos and clips), focussed content (short clips to full-length videos), and the ubiquity of access through the web, it seemed that streaming video would render DVD obsolete before it could ever becom a media standard.

Then, when some of its limitations, such as download issues regarding firewalls and bandwidth, began to become apparent just as YouTube was taking off, offering FREE content on almost any topic imaginable, the luster of a paid service like DS quickly waned.

When we declined to renew the license after two years to only a handful of almost wistful emails of concern, the handwriting was on the wall. Expensive subscription databases, whether for periodicals, fulltext reference services, or media, are an endangered species.

Enter YouTube

YouTube is the first, I suspect, of a whole new paradigm for personal expression. Where generations of scribblers once wrote for a tiny chosen readership, now everyone from aspiring academics and eclectic entrepreneurs to downy-eyed dreamers and silicone snake-oil salesmen can vomit out their beliefs, biases, and unpolished pitches to the cold Crystal Eye of the webcam. Every subject imaginable has been covered, with many points of view cleverly explored. There is truly something for everyone on the web, and now it’s available in full motion glory. For the truly committed, web-based video is the new Information El Dorado.

Model on display in the Gold Museum, Bogotá, Colombia

So what’s wrong with this Picture?

Sure, it’s distorted but more important is the signal-to-noise ratio. In an environment where so much is unpolished, unfinished, inaccurate, or deliberately misleading, how can a data-miner be sure he or she is following a true high-grade vein of information?

There is so much on YouTube truly not worth the time to access that it makes the paucity of  authoritative print material on the open web seem like the Mother Lode by comparison.

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with more conflicting information, more contradicting scientific conclusions, and much, much more raw data all the time, who has time to troll through the endless files of dross that make up the bulk of YouTube?

By the time you locate a promising file, download it so you can play it uninterrupted (for those  still in the “third-world” of information access speed) and then play to evaluate it for authority, bias, content and currency, you can often have just created something yourself of equal value.

Undeniable, however, has been streaming video’s  impact on the market for other media formats.  Three years after purchasing our first DVDs and now having “officialy” retired our VHS collection, we are already faced with the next generation media storage. We are still buying DVD’s, but at one time we owned 5,000 VHS titles, while after three years we still have only around 1,000 DVDs. Because of the need to migrate to both new media (BlueRay?) and compatible players, it is likely that HD-DVD will remain almost unused in the near future.

The reason? FREE streaming video. Aside from the the ubiquitous YouTube, free video content is available from everything from CNN and ESPN feeds to Indie developers to professional blogs. On the Environment, for example

YouTube (What’s the Worst that Can Happen? Greg Craven, Indepent teacher & author)

Democracy Now (Fracking and the Environment. Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica)

TED Talks (What’s Wrong with What we Eat? Mark Bittman, NYTimes Food Writer)

Of course, it’s important to not  limit oneself to one’s own personal favorites, be it the Age or Ted Talks. That way lies the same one-trick ponyism that many tech afficianados fall prey to (“Read these blogs and  you’ll never go wrong”).

The answer may be in a next-generation Google that can truly and “intelligently” sift through the mountain of visual verbiage (if a picture’s worth a thousand words, what’s a minute of 30fps video worth?). But until the new Google truly rises phoenixlike from the ashes of the best of the text-dependent search algorithm web-crawlers, web-based video will still be a poor-man’s information side-show, the domain of the “truly committed” or the “obsessed”. 

The Onion (Taco Bell’s New Green Menu takes no Ingredients from Nature) 

Hmmm…

Assignment: “…. find an appropriate image to use in at least one of the classes you teach.  How can visual imagery support your curricular content?”

I’m not teaching as many direct classes these days as technology and available time conspire to draw students into their own worlds and teacher into their own classrooms,  but I interact constantly with students, teachers, parents and vendors, and so these are truly “the classes I teach”.  Regardless of the topic, I often lately find myself coming around to the elephant in the room; the environment , or more succinctly, our blatant and growing disregard for the environment in our pursuit of Consumerism’s Holy Grail.  Recently, it seems like the elephant is becoming a herd, as we crowd in increasing environmental degradation (blogged about last post with a positive-spin response by Doug Johnson in the Blue Skunk Blog),  potential global warming tipping points,  growing disease vectors,  and possible environmental collapse.

Yesterday, Stuart H. Scott, in an address to HS students at International School Bangkok, added another “mother of all elephants in the room” – the spectre of actual human extinction if we continue the “BAU” course. For the first time since Al Gore raised the red flag for many of us,  I watched an adult literally choke up talking to kids about Catastrophic Failure Modes and the real possibility of a future United States unable to feed its citizens.  It’s looking increasing likely, from where I stand, that the elephants are truly about to run amok…

I wrote a book about my emerging convictions around this topic, and when I stalled out at getting a publisher, I decided to go it alone.  I was able to meet the design requirements for the Interior file of a POD book (great for the environment), but when I came to the cover image, I was stuck. I wanted an image that would convey a sense of the impending catastrophe  the book explores while hinting at the wonder that still exists in nature and the the tentative promise of redemption through a higher power, be that divine, or human-inspired.

In the end, I chose an image of my own, grabbed quickly around the helpful assistance from my 18 month-old son. For me, this image will always represent the sense of chaotic purpose driven by a growing sense of impending doom I was feeling as I tried to breath life into my initial literary “creation”. Although the meaning may be a large part of only my own internal “soul-map”, the image neatly encapsulates one of the core messages I had spent 190,000 words trying to articulate. Does it work for anyone else? I guess that’s a question that only someone who has read the book might answer…

…we would not be discussing what kids can’t do in our library.

TechUseAgreement

We’d be talking about how to facilitate, among other web2.0 strategies, student exploration of the following emerging trends;

• Gaming – World of Warcraft broke the 10,000,000 user mark – a year ago. Kids ARE gaming!
• Virtual Worlds –Virtual worlds like Second Life may soon become pervasive. An AUP should  acknowledge this.
• S/W Downloads – we need better guidelines for downloading – what, when, how, to where?
• Streaming Media – better guidelines on use (when, where, how – e.g. using headphones, etc)
• Cloud computing and the Symantic Web (related to the above, but broader in scope as everything begins to reside on the “cloud” and as “smart objects” become ubiguitous) – the Horizon Report, 2009

Unfortunately, it’s not a perfect world. In the first place, all of the above require access to bandwidth that we just do not have at this time in Thailand. Even in the US, a Neilsen News report on April 13 that Streaming video had increased by 40% in one year was followed shortly by news of bandwidth caps by big internet providers. “Capping”, is, of course, a relative term. 250 GB of data/month (equivalent of 120 full-length movies or 65,000 songs) seems a lot in an environment where real download speeds are measured in 2-digit KILOBYTES/second rather the the 1-2 megabytes/second Thai home users typically pay for.

Even at our school, where we have something like 40 megabytes/second, it still often takes several seconds for a static page to stream in, and streaming video is often broken up with pauses for buffering.  Allowing students to explore the new technologies with no limits is simply not a practical option at this time.

And then there’s the issue of teen decision-making skills.  We greet around 1200 visitors in a typical day in our main library, and 50-60% of these borrow a wireless laptop for use during their visit. We have 150 chairs in 7 discrete seating areas dispersed over 700 square meters on two floors. Realistically, we simply are not aware of what most students do with the computers most of the time. In this environment, and in consideration of others rights to a “quiet, productive workplace” environment, we feel it incumbent on us to provide guidance in what uses of the area, and the the technology being used in it, are in keeping with this objective. A “Technology Use Agreement” that students sign off on, help us all stay on the same page regarding appropriate use.

Coming out of this course, we have a Proposed new HS Acceptable Use Policy. Since it has not yet been adopted for officila use by the school, we feel we still need a document to help us manage technology use in the Main Library.

Our final cut at a “Technology Use Agreement” for ISB’s Main LIbrary may be construed as focussing on prohibition rather than entitlement, but in our defence, we have attempted to open the doors to new and creative explorative options not available in our existing agreement. Rather than specifically prohibiting gaming, etc, for example, we suggest that students seek permission to engage in activities outside of the normal scope of online activity.

In our prohibitive rather than entitling stance, we are not alone. In the litiginous United States, AUPs can be even more rife with legal jargon and limitation. An example from DadeSchools in Florida is a case in point. This document specifically focusses on limitations and prohibitions, and regularly references School Board Policy which in each instance is a case-study in legal jargon. It, like many AUP’s still out there, could be seen as a document with a built-in self-fulfilling prophecy for failure. Few users are going to plow through the intricacies and exhortations to determine what really can and can’t be done with the tools it references.

We should count our blessings that for the moment, at least, we feel we can cover the ground in our Main LIbrary with a relatively benign, single page isb-technology-use-agreement-final-120509

Of course, the fact that we have not fundamentally changed the Use Agreement we have had in place since the adoption of wireless laptops suggests that should the environment change in the near future, we should – make that we must – revisit the question again.

Perhaps in that newly renovated “Learning Commons” we are working toward, we WILL be able to enable and promote the many creative and innovative ways in which kids could use the technology.

Amen to that…

Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy or Technology Use Agreement? What’s in a Name?

During the current SUNY Technology class, at least three groups are wrestling with ISB’s Acceptable Use Policy. Two groups are redrafting existing divisional Acceptable Use Policies to bring improved currency and relevance to documents several years old.  This project is to attempt to forge a link between the somewhat subjective wording of the AUP’s as currently in development and the very objective requirements of applying principles of “acceptable use” in a real-world environment; in this case, ISB’s Main Library.

For the purposes of this reflection, I will concentrate on the work of the HS AUP and Main LIbrary
“Technology Use Agreement” teams, since the most significant disparities between policy and behavior appear at this level. By the time they reach high school, students are better equipped to both assess their own personal actions and to rationalize this behavior.

A surprising revelation as I have considered this project is that none of the related documents (from ISB) are currently (at least prominently) available on ISB’s website or 1st-generation linked pages. A Google search for “ISB Bangkok” along with “AUP” or “Acceptable Use Policy” does not turn up a working link to a current AUP at any division level. This fact alone suggests that ISB’s core relationship to an AUP needs to be rethought. The quickest way to ISB’s existing AUP’s is through the SUNY Technology Course currently in action, where the current AUP’s are offered as attachments (scroll to the bottom).

Neither is the laptop-loan-agreement we have used for the four years since we adopted wireless laptops in our Main LIbrary available online. In my search I came across Acceptable Use Policies, Laptop Loan Agreements, and Technology Use Agreements, but none from ISB.

Once again, kudos to our very own ISB SUNY instructors Jeff Utecht and Chad Bates, for finding some of the best summarties of current thinking on AUPs, posted as resources for this course from AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) For New Web Tools by Dr. Howie DeBlasi (His keynote address from the AzTEA Conference, January 31, 2009 is worth a view)

Meanwhile, while I believe in a review of the overarching guiding principles of acceptable technology use at ISB, in our Main LIbrary, we still need a tangible, quickly reviewable but relatively comprehensive set of guidelines which we will ask student patrons to sign off on. As we review our school webpages, whatever emerges as a full-blown new AUP will  be placed at the library pages. For now, here is the proposed  “isb-technology-use-agreement-final-090509” which will likely continue to be used as the “rubber-meets-road” working document to hold students accountable for acceptable technology use in Main LIbrary.