Taste of Tech

A few weeks ago, I went Christmas shopping. A certain member of my family has been grumbling for years that she doesn’t have a navigation system for her car. The technology has been getting better, and prices have been coming down, so this seemed like a good year to get her one.

My initial thought was to get her a bluetooth GPS receiver and software for her Palm Pilot. The Palm is only a year old. It certainly has plenty of processing power to handle the navigation system, and it’s something she’s already carrying around. I went to our local big-box-electronic-superstore looking for such a solution.

It was the holiday season, but the store wasn’t too busy. Within a minute or so, someone asked to help me, and I explained what I was looking for. Blank stare. Apparently such a thing doesn’t exist. He went to find a manager. Nope.

“We don’t have anything like that. You could try the local big-box-office-supply-superstore down the street, but you’ll probably have to go online to find something like that.”

So, I headed out to the big-box-office-supply-superstore. They at least understood the concept, and they did have navigation software.

“What about the GPS receiver?”

Blank stare.

“How does the Palm Pilot know where I am?”

He picked up the box and started reading. “This is just the software. You need the one with the GPS receiver.”

“Right. Do you have that?”

“Oh, no. You’d probably have to go online to find something like that.”

Great. Since I was already in the store, I thought I might as well look at the dedicated GPS devices. They ranged in price from about $150 to $400.

“What’s the difference between the TomTom and the Garmin?”

He picked up the boxes and looked.”This one has more points of interest.”

“Really? $200 worth of points of interest? Thanks for the help. It looks like the Mia is on sale.” I picked up the box and compared it to the TomTom. “They look like they have all the same features.”

“The Mia isn’t as good.” Why? Apparently because it’s less expensive.

All of the units I had looked at had those annoying stickers on them that show you what the software would look like if they actually let you turn the thing on.

“Do you have any that actually work?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have one I can play with? I want to see if the places I actually go are in there.”

“Oh, no. We don’t have anything like that.” Thanks for your help.

I ended up doing my shopping online, ironically at the suggestion of both retail stores. Online retailers offer better pricing, better selection, and more product information than their physical counterparts. There are only three reasons left to go to retail stores:

1. I need it now. I can’t wait for an order to be processed, filled, and shipped. When I have to have it right away, I have to go to a store to get it. Timeliness didn’t apply in this case, though.
2. I need to actually see the item. Does the navigation system have my house in it? Is the screen big enough and bright enough that I’ll be able to see it? These are things you can’t tell from a picture on a web site. But these stores couldn’t help.
3. I need some advice. I need to talk to someone who knows something about the products. I need to explain my needs, get some informed advice, and make a good purchasing decision based on that advice. Unfortunately, in both stores, I encountered box readers. These are sales people who are trained to answer all questions by reading the information on the product package. That doesn’t help me. I can read all by myself.

I don’t know what the future holds for retailers. I’m sure they’ll survive in some capacity, simply because of the immediate need mentioned above. But for people who want to make informed purchasing decisions, there’s no longer any comparison between the physical and online stores.

It’s the time of year when we pause to reflect on the roads we’ve traveled, the chasms we’ve crossed, and the journey still ahead. Last week’s EdTechYearly got me thinking about the progress we’ve made this year. And yet, there are still those burning questions of whether we’re having much effect outside the world of educational technology. If you haven’t yet, you can share your thoughts on 2007 in this voicethread.

These kinds of posts are usually done in list form. While I’m generally opposed to “top ten” lists, I will share a few of my highlights of 2007. These aren’t in any particular order:

Students and Social Networking

According to a study released by the National School Boards Association this year, 96% of students who have Internet access have used social networking tools. 41% of students with Internet access post new content at least once a week.That’s up from 12% in 2002. 30% of students with Internet access have their own blogs. In 2002, it was less than 1%. Kids know about email. They use it to communicate with their parents and their teachers. It’s old-school. With their friends, it’s instant messaging, SMS, Facebook, Myspace.

Students don’t communicate in the same ways that their parents and teachers do. As professionals in education, we have to be more aware of these tools and how they’re being used. Stop focusing on the negative examples and media-hyped anecdotes intended to scare us away from these technologies. Start using them in structured ways, both for instruction and professional development. Embrace the technologies by using closed systems that also provide privacy protections. Take baby steps with things like Moodle and Wordpress.

Internet Filtering

Schools in the United States must filter Internet access in order to qualify for e-rate funding. Most schools are also very concerned that students will use the school’s Internet connection to access inappropriate or illegal content. This can be a public relations nightmare for a school as well as a legal one. If students are accidentally exposed to inappropriate materials at school, one might make the case that the school was negligent in protecting the student in loco parentis. As a result, most schools (mine included) err on the side of caution.

Our web filter compares each web request against a database. If the site is classified as belonging to a category that is blocked, the request is denied. The whole system relies on a company (Secure Computing, in our case) that reviews each web site and categorizes it.

This worked… umm… marginally well in 1995. Assuming that there aren’t many new web sites coming online, and that the web sites don’t change all that much, a single company could conceivably keep up. But according to Netcraft, there were 19.2 billion web pages in August, 2005, and 29.7 billion by February, 2007. I can’t imagine that the rate of growth on the web has decreased this year, which means that there are more than 13,000 new web pages added every minute. I’m pretty sure Secure Computing doesn’t have enough people to handle that kind of growth.

Now, to complicate things. The web is becoming increasingly interactive. You can add your comments to all kinds of pages. You can share ideas, video, audio, and all sorts of things that can’t be easily filtered. The interactive nature of these sites makes it nearly impossible for a filter to know whether the site contains objectionable material. So what do they do? They err on the side of caution. For us, that means there are thousands of sites that are blocked that probably shouldn’t be.

While we do have a review procedure for overriding bad filtering decisions, it’s clear that we need a better way to do this. Our old model of web filtering isn’t going to work. And I’m looking at 2008 as the year when we start seeing better solutions.

Personal Learning Networks

I’m not going to say too much about this, since I just blogged about it. But current technologies allow us to create our own personal learning networks. Use tools like blogs, Skype, twitter, delicious, podcasts, and ustream to connect with people who share similar interests, challenges, and ideas. Then, learn from each other.

One Laptop Per Child

Overhyped? Maybe. But the One Laptop Per Child project has actually produced a working computer. Sure, it’s $186, and you can’t actually buy one. But if you act quickly enough, you can buy two of them for $400, and you even get to keep one.

The real story here is that the OLPC project has ignited somewhat of a price war in the low end laptop business. There are at least three different projects offering laptops in the $300-400 price range, and this can only be good news for schools. If I can get a laptop for $400, how much does that make the desktop version? If we’re willing to make some tradeoffs, it may actually be possible to get to 1:1.

Digital Rights/Copyright

The RIAA has been busy this year. Their position is that music sales are declining because people are illegally sharing music online. To combat this growing problem, they’re suing just about everyone they can think of. Earlier this year, Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $220,000 in damages for the 24 songs she was sharing online. Now, the RIAA is filing suit against people who rip their legally purchased CDs into mp3 files for their own use. Want to listen to your CDs on your mp3 player? Sorry, you have to re-purchase the music. (Update: it turns out the RIAA is not suing for ripping CDs, but they’re still saying mp3s are unauthorized copies).

Traditionally, the RIAA has made an extraordinary amount of money from music repurchases. People bought Sgt. Pepper in vinyl when it came out in 1967. A few years later, they bought it again in 8-track so they could play it in the car. A few years after that, the 8-track players were gone, and the cassette had to be purchased. Then, the extraordinary quality of the CD made owning this new format a must. But with the transition to online digital music, there’s no reason for repurchasing. The mp3 version actually has a substantially lower quality than the CD. So the RIAA needs a legal reason to force you to buy yet another copy.

It’s not all bad news on the copyright front, though. Wikipedia is moving to a Creative Commons license, which will make it easier to share content from that resource. The Cape Town Declaration, despite its criticisms, is aiming to open up access to educational resources without burdensome copyright and licensing restrictions. And the interactive nature of social networking technologies has made it easier for independent artists to be heard without having to sell their souls to the big media companies. It seems like the more the RIAA tightens its grip, the more willing people are to share content. That can only be good news to schools that are spending more than $100 per textbook. If we could collaboratively create and share educational content, we could save a fortune.

As 2007 draws to a close, I can’t help but think about how much things have changed for me since I jumped in to to the EdTechTalk community a year ago. I realized at the end of 2006 that the people producing this excellent weekly content are real people. I can send them messages, and they’ll answer. I can blog about them, and they’ll comment. I can jump into the chat room, or onto a Skype call, and talk to them about educational technology. It’s a very welcoming community, and I’m honored to be a part of it. I’ve found that I’m learning more by interacting with the community than I ever learned sitting in a graduate class. I can ask questions of others, and they’ll give me honest, reasoned opinions. I can participate in discussions on various topics and truly get a global perspective. If I’m having a problem, these people are more than willing to help. And it goes both ways. If there’s a place where my talents or expertise come into play, I lend a hand.

The new tools have given new meaning to the word “instant.” I can remember being impressed by email. I can send a message to another computer, anywhere in the world, for free. It will be delivered in a few minutes. That person will receive the message the next time he or she checks email. Then, they can reply to the message, and I’ll receive it the next time I check my mail. This is a huge improvement over snail mail, remember. It takes two days for domestic mail if you’re not in the same city. We can exchange email in minutes. Amazing.

But that’s old news. Email is slow and cumbersome now. I can use a blog post to send information out to millions (okay, well, maybe dozens) of people. If I’m referring to something on another blog somewhere, it automatically gets notified of my comment. It’s an ever-changing, expanding, contracting, adapting community of people who share somewhat similar interests. Not fast enough? We’ve been using group Skype chats for a while now, and have found them to be really useful for having instant-message discussions among a small group of people. Sure, instant messaging has been around for a long time, but I’m finally finding ways to put it to good use in an asynchronous way.

Then there’s Twitter. The power of blogging with the speed of instant messaging. In 140 characters or less, type what you have to say. The message goes out to everyone who’s following you. The intended use is to answer the question “What are you doing?” But most of the people I’m following use it to let people know about new things they’ve discovered, or projects they’re working on, or upcoming events.

As I’m writing this, Sharon Peters is very excited about something called Open Source Living. I have no idea what that is, but I’m going to find out as soon as I’m done writing this blog post.

What does this mean for professional development? I’ve always felt that the one-day professional inservice days were a waste of time. Most of the teachers see it as a break from their “real” jobs, and they don’t take them seriously. It’s also impossible to find an inservice topic that is relevant to everyone in a school. I’ve often been in situations where the inservice topic has been shoehorned into places where it really doesn’t make any sense. I have to admit that I’ve been guilty of it, too. How do webquests fit in to a physical education program?

A decade or more ago, we started using Individualized Education Programs for students with disabilities. These documents outline specific plans for the education of these children. They assess the student’s current academic and functional performance, identify specific, measurable goals for the coming year, and outline the services, modifications, and resources that will be employed to help this student meet the stated objectives. While these plans have received a lot of criticism because of the enormous amount of paperwork they create for teachers and schools, most professionals agree that they have had a significant positive effect on the students who use them.

A few years later, Individual Professional Development Plans came into vogue. In Ohio, teachers now maintain their licenses by writing and completing these individualized plans. Theoretically, all of a teacher’s professional development activities should support the plan. By successfully completing these activities, they make progress toward achieving their goals and get credit for the activities. In practice, most of the plans are so vaguely written that nearly anything can be justified to support the goals. And the committee that reviews and approves the plans and the activities is so overwhelmed with paperwork that simply meeting the procedural requirements nearly guarantees approval.

If we actually used the professional development plans the way we use the IEPs, we would have a mechanism for embracing and rewarding nontraditional professional development. Then, teachers could join their own communities, grow professionally, and get credit for it at the same time.

This morning, Mrs. Hricik’s first graders presented their gingerbread stories. After their presentation for local senior citizens got snowed out earlier this week, they hastily adjusted schedules and invited parents in today. With the help of Jeff Lebow, EdTechTalk, and Ustream, we were able to stream audio and video of the presentations to family members who couldn’t come in to school. We had a maximum of 23 viewers at one point, with people from Colorado, Kansas, California, and Florida.

Special thanks to the students and to Mrs. Hricik for letting us share their stories.

I’m still trying to get my mind around the changes that are happening in computer hardware. One of the major impacts of the One Laptop Per Child project is that it has focused attention on inexpensive, no-frills hardware. Through December 31, you can still take advantage of the buy-one, give-one promotion. For $400, you get an XO laptop to keep, and a child in a third world country gets one too.

But let’s say you want to give a bunch of laptops to a school. If you’re giving 1,000 of them, you can do so for $249 each. Plus, you get to pick the school where they’re going to go. There aren’t any stated restrictions about where the school has to be. While the details of the program might stipulate that the school can’t be in the United States, it’s not ruled out by the preliminary information on the web site.

Another option is the Asus EeePC. The low end models run for $299 in the US, but I’d bet that price would come down if you were buying a thousand at a time. Meanwhile, Intel’s ClassMate is in the same price range. And with the Sinomaniac and Longmeng projects taking shape in China, you can bet that competition is going to grow, making the machines more powerful and driving the prices down.

So what do all of these machines do? In general, they’re laptops — small laptops. They have 7″ screens, relatively slow processors, and flash memory instead of hard drives. Most of them use Linux as the operating system instead of Windows. This keeps the system requirements down while virtually eliminating software license costs. The computers can access the web, do email, and use productivity software (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, etc). They also typically have bundled “educational” software, which likely varies widely in quality.

What don’t they do? I would expect that they would have problems with multimedia. Certainly audio and video editing would be a problem. They’re not going to run proprietary Windows software, so there won’t be as many software options. Support for peripherals will likely be limited. And they’re certainly not as speedy as the latest offerings from the big computer makers. Are these dealbreakers?

Economically, it may be possible to do a 1:1 program with these devices. Right now, our students are spending $120 for a graphing calculator. There’s no reason why that device couldn’t be emulated, and that would make up half of the cost right there. If we could substantially reduce the number of desktop computers available in the schools for student use, we could save $20 per student per year. Assuming they keep the laptops for several years, that would make up part of the difference. Then, if we leverage some of the benefits of a 1:1 program by using more online resources and fewer print resources (we spend a LOT of money on textbooks), it suddenly puts these things within reach.

Would this really fly? I don’t know. We already face a lot of criticism for having outdated technology (Why aren’t you running Vista? What do you mean we can’t use PowerPoint 2007?) Running Linux would make these problems a lot worse. Much of the software we currently use wouldn’t work. And supporting that many computers — both from a hardware perspective and a network one — would be a daunting task. But a project like this is a lot more feasible than it was a year ago.