Though educators are finding smart ways to integrate technology and learning, the road has been and continues to be challenging on multiple fronts. The NMC Horizon Report: 2012 K-12 Edition, a collaboration between the New Media Consortium, the Consortium for School Networking, and the International Society for Technology in Education, takes the birds-eye view and encapsulates some of the significant challenges that must still be addressed and offers the following assessment.

Behind the challenges listed here is also a pervasive sense that local and organizational constraints are likely the most important factors in any decision to adopt — or not to adopt — a given technology. Even K-12 institutions that are eager to adopt new technologies may be constrained by school policies, the lack of necessary human resources, and the financial wherewithal to realize their ideas. Still others are located within buildings that simply were not designed to provide the radio frequency transparency that wireless technologies require, and thus find themselves shut out of many potential technology options. While acknowledging that local barriers to technology adoptions are many and significant, the advisory board focused its discussions on challenges that are common to the K-12 community as a whole. The highest ranked challenges they identified are listed here, in the order in which the advisory board ranked them.

Flickr:David Ortez

Sometimes teachers and administrators need a kick in the pants to see what they perceive as problems re-framed in a different way. Adam S. Bellow, author of The Tech Commandments, and founder of eduTecher, spoke to a roomful of receptive teachers at the recent ISTE 2011 conference, and demonstrated some of the ironies and contradictions the education system is mired in. And he had some advice.

1) DON’T TRAP TECHNOLOGY IN A ROOM. “When I went to school, computers were put in a room called The Lab,” Bellow said. “‘What are they experimenting with in there, I thought.’ Technology wasn’t built into what we were doing. It was farmed off in a room, like it was special. Like we were learning how to code, and in case the Russians came, we’d know what to do.” Technology should be like oxygen, Bellow said, quoting Chris Lehmann, the founding principal of Science Leadership Academy: Ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.

2) TECHNOLOGY IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Bellow emphasized the importance of making professional development a priority, the importance of time and money being spent to educate teachers on not just an hour-long how-to session, but ways to integrate technology creatively into educators’ daily teaching practice in meaningful ways. He told the story of an interactive-whiteboard training guide who made one quick appearance at a school, never to return, leaving teachers still unsure of how to use the technology. There’s a world of professional development on YouTube and on Twitter, ironically sites that most schools block (see Number 4.)

3) MOBILE TECHNOLOGY STRETCHES A LONG WAY. “You can get much more out of mobile tech than out of most other technology,” Bellow said. Kids bring it to class everyday, but we tell them to turn it off as soon as they walk in. In New York City, Bellow said he watched as an agonizingly long queue of students waited for 45 minutes to pass through a metal detector and hand over their cell phones, which were then placed in individually labeled manila envelopes. “Can we do something better with those 45 minutes?” he asked. Cell phones can replace expensive reference books, Flip cameras, old calculators, and the list goes on. “Instead of buying those tools, buy an iPod Touch and it’ll be all of those things,” he said.

4) THE NEW ‘F WORD’ IS FEAR. Not Facebook, and not the other expletive you might have expected. Schools fear everything from being replaced by gadgets (“Any teacher who can be replaced by a robot should be,” he said), to kids knowing more about subjects than they do, to collaborative Web tools that are blocked because of a slew of acronyms that haunt administrators. On one hand, “teachers are frustrated because they feel like they’re being handcuffed,” Bellow said, due to crude filters that block out all kinds of useful websites. On the other hand, kids already come to school with phones that have access to everything. “We could block Facebook, but who are we kidding? They’re already on it,” he said. “The world is not a sterile place. Kids need to learn how to deal with it.” And because kids have access to every kind of information at any time, they need to learn about things like Creative Commons and copyright rules. “We’re doing them a major disservice if we don’t teach them good digital citizenship,” he said.

5) TECH TOOLS ARE NOT JUST A PASSING FAD. Bellow said he’s heard countless times from those who don’t want to take risks by finding and investing in new tools. And even when they do, they use only a fraction of the tools’ potential purposes because they haven’t invested enough time to figure it out (see Number 2). Bellow told the story of a school administrator who was able to buy iPads for his teachers, but is only using them to take attendance. He showed a video of a 100-year-old woman learning how to use the iPad to browse the Web, to read books, to watch videos, and how excited she was about it. “We are natural lifelong learners,” he said.

6) MONEY IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Teachers have access to thousands of free Web tools. And even if the free ones do decide to start charging, others will crop up to replace it. The point is not to be afraid of diving in (see Number 4).

7) INVITE EVERY STAKEHOLDER TO THE CONVERSATION. “Who’s at the table?” Bellow asked. “Mostly administrators, some ask teachers. But here’s a novel idea. Let’s have students come to the table, and parents too!”

MindShift readers are familiar with these concepts, but it’s great to have a tidy recap. Thanks, Mr. Bellow.

Audrey Watters

Another ISTE attendee.

The International Society for Technology in Education held its annual conference and exhibition this week in Philadelphia. While the official headcount has yet to be released, early estimates pegged the number of attendees at over 20,000.

In lieu of our typical weekly review of ed-tech news, we’ve opted to focus instead on some of the announcements that came out of ISTE 2011.

• Educational animation site BrainPOP launched GameUp, a free resource that integrates educational games into the BrainPOP platform. The game titles include “Battleship Numberline” and “Microbes” and come from organizations like iCivics, Filament Games, and Nobelprize.org. The games focus on topics like science, math, and social studies, and like the rest of the BrainPOP materials include supplemental information for teachers such as how to use the game in a lesson, which curriculum standards the game is aligned to, as well as a link to one related BrainPOP topic.
• PBS launched PBS Learning Media, an online resource with over 14,000 pieces of digital content, including video, audio, photos, and more. The content comes from various local public broadcasting stations, as well as other public agencies, such as the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and NASA. The site is available to teachers and parents, and the material is all tagged and searchable, so that information can be found by content type, age type or topic. See our full story here.
• ISTE itself released a white paper this week that offers a first look at ISTE’s new standards for technology coaching. The proposed NETS*C won’t be finalized until this fall, but the white paper discusses ISTE’s latest set of standards and the organization’s recommendations for helping integrate technology more fully into professional development.
• Project Tomorrow and Blackboard released a new report examining the rapid acceleration in online learning at the middle and high school level in the U.S. The survey found that the number of high school students who have been involved with online learning has tripled and the number of middle school students who’ve done so has doubled over the last three years. Furthermore, 36% of classroom teachers say that they too have taken some sort of online class. More than 40% of the students surveyed said they see online classes as an essential part of their learning experience, and more parents and administrators are starting to agree. The demand for online learning opportunities is growing, with a third of 3rd through 5th graders saying they’d like to have the opportunity.
• StudySync announced that it was expanding its supplemental curriculum from the high school to the middle school level. The company provides a library of more than 300 videos that help teach literature and writing. The video lessons serve to help students learn how to analyze and appreciate literature, and the StudySync system also includes peer-to-peer interaction, so that students learn to engage in written discussions around literature. In expanding to the middle school level, StudySync has added new level-appropriate titles, including Alice in Wonderland and Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl.
• Sokikom announced the launch of what it’s calling the first massively multiplayer online math game. Geared to students grades 1 through 6, Sokikom’s game lets up to 30 students in a classroom play a game together. Currently Sokikom has 3 games: Frachine, which focuses on fractions, decimals and percentages; Opirate, which focuses on algebra; and Treeching, which deals with measurement, time, and money.
• McGraw-Hill introduced CINCH, an all-digital, cloud-based curriculum for K-12 math and grade 7 through 12 science. The content is available through the browser, meaning that students will be able to access it on any Internet-enabled device. CINCH includes not just digital text but also education games, an assessment component, and social networking elements (such as commenting within the curriculum). McGraw-Hill says that the content in CINCH is customizable by districts and teachers and is aligned to Common Core State Standards.
• Interactive whiteboard maker Promethean announced a partnership with the Channel One Network. Promethean Activboards will get access to the daily Channel One news, supplemented with various interactive tools.

data.ed.gov

Interactive map on data.ed.gov

“Now is the time,” said Karen Cator, director of education technology at the Department of Education. “We’re at this incredible inflection point as we go from print to digital.”

Cator enumerated the ways in which the D.O.E. is helping to make the shift between the print and digital world at the ISTE conference yesterday.

1. TRANSPARENCY. Data.Ed.Gov is an interactive map that pintpoints which schools in the U.S. have broadband. It’s a collaboration with the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Inofrmation Administration. “If we can build those kinds of maps that we can layer on what’s happening in all these schools around country, that provides transparency and something that people can aspire to, follow,” Cator told me late last year.

2. DIGITAL LITERACY. DigitalLiteracy.gov was recently launched by a group of federal government agencies to help build computer and Internet skills, a free resource for anyone. A description from the site: “To provide librarians, teachers, workforce trainers, and others a central location to share digital literacy content and best practices. These trusted groups can, in turn, better reach out to their communities in providing them the skills today’s employers need.” Educators have their own dedicated link.

3. BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE ADVICE. For educators who want to find the best way to leverage their students’ devices, whether it’s their mobile phones or home laptops, CoSN’s newly launched Access4ed provides a host of resources about working experiments. From the site: “It will include conversations around key issues, case studies from districts addressing them, discussion of policy issues and how to address them, and opportunities to connect with education leaders in districts similar to and different from yours.”

4. CLEARING HOUSE FOR PROFESSIONAL NETWORKS. Cator described it to me this way: “If I’m a teacher, I maintain a profile, I let others into my professional learning network to see the conversations and the communities I’m a part of. I can follow fellow educators that might be involved in interesting projects and trying new projects in the classroom. So it goes beyond just following people on Twitter, but creating a profile for professional educators.” The idea of this “persistent online profile” is the premise behind  Connected Online Communities of Practice, a directory of professional teachers networks created by the D.O.E. and the American Institutes for Research. The organization aims to launch new online communities of practice, conduct design experiments, undertake case studies, and develop ideas about new designs and infrastructure. After reviewing all the nominated online professional networks, the organization’s technical working group, a who’s who of innovative education thinkers, will produce a report about best practices.

Other goals on the horizon for the D.O.E.:

• Equity of access to all Americans. If schools are able to provide access to technology, Cator said the goal is provide the same access at home, as well as teach them how to use the technology so they can “fully participate.”
• Connect basic research to the marketplace. With all the research and development that’s being done in government agencies, the goal is to connect that knowledge to those who create products.
• Connect entrepreneurs to investors. Through organizations like Startup America, a way for smart ideas to find their way to those who can bring it to life.

Flickr: Môsieur J. [version 5.1.1

Computer games and mobile devices will be prevalent in schools within the next few years.

Cloud computing and mobile learning: That’s the way of the near future in education, according to the New Media Consortium (NMC) Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition.

Released by the NMC’s Horizon Project, the report distills current trends, challenges, and emerging technologies in K-12 education. “There are so many things to pay attention to in the world of emerging technologies,” says New Media Consortium CEO and Horizon Project founder Dr. Larry Johnson. “What we’re saying is, ‘Pay attention to this small list and you won’t go wrong.’”

The report is full of specific examples of what’s really happening in schools, but Johnson recommends keeping a close eye on the following trends.

• IN THE NEXT YEAR: CLOUD COMPUTING AND MOBILE DEVICES

Schools will start incorporating mobile, hand-held devices in the classroom in significant ways. Mobiles (read: smart phones), Johnson says, were placed “pretty far out” in past Horizon reports — in the four- to five-year category, mostly because of policy concerns. “Schools didn’t have the right policies in place to even think about it; [phones] were still considered disruptive,” he says. But now, “we think mobiles are finally going to tip in education.”

Cloud computing will replace data storage on school servers because using free data centers that host thousands of servers, like Google, is becoming more prevalent. Not only are these cloud computing services more convenient for schools (Google Docs, for instance), but it’s “increasingly seen as a way to save money,” Johnson says.

• 2-3 YEARS: GAME-BASED LEARNING AND OPEN CONTENT

Games are gaining more traction in education — primarily for the potential of highly sophisticated video games to “foster collaboration and engage students deeply in the process of learning.” Open content is perhaps not yet as widely employed as cloud computing is to save money, but it’s on its way: open educational resources have been offered by institutions as renowned as MIT for a decade and are increasingly seen in the K-12 community as a way to increase student choice and access to learning.

• 4-5 YEARS: LEARNING ANALYTICS AND PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

It might still be far out, but there’s a glimmer on the horizon that standardized tests may not be the only widely approved form of student assessment. Analytics technology is becoming sophisticated enough that schools may start providing personalized assessment systems for students over the next five years. And while a “personal learning environment” is still very much in its conceptual phase, the idea that “student-designed learning approaches that encompass different types of content” — like videos, apps, games, and social media tools — can meet his or her learning style and pace goes a long way to making education more personalized, and therefore effective.

The report also cites key trends and critical challenges. Among them:

• A NEW DEFINITION OF “THE DIGITAL DIVIDE.” Today’s digital divide is “less about the devices that you have than the knowledge and capability you have to use them when you need to,” says Johnson. “We use the Internet as if it were air. Doing a Web search is something we do without even thinking. That, more and more, is how employers expect their workforce to be. The people who have those skills are going to be relatively more successful than people who don’t.”
• LACK OF DIGITAL MEDIA TRAINING FOR TEACHERS. Despite widespread agreement about its importance in schools, schools of education and professional development programs for teachers are still not providing the training necessary to make tech integration a reality.
• THE NEED FOR SYSTEMATIC CHANGE. “The fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment” is one of the greatest obstacles to innovation, write the report’s collaborators. “As long as maintaining the basic elements of the existing system remains the focus of efforts to support education, there will be resistance to any profound change in practice.”

This last idea is potentially controversial, but Johnson is matter-of-fact.

“Everything about the way that teachers are evaluated and the way their work is evaluated is based on old models,” he says. “It’s really very difficult to change. When your lesson plans have to conform to a specific structure, and when your creativity is limited to making sure your students pass high-stakes tests, the ability of a teacher to encourage students to become self-directed learners is hampered.”

Nevertheless, he insists, “I’m an optimist in this. I understand that change takes time. Schools are not early adopters. They tend to look for technologies that are proven in the rest of the world — in the business, entertainment, or other industries. Once they’re established elsewhere, schools bring them in.”