Module 2: Smart Phone Tetrad

I remember from my childhood the old Get Smart television show that featured the secret agent and his many gadgets. Little did I know that the idea of a “shoe phone” would eventually become a reality. The Smart Phone of today has gone through many progressions to arrive where it is today and is primed for where it will go next.

McLuhan's four laws of media illustrate this progression in terms of what the new technology enhances and obsoletes, what it rekindles from the past and what it leads to in the future.(Thornburg, 2008). The Smart Phone is just that, it’s smart. It enhances regular PDA and cell phone technology because it integrates a portable telephone with the ability to store and manage large amounts of information. It enhances ones ability to communicate and be productive without being tethered to the office or home. Regular cell phones and PDA’s are obsoleted because the new Smart Phones integrate the features that are unique to the cell phone and PDA and adds access to the internet. All of these functions have taken over the classic job of a secretary. The secretary’s job was to keep her boss organized, scheduled, and in communication with those who needed him. Now, the Smart Phone is like having your own secretary right at your fingertips. Thornburg (2008) characterizes Mcluhan’s idea by indicating that “every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user” (p. 2). I believe that smart phone technology will follow this idea. I predict that eventually we will be able to have a chip implanted in us that serves as a receiver. We will be able to use our brain to communicate and retrieve the information that is stored or that we are seeking. Communication and information retrieval systems will be enhanced by becoming an integrated part of our bodies.

The idea of the “shoe phone” seemed so far out when I think back to those days of my childhood. While a phone in a shoe did not ever catch on, the idea did, and it has advanced even further than I would have ever expected. I predict that the Smart Phone technology will continue to transform itself into an even more integrative tool inserted into the body that will become as commonplace as contact lenses or plastic surgery is today.

References

Thornburg, D. D. (2008). Emerging technologies and Mcluhan’s Laws of Media. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.

Responses

During this Module I responded to the following classmates:


Lewis Chappelear
http://lchappelear.blogspot.com/2011/06/current-trend-in-educational-technology.html#comments

Maria Rodriguez
http://msrodriguez-design.blogspot.com/2011/06/emerging-and-future-technology.html#comments

EDUC 8848: Emerging & Future Technologies Week #1

Click to the Future

I have had my eye on Interactive Response Systems (clickers) for a couple of years, but my district did not want to invest in them. Just this year we finally got a couple of sets of clickers from SMART Technologies. The handheld remotes are sold as class sets and used formative/summative assessments and polling. The clickers provide students with immediate results from the assessment and the data can be exported into an excel document. Here is a link to a tutorial for the clickers
http://www.slideshare.net/Andreatej/tutorial-for-smart-student-response-system


Challenges
The greatest drawback of this technology is the cost of nearly $2000 per set of 32 handsets. I have not seen the price drop over the last few years. This clicker system utilizes a receiver (that transmits through radio waves) that is connected to the computer through a USB cable. Each handset requires two AA batteries. Since there is only one receiver per set and our classrooms have no more than 25 students, it is unfortunate that the clickers are linked to one receiver. The program is compatible with Smart Notebook Software (SMART Interactive Whiteboard). There was a change in the software since the product first emerged and the newer version seems less user-friendly and has some bugs. It is unfortunate that the clickers can only be used through proprietary means, compatible only with SMART products.

Societal Needs/Benefits
There are numerous benefits with using clickers, in education. The scoring of and feedback on the students' work is a great selling point. A teacher who might have 100 students to assess can literally give the test in 30 minutes and have the results in the students hands a few minutes later, saving a huge amount of time spent grading tests and providing students with instantaneous feedback. There is also a component that notifies the instructor when a students does not answer the question, which is key strategy to maintain student engagement. The mere use of an electronic gadget is highly motivating to students and makes them feel like they are playing an electronic game. There is no doubt that students would much rather take a test with clickers than with a traditional paper-pencil format. This digital format also reduces the amount of paper used for printing and subsequently reduces the cost of printing.

Improvement for Future
Mobile devices have already come down significantly in price. It would make sense to me that SMART would design an electronic response app for a mobile phone. The mobile devices are ubiquitous and it seems that the future sees more and more technology folded into one multi-use device. With a wireless connection or blue tooth, rather than a USB connection, students could use their i Pods, i Pads, cell phones to connect, take a test, and submit results. Because the cell phone technology is already here and reasonably priced, all one would need is to purchase the app.

EDUC 8848: Emerging and Future Technologies

My name is Cathy Marziali. This is the 6th class that I have taken in my Walden doctoral program and the only class that I am taking this term. I try to only take one class per term because I am realistic about the balance that I must maintain between my job, Walden classes and my personal life.

I am an Assistant Principal in a Department of Defense school located on a military base near Ramstein, Germany. This is my 23rd year in education and I am finishing up my second school year in this position. Before this job I was a teacher specializing in foreign language in elementary school, having taught Italian immersion and Spanish to grades K-1 at a base in Italy for five years. I also spent many years teaching Kindergarten and in various positions at district and county offices of education in California.

I'm married to a man who I met in Florence, Italy during a study abroad program in college and we have now been married 26 years. Our two kids are in college now, one in California and one in Oregon. It’s hard to live a world away from them. I am thankful for the technologies that keep us in close contact despite our geographical distances. I have also always been drawn toward the use of technology in education which explains why my Ph.D specialization is Educational Technology.

The motivation for my interest in Educational Technology was most likely born from my quest as a parent to see my own children more engaged, motivated and successful in school. My kids, who are both in college now, are right-brained kids who struggled to survive (and continue to struggle) in the traditional left-brained oriented classrooms. My goal is to help teachers transform teaching and learning opportunities so that they are relevant and teach students in the way that their brains are wired to learn. Technology can be a simple, yet powerful, tool that has the potential to provide more meaningful access to learning and success in the 21st century. While it is not the solution or an alternative to best instructional practices, it is a tool that teachers must utilize to connect with the children of this era. My current world is a school full of PK-6th grade children of U.S. Military personnel who are on the front lines of the war in Afghanistan. Approximately 90% of our students have a parent who has deployed within the last few months or so, so they need lots of hugs and TLC these days. These families are making huge sacrifices for our country and I consider it an honor to try to make the educational experience of these children the best that it can be.
I plan to have the month of July off and spend some time with family on the West Coast. I am looking forward to this class... hoping that I will be able to juggle family time and have reliable internet connections while I travel. I look forward to working with you all this term.

Module 5: New Technologies

Over the last few years my own teenagers’ involvement in social networking brought out the curiosity in me. I have since become an avid user of Facebook as a means to keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues around the world. As I arrived at a new school this year, I suddenly began to receive invitations to become “friends” with staff members from my school. Our interactions became social rather than work-related.
When I learned about Ning, a social networking site that can be created and designed for one’s own interests and purposes, I realized that the implications for professional development were great. I designed a Ning site specifically to provide professional development opportunities for our teachers. The site was unveiled at a faculty meeting. While the concept was welcomed with enthusiasm and interest, I am disappointed by the lack of engagement in its use.
I have begun to ask myself what I can do to motivate my staff to use this tool. The staff falls upon a continuum of novice users of technology (they do email and that’s about it) to technology guru’s who are highly competent and confident. John M. Keller has put forward a model of motivational design that has given me insight into where I may have gone wrong. According to Keller, the essential conditions of motivation are attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction which are commonly known by the acronym ARCS (Driscoll, 2005). Though I feel that I sufficiently gained the staff’s attention and highlighted the relevance of Ning to professional development, I certainly neglected to allow the opportunity for the staff to build confidence. I introduced the tool and then expected that they go try it out independently. Only a handful of teachers actually went in and tried it out. Satisfaction was not generated because they haven’t had the opportunities to learn the platform enough to generate confidence or feel its relevance. I also think that the staff did not feel a sense of urgency to use the tool. If I were to add an incentive or a requirement that using Ning would fulfill, I imagine that there would be more motivation to use it. I believe that urgency could be another component easily added to Keller’s model for motivation though Keller might include urgency under relevance.
My plan to remedy this situation is to ramp up my attempts to motivate my teachers to use Ning. Building confidence will only happen if I give teachers opportunities to use the platform in a non-threatening way. If I use the gradual release of responsibility model, I will provide them with the scaffolded support that they need until they become ready to be independent users. As they become more confident and independent, they will realize that the use of Ning is worthwhile and helpful to their job, resulting in a strong sense of satisfaction, thus leading to increased motivation to use it.
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Module 4: Connectivism

When I moved overseas 6 years ago, my opportunities for professional development became quite scarce. Due to my geographic isolation and budgetary constraints, I found myself unable to attend professional conferences as I once had while living stateside. I turned to reading books, online articles, conversations with colleagues and an occasional class offered locally or online. My learning network looked like this:



I was feeling professionally isolated until one day when I found a particularly interesting podcast online. I began to subscribe to the weekly podcast called PD to Go. This podcast was primarily about using Smart Boards in the classroom. But each hour-long podcast also included highlights and tips about cutting edge technology. During one weeklong road trip during spring break, I listened to the podcasts that had been downloaded to my iPod and I took notes about all of the sites and technologies that sounded interesting to me. When I got home, I began joining and exploring the networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Ning and others. And so, the beginning of my digital learning network began. I chose people to follow on Twitter who are knowledgeable in the area of educational technology. I joined discussion boards, blogs and wikis. Now my learning is centered on my interests and allows me to explore to find the gaps in my own knowledge. I find myself grateful for social bookmarking sites like Delicious that allow me to save bookmarks and organize them for future use. I realize that each network has the potential to take me deeper into my interest and gives me the opportunity to see perspectives that I had never even considered. I am grateful for learning about Google Reader to help keep my massive network connections organized. I have moved from a one dimensional recipient of information to an interactive participant in a multidimensional interactive world. Here is what my network has evolved into over the last few years:



I have to admit that I am probably more of a lurker than a participant in many networks where I do not have an established relationship with the participants. That is probably just characteristic of me as a person and a learner. I would normally be the kind of learner who craves the face-to-face interactions and collaborative climate of getting to know my classmates in a traditional classroom, but the tools like Skype, Google Chat, Google Docs give me that immediate interaction that I enjoy. Because of the collaborative nature of these social networking technologies, it is not difficult to find answers to questions. I am comfortable asking “friends” within my networks or searching for answers on my own using search engines and tags in blogs and wikis. Though I know that I must use Google with caution, it is still my favorite search engine for finding the answers to questions. What a different experience education is at this time in my life as compared to my undergraduate days before computers, the internet and Web 2.0 technologies.

Module 3: Collaboration

I do believe that humans have a basic instinct to interact and work as a group. One can observe children (and even adults) who do not know each other, placed in a room together, who will naturally gravitate toward each other for social interaction. It does not necessarily mean that they will work cooperatively or interact appropriately, but it illustrates that by human nature we gravitate toward one another. According to James Fowler (2005), “Human beings frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers whom they will never meet again, even when such cooperation is individually costly” (pg. 7047).
In his video Way-new Collaboration, Howard Rheingold made a strong case regarding the nature of and the natural evolution of collective knowledge in our society. With advances in technology and the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies, the internet is no longer a one-way giver of information. The flow of information and constructed knowledge has the potential to flow two ways as well as to branch out into further tributaries. In true constructivist form, the Web 2.0 user takes the information and reconstructs the knowledge by making sense of it based upon his/her own experiences. This knowledge then flows back into collaborative spaces (like social networks, wikis, blogs, etc.) and is processed and reconstructed by another user with different experiences and different perspectives. However, in that process other users who are in the network of the original user take that knowledge and reconstruct it based upon their unique perspectives. It is quite probable that the original piece of information has become transformed into an entirely new piece of knowledge with the process ready to cycle on. As George Siemens (2006) says, “The end of a process is a product. Our internet-era knowledge is no longer suitable as a product-we can continue to revise, connect, and alter indefinitely” (pg. 53).

Fowler, James H. (2005). Altruistic punishment and the origin of cooperation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(19), 7047-7049. Retrieved January 10, 2010, from Research Library. (Document ID: 836453451).

Siemens, George. (2006). Knowing knowledge. ISBN 978-1-4303-0230-8. A Creative Commons licensed version is available online at http://www.elearnspace.org/KnowingKnowledge_LowRes.pdf.