Archive for November 2011

Great Lakes 1:1 Computing Conference

November 30, 2011 Nick Sauers No comments

I’m excited to be on my way to my third Great Lakes 1:1 Com­put­ing Con­fer­ence which will be held at Lake Geneva this year. The ses­sions for the past two years have been fan­tas­tic. Break­out ses­sions are gen­er­ally fairly small and personal.The con­fer­ence is small enough that it is extremely easy to net­work with other one-to-one edu­ca­tors. I met many of the experts I turn to when I have con­cerns or ques­tions about one-to-one issues at this conference.

If you are unable to attend the con­fer­ence, you can still ben­e­fit from their wiki which will con­tinue to get more robust through­out the con­fer­ence. You can also fol­low the con­ver­sa­tion with the hash­tag #gl121. I’m also going to attempt to ustream a ses­sion from 2:00–3:00 on Fri­day at this link. If ustream and band­width coop­er­ate, the ses­sion will also be avail­able to view at any time. The ses­sion will be a Q & A ses­sion with one-to-one educators.

Nick Sauers

Online learning in education

November 18, 2011 Nick Sauers No comments

A recent report that was released enti­tled Keep­ing Pace with K-12 Online Learn­ing focuses on the impact of online learn­ing around the coun­try. That report along with a 2009 Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion report are pos­si­bly the two largest as well as most cur­rent stud­ies ana­lyz­ing the impact of online learn­ing. Two find­ings jump out at me from those studies.

  1. The num­ber of stu­dents tak­ing online courses is grow­ing quickly, and it will con­tinue to do so.
  2. Stu­dent per­for­mance in online learn­ing is sim­i­lar to per­for­mance in face-to-face courses.

The first find­ing is cer­tainly not sur­pris­ing to any of you involved with edu­ca­tion. The sec­ond find­ing may actu­ally be a bit under­stated. A  2009 study from the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion that ana­lyzed a large num­ber of online learn­ing stud­ies indi­cated that classes with online learn­ing, whether com­pletely online or blended, pro­duced stronger learn­ing out­comes than classes with solely face-to-face instruc­tion. Other stud­ies have found sim­i­lar results. Cer­tainly, this doesn’t indi­cate that sim­ply cre­at­ing online courses pro­duces supe­rior results. It also doesn’t indi­cate that online learn­ing pro­duces WORSE results as many would argue. Like many forms of instruc­tion, it isn’t about the medium for deliv­ery of instruc­tion, but rather the strate­gies and method­olo­gies used for instruc­tion. I have actu­ally spo­ken with many vet­eran teach­ers who have reflected that online learn­ing has really made them think closely about their deliv­ery and ped­a­gogy. Those reflec­tions have forced them to become very delib­er­ate at cre­at­ing online envi­ron­ments with cer­tain com­po­nents that they viewed as pow­er­ful teach­ing tech­niques. In turn, they cre­ated very mean­ing­ful learn­ing environments.

The Keep­ing Pace study is cer­tainly worth tak­ing a look at. Although the report is quite long, it pro­vides a short assess­ment for each state. I’d rec­om­mended tak­ing a look at your state, and com­par­ing it to oth­ers. As a one-to-one edu­ca­tor, how are you involved with online learn­ing? Do your stu­dents par­tic­i­pate in blended learn­ing environments?

Nick Sauers

1-to-1 and Creating/Publishing Something New

November 13, 2011 Pam Livingston No comments

There is so much power and poten­tial in hav­ing every stu­dent have a dig­i­tal device avail­able for school or home use. It means hav­ing at the student’s fin­ger­tips nearly any resource for writ­ing, pub­lish­ing, research­ing, plan­ning, graph­ing, edit­ing, shar­ing, and col­lab­o­rat­ing.  It also means all these resources along with the files and work cre­ated by the stu­dent are com­pletely mobile and avail­able as needed. Teach­ers in 1-to-1 envi­ron­ments no longer need to dis­trib­ute resources and col­lect them later, and there­fore can relin­quish their roles as the sole dis­sem­i­na­tors of knowl­edge.  Noth­ing jump­starts student-centered learn­ing like 1-to-1.

Unless 1-to-1 hap­pens to be solely about hav­ing a device to fol­low along with a teacher.

There are schools where 1-to-1 is about a teacher using a pro­jec­tor and bring­ing up a work­sheet while stu­dents, using their own dig­i­tal devices, fol­low along at their own desks with their own elec­tronic copies of the work­sheets.  Where stu­dents do not have the oppor­tu­nity to explore or col­lab­o­rate but still face front in desks in rows, albeit desks with lap­tops or tablets on them.  Where teacher-centered learn­ing is auto­mated and facil­i­tated so that work­sheets aren’t handed out any­more but still are inte­gral to learn­ing.  Where stu­dents aren’t asked to be part of the plan­ning or the ideas of the school, in spite of being the stake­hold­ers with the most at stake in terms of their futures.

But there are also schools where stu­dents cre­ate some­thing new and dif­fer­ent and where teach­ers have adapted to the role of co-learner and where think­ing and projects and col­lab­o­ra­tion flourish.

It’s the nature of schools that mate­r­ial and con­tent must be learned so there is a place for dif­fer­ent deliv­ery and method­ol­ogy.  Some­times stu­dents do face front and there is whole class instruc­tion needed even in the most effec­tive and student-centered spaces.

But if 1-to-1 is totally and com­pletely, with­out excep­tion, in every learn­ing space about teacher-centered instruc­tion — is it truly worth the time, energy, and cost?

- Pam Livingston

One-to-one research brief

November 4, 2011 Nick Sauers No comments

A research brief that I co-authored with Scott McLeod was recently released as a CASTLE brief.  The brief  can be found here, and it sum­ma­rizes much of the rel­e­vant research around one-to-one. It is a fairly quick read at just over five pages. Enjoy!

Nick Sauers