The SAMR (substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition) model and TPACK (technological pedagogical content knowledge) model can help schools as they transition to using more digital tools.
In a recent edWebinar, Michelle Luhtala, library department chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut, reviewed these models and discussed apps that can take teaching, learning and reading to the next level.
The SAMR model determines the level of technology integration of a tool: substitution, which doesn’t add value; augmentation, which adds a few features with only a little improvement; modification, which redesigns some structures; and redefinition, which allows the creation of new tasks and is the ultimate learning goal. Transformation in how educators are teaching and how students are understanding content happens in the modification and redefinition parts of the model.
MackinVIA’s Classroom allows educators to create a collection of digital content for students; build assignment around it; and share the collection, or an individual book, with the classroom. Students can also highlight text, make annotations, and save these to Google Drive.
Emerging Tech for Schools and Libraries is a free professional learning community where school librarians, teachers, and administrators can explore all the ways to integrate technology and 21st century learning into school library programs.
Chad, K., & Anderson, H. (2017). The new role of the library in teaching and learning outcomes (p. ). Higher Education Library Technology. https://doi.org/10.13140/rg.2.2.14688.89606/1
p. 4 “Modern university libraries require remote access for large numbers of concurrent users, with fewer authentication steps and more flexible digital rights management (DRM) to satisfy student demand”. They found the most frequent problem was that core reading list titles were not available to libraries as e-books.
p. 5 Overcoming the “textbook taboo”
In the US, academic software firm bepress notes that, in response to increased student textbook costs: “Educators, institutions, and even state legislators are turning their attention toward Open Educational Resources (OER)” in order to save students money while increasing engagement and retention. As a result bepress has developed its infrastructure to host and share OER within and across institutions.21 The UMass Library Open Education Initiative estimates it has saved the institution over $1.3 million since its inception in 2011. 22 Other textbook initiatives include SUNY Open Textbooks, developed by the State University of New York Libraries, which has already published 18 textbooks, and OpenStax, developed by Rice University.
p.5. sceptics about OER rapid progress still see potential in working with publishers.
Knowledge Unlatched 23 is an example of this kind of collaboration: “We believe that by working together libraries and publishers can create a sustainable route to Open Access for scholarly books.” Groups of libraries contribute to fund publication though a crowdfunding platform. The consortium pays a fixed upfront fee for the publisher to publish the book online under a Creative Commons license.
p.6.Technology: from library systems to educational technology.The rise of the library centric reading list system
big increase in the number of universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand deploying library reading lists solutions.The online reading list can be seen as a sort of course catalogue that gives the user a (sometimes week-by-week) course/module view on core resources and provides a link to print holdings information or the electronic full text. It differs significantly from the integrated library system (ILS) ‘course reserve’ module, notably by providing access to materials beyond the items in the library catalogue. Titles can be characterised, for example as ‘recommended’ or ‘essential’ reading and citations annotated.
Reading list software brings librarians and academics together into a system where they must cooperate to be effective. Indeed some librarians claim that the reading list system is a key library tool for transforming student learning.
Higher education institutions, particularly those in Australia, New Zealand and some other parts of Europe (including the UK) are more likely to operate a reading list model, supplying students with a (sometimes long) list of recommended titles.
p.8. E-book platforms (discusses only UK)
p.9. Data: library management information to learning analytics
p.10. Leadership “Strong digital leadership is a key feature of effective educational organisations and its absence can be a significant barrier to progress. The digital agenda is therefore a leadership issue”. 48 (Rebooting learning for the digital age: What next for technology-enhanced higher education? Sarah Davies, Joel Mullan, Paul Feldman. Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) Report 93. February 2017. )
A merging of LibTech and EdTech
The LITA discussion is under RE: [lita-l] Anyone Running Multiple Discovery Layers?
(1) the circumstances under which personalized learning can help students and
(2) the best way to evaluate the real educational value for products that are marketed under the personalized learning banner.
The most descriptive label we could come up with for the practices that the two of us have observed in our school visits might be undepersonalized teaching.
The most stereotypical depersonalized teaching experience is the large lecture class, but there are many other situations in which teachers do not connect with individual students and/or meet the students’ specific needs. For example, even a small class might contain students with a wide-enough range of skills, aptitudes, and needs that the teacher cannot possibly serve them all equally well. Or a student may have needs (or aptitudes) that the teacher simply doesn’t get an opportunity to see within the amount of contact time that the class allows. The truth is that students fall through the cracks all the time, even in the best classes taught by the best teachers. Failing a course is the most visible evidence, but more often students drift through the class and earn a passing grade—maybe even a good grade—without getting any lasting educational benefit.
personalized learning as a practice rather than a product
Technology then becomes an enabler for increasing meaningful personal contact. In our observations, we have seen three main technology-enabled strategies for lowering classroom barriers to one-on-one teacher/student (and student/student) interactions:
Moving content broadcast out of the classroom: Even in relatively small classes, a lot of class time can be taken up with content broadcast such as lectures and announcements. Personalized learning strategies often try to move as much broadcast out of class time as possible in order to make room for more conversation. This strategy is sometimes called “flipping” because it is commonly accomplished by having the teacher record the lectures they would normally give in class and assign the lecture videos as homework,
Turning homework time into contact time: In a traditional class, much of the work that the students do is invisible to the teacher. For some aspects, such as homework problems, teachers can observe the results but are often severely limited by time constraints.Personalized learning approaches often allow the teacher to observe the students’ work in digital products, so that there is more opportunity to coach students.
Providing tutoring: Sometimes students get stuck in problem areas that don’t require help from a skilled human instructor. Although software isn’t good at teaching everything, it can be good at teaching some things. Personalized learning approaches can offload the tutoring for those topics to adaptive learning software that gives students interactive feedback while also turning the students’ work into contact time by making it observable to the teacher at a glance through analytics.
In the business world, an analogous initiative might be called “business process redesign.” Emphasis is on process. The primary question being asked is, “What is the most effective way to accomplish the goal?” The redesigned process may well need software, but it is the process itself that matters. In personalized learning, the process we are redesigning is that of teaching individual students what they need to learn from a class as effectively as possible (though we can easily imagine applying the same kind of exercise to improving advising, course registration, or any other important function).
Self-Regulated Learning
Students in the course spend part of their class time in a computer lab, working at their own pace through an adaptive learning math program. Students who already know much of the content can move through it quickly, giving them more time to master the concepts that they have yet to learn. Students who have more to learn can take their time and get tutoring and reinforcement from the software. Teachers, now freed from the task of lecturing, roam the room and give individual attention to those students who need it. They can also see how students are doing, individually and as a class, through the software’s analytics. But the course has another critical component that takes place outside the computer lab, separate from the technology. Every week, the teachers meet with the students to discuss learning goals and strategies. Students review the goals they set the previous week, discuss their progress toward those goals, evaluate whether the strategies they used helped them, and develop new goals for the next week.
$129. Select CoSN Member or Non-member, change the “0” next to the “Symposium on Educating for Digital Citizenship ONLY” to a “1”. Click “next” and complete your registration.
CoSN and UNESCO, in partnership with the Global Education Conference, HP, ClassLink, Participate, Qatar Foundation International, Partnership for 21st Century Learning, ISTE, iEARN-USA, The Stevens Initiative at the Aspen Institute, World Savvy, Wikimedia, TakingITGlobal, Smithsonian Institute, and Project Tomorrow, are hosting this event to bring together thought leaders from across the world to explore the role of education in ensuring students are responsible digital citizens.
Internet safety has been a concern for policymakers and educators since the moment technology, particularly the Internet, was introduced to classrooms. Increasingly many school systems are evolving that focus from simply minimizing risk and blocking access, to more responsible use policies and strategies that empower the student as a digital citizen. Digital citizenship initiatives also seek to prepare students to live in a world where online hate and radicalization are all too common.
Join us for a lively and engaging exploration of what are the essential digital citizenship skills that students need, including policies and practices in response to the following questions:
How can technology be used to improve digital citizenship and to what extent is technology providing new challenges to digital citizenship?
How should we access information effectively and form good evaluate its accuracy?
How should we develop the skills to engage with others respectfully and in a sensitive and ethical manner?
How should we develop an appropriate balance between instruction and nurturing student behaviors that ensure ICT (Information and communications technology) is used safely and responsibly?
What is digital literacy? Do you know how you can foster digital literacy through formal and informal learning opportunities for your library staff and users?
Supporting digital literacy still remains an important part of library staff members’ work, but sometimes we struggle to agree on a simple, meaningful definition of the term. In this four-week eCourse, training/learning specialist Paul Signorelli begins by exploring a variety of definitions, focusing on work by a few leading proponents of the need to foster digital literacy among people of all ages and backgrounds. He explores a variety of digital-literacy resources – including case studies of how we creatively approach digital-literacy learning opportunities for library staff and users, and explores a variety of digital tools that will help to encourage further understanding of this topic.
+++++++++++++++
more on digital literacy in this IMS blog
U.S. Education Secretary spared no words in her critique of education reform efforts during the Bush and Obama administrations. “I don’t think there is much we can hold onto, from a federal level, that we can say was a real success,”
This is not the first time DeVos has praised personalized learning. The education secretary visited Thomas Russell Middle School in Milpitas, Calif
Her vision of personalized learning has plenty of detractors. Educators and administrators have already begun to voice their reservations about personalized learning in schools. At a gathering of educators in Oakland last October speakers decried what they described as the privatization of public education through the introduction of technology initiatives such as personalized learning. More recently, former AltSchool educator Paul Emerich wrote a blog post titled, “Why I Left Silicon Valley, EdTech, and ‘Personalized’ Learning,” where he offered critiques of the personalized learning movement in his school. The post touched on concerns about his workload and interactions with students.
Parents are raising pressure too. In at least two states, their concerns over screen-time and digital content used in online educational platform has forced districts to suspend the implementation of technology-enabled personalized learning programs such as Summit Learning.
De Vos pointed to previous federal-led education funding programs as a “carrot” that made little or no impact. Her critique is not unfounded: A report published last year by the Education Department’s research division found that the $7 billion School Improvement Grants program made “no significant impacts” on test scores, high school graduation rates or college enrollment.
Common Core is currently adopted in 36 states, according to EdWeek’s Common Core Tracker, last updated September 2017.
++++++++++++++++
DeVos: ‘Common Core Is Dead’; A Large Online Charter School Is Shut Down
One of the largest online charter schools in the country closed this week amid a financial and legal dispute with the state of Ohio.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in a keynote address this week to the American Enterprise Institute.
She also cited a survey by the American Federation of Teachers that 60 percent of its teachers reported having moderate to no influence over the content and skills taught in their own classrooms. That same survey also noted that 86 percent of teachers said they do not feel respected by DeVos.
The Integrated Advising and Planning for Student Success or ‘iPASS’ grant has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; it supports the transformation of advising and student services in higher ed through the redesign of structures, processes, and technologies. To date, this work is ongoing in 26 grantee institutions across the country.
created and delivered our Series on Excellence in Advising through iPASS as a semi self-paced online course to ensure the broadest access possible to all grantees.
By creating engaging 360° tours, students are not only learning these new tools for themselves but are also helping local organizations see the possibility of VR for marketing and public relations.
some key takeaways from the projects that we have seen:
Let the students lead: In all of these projects, students are taking the initiative. The institutions are providing the technology, the space, organizational vision, and in some cases, academic credit. At NYU Tandon, students organized the entire conference, doing publicity, registration, catering, and scheduling (see figure 4). They brought in a diverse group of speakers from academic, tech, and startup backgrounds. The event included TED-style spotlights, talks, workshops, and demos.
Don’t compromise on space: Brown University’s Granoff Center for the Creative Arts is designed to encourage cross-discipline collaboration. The Tandon event used the main auditorium and the flagship NYU MakerSpace. Space influences behavior and is crucial in driving collaboration and active participation. In addition, to produce VR and AR/MR experiences students need access to high-end technology and, in some cases, motion-capture studios and 360° cameras.
Create opportunities for social impact: Many of these programs are open to the local community or have been designed to have an impact outside higher education. At Emporia State, students are using VR and 360° video to help local businesses. The Gaspee Affair VR experience at Brown University will become a resource for teaching middle and high school students.
Showcase student work: So often in education, the work students do in a course is only seen by others in the same class. Like the example at Texas A&M, all of these experiences have a connection with their campus or larger community. VR and AR engender a level of excitement that gets students engaged with each other and encourage peer learning. It’s worth it to seek out opportunities to bring this work to community events.
+++++++++
more on VR in education in this IMS blog
The ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in 2018 (JCDL 2018L: https://2018.jcdl.org/) will be held in conjunction with UNT Open Access
Symposium 2018 (https://openaccess.unt.edu/symposium/2018) on June 3 – 6, 2018
in Fort Worth, Texas, the rustic and artistic threshold into the American
West. JCDL welcomes interesting submissions ranging across theories, systems,
services, and applications. We invite those managing, operating, developing,
curating, evaluating, or utilizing digital libraries broadly defined, covering
academic or public institutions, including archives, museums, and social
networks. We seek involvement of those in iSchools, as well as working in
computer or information or social sciences and technologies. Multiple tracks
and sessions will ensure tailoring to researchers, practitioners, and diverse
communities including data science/analytics, data curation/stewardship, information retrieval, human-computer interaction, hypertext (and Web/network science), multimedia, publishing, preservation, digital humanities, machine learning/AI, heritage/culture, health/medicine, policy, law, and privacy/ intellectual property.
General Instructions on submissions of full papers, short papers, posters and
demonstrations, doctoral consortium, tutorials, workshops, and panels can be
found at https://2018.jcdl.org/general_instructions. Below are the submission
deadlines:
• Jan. 15, 2018 – Tutorial and workshop proposal submissions
• Jan. 15, 2018 – Full paper and short paper submissions
• Jan. 29, 2018 – Panel, poster and demonstration submissions
• Feb. 1, 2018 – Notification of acceptance for tutorials and workshops
• Mar. 8, 2018 – Notification of acceptance for full papers, short papers,
panels, posters, and demonstrations
• Mar. 25, 2018 – Doctoral Consortium abstract submissions
• Apr. 5, 2018 – Notification of acceptance for Doctoral Consortium
• Apr. 15, 2018 – Final camera-ready deadline for full papers, short papers,
panels, posters, and demonstrations
2018 Special Focus: Education in a Time of Austerity and Social Turbulence 21–23 June 2018 University of Athens, Athens, Greece http://thelearner.com/2018-conference
Theme 8: Technologies in Learning
Technology and human values: learning through and about technology
Crossing the digital divide: access to learning in, and about, the digital world
New tools for learning: online digitally mediated learning
Virtual worlds, virtual classrooms: interactive, self-paced and autonomous learning
Ubiquitous learning: using the affordances of the new mediaDistance learning: reducing the distance
Theme 9: Literacies Learning
Defining new literacies
Languages of power: literacy’s role in social access
Instructional responses to individual differences in literacy learning
The visual and the verbal: Multiliteracies and multimodal communications
Literacy in learning: language in learning across the subject areas
The changing role of libraries in literacies learning
Languages education and second language learning
Multilingual learning for a multicultural world
The arts and design in multimodal learning
The computer, internet, and digital media: educational challenges and responses
++++++++++
PROPOSAL: Paper presentation in a Themed Session
Title
Virtual Reality and Gamification in the Educational Process: The Experience from an Academic Library
short description
VR, AR and Mixed Reality, as well as gaming and gamification are proposed as sandbox opportunity to transition from a lecture-type instruction to constructivist-based methods.
long description
The NMC New Horizon Report 2017 predicts a rapid application of Video360 in K12. Millennials are leaving college, Gen Z students are our next patrons. Higher Education needs to meet its new students on “their playground.” A collaboration by a librarian and VR specialist is testing the opportunities to apply 360 degree movies and VR in academic library orientation. The team seeks to bank on the inheriting interest of young patrons toward these technologies and their inextricable part of a rapidly becoming traditional gaming environment. A “low-end,” inexpensive and more mobile Google Cardboard solution was preferred to HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens or comparable hi-end VR, AR and mixed reality products.
The team relies on the constructivist theory of assisting students in building their knowledge in their own pace and on their own terms, rather than being lectured and/or being guided by a librarian during a traditional library orientation tour. Using inexpensive Google Cardboard goggles, students can explore a realistic set up of the actual library and familiarize themselves with its services. Students were polled on the effectiveness of such approach as well as on their inclination to entertain more comprehensive version of library orientation. Based on the lessons from this experiment, the team intends to pursue also a standardized approach to introducing VR to other campus services, thus bringing down further the cost of VR projects on campus. The project is considered a sandbox for academic instruction across campus. The same concept can be applied for [e.g., Chemistry, Physics, Biology) lab tours; for classes, which anticipate preliminary orientation process.
Following the VR orientation, the traditional students’ library instruction, usually conducted in a room, is replaced by a dynamic gamified library instruction. Students are split in groups of three and conduct a “scavenger hunt”; students use a jQuery-generated Web site on their mobile devices to advance through “hoops” of standard information literacy test. E.g., they need to walk to the Reference Desk, collect specific information and log their findings in the Web site. The idea follows the strong interest in the educational world toward gaming and gamification of the educational process. This library orientation approach applies the three principles for gamification: empowers learners; teaches problem solving and increases understanding.
Similarly to the experience with VR for library orientation, this library instruction process is used as a sandbox and has been successfully replicated by other instructors in their classes.
