Session Title: Measuring Learning Outcomes of New Library Initiatives Coordinator: Professor Plamen Miltenoff, Ph.D., MLIS, St. Cloud State University, USA Contact: pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu Scope & rationale: The advent of new technologies, such as virtual/augmented/mixed reality, and new pedagogical concepts, such as gaming and gamification, steers academic libraries in uncharted territories. There is not yet sufficiently compiled research and, respectively, proof to justify financial and workforce investment in such endeavors. On the other hand, dwindling resources for education presses administration to demand justification for new endeavors. As it has been established already, technology does not teach; teachers do; a growing body of literature questions the impact of educational technology on educational outcomes. This session seeks to bring together presentations and discussion, both qualitative and quantitative research, related to new pedagogical and technological endeavors in academic libraries as part of education on campus. By experimenting with new technologies such as Video 360 degrees and new pedagogical approaches such as gaming and gamification, does the library improve learning? By experimenting with new technologies and pedagogical approaches, does the library help campus faculty to adopt these methods and improve their teaching? How can results be measured, demonstrated?
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.
Over the past year, interest in eXtended reality (XR) technologies (such as virtual, augmented, immersive, and mixed reality) has surged. New and more affordable XR technologies, along with voice activation and sophisticated visual display walls, provide promising directions and opportunities to immerse learners in the curriculum, offering deeper and more vivid learning experiences and extending the learning environment. But what’s the curricular reality with respect to these technologies? What is hype and what is substance? Specifically:
What practical applications do “XR technologies” have for teaching, learning, and research?
How are these technologies being applied to engage learners as consumers and creators of XR experiences?
What evidence is there to support XR technologies as effective tools in the learning environment?
How can these technologies be integrated into learning spaces?
What are the ethical questions we should consider as we explore XR?
the power of storytelling. Which allows brands to be more memorable and build more meaningful connections with the audience.
Every business website has an “About” page. Most businesses fill this page with boring stats and statements when they should be using it to tell their story.
According to a case study by HBR, making an emotional connection with your audience is much more important than customer satisfaction.
Getting your customers to share their own stories, also known as brand-driven storytelling, is a powerful approach that can increase your authority and brand awareness at the same time.
Basically, my response to ed tech is “It depends.” And one key consideration on which it depends is the reason given for supporting it.
ads in education periodicals, booths at conferences, and advocacy organizations are selling not only specific kinds of software but the whole idea that ed tech is de rigueur for any school that doesn’t want to risk being tagged as “twentieth century.”
Other people, particularly politicians, defend technology on the grounds that it will keep our students “competitive in the global economy.” This catch-all justification has been invoked to support other dubious policies, including highly prescriptive, one-size-fits-all national curriculum standards. It’s based on two premises: that decisions about children’s learning should be driven by economic considerations, and that people in other countries should be seen primarily as rivals to be defeated.
But the rationale that I find most disturbing—despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s rarely made explicit—is the idea that technology will increase our efficiency…at teaching the same way that children have been taught for a very long time.
a deeper question: “What kinds of learning should be taking place in those schools?” If we favor an approach by which students actively construct meaning, an interactive process that involves a deep understanding of ideas and emerges from the interests and questions of the learners themselves, well, then we’d be open to the kinds of technology that truly support this kind of inquiry. Show me something that helps kids create, design, produce, construct—and I’m on board. Show me something that helps them make things collaboratively (rather than just on their own), and I’m even more interested—although it’s important to keep in mind that meaningful learning never requires technology, so even here we should object whenever we’re told that software (or a device with a screen) is essential.
more worrisome are the variants of ed tech that deal with grades and tests, making them even more destructive than they already are: putting grades online (thereby increasing their salience and their damaging effects), using computers to administer tests and score essays, and setting up “embedded” assessment that’s marketed as “competency-based.”
we shouldn’t confuse personalized learning with personal learning. The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. The second involves working with each student to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests, and it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well.
a recent review found that studies of tech-based personalized instruction “show mixed results ranging from modest impacts to no impact” – despite the fact that it’s remarkably expensive. In fact, ed tech of various kinds has made headlines lately for reasons that can’t be welcome to its proponents. According to an article in Education Week, “a host of national and regional surveys suggest that teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning.” Last fall, meanwhile, OECD reportednegative outcomes when students spent a lot of time using computers, while Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes
Ed tech is increasingly making its way even into classrooms for young children. And the federal government is pushing this stuff unreservedly: Check out the U.S. Office of Education Technology’s 2016 plan recommending greater use of “embedded” assessment, which “includes ongoing gathering and sharing of data,” plus, in a development that seems inevitable in retrospect, a tech-based program to foster a “growth mindset” in children. There’s much more in that plan, too—virtually all of it, as blogger Emily Talmage points out, uncannily aligned with the wish list of the Digital Learning Council, a group consisting largely of conservative advocacy groups and foundations, and corporations with a financial interest in promoting ed tech.