New Report on Emerging Technologies
The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s
Horizon Project, a research-oriented effort that seeks to identify and
describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on
teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education.
New Study
As the use of computing and networking technologies in schools proliferates, educators increasingly incorporate online tools and resources into their curricula – some even replace traditional classroom interactions with "virtual" courses that take place entirely online.
In an effort to offer the K-12 community greater insight into the current trends in online learning, Project Tomorrow and Blackboard have teamed to deliver a new report titled "Learning in 21st Century: A National Report of Online Learning."
This 21-page report, which will be released on October 18, examines the views of online learning provided by more than 250,000 students, teachers and parents (across more than 3,000 schools nationwide) in response to the 2006 Project Tomorrow–NetDay Speak Up online surveys.
"Learning in the 21st Century" also contains interviews with administrators and teachers in six school districts which use a range of innovative online learning models, providing additional insight into the integration of online learning into curricula and the benefits experienced by teachers and students.
A sampling of key findings in the report:
* While 47% of students in grades 9–12 pursue online learning to secure courses not offered at school and 43% to work at their own pace, the top reason (42%) for students in grades 6–8 is to receive extra help
* 77% of teachers believe technology makes a difference in learning and 28% of teachers want online courses to be offered as an alternative in their district
* 42% of parents believe online classes are a good investment to improve student achievement
Click here to download Learning in the 21st Century: A National Report of Online Learning and visit www.blackboard.com/k12 to see how Blackboard is impacting K-12 education.
Full report at:
http://www.blackboard.com/K12/OnlineLearningReport
New Report
In a new report, Maximizing the Impact: The Pivotal Role of Technology in a 21st Century Education System, the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills urged renewed emphasis on technology in education.
The report urges federal, state and local policymakers and other stakeholders to take action on three fronts:
1. Use technology comprehensively to develop proficiency in 21st century skills. Knowledge of core content is necessary, but no longer sufficient, for success in a competitive world. Even if all students mastered core academic subjects, they still would be woefully underprepared to succeed in postsecondary institutions and workplaces, which increasingly value people who can use their knowledge to communicate, collaborate, analyze, create, innovate, and solve problems. Used comprehensively, technology helps students develop 21st century skills.
2. Use technology comprehensively to support innovative teaching and learning. To keep pace with a changing world, schools need to offer more rigorous, relevant and engaging opportunities for students to learn—and to apply their knowledge and skills in meaningful ways. Used comprehensively, technology supports new, research-based approaches and promising practices in teaching and learning.
3. Use technology comprehensively to create robust education support systems. To be effective in schools and classrooms, teachers and administrators need training, tools and proficiency in 21st century skills themselves. Used comprehensively, technology transforms standards and assessments, curriculum and instruction, professional development, learning environments, and administration.
The report supports the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ framework for 21st century learning, which calls for mastery of core subjects and 21st century skills. The report also highlights effective practices in states, districts and schools that are using technology to achieve results. And it provides guiding questions and action principles for policymakers and other stakeholders who are committed to maximizing the impact of technology in education.
Together, SETDA, ISTE and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills represent dozens of leading U.S. companies and organizations, six leadership states, education technology directors in all 50 states, 85,000 education technology professionals and 3.2 million educators throughout the country.
To view the full report:
2007 Report of Longitudinal Study
This 2007 ECAR research study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, and 2006 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study, which reports noticeable changes from previous years, is based on quantitative data from a spring 2007 survey and interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies these students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience.
Link to: http://connect.educause.edu/library/abstract/TheECARStudyofUnderg/45075?time=1190062919
Audio Interview (from the Chronicle of Higher Education)
Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Comparative Media Studies Program, talks about why scholars should look beyond their academic fields in their work.
New Study
Beyond Google: How do Students Conduct Academic Research? reports findings from an exploratory study about how students majoring
in humanities and social sciences use the Internet and library
resources for research. Using student discussion groups, content
analysis, and a student survey, our results suggest students may not be
as reliant on public Internet sites as previous research has reported.
Instead, students in our study used a hybrid approach for conducting
course–related research. A majority of students leveraged both online
and offline sources to overcome challenges with finding, selecting, and
evaluating resources and gauging professors’ expectations for quality
research.
The study can be found at:
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_8/head/index.html#author
New Report from The Aspen Institute
Next-Generation Media: The Global Shift examines the growth of the Internet and its effect on a rapidly changing topic: the impact of new media on politics, business, society, culture, and governments the world over. The report also sheds light on how traditional media will need to adapt to face the competition of the next generation media.
Download the report at:
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/atf/cf/%7BDEB6F227-659B-4EC8-8F84-8DF23CA704F5%7D/NEXTGENERATION.PDF
Many of the high performing online readers (7th grade) in our think aloud study, and many of the students in our formative experimental year too, appear to take what we call "a dot com strategy" to locating information. Instead of using a search engine to search for information about George Washington, for example, they simply type the topic and ".com" into the address window: www.georgewashington.com This of course, often gets them in trouble. Frequently, this takes them to a "trap site" that is used for commercial purposes and sometimes they never get out, wasting much time trying to find the information they need. The pattern is explained a bit in a recent paper, located at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dcbjhrtq_10djqrhz
Don
New Pew/Internet Report
Fully 85% of American adults use the internet or cell phones – and most use both. Many also have broadband connections, digital cameras and video game systems. Yet the proportion of adults who exploit the connectivity, the capacity for self expression, and the interactivity of modern information technology is a modest 8%.
Fully half of adults have a more distant or non-existent relationship to modern information technology. Some of this diffidence is driven by people’s concerns about information overload; some is related to people’s sense that their gadgets have more capacity than users can master; some is connected to people’s sense that things like blogging and creating home-brew videos for YouTube is not for them; and some is rooted in people’s inability to afford or their unwillingness to buy the gear that would bring them into the digital age.
These findings come from the Pew Internet Project’s typology of information and communication technology (ICT) users. The typology categorizes Americans based on the amount of ICTs they possess, how they use them, and their attitudes about the role of ICTs are in their lives. Ten separate groups emerge in the typology.
Doug, Julie, and I have been developing an informational piece about our lab. It is impressive to see all that we have accomplished together. I attach the current draft and invite revision suggestions and comments.
Don
Download the_new_literacies_research_lab_description_short.doc
NEW REPORT
Findings from the First Student Cohort
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, in
the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, has
released a major study of the effectiveness of education technology. The
report, ‘Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products:
Findings from the First Student Cohort’ which was mandated by Congress,
uses scientifically based research methods and control groups to focus on
the impact of technology on student academic achievement.
The report is available at: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20074005
New NAAL Reports Available
The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) is a nationally representative assessment of literacy among adults (age 16 and older) residing in households and prisons in the United States.
The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy and 1992 National Adult Literacy Surveys are now available at:
The Poynter Institute Eyetrak07
The Poynter Institute unveiled the initial findings of its most recent study of reader behavior of newspapers at the ASNE convention in Washington, D.C.
Information about the study can be found at:
http://eyetrack.poynter.org/
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=120458
A Research Synthesis
This review focuses on the multiple variables that impact the literacy development of adolescents, which are divided into four broad categories: development variables; social, cultural, and linguistic variables; instructional and assessment variables; and professional development variables.
The entire document can be downloaded at:
http://www.learningpt.org/pdfs/literacy/tenYears.pdf
Complete the Survey Online
As technology resources, practices, and assessments change over time, it is necessary to review and refresh the standards. Within an evolving learning landscape, a connected global community, and a context of emerging technologies, ongoing renewal activities are essential.
The ISTE National Educational Technology Standards for Students were released in June 1998, were originally created for use within the United States. Over time, the standards have received acceptance and widespread use across the United States and in many other countries. As ISTE refreshes the standards, originally created in 1997, we wish to gather input from people within the United States as well as colleagues from around the world.
The collective wisdom of the worldwide educational technology community is necessary to help ISTE maintain the standards and associated resources as fresh and meaningful guides for leadership and innovation in the use of technology. We hope you will choose to participate in the NETS•S Refresh initiative by completing the attached NETS Refresh survey.
You can complete the survey to add your voice and expertise to the NETS•S Refresh initiative: http://surveymonkey.com/
New Emerging Technologies Report
Collaboration in K-12 Schools: Anywhere, Anytime, Any Way is the fifth CoSN Emerging Technologies Report. Based
upon extensive research and interviews with educators, administrators, and industry experts, the report explores the
implications, technologies, costs, and current implementations of the digital tools that make collaboration—regardless of
location and time—possible for groups of teachers, administrators, and students. The
report will be available for purchase through CoSN's online Catalog in late summer 2006.
The executive summary is located at:
http://www.cosn.org/resources/emerging_technologies/collaboration.cfm
ACCESS Distance Learning (Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, and
Students Statewide) is an education initiative of the Alabama
Department of Education. It provides opportunities and options for
Alabama public high school students to engage in Advanced Placement
(AP), elective, and other courses to which they may not otherwise have
access.
More information at: http://accessdl.state.al.us/
Click on the courses tab and look at what they are offering for online courses for high school students.
Technology Counts 2006—the ninth edition of Education Week’s
annual report on educational technology—examines how technology and
education policies are evolving to support the use of data to improve
student achievement.
Additional reports can be found at:
http://www2.edweek.org/rc/articles/2004/10/15/tc-archive.html
Feature Article in Scientific American
New systems may allow people to record everything they see and
hear--and even things they cannot sense--and to store all these data in
a personal digital archive.
GORDON BELL, pictured above and one of the article's authors, launched a research project aimed at creating a digital archive of all his interactions with the world. Bell's digital memories include documents from his long career in the computer industry, all the photographs he takes and conversations he records, every Web site he visits, and every e-mail he sends and receives. Some of the actual screen shots from Bell's archive are incorporated in this image.
To read more, link to Scientific American online.
Valuable Online Resource
The major aim of the Scientific Commons project is to develop the world’s largest communication medium for scientific knowledge products which is freely accessible to the public. A key challenge of the project is to support the rapidly growing number of movements and archives who admit the free distribution and access to scientific knowledge. These are the valuable sources for the ScientificCommons.org project. The ScientificCommons.org project makes it possible to access the largely distributed sources with their vast amount of scientific publications via just one common interface. ScientificCommons.org identifies authors from all archives and makes their social and professional relationships transparent and visible to anyone across disciplinary, institutional and technological boundaries. Currently ScientificCommons.org has indexed about 13 million scientific publications and successfully extracted 6 million authors out of this data.
