Category: Digital Learning Design

Navigation North Project Earns 2017 Gold MUSE Award

Post author By North Navigation
Post date May 15, 2017

The Smithsonian Learning Lab was launched last year as a result of the partnership between The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access in Washington, D.C. and educational technology agency Navigation North. Last week, the project was awarded a 2017 Gold MUSE Award for Education & Outreach from the American Alliance of Museums.

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Joe Hobson and Brian Ausland of Navigation North spearheaded prototyping initiatives with educators determining how best to leverage digital resources in classrooms, leading to the team’s extensive user testing and post-launch research released last month.

The Smithsonian Learning Lab has received several recognitions over its inaugural year, including Top 10 Tech of 2016 by School Library Journal and Best EdTech of 2016 by Common Sense Education. Over 2 million digitized museum resources are currently available online, with thousands more are being added every week.

Learn more about the project here.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Company News Digital Learning Design Education Educational Partnerships Industry Open Educational Resources

Leading OER Resource Research Partnership: Smithsonian Learning Lab

Post author By North Navigation
Post date April 24, 2017

For over five years the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access (SCLDA) has been researching, building, and improving the Smithsonian Learning Lab for educators. But now it is time to hear from the students!

We at Navigation North are proud to be a partner in this exciting venture which brings digitized collections from Smithsonian’s 19 museums, 9 research centers, and the National Zoo into classrooms across the country.

And new resources are being added every day!

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As it currently exists, the Learning Lab was created with input from a variety of classroom teachers. Our leadership team partnered with Smithsonian staff to lead prototyping, along with providing recommendations for metadata and resources structuring.

Not only do we love teacher input on tools we develop for the classroom, but students also need to be heard!

Navigation North VP and Director of Education, Brian Ausland, leading an in-class session with students.

In 2015, SCLDA launched a research project, Understanding the Needs of Student Users of Digital Smithsonian Resources. The goal of this research was to provide additional insight into how digital systems, tools, and content can better align with the needs of student learners.

Last week, members of the SCLDA project team presented an overview of this research at the Museums and the Web Conference in Cleveland, Ohio. The findings from this research are also available on the Learning Lab blog here.

[irp posts=”7638″ name=”Prepare Your Students For Digital Assessments By Using Free Online Resources”]

If you have questions about how to leverage Open Education Resources (OER) or are contemplating a partner for your next EdTech research project, feel free to reach out to our team.

We don’t byte! ;)[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Digital Learning Design Education Open Educational Resources

4 Reasons Students Love The Smithsonian Learning Lab

Post author By North Navigation
Post date January 11, 2017

The Smithsonian Learning Lab was created to connect students to over 2 million digital resources available from 19 Smithsonian museums and the Smithsonian National Zoo. Partnered with this is the adoption of new state and federal policies calling for curricula to include digital materials and resources, including open education resources.

But let’s not focus on the stuffy adult whatnot. There are fun and interactive ways students of all ages can enjoy learning with the Smithsonian Learning Lab! Students who don’t have financial or geographical access to Smithsonian resources can now replace a field trip with digital experiences.

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1. Collections Are More Fun Than “Sit and Get”

Students can save, sort, edit and recall resources from the search function, creating their own collections. Building collections allows kids to learn based on their interests and can challenge them to make connections between disparate resources.

If students find interesting items outside of the Learning Lab, they can also add non-Smithsonian resources from any web link.

Famous Pharaohs Collection

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2. Personalized Learning

The new Sorting Activity Tool allows students to arrange items in a linear order or group items into buckets. This example asks participants to sort presidents by the year they were in office. Students find these activities more engaging than dull instructional alternatives.

The Last 100 Years, In Order

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3. The Variety Of Resources To Engage Students

From space exploration to insects, from old books to ruby slippers; there are over a million unique resources for students to explore.

Smithsonian Insect Resources

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[irp posts=”6679″ name=”How Is Navigation North Different From Other EdTech Companies?”]

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4. This Is Not Yesterday’s Technology

The Learning Lab is continuously being improved with features added. New 3D objects allow students to move resources as if interacting with the physical items!

Abraham Lincoln 3D Mask

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Check out the Smithsonian Learning Lab today! Click here to read about Navigation North’s support and to view press and features of the project.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Digital Learning Design Education Educational Partnerships Open Educational Resources

6 Reasons Teachers Love The Smithsonian Learning Lab

Post author By North Navigation
Post date December 16, 2016

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The Smithsonian Learning Lab provides an online toolkit for teachers to discover Smithsonian’s digital resources and create personalized learning experiences for themselves and others.

Educators can visually explore more than 2 million resources from across the Smithsonian, so it’s easy to find something of interest. The website’s tools enable users to easily organize and customize the resources to make them their own.

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As teachers share their work with others – whether it’s one person, an entire classroom, or the world – the Learning Lab becomes an ever-richer source of knowledge and ideas and a more collaborative community.

Here are six reasons teachers love using the Smithsonian Learning Lab!

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1. Bring millions of Smithsonian resources to your students.

Teachers can help students engage in deep examination of an image by using image annotation. Describe details and highlight notable information from your lesson.

Minimize resource information to just what your students need to know by adding an item to your collection, selecting the information panel, and clicking the description to edit to your liking.

The Hotspot Tool allows you to pinpoint areas on an image or document and provide further information.

2. Digital resources from across Smithsonian in a variety of media formats.

There are now over 2 million digitized resources with new ones being added constantly, including 3D scans which are available for download. Read more about Smithsonian digitalization efforts.

No one is limited to only Smithsonian resources. You can also add resources from your own website, a YouTube video, or any document into your collection for student review.

Check out this 3D replica of Abraham Lincoln.

3. Bring collections to where your students are.

Likewise, instructors can find items from the Smithsonian collection and embed them where learners already like to connect, be that a class website, Google Classroom, Moodle, or other tools.

Embed codes are easily found in the options of the Share button.

This is a collection about the Apollo 11 crew:

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4. Teachers build collections, share resources and expand the Learning Lab.

There are a wealth of resources and activities to introduce students of all ages to the Smithsonian Learning Lab, including over 1,400 collections shared by users and the Smithsonian Staff.

5. Adapting collections for instructor needs is easy.

Using another teacher’s resources for your own is great, but adaptation is even better! If you like a collection another instructor has created, but want to add items such as a quiz, that’s no problem. You can also update the language used to better speak to your own students.

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6. Test Subject-area knowledge and encourage critical thinking.

Assignments and quizzes are a great way to track student engagement with the content you’ve created.

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For more detailed information on getting started with the Learning Lab, click here.

Don’t wait, explore the Smithsonian Learning Lab today!

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Interested in how Navigation North helped develop this educational technology tool?

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Activities Company News Digital Learning Design Education Innovative Instruction Open Educational Resources

Recognition For Research: Navigation North Keeps Development Connected To The Classroom

Post author By North Navigation
Post date November 18, 2016

Navigation North is proud to receive recognition for the research-based work we have conducted with our colleagues at the Smithsonian in developing and shaping the Smithsonian Learning Lab. Digital Promise convened experts at Teachers College, Columbia University to review and selected one exemplary company and two honorable mentions in each category. EdSurge reported on the findings, identifying Smithsonian Learning Lab for its work with extensive nation-wide teacher testing and prototyping to inform development and design.

While many teams lean heavily on marketing trends reports or committees of experts to understand classroom needs, we have found the need to balance those types of approaches with regular work directly in classrooms with teachers and students. Here is a recent snapshot of this work around digital tools and resources designed specifically for teenage learners.

Working in coordination with the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access (SCLDA) researchers, Navigation North examined strategies, processes, and tools that engage students and promote deep, sustained inquiry.

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Persistent scaffolding and questions, student notation and annotation of resources, visual indicators of student progress, and peer to peer collaboration, were a handful of the elements we observed as generated from both a survey of over 120 pieces of contemporary literature and studies on teen-use of digital learning tools and systems, and an inventory of the features contained within the top 10 predominant learning management systems and social media platforms actively used by teens across the U.S.

Distilling this information down allowed the Navigation North team to create a specific testing regimen using the Smithsonian Learning Lab as the primary environment for organization and distribution of learning resources and content for the student-testers.

All information collected is being organized into a report coming out soon as part of a Smithsonian Youth Access Grant in which Navigation North is contracted to lead and complete as part of their ongoing work as the lead design and developer of the Smithsonian Learning Lab.

[irp posts=”6679″ name=”How Is Navigation North Different From Other EdTech Companies?”]

As is usually the case, students delighted us with their intuition, instinctive aptitude for exploration and discovery, and direct feedback on what worked and what did not:

“I like all the information connected to what I’m looking at so I can add my own notes to understand later.”

“I prefer to have a way to type up what I am finding or even what I don’t fully understand when looking at the online videos. Then I can check that against what I’m reading later in the lesson.”

“If I could take what I typed directly on the picture and then use that in my answers on the test at the end, that would be what I would change.”

“I was hoping to find more information on light sabres… I mean, come on man.”

One activity had students selecting contemporary applications for some of Emerson and Thoreau’s quotes, so it was fitting when we saw one student select the following Thoreau adage, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

[irp posts=”6239″ name=”The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same”]

Whenever we go into the classroom, we always see more. A big THANK YOU goes out to the teachers who opened their classrooms to us and our colleagues from the Smithsonian, and the willingness of the students to expose their thinking, their processes, and candid feedback so we may learn from them.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Company News Digital Learning Design

Navigation North Launches New Website

Post author By North Navigation
Post date November 17, 2016

Our team is pleased to announce the launch of our newly re-designed website!

Some of the concepts we incorporated in our new site, which can also benefit our clients:

Clean, modern aesthetic with easy to use navigation
Promote user journeys through prioritizing relevant content
Proper naming conventions and use of “alt” and “title” tags throughout
Responsive design providing a positive user experience on any device
Use of attention-grabbing call to action (CTA)
Site structure which Google recognizes easily and encourages
Portfolio items acting as mini case studies
A blog promoting both company and industry insights
Easy-to-find contact information for both our Chico and Minneapolis office
Several places to engage users through social network connecting and sharing

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While browsing around, be sure to check out our solutions and the work we’ve completed for our valued clients.

[irp posts=”6618″ name=”Our Team Welcomes Chris Bordeaux as Director of Creative Services”]

Enjoy![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Communities of Practice Digital Learning Design Education Educational Partnerships Innovative Instruction Open Educational Resources

Where Exquisite Summer Content Begins to Bloom

Post author By North Navigation
Post date June 28, 2016

The seeds all looked more or less the same as did the work to plant them. Now there are tomatoes, wildflowers, peppers, sunflowers, and corn well on its way. A convergence of exquisite and diverse flora from a common environment of soil and water, experience and effort.

We have been involved in some interesting conversations around what’s working for schools and districts and what’s not. As of right now, we can’t share much more than that however we will offer this. Its always amazing how clear and strong and impassioned the voices become when you start to hear from those close to classrooms who are introducing real solutions. Too often we end up engaged with teams so far outside of that reality that different types of clarity, strength, and passion dominate the conversation. In those instances, people are clearest about their titles, personal opinions run strong, and passion most-readily mirrors profitability.

But this week has been different and refreshing as a garden of sorts suddenly began to take bloom from last year’s efforts.

[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][irp posts=”6848″ name=”6 Reasons Teachers Love The Smithsonian Learning Lab”]

Smithsonian Goes Full In

At the nation’s largest EdTech Conference this week, ISTE 2016…we have the satisfaction of watching the database of users quickly close on 5,000 on only the second day of the Smithsonian team’s official launch of the Learning Lab. We look forward to seeing what teachers create when given specially designed access to over a million resources with features specifically for them and the learners they support all over the world. A year of tediously milling over research findings, design schemes, mockups, and UX flowcharts along with the requisite meetings, testing, UI interpretations…finally our latest system breaks soil and begins to sprout.

Here’s what media outlets are saying about it:

The online toolkit allows users to both find and create collections for their lessons by drawing from teaching materials and digitized Smithsonian objects via the “Discover,” “Create” and “Share” tools. (Article) –Education Week

With many teachers emphasizing real-world applications to their lessons, the Smithsonian’s free collection represents a massive database of potential course content and artifacts. (Article) – Education Dive

Molte di queste caratteristiche dei siti sono pensate per rispondere alle necessità di insegnare di insegnanti e di studenti in classi fino ai 12 anni, nell’educazione di più alto livello e in altri ambienti di apprendimento misto. (Article) –Archeomatica

Teachers Design Exquisite Content

While involved in some current research, we overheard this statement during an interview on transitioning from textbooks, “In some real ways, the proliferation of streaming media has provided consumers access to more diverse and exquisite content…teachers and students deserve no less in the classroom.”

Just a few days later, we set about publishing this year’s teacher-developed curricular projects for one of the online programs we support. In reflecting on what we saw, the term exquisite content came to mind over and over again.

One of the activities engages students in deep analyses of immigration through the lens of attitudes, facilities, laws, and induction processes as compared across various eras in America’s history.
Another project asks students to examine the concept of identity through the perspective of personal narrative, social and consumer media, genetics and biology, and culture.
With another team, the work of a Music Production teacher, an English teacher, and a Special Education instructor who shrugged off the traditional, departmentalized disciplinary construct, came together to create an integrated unit where students with special needs work side by side with their peers to create stories based on mutual challenges all students face in life and at school in the form of produced radio broadcasts, professionally mixed and edited and published to NPR.
In yet another, learners use engineering design software combined with plant and soil science and combine it with the study of psychological effects of trauma and PTSD through personal accounts of war to create a local “Healing Garden” for returning veterans and their families in a partnership with local VA services agencies.

The list goes on and on… exquisite all.

[irp posts=”6790″ name=”California’s Blended PD/Curriculum Project Works To Explain Growing Popularity In Other States”]

And now as we watch the number of teacher-authored Learning Collections begin to grow right alongside Smithsonian specialists’ created collections, we get to witness how the new platform will help the Smithsonian realize the formation of a new, authentic, global learning community where teachers’ creativity and learners’ imagination can flourish far beyond the walls of the 19 museums.

Other great Learning Collections

Where there was once soil and sand, there now blooms exquisite content…feel free to wander in and pick what you like.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Digital Learning Design Education Educational Leadership School System Reform

The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same

Post author By North Navigation
Post date May 20, 2016

The phrase was coined by French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Aside from writing a number of novels and serving as the editor of Le Figaro, he was a former teacher, known for his keenly satirical tone and bitter wit, and loved educational reform and going fishing. Go figure.

I was recently sent a folder of instructional documents that I had collected in 1997 by a former colleague. He found them for me on an old computer. Looking through materials I had created or assembled then as a young teacher was an experience similar to stumbling upon an old yearbook, or maybe reminiscing over a series of letters between friends from long ago.

Along with instructional materials, there were items that I don’t recall having or reviewing; A link to a teacher community on GeoCities, a Lord of the Flies “cyber-guide” from a teacher in San Diego, various articles. I also found instructions that lead my students in creating their own Hot Mail accounts (they, nor I, had email accounts provided through the school back then). In those instructions, there was even a note to myself warning me to write out www.hotmail.com on the board next time so they didn’t accidentally put in www.hotmale.com instead. Lesson learned.

There was also photocopied chapters from the recently published book Learn & Live that I had ordered from the glef.org site (now Edutopia). It looks like I had made handouts to give to my colleagues, I’m sure, at an upcoming staff meeting. And on one particular photocopy, I had highlighted an excerpt that read,

“With the growing number of computer networks, teachers are able to connect with others from around the world and access information globally…work together to research and develop curriculum…These teachers report that they no longer feel isolated in their classrooms and enjoy their jobs more.”

I had notated in the margins, connect with other teachers online and share our best lessons.

At that time, I was the only full-time English teacher at our little high school of 235 students. My “English Department” was just me and two other teachers who both split duties between English and History classes to round out their positions. And in looking for more curricular models for my own classroom, I had marveled at how teachers in other parts of the United States were starting to develop lessons and projects online, not as html-published word documents or pdf-based lessons written to other teachers like those I had used in college from the ERIC database…but as full websites for their own students to engage and use to guide their classroom activities. You could actually get a more comprehensive sense of their instructional thinking, their tone, where they stepped up support, slowed down the instructional pacing, went deep, moved fast, etc…So I gave it a try with my own unit on Animal Farm.

Of the activities and projects for each chapter I had designed, and the vocabulary lists I had tied to merriam-webster.com, (Check it out but beware of potentially seizure inducing animated gifs) I will never forget getting an email from an 8th grade teacher in New Jersey who sent me a grainy realPlayer video of her students signing their made-up Animal Farm National Anthem based on one of my activities and thanked me for posting the project.

So thanks for taking that walk with me down memory lane, but in the “bitter wit” spirit of Alphonse Karr, and his famous adage, I will share the real reason I’ve included this montage.

A kid, that might or might not live in my home, came home last week and said, “Animal Farm is so ridiculously stupid.” Those are fighting words to a former English teacher. But upon a bit of calm inquiry, I started to see the reason.

“Ok, how did your teacher introduce the story?”
“Did you get any background on George Orwell or the political environment of Europe at the time this was published?”
“Are you clear on why this is considered an allegory and how it relates to the Russian Revolution?”

He responded, that they were given 4 worksheets and were told to watch a short video on the Russian Revolution and to take notes on these “study-guides” and then review at home before starting the novel. “Then the next day, we started reading the book in class…and it has talking animals.” In looking at the “worksheets / study-guides” I found 3 typed (as in type-writer…pre-word processor) photocopied lists of historical characters and a correlation sheet (shown) photocopied from a 1991 workbook.

And that is why I made some inquiries to see if someone could dig up my old materials on an old off-line server for Animal Farm. A few days later, I sat a young man down at the dining table and said, “Give me 10 minutes, and I will make the remaining 7 chapters of your book somewhat comprehensible if not maybe even palatable.” We discussed Orwell’s tumultuous life, idealistic view of Communism, his time in Spain embedded with communist rebel forces during their civil war, his growing concern with fascism and how communism was potentially being used to forge even more totalitarian regimes across Europe…we went over the 3 pyramids of political transition that framed Russia’s move from Czar Nicholas II to Stalin that an incredible History teacher helped create for me to use. How Orwell’s novella was originally rejected by publishers who feared it would upset the delicate alliance between the UK, US, and the newly formed Soviet Union. As my 10 minutes wrapped up he said, “So Squealer IS the newspaper Pravda…and Snowball IS Trotsky, because he was part of the animal movement, but now he’s gone and its easy for the pigs to blame him for everything going wrong, and is probably actually dead, but they aren’t going to say that, because then they can’t blame him for everything and….ok, ok, this makes more sense now.”

[irp]

Looking back at another item in that old folder of materials, there was also an article by Linda Darling-Hammond from 1999, which holds the following concern regarding the need for teachers to network and share strong instructional practice and the growing promise of technology to serve as a vehicle to enable that process:

“After entry, teachers are typically expected to know everything they will need for a career, or to learn through occasional workshops mostly on their own, with few structured opportunities to observe and analyze teaching with others. As one high school teacher who had spent twenty-five years in the classroom once told me: “I have taught 20,000 classes; I have been ‘evaluated’ thirty times; but I have never seen another teacher teach.”

The article frame out the hope that the new millennium and ensuing decade (the 2000’s) would enable vast sharing of exemplary curriculum. I was ignited with this notion, and had no way of knowing that I would be invited within the next year to join a statewide team doing precisely this work. I have since worked in many capacities on the very notation I scribbled 19 years ago on an article about, “connecting with other teachers online….and sharing our best lessons.” That was a long time ago. Yet here, today, among the files in this old folder, I saw at the top of one of my “political pyramid” handouts for students the heading question of The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same?

[irp]

And given the perspective of almost 20 years now, and all the change that has occurred in that time with technology and with education…I reflect on the fact that teaching a classic novel such as Animal Farm, that has to have been done by so many teachers in so many ways, with such creativity and flair still eludes many. How many times have skilled educators in classrooms all across the United States honed versions of activities related to this story that help kids unlock the meaning and the application of the themes, that can then be extended into other disciplines, and used to stimulate thinking about propaganda and power and representation and information, and can be applied to any number of contemporary events, in ways that have even the most marginalized youth attentive and engaged? Yet here we are in 2016, and a student is given a stack of 25 year old photocopied handouts as part of an Honors English Class, in a shiny nice suburban high school, with far more instructional options and resources than most…and I think the answer to Mr. Alphonse Karr’s satirical assertion, The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same, is quite clear, at least in the field of education.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Communities of Practice Digital Learning Design Education Innovative Instruction Open Educational Resources Professional Development

Transforming Rich OER Into Instructional Music Will Take More Than a Kazoo

Post author By North Navigation
Post date April 13, 2016

By rip (originally posted to Flickr as Al 'Kazoo' Doyle) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

OER sometimes looks like millions of random musical notes at its most granular level. They can be organized in many different ways by different practitioners to create entirely different songs…and at times, some projects choose to do a bit of assembly and organize the notes into certain kinds of songs or sheets of pre-constructed music to lend more structure and focus. I find this diverse ecology of growing, available, unstructured to fully-structured OER incredibly valuable to an education system starting to finally legitimize its practitioners as important curators of curriculum and not just distributors of selected textbooks, worksheets, and test prep. activities.

It is absolutely wonderful to observe skilled educators taking seemingly disparate resources and through a deep understanding of their learners’ needs and a sense of how to blend traditional materials with new content, create a tapestry of harmonious learning activities and experiences. I marvel at how they weave in moments of reflection, connect to prior knowledge, and push for extended application through use, inspection, and analyses of resources sometimes designed for learning, oftentimes not.

I liken highly-effective teachers to talented musicians. There is a place for the notes, and the sheet music…but in the end, the actual music is a product of the musician’s interpretation. And most musicians use any number of instruments by which to organize those notes into melody. The instrument is what they use to sequence, and deliver the notes as interpreted by their own intonation and emphasis, moving quickly through some sections, while lingering with long and focused intent on others.

Consider this selection by Miles Davis entitled So What.

With some focus and effort, we are doing a better job in Ed Tech of getting more notes, more scores, and more sheet music accessible to more educators. And this was and is a big, initial piece of work that needs to be continued as more and more education-funded resource development initiatives embrace the value of sharing the derivatives of their work, more teacher teams are given the opportunity to author materials, and the growing efforts of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) result in shared, rich, digital repositories released for formal and informal learning use. As innovation goes however, crossing one threshold often brings the innovators to the next series of big challenges. One such emerging challenge is providing the right instruments by which teachers are asked to organize new resources into instructional music for their learners. To date, by and large, the digital learning industry has provided educators the equivalent of a Kazoo. Imagine that piece above with Miles Davis lips pursed around a Kazoo. We know that it can certainly produce a sound and even given notes. But given the limited sophistication of this instrument, there is no way it will adequately reflect the complexity and layers of music capable of any musician, let alone our most talented artists.

[irp]

This week I received 3 separate announcements about projects that have done an incredible job integrating diverse resource repositories and now want to showcase some of their new instruments for “creating instruction” or “blended curriculum”. These are all projects in the national spotlight and have significant funding and traction. In addition to sharing extensive OER repositories, they’ve all adopted variations on the “content playlist” solutions that’s been so popular with eLearning designers since iTunesU and Gooru Learning created some initial approaches to this archetype borrowed heavily from common media playlists underpinning iTunes and YouTube. But as Victoria University’s then Vice Chancellor Lindsay Tanner cautioned about the state of eLearning in 2011 when addressing fellow university leaders across Australia,

While we’ve made great progress in eLearning, there’s been an awful lot about ‘e’ and not much about ‘learning’. Plenty of tech, very little ped(agogy)…we need to do better.

Have we done better in the last 5 years since 2011?

Researcher Stephen Downes, through years of contributions to this field, refers regularly to a transition from static technology – which allows central agencies to document, store, and organize learning content – to haptic technology meant to support collaborative, interactive, and creative learning experiences. Just this last year, no less than 11 entire state platforms have either been introduced or gone through massive redesigns along with digital curriculum collection and sharing systems created by SBAC and PARCC at the cost of tens of millions of dollars per project. Some have integrated playlist-like resource organizers, but most still move educators through a series of grade level or standards browsing manipulations only to deliver them to a static series of pdf-based lesson plans. Regardless, teachers need a way to create relationships between seemingly disparate resources for their learners much like a musician blends notes and alters pacing. Teachers can not readily inject connective annotations, direct a learner’s focus to specific elements of a resource to help scaffold from micro to macro concepts, draw up parallels relating to contemporary issues, engage in constructivist activities while embedding social, reflective exercises to help the learner monitor personal progress and relate to how others are experiencing the information and formulating responses. That would be music. But sadly, we seem to still be handing out kazoos, and what they produce is vaguely recognizable as such.

[irp]

We have been working on prototyping some new instruments. The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access invited us to assist in some new research on this topic as an extension of their 2-year Carnegie research project. As such, we are engaged in a deep examination of existing literature on digital learning environments and tools with a particular focus on what works for kids. We are also extending our analysis to compare popular online learning systems with everyday social media tools that seem to intrigue youth-users in creating content, looking up information, and generally engaging their peers beyond mitigated learning exchanges. So if you happen to get an invite from one of us to join Kik, Instagram, Snapchat, or Whisper, now you’ll know why. We hope to distill this research down to some common principles and features and then vet it with in-class observations and student interviews across diverse communities and school sites. Stay tuned…an until then, enjoy a sweet kazoo version of Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Communities of Practice Company News Digital Learning Design Education Educational Leadership School System Reform

We Snuck A Teacher Into SXSW.Edu This Year

Post author By North Navigation
Post date March 11, 2016

We were only two hours in, yet Sarah and I had already hustled through the exhibitor floor, meandered in the Playground, created LED-light up clouds in a Makers Space session, and caught half a panel discussion on Competency-Based assessment. Now on the hunt for coffee, my 4th grade teacher companion, sporting a Canvas LMS tattoo sleeve, and Kahoot stickers proclaimed, “Wow, this is so different than any other conference.”

That caught my attention. “How so?” I asked. “We haven’t even really been here that long.” Without hesitation she exclaimed, “Everyone here seems so incredibly happy and optimistic about all of this stuff.” …then put a lid on small to-go cup.

“Hmmm, ok.” I responded. As we headed off to our next thing she abruptly stopped and turned to me. “Are there any teachers here, I mean really? ”

I assured her, “Well, it seems like there are more here than I’ve seen in the past. Do you think there should be more?” She pondered, “I’m not sure.” as we showed up late to a session on Mindfulness. “Actually, Yes. Although a bunch of teachers might bring a bit more reality to the scene than many here are looking for.”

The best way to predict the future is to make it.

The next day we sat and listened to futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal during her keynote, make a case for shaping the future. Five years from its inception, I wondered if SXSW.edu had taken steps to make a future where a teacher felt as if this was an education conference largely not attended by educators, or if in not planning, it had inadvertently become that. However, the “Signals of Change” that Ms. McGonigal alluded to during her address felt present this year. And in a message about understanding trends and projecting where they might potentially take us, there was a sense of collective I hadn’t felt in the past here, where potential solutions to problems should be the work of many, not just a few.

In years past, it seemed that key persons and groups used SXSW.edu as a platform to boldly propose a future where technology (specifically, their technology) would inevitably solve all of education’s problems: Give us enough funding and enough data, and we will match it with enough venture capital bravado and programmers and young MBA’s in a newly opened, hip office in a dilapidated urban neighborhood and create the software to solve education’s problems for you.

In subtle, but real ways…the message seemed to shift this year to: Give us enough understanding of your work, a sense of how you reach kids on a day to day basis through specific strategies and interactions, and we will come to your classrooms, listen to you, pay attention to how and why kids engage and use that to create supportive software to help amplify those approaches to solve problems with you.

In a session titled, What Do We Mean When We Ask if EdTech “Works”?, Chief of Learning Innovation at LEAP Innovations, Chris Liang-Vergara, summarized his team’s research report Finding What Works with this (as interpreted on a half cup of mediocre coffee after a very late night – all apologies Chris):

When people ask, “What are the qualities of a good digital learning tool?” we want to resist the urge to place the promise of measurable learning gains on the tools alone. The tool is such a small percent of the formula in relation to the skill of the instructor. Instead, we tend to look for tools that support innovative pedagogical practice, provide a learner focused approach, and enable the type of learner agency that the teachers are already looking for and fostering in their classrooms….where teachers don’t have these core expectations nor are implementing strategies that support student inquiry and access to diverse resources and differentiated demonstration of knowledge, the tools provide little help to change the outcomes of those classrooms.

Having spent the better part of the last 7 years watching educational software development largely focus on processes that take place at the perimeter of the teaching and learning cycle, it was refreshing to hear and see groups begin to circle back to the important instructional authoring and delivery pieces that truly inform best practice and inevitably have the most promise in supporting learning gains.

So as part of a team that showed up to illuminate our recent work with our colleagues from the Smithsonian on their new Learning Lab, we definitely felt like we were a part of that message and were thrilled with the numbers that turned out for our presentation and later for our social mixer in downtown Austin. It felt right sharing how much time we spent in classrooms, and how much of our system could be cited back to a specific teacher’s needs or a given group of 6th graders trying to accomplish a complex learning activity with one of our many prototypes. I was happy to see two of the teachers in the crowd who had been part of our testing team across 3 years of research and development and to know that our lead researcher, programmer, educator-specialist, and project director knew them personally.

The questions we received during our presentation and the conversations at our follow-up event were pointed, vibrant, and clear. Afterwards, we invited an eclectic group to come meet the Smithsonian team that included this small band of teachers interspersed with industry leads from t’es, Nova, SETDA , U.S. OET, National Film Board of Canada, the Annenberg Learner Foundation and NYLearns, amongst many others. (Thank you all for your attendance and support.) There was a general desire to see the ways in which teachers had played an active role in the organizing of open educational resources while applying of their own instructional cohesion as part of the process. The Smithsonian Learning Lab was received well, and many wanted to know what kinds of inputs, efforts, and culture supported its development and ongoing implementation. Good people intermingled with good drinks and food in a music filled environment where ideas could take form over handshakes, laughing, and genuine collegiality.

At one point I stumbled into a conversation amongst educators about what makes for a great teacher, and because we had asked people to remove their SXSW badges (and thus titles and affiliations) at the door in order to have people meet merely as people, I was surprised to to find out later that the conversation actually involved a software CEO, a lead actor/educator from the Royal Shakespeare Company, a middle school History teacher from Utah, and an Ed Tech Incubator from Tokyo. That evening was the culmination of one of the better experiences I’ve had at a conference in the last few years, and not one I would have suspected could have occurred at the SXSW.edu events of the past.

Perhaps this conference really is growing into an educator affair? Perhaps we bring more teachers next time? I thought to just ask Sarah since she was sitting next to me on our long flight back home.

Under the beam of the small personal overhead spotlight she had turned
on, I saw that she was scrolling through 3 days of emails from her teaching partner, scores of parents, administrative site announcements, fund-raiser events, etc. “Over 120 in all.” she tells me. She was working to select those that need immediate answers and those that can wait a day or two. So instead, I offered to start developing the slide show she’s required by her administrator to present to her faculty from my laptop while she openly cites from 3 days of notes. “That would be really helpful.” she replied with a sigh that I assume comes with connecting back to the reality of a teaching life waiting at home…”at least I got my grades in before I left.”

“So what do you want to share with your colleagues?” I asked, opening my laptop. She fished out her notes while I started a new Google Slide presentation, and typed What Sarah Learned @ SXSW.Edu.