Following up on our project to develop a dual enrollment computer science course (i.e. offered to high school students, but with the option of receiving college credit for their work), I thought I would share our course map. In other words, when students are done with the course, this is what we expect them to know, understand, value:
(As mentioned, these outcomes are guided by the CS Principles project)
With SITE 2012, SXSWedu 2012, and SXSW 2012 all happening within the span of two weeks, we’ve been keeping quite busy around here. Though these conferences provide lots of opportunities for discussion with colleagues, they also allow us the chance to introduce our students to the burgeoning nature of our field.
Last week, I had the great pleasure of hosting Audrey Watters in my class. Audrey is an education technology journalist and open education advocate that was described by Stephen Downes as “one of the best things to come along in education technology in 2011.” She spoke to my class about educational technology start-ups, educational technology entrepreneurship, and the business world’s recent fascination with our field. These are topics that are at the forefront of our field at present, but are largely missing from our field’s curricula. Thus, Audrey’s visit was of great interest. Our discussion continued beyond the end of the class, and if you haven’t met Audrey yet, you should! She’s knowledgeable, passionate, and says it how it is. Our field needs more Audreys, more people who aren’t distracted by the shiny technologies and their promises, and who are good at analyzing trends and the changes facing education. Audrey’s talk focused on “How Hating Blackboard Hurts Ed-Tech Entrepreneurship”:
Description: The “I hate Blackboard” Facebook group has tens of thousands of members, reflecting no doubt a fairly common sentiment among students and teachers alike regarding the learning management system giant. It’s not surprising then to see a string of competitors arise to challenge it. But how does the focus on Blackboard — on its failures to make its customers happy — skew the way entrepreneurs (and just as importantly, perhaps, investors) think about ed-tech? By focusing on improving the LMS, are we trying to “fix” the wrong problem? What are some of the opportunities for ed-tech startups that aren’t getting enough attention because we focus so much on this one particular company and on the LMS industry?
When we wrote about Networked Participatory Scholarship we discussed how as a culture we have found great value in online collaborative projects, ranging from Wikipedia, to Firefox, to Apache, Python, etc. We argued that such collective ways of thinking are scarce in academia though innovators are currently toying with such approaches. One example includes the cadre of mentors who helped Alec Couros teach one of his open courses in 2010 (see other examples pertaining to crowdsourcing in education).
The value of the Web as a platform for collectives to organize around issues of interest is now being demonstrated again with a call to boycott Elsevier that appears to have been successful. This is an example that demonstrates the value, implications, and insights of digital/network skills and literacies for academics. For instance, the social web supported Timothy Gowers in organizing the boycott. Of course not everyone has such a great following as Gowers to be able to enact change, but the possibility is there – after all the Star Wars kid didn’t have any sort of following prior to his video being released online, but following that he quickly became an Internet sensation. The lesson here is that as academics we need to understand the culture of the Web and its participatory nature because it can help us forge a scholarly future with values that we deem to be important.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned Project Engage: Our approach to improve and broaden participation in computer science for high school students. We are using a technology-enhanced PBL approach and are adopting the Computer Science Principles as our guiding curricular framework. Rather than focusing on the teaching of a specific programming language, this course focuses on CS ideas, skills, and processes for students new to CS. We are nearing completion of our first module, and I thought that others might find our approach and work worthwhile so I am posting one of our artifacts here.
In this module students are tasked with the following problem: Leandro’s online identity has been stolen and used to cyberbully Chris. As a result, Leandro has been expelled from school. As Leandro’s friend, you must help convince the principal that Leandro is innocent. As a group, dig through the digital evidence available from the investigation, and create a compelling presentation to exonerate Leandro. Good luck!
As in other problem-based learning projects, we are using a video clip to introduce the problem that is intended to attract interest and curiosity. Here’s our beta product:
When I was pondering the names of “Educational Technology” degrees last year, we were in the midst of examining the identity of the field. Now, I am happy to announce, that our program at the University of Texas at Austin has a new name: Learning Technologies. Though a name doesn’t mean that we will change the work we do, it does capture the field and essence of our work in a better way. We are definitely not the first to go through this change. Purdue, Georgia, Penn State, Georgia State, Michigan State, and the University of Minnesota have all moved towards this direction.
2nd CALL for PAPERS
62nd Annual conference of the International Council for Educational Media 2012
In conjunction with the 5th Innovative Learning Environments 2012
Download the Call for Papers
CONFERENCE THEME: Design Thinking in Education, Media, and Society
DATE AND LOCATION: 26-29, September 2012, Nicosia, Cyprus
ORGANIZERS: CARDET, ICEM, UNIC
Extended Deadline for Abstracts: March 12, 2012
The theme of the conference is “Design thinking”. All humans have an inherent ability to design. When planning a dinner, a trip, a building, a learning activity, a new product, we engage in design. Everything that we have around us (with the exception of the untouched nature) has been designed. However, the process of design was poorly understood for a long time. Design thinking is an interdisciplinary framework that draws from the fields of cognition, creativity, engineering, arts, and the social sciences. Design thinking uses the sensibilities of a designer to develop human-centered innovative solutions to problems. During the ICEM2012 conference we will explore the various applications of design thinking and discuss challenges and opportunities that might arise when applying such a framework to solve problems faced in education, media and society.
Topics of interest to this international event include, but are not limited to the following:
– Design thinking and its application across contexts
– Arts-based approaches to education, design and problem solving
– E-learning theory, design, and practice
– Learning design (theory and practice)
– Games in education and training
– Mobile learning applications
– Visual and media literacy
– Design research across disciplines
– Accessibility and assistive technologies
– Technology and social justice
– Distance education and online environments
– Educational media production and distribution
– Research and evaluation methods in educational technology
– Teacher education and lifelong learning
– Applications of technology in business, government, and medicine
We encourage the submission of a variety of papers and work including but not limited to empirical research, case studies, classroom implementations, case studies with applications of technology, theoretical discussions, and critical reviews of literature.
Part of my research demands that I develop technology-enhanced interventions in order to study them. I enjoy this part of my work partly because I get to create solutions to tackle education problems and partly because it has allowed me to explore technology-enhanced learning across different disciplines (e.g. I was involved with developing online learning environments for American Sign Language, environmental stewardship, and sociological concepts).
Now comes another excitement and challenge: Last August, Dr. Calvin Lin and I were awarded a National Science Foundation grant (award #1138506) to develop a hybrid “Introduction to Computer Science” course to be taught at Texas high schools and institutions of higher education. The project is a collaboration between the department of Computer Science (Dr. Lin) and Curriculum and Instruction – Instructional Technology (me). I’ll be posting more about the project (probably on a different blog), but the overarching goal here is to enhance how CS is taught using emerging technologies and pedagogies (mostly PBL) while valuing local contexts and practices. Mark Guzdial, in a recent paper, notes that “We need more education research that is informed by understanding CS—how it’s taught, what the current practices are, and what’s important to keep as we change practice. We need more computing education researchers to help meet the workforce needs in our technology-based society.”
I look forward to sharing more about this project with everyone soon!
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