jebsblog

I have written and published a new article about accessible documents on the Maine CITE website. This is the first of a series I plan to write on the topic called Making Accessible Educational Documents. The articles are based upon the series of articles I wrote for the Maine State Government Office of Information Technology over the past two years and will refine the content, focusing it specifically on the needs of classroom teachers and educational administrators at all levels – Kindergarten through college.

As more and more curriculum and school-related content is being provided to students, parents and the general public in digital form, it is essential that these documents be created in a form that everyone can access.

The articles will also appear in print form in the quarterly newsletter published by the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine (ACTEM).

The first in the series is called Making Text Documents Accessible and deals with word processor and Portable Document Format (PDF) documents .

Also featured on the new web resource will be quick tips and resources to help teachers and educational administrators communicate better with their constituents.

~j

I just finished reading an article in the New York Times (on line of course) “Texting, Surfing, Studying” written by a pediatrician about “her” own children and how they “multitask.” BTW, I cannot tell by the name (or anything in the text) as to whether this is a man or a woman writing – my bias is it’s a woman – so apologies given if necessary.

In any case Dr. Klass shares the story of an “experiment” with her son who is currently a medical student and his friends (also medical students). She asked them about study habits and it turned out most of them indicated that when they studied they were also doing something else (watching a movie, texting, or exercising). Apparently, all of these highly educated and competent medical students could manage to successfully study and do the other task.

Dr. Kass notes in the article about the research showing that there is no such thing as multitasking in human behavior. My own personal and professional experience would back that up. But Dr. Kass appears to be supporting the notion that today’s generation of “digital natives” are perhaps different their forefathers. This notion is in dispute among cognitive neuroscientists, but I would venture to guess there are some stylistic differences at work here.

Rather than quoting research, I thought I would tell you about my stepbrother. Chris is eight years younger than I, but still falls within the “baby boomer” generation. We became brothers when he was 11 and I was 19 and so I only got to observe his studying behavior for a few years. The fact that I was a psychology major helped.

Chris’ technique for studying – which, by the way he did very little of – was to have a book open on his lap while he was watching television. I, on the other hand, have to be in a room with almost complete silence for me to study anything. The only exception is listening to classical music and only such music that has no one singing – no opera!

Now I won’t pontificate and talk about the level of academic achievement that my brother and I attained – suffice it to say there was some variance here. But to this day, he is still much better at remembering things that he has learned by listening and can repeat lines from plays and movies seen years ago with ease. I, on the other hand am one of those people who when I got to a meeting or party and am introduced to new people, cannot remember their names to save my life. And, I can only remember lyrics to songs when I am playing an instrument along while singing.

Both my stepbrother and I are fairly adept at using technology and in other ways are very similar. So I have my doubts about the digital immigrant/digital native notion – sorry Marc Prensky. The only geeky behavior that I eschew is video gaming. For the life of me, I just don’t get it.  To be a gamer I think you have to have been born with a GameBoy in you hands.

Check out the NYT article and feel free to comment.

Image from Gideo Burton Creative Commons license.

The Maine Learning Technology Initiative – affectionately known in these parts as MLTI (pronounced “Milty”) – has unveiled their new professional development blog called Maine121.org.

Apart from the fact that it is built in WordPress and just happens to use the same template as this jebswebs’ blog, it should be a welcome addition to the program and to Maine educators.

Most noticeably the blog will feature a section discussing “accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).” We are pleased that this “theme” is important to the MLTI program and look forward to the potential for collaboration.

BTW, a little background. The MLTI program is Maine’s “laptop program;” designed to get laptop computers into the hands of students and teachers. The program started in fall of 2002 with Apple iBook G4s deployed to every student and teacher in Maine’s middle schools. Eventually the program was expanded to include administrators and support staff and most recently, it was expanded into Maine’s high schools. About 64,000 Apple MacBooks were sent out this summer making it one of the largest 1-to-1 educational technology programs, of its kind, in the country. Read the MLTI history

~j

I read this brief article from yesterday’s New York Times with great interest. Entitled, “Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom,” it grabbed my attention immediately.

Having spent a fair amount of my career dealing with distance education, I always found myself defending this style of pedagogy with my traditionally inclined colleagues. When logic and research failed, the comeback was always, “…well I just could not learn without there being a teacher in the room…”

Personal learning styles and technologically-literate students aside, there had been no definitive study to prove either way if distance education was as “effective” as traditional methods. The NYT’s article describes a new research study from SRI that may have done just this. I will now be endeavoring to pore through that study. In the meantime, I thought I should share some of the comments made about the study so far:

Over the 12-year span, the report found 99 studies in which there were quantitative comparisons of online and classroom performance for the same courses. The analysis for the Department of Education found that, on average, students doing some or all of the course online would rank in the 59th percentile in tested performance, compared with the average classroom student scoring in the 50th percentile. That is a modest but statistically meaningful difference.

Hey, not shabby…

…and where have you heard this before (Hint: Me!)

The real promise of online education, experts say, is providing learning experiences that are more tailored to individual students than is possible in classrooms. That enables more “learning by doing,” which many students find more engaging and useful.

Again, surprise, surprise, surprise! (deference to Gomer Pyle)

Mr. Regier sees things evolving fairly rapidly, accelerated by the increasing use of social networking technology. More and more, students will help and teach each other, he said.

~jeb

Perhaps because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California gave it some broad public attention, or perhaps it is a sign of the times, but it seems not a day goes by that there is not another news story about digital textbooks. Since my concerns are related to the accessibility of the media and the medium, I have been reading all that I can.

Here are some of the latest stories, just in case you are interested.

California names first digital textbooks that meet standards for high school math, science

Online textbooks offered free to students

U.S. company to offer digital textbooks on iPhone

Students’ textbooks might soon be a thing of the past: Virtual books could be turning the page on modern education

Digital textbooks may soon take over for paper predecessors

And so it goes…

~j