Janine’s blog

He posed two key questions:

1. Can ICT make improvements in education happen faster?
2. What is effective integration of ICT?

Drawing on a book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A Moore - the chasm being the gap between techno enthusiasts and the pragmatic/conservative bulk of the population, this observation was made:

Most educational technologies start with visionary promise but never achieve the promise beyond a few exciting demonstration classrooms

The example of the Graphics Calculator in Mathematics was used to illustrate some general principles for effective integration of ICT:

Why have Graphics Calculators been successful?

• they reduce cognitive load  (takes over the tedious tasks)
• dual coding - graphical and linguistic coding enhances learning
• multiple representations - effectively mediating social construction of meaning

How does this success happen?

• STARTS with
  • simple, inexpensive, robust technology
  • symbiotic innovation by teachers/technologists (refer to Eric von Hippel Democratising innovation, Tom Ferrio, Building a breakthrough husiness concept
• RESULTS in system support to “cross the chasm”
  • build a huge teacher training network
  • integrated into national standards
  • incorporation into Curriculum
  • required in assessments
• BACKED by
  • research results demonstrating effectiveness

What Education Needs: Simple tools for Revolutionaries -  What are the simple tools that teachers can grow with? These tools do not replace or automate human intelligence but rather they augment (teacher) capability.

Future such tools? …perhaps Student response systems

Dr Roschelle highlighted Student response systems as a relatively new example with the potential to have similar success. These small handheld devices allow simultaneous input by multiple students to questions posed. Responses are rapidly processed and displayed in graphical form on a large screen.  Tests have shown that peer feedback leads to a convergence towards the correct responses.

Currently about 12 companies offer products of this nature and teachers are showing very high interest. An overview of them is at http://clte.asu.edu/wakonse/ENewsletter/studentresponse_idea.htm

Refer also to Eric Mazur’s work on Peer Instruction