Ruth Reynard's Technology's Impact on Learning Outcomes: Can It Be Measured? (T.H.E. Journal, May 2009) is an article that could have, and often has, been written anytime these past twenty years. It contains, however, much that bears repeating.
It points out a recurring difficulty: how do teachers learn about new (and existing) technologies and integrate them into their teaching? Even if they do, how do we know what impact these technologies are having on education? ANd how in the world can this impact be measured by checking a box on a multiple choice test?
She asks: ""What are the standards of success we should be measuring?"
A short answer: The more we remain fixated with standardized assessments, the less likely we will be to truly measure the kind of learning that is currently taking place in technology-supported learning environments.
Conversely, teachers who continue to use older standards for measurement because they do not use new technology are still working with students who do use technology elsewhere or who have been affected by new technology in their thinking and perceptions."
Reynard suggests a focus on process-based instructional design, asking teachers to, among other things, "focus on how rather than what. Teachers who encourage students to focus on “how” something works or happens are more likely to develop students who can think beyond what is currently happening to what might happen more efficiently and effectively." In other words, process teaches thinking skills beyond the memorization skills needed to excel at standardized tests.
What she does not say, and what I have not yet heard anyone say, is how dealing with computers and the web as it exists today, embracing and learning to navigate the model of constant change that is part of that existence, might actually be teaching students more about critical thinking, nimbleness of thought, and ability to apply to new situations what has been extrapolated from previous situations, than any formal use of an instructional technology in a course. The very act of keeping up with, or experimenting with, new technology is in itself teaching these skills, regardless of what use the teacher is making of the techology used in teaching a course.
The publishing world continues to buzz about upcoming reading devices and the business models that will best exploit them.
E Ink, the company that makes the electronic "paper" used in devices like the Kindle, is still a black-and-white-only technology. However, Plastic Logic will be piloting their larger reading device later this year with expected sales to begin in 2010. This thin, lightweight, 8.5x11 inch, touch screen reader is expected to expand the ebook market beyond books to newspapers, documents, music, etc. (demo here) Word is that newspapers are considering this an opportunity to rethink their "free on the web" model and instead offer subscriptions.
And the Kindle? An announcement of a new, large form, Kindle is expected Wednesday (sneak peek here). In fact, several universities are already lining up deals to offer these, with textbooks pre-installed for students. They are Case Western Reserve, Pace, Princeton, Reed, UVA and Arizona State. What happens to all those color pictures and graphs in your normal $100+ textbook? Well, some sacrifices must be made. But from a student point of view, ditching the 40 pounds of textbooks for a one pound Kindle has got to be a good deal.
Update, May 5: According to the Wall Street Journal today: "Beginning this fall, some students at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland will be given large-screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and a freshman seminar already installed, said Lev Gonick, the school's chief information officer. The university plans to compare the experiences of students who get the Kindles and those who use traditional textbooks, he said."
Meanwhile, rumors of an Apple tablet have circulated for years, but have recently begun to intensify. The advantage, of course, is that this would be a full color computer, not just a reading device. The disadvantage is that it would still not have the readability, especially in bright light, of electronic paper. We'll see.
A couple weeks ago Dan Cohen decided to try a live Twitter experiment in crowdsourcing during his live presentation at a conference. The experiment is described in his blog post summary. was to use Twitter to "replicate digitally the traditional “author’s query,” where a scholar asks readers of a journal for assistance with a research project."
He posted an image of a historic artifact, then asked people to try and identify it or come up with information about it. Within 9 minutes he had the answer, and within a half hour there were about 100 collective responses providing a "fairly rich description" along with resources and citations.
Of particular note were the conversations and discussions, abbreviated though each post may have been due to Twitter's limits, that swirled around the topic. Granted, Cohen has quite a few followers and there was a certain amount of excitement in being part of this experiment. Yet the fact remains that in this case Twitter did fulfill a scholarly function.
His summary here: http://www.dancohen.org/2009/04/29/the-spider-and-the-web-results/
Here are several statements she has encountered from students. Read the engaging article for her speculations on the "cause and cure" of these statements.
1. "I have no idea [about the dates or details of my topic]."
2. I’m wondering why I can’t I find this periodical article in the library’s catalog.
3. This magazine isn’t digitized, so I guess we don’t have it and I can’t get it.
4. I need to change my topic because there’s not enough stuff [sic] about it.
5. I’m not clear about what makes an article scholarly or a book a monograph.
6. I can’t find books about [an event that occurred last month].
7. I’m confused about the difference between a primary and a secondary source.
8. I’m afraid I’ll be cheating if I take references from someone else’s biblio.
Just published: a report, including several papers, from the September 2008 symposium held by the Council on Library and Information Resources and the National Endowment for the Humanities, titled:
"Working Together of Apart: Promoting the Next Generation of Digital Scholarship"
The purpose of the symposium was to explore the intersections between the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. There were two fundamental questions framing the meeting: 1) how are the interpretation and analysis of texts, images and other media, as well as their expression and related pedagogy, being transformed by digital applications, and 2) what kinds of research in computer science will be driven by the research, questions, and needs of digital humanities and social science scholars?
Papers include:
- Asking Questions and Building a Research Agenda for Digital Scholarship (Amy Friedlander)
- Tools for Thinking: ePhilology and Cyberinfrastructure (Gregory Crane, Alison Babeu, David Bamman, Lisa Cerrato, Rashmi Singhal)
- The Changing Landscape of American Studies in a Global Era (Caroline Levander)
- A Whirlwind Tour of Automated Language Processing for the Humanities and Social Sciences (Douglas W. Oard)
- Information Visualization: Challenge for the Humanities (Maureen Stone)
- Art History and the New Media: Representation and the Production of
- Humanistic Knowledge (Stephen Murray)
- Social Attention in the Age of the Web (Bernardo A. Huberman)
- Digital Humanities Centers: Loci for Digital Scholarship (Diane M. Zorich)
First it was Flickr, now its YouTube. Hoorah for the Library of Congress as they begin to place portions of their vast video holdings on the popular site. First collections include the 2008 National Book Festival author presentations, the Books and Beyond author series, “Westinghouse” industrial films from 1904, scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center, and the earliest movies made by Thomas Edison, including the first moving image ever made.
Watch for more in future:
http://www.youtube.com/user/LibraryOfCongress
NYTimes has two articles today related to eBooks and electronic writing. (Brad Stone "Is This the Future of the Digital Book?" and Randall Stross "Small Company Offers Web-Based Competition for Microsoft Word"). I pair them together because they both describe ways in which current web-based media are nibbling at the edges of the reading and writing experience.
The usual points are made--people can and do read onscreen, web-based document creation is possible--but the first article goes on to frame reading in terms of "experience." This is often left out of discussions about ebooks.
So in a comment ebook readers, for example, we find "for all the hype and initial success of devices like the Kindle, they threaten to strip traditional books of much of their transportive appeal. Images on the jacket cover, inviting fonts and the satisfying feel of quality paper are all largely absent, replaced by humdrum pixels on a virtual page."
Will portability and convenience be enough, or do readers want to replace the book experience with something else?
The article begins with information about vook.tv, Bradley Inman's start-up that seeks to roll writing, video, and streams into compelling fiction. Also mentioned are WEBook, which "allows people to collaborate on writing books and is working on new ways to let readers give writers real-time feedback on their work" and Wattpad, a venue for new writers, and Fourth Story Media's "Amanda Project" that will allow users to "to create their own characters, upload artwork and follow clues that relate to the books’ overarching narrative" on the site or on their iPhones.
Silly? Gimmicky? Ephemeral? Anyone remember Eastgate's hypertexts?
As for Zoho writer, the subject of the second article, it is adding features at a pace designed to help it beat Microsoft's promised web-based editor. Like some online editors it allows for simultaneous editing. Even better, footnotes/endnotes, those two challenges of such online editors as Google Docs, seem to be solved. Now if only Zotero could nail down a way to work with it, academic writers could be set free from the Microsoft chain.
Some numbers from the Association of American Publishers from data from major book publishers comparing 2007 to 2008:
Overall sales down 2.8% (to $24.3 billion)
Trade paperbacks up, trade hardcover way down for an overall decline of 5.2% (to $8.1 billion)
Higher education textbooks up 2.7% (to $3.8 billion)
Mass market paperbacks down 3% (to $1.1 billion)
Religious books down 7.6% (to $724 million)
Audio book sales down 21% ($172 million)
eBooks up 68.4% (to $113 million)
So, while eBooks are doing well they still represent only a small fraction of total book sales.
Story and link to data here: http://www.publishers.org/main/IndustryStats/IndStats/2008/2008_Stats.htm
The University of Chicago will no longer be accepting and archiving dissertations on paper. Furthermore, they will be using UMI Dissertation Publishing's web-based interface for submission of dissertations. What a concept! In the current process, dissertations begin life as digital documents, get printed on paper, then get scanned to be turned back into digital documents. The resulting scans are PDF files that are of inferior quality to the originals and are not accessible to those using screen readers to read them.
The new process will accept PDFs created directly from the originals to be archived at the library. These electronic versions will also be sent to UMI for inclusion in the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. Saves time, saves money, saves space, saves trees, and results in a more useful product. Win, win, win.
3D modeling for humanities research may finally be coming into its own. NEH has posted the latest round of funded start-up projects, including "creations and curation of 3D virtual objects/artifacts; 3D modeling and virtual re-creation of historic structures; [and] reconstruction of 3D events using images and documentation..." Another one of particular interest to me: UNC-CH "Image to XML" an "open-source transcription and annotation tool using Scalable Vector Graphics for historical and literary archival manuscripts." I hope that one is developed.
http://digitalstewardshipnow.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/thirteen-digital-humanities-start-up-grants-announcedneh-office-of-digital-humanities/
