Professional Goals
The world has changed. It once was some 25,000 statute miles in circumference; now it is about ninety minutes from Cape Canaveral to Cape Canaveral. As a senior in high school, and as a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol, I was afforded the opportunity to spend a week at the now defunct Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, a part of the Air Defense Command. Among other activities, we cadets were able to tour the base's computer room--one room, as large as three or more basketball courts, vacuum tube-driven hardware, loud and cold environment. Later, data punch cards became the standard means of remembering information--ROM. Each card had this caveat: "Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate."
Later,
in the early 1980s, after separating from the Navy, I purchased a Radio Shack
"Tandy Color Computer 128". Think of that: One hundred
twenty-eight kilobytes of RAM! No hard drive (what was that?), and
programs were on either audio cassettes or little plug-in modules.
In
Basic Training, Spring of 1975, I watched a 16mm film featuring the 1969
flight line fire aboard the USS Forrestal, a paradigm-shifting event in the
Navy; recently, I found it online, downloaded it, and can now watch it using
Windows Media Player.
We
learned the old-fashioned way, back then. We earned it.
Well, those of us who actually tried. We listened to lecture, we
read, we dissected frogs and tortoises and earthworms. We did lab
experiments in physics and chemistry. And we had to remember what
we had learned. We had no choice. Tests were not open book, and
neither was life. We did not have access to an internet, or a world wide
web--or, for that matter, even a well-stocked library.
Not
so today. Not so, the 21st Century. The
teaching model, as explained in this Prezi YouTube video
uploaded by mathipedia, has changed. For the better, or for
the worse--the jury is still out, but I do have my opinion. Some of the
assertions made therein, I agree with; others, I do not. I am forced,
based on empirical evidence, to agree with the assertion that teachers are no
longer the sole source of information in the classroom. However, I am a
little queasy about calling teachers filters of information.
What I disagree with, however, is the notion about
apparently starting with the upper levels of Bloom's taxonomy first:
Creating, evaluating, analyzing; meanwhile, we are neglecting the
fundamentals: Remembering, understanding, and applying.
My
concern is perhaps better explained by the car repair analogy. One cannot
be expected to understand the more complex fuel management systems or ignition
management systems of a newer car unless one has a basic, fundamental
understanding of the four-stroke cycle engine's combustion process.
Well. Enough of that, before I get in trouble, and find myself fired before being hired. As Bob Dylan so eloquently said so many millennia ago, "The times, they are a changin'." And respond I must. In the "old days," teachers had to concern themselves with only content knowledge (CK) and, to a lesser degree, pedagogical knowledge (PK). (See Shulman, here.) Now, however, as the Prezi above states, there is more: There is technical knowledge (TK) which must be gained by the teacher also.
Well. Enough of that, before I get in trouble, and find myself fired before being hired. As Bob Dylan so eloquently said so many millennia ago, "The times, they are a changin'." And respond I must. In the "old days," teachers had to concern themselves with only content knowledge (CK) and, to a lesser degree, pedagogical knowledge (PK). (See Shulman, here.) Now, however, as the Prezi above states, there is more: There is technical knowledge (TK) which must be gained by the teacher also.
Reading
the literature about them, I get the sense that, based on my education--both in
my baccalaureate majors and also in my graduate training--that I employed TPCK
during my student teaching semester. I just didn't call it that. Blending
the three together has been the mission of the people at TPACK Academy.
There they have striven to help educators find that "sweet
spot" where PK, CK, and TK all intersect--TPCK. Ideally, that
intersection will be broad-based; but they must now intersect.
Leading
up to the next bit of discussion, we need to watch the two following videos one
concerning the demise
of the traditional, or legacy college education, and then a video
which is a hypothetical account of the demise of traditional, or legacy news media. Now let us
analyze something which the voice-over narrator says in the second video:
"For too many, EPIC is merely a collection of trivia much of it
untrue, all of it narrow, shallow, and sensational. But EPIC was
what we wanted. It is what we chose, and its commercial success
preempted any discussions of media and democracy, or journalistic ethics."
Both
videos paint incredible pictures of the future, but both imply that there is a
fine line between a progressive society, and a dystopian society.
Technological shifts often outrun society.
Free Online Instructional Videos for K-12
"KHAAANNNN!"
Also sprach Kirk, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
But that was then, this is now, and it is a whole different Khan:
Sal Khan, former hedge fund analyst, who began by helping, via YouTube,
his niece. Since then, over 41 million students have clicked on his
website, taking in lessons in all the STEM subjects. He intends to carry
his online "academy" into history, according to this 60 Minutes video, produced in March,
2012. His video lessons are being incorporated into the curriculum in the
Los Altos school district near San Francisco and, at least per the video, has
garnered nothing but praise from faculty and students alike. indeed, as Google's
Eric Schmidt noted, "...Innovation never comes from the established
institutions; it's always a graduate student or some crazy person or somebody
with a great vision...."
Coupled
with such resources as Educanon, which can be used to make the videos
even more interactive, teachers can engage students even more thoroughly.
Kahn
appears to want to include such subjects as history in his repertoire; as a
social studies teacher, I am cautiously skeptical. I would have to
carefully vet his lessons before placing my (rather insignificant) seal of
approval upon them.
Free Online University Classes and MOOCs
What is a MOOC? Based on this video from Educause, I interpret it as a new twist on the old "continuing education" credit classes. Some key words used in the video included "connectivity" and "analytics."
Are
you interested in a better understanding of our founding document, the United
States Constitution and its 27 Amendments? Hillsdale College has offered, and will
again, I am sure, this free course, known as Constitution 101.
Plans for Free Online Degrees
Dr. Daphne Koller, Stanford, gave a TED talk in
2012 concerning online education--specifically free classes. In it she
revealed that at least by the time of her lecture, college tuition had
increased by 556%! One might be tempted to ask the universal question,
"why", but methinks it is quite self-evident: Government
interference. When the federal government decided to interpose itself
into the free marked of education in the form of taking over the student loan
system, a new bubble was formed, just like the savings & loan, dot.com,
housing, and healthcare financing bubbles were formed. But that is a
discussion for another time.
The
problem with "free" degrees is, they are free. Although the
principle of TANSTAAFL plays in--"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free
Lunch." And the notion that everybody getting an online education
will make 98% of them "above average" is just a bit more than
misleading. There is no "Lake Woebegone".
That
said, education is vital. But as one correspondent cautioned in the
replies, too many potential employers still demand not a
certificate, but a diploma--be it associate's, baccalaureate, or
master's degree. And Dr. Koller, et. al. must make that
leap. That is a daunting challenge, fraught with many hidden dangers,
such as security of the data--be it academic, or personal user data, cultural
and language barriers, grading biases (not every answer is binary), and other
factors. It may yet be done. and it may yet be successful.
But we must ask at what cost. Professors still have wives and children
to feed; they have student loans of their own to discharge. There is the
infrastructure, the technical personnel to maintain it; there are a plethora of
other overhead costs which must be absorbed by someone: And
it is not fair to the legacy students at a university such as Dr. Koller's
Stanford. This is analogous to a transportation infrastructure issue
which is rearing its head. Highways are built and maintained by being
financed with revenues from road use taxes. These taxes are collected at
the gasoline and Diesel fuel pumps. But with the latest hybrids and
electric vehicles, not to mention the more efficient typical cars, tax revenues
are not keeping pace with the wear and tear on our transportation
infrastructure.
"Free
online degrees" cannot ever be entirely free.
New Writers and Sources of Textbooks
It
was the Autumn and Winter of 1975/76. Common Core had not been invented.
Or had it? Writing one's own textbook? Pshaw. Permit me to
introduce to you the US Naval Nuclear Power School, then located at the Mare
Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, CA. Each student wrote his own textbook
based on the curriculum that did not deviate one iota from that prescribed by
NAVEDTRA. This applied to such courses as General Chemistry, Heat Transfer/Fluid
Flow, Nuclear Physics, and others. Only in the second semester's course
work were we subjected to pre-published texts. And those were classified
documents, unlike the self-written ones, so they were permitted only in the
classroom or the barracks. I still have those hand-written textbooks.
But
this is a new phenomenon, and it may be the salvation, at least in part, of
legacy universities, where textbooks require their own student loans. One
source of "open-source" textbooks, OpenStax, is free; however the Rice University
non-profit organization requests students submit their homework via WebAssign,
which charges up to $25.00/semester--still a far cry from the cost of some
textbooks. Whereas OpenStax is donor-funded, Flat World Knowledge is not; they
charge for their textbooks.
Teach Thought, a "progressive learning brand
dedicated to supporting educators in evolving learning for a 21st century
audience," has proffered the idea that textbooks be modified by
teachers as they see fit; Toss in a different textbook's paragraph, cut/copy/paste.
The secret (and the danger, in my opinion) is the concept of
"open-source educational resources," or OERs, which have no copyright
restrictions. This means anyone may change the document and publish it.
However, the danger is, that digital textbook turns into a sort of
Wikipedia, with no accountability for accuracy. Teachers emphasize
multiple times each school year the importance of realizing Wikipedia is not to
be treated as a reliable source, primarily because of this reason--it is open
source. Should any teacher use an "open source" textbook?
Resources
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTIBDR4Dn2g#t=81
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Shulman
- http://epic2020.org/
- http://idorosen.com/mirrors/robinsloan.com/epic/
- http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/khan-academy-the-future-of-education-50121400/
- https://www.educanon.com/aboutus
- http://www.educause.edu/library/massive-open-online-course-mooc
- http://hillsdale.edu/
- http://lp.hillsdale.edu/constitution-101-signup-tv/?utm_source=general&utm_medium=drtv&utm_content=website&utm_campaign=con101
- http://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education#t-33798
- https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/12/04/openstax-announces-first-ipad-version-its-free-online-textbooks
- http://www.teachthought.com/technology/5-sources-of-open-source-textbooks/
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