Edu Tech Blog

Data Analysis for Students

Fri, 7 Mar 2008 21:31:22 +0800

The United Nations has created a web site that gives access to the vast amounts of data the UN has been gathering for the past 50 years. Perfect not only for gathering data but also for easily and quickly grabbing large data sets to work with and analyse. Check it out: UNData

Teens and Copyright law

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:10:31 +0800

I read an article today on Ars Technica that talked about teens and how they do not understand copyright law. Not surprisingly, students do not understand that downloading and copying songs and images from the Internet is illegal. Interestingly though one of the findings of the study revealed that most teens credit their own parents with anything they do actually know about copyright. This made me wonder what exactly we are teaching in schools about intellectual property rights. Do we assume that students know already that copying other people’s work is wrong? Do we assume that students can extrapolate from the fact that stealing someone’s lunch would be wrong, therefore stealing their ideas or their electronic work would also be wrong? Is all our “reminding” them about citing sources and crediting authors based on an incorrect assumption, that they already know that they should not copy things from the web? I imagine myself nagging my students about copying from the web, and putting things in their own words and the blank looks I get back lead me to believe that I have become Charlie Brown’s parents.

While this is clearly a serious issue, I also wonder if we will be kicking ourselves i the future that we wasted our time on all this. Information and ideas want to be free. Intellectual property is an illusion. Once an idea is shared it becomes part of the collective intelligence. To repeat it, build on it and rework it should be everyone’s right. Citing the origin of the idea remains important, but paying for the idea is ludicrous. Can I then extrapolate that, if a song is in the public domain I should be able to copy it, share it, remix it and improve on it, as long as I let everyone know the original work belongs to David Grohl? I think so.

I think that, one day, likely soon, all information and intellectual property will be free. Free to use and share. Corporations and the RIAA are the ones that are resisting this evolution of information. They do not know how they will still make money. That is their problem. Information wants to be free and the democratic web will bring that about.

Original Microsoft Research paper

Teaching Data Literacy

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 23:11:16 +0800

A posting I read today on Jeff Utecht’s blog, Utechtips, got me thinking about data and the enormous amounts of data being collected and created on the web today. His posting was about a new piece of software demoed at the TED talks called Photosynth. This web site and software uses tags and photo meta data to make connections between related pictures.
At the end of the day I was in a meeting and we were talking about 21st century skills and helping students become digital citizens. It made me think about all this data and how students will need data literacy skills to make sense of it all and also to make the connections that will be needed to make new information.

When will someone produce a learning tool for today’s students?

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:47:32 +0800

Why can’t Alphasmart, Apple, Dell, Intel, or even Leapfrog, create a portable learning tool for students? Really. This does not strike me as terribly difficult. Surely there is a willing market of schools and students who would want such a device. So why did we not see the perfect device appear at Macworld yesterday?

If I have not made it clear in some of my previous posts, I believe ubiquitous computing is a must in schools today. Anytime anywhere learning is crucial for both students and teachers to truly integrate technology into their day. One of the main problems with one-to-one laptop programs is the question of cost-effectiveness: does it really make financial sense to give a student a $1000+ laptop? Some of the fallout from doing so is often a culture of fear of not using such an expensive device. If the school has paid so much for a computer, the students better be using it 24/7.

It would be preferable, in my opinion, to buy a $300 device that was smaller perhaps than a full laptop and yet did all the things a student might need to do. While several devices have emerged very recently I am still not convinced anyone is taking this very seriously. Apple would have been my bet, with their history of serving education, but they seem to be getting away from that. Switching to Intel processors and abandoning OS9 has rendered hundreds of excellent educational software titles in our school’s library completely useless. Now, I happen to think that OSX and the bundled iLife suite currently offer students the best learning tools for education today, but even a basic Macbook is around $1000. Why not, Apple?

The OLPC, Intel’s Classmate, the Asus EEE PC and the Everex Cloudbook are all entering this market, though the first two are for emerging markets and the latter seem more for cheapskates than students. I have nothing against emerging markets nor Linux but I do not see any of these as a perfect device. I guess I think we need to depart from the “laptop” idea. Something that is part iPhone, part tablet PC, part EEE PC, part OLPC and part Amazon Kindle. Touch display, pen interaction, built-in camera, webcam and video cam, web browser, small form factor, rugged and lightweight. All for $300. Is that too much to ask?

Clearly, yes.

But someday soon. If not Apple, then maybe Alphasmart, or Leapfrog or some new company. I think perhaps the big guys are too married to the laptop form factor.

The Macbook Air is nice though. I wouldn’t say no to one myself.

Podcast link

Tue, 4 Dec 2007 20:01:43 +0800

No article today, just a couple of links to the podcasts and blogs my fifth grade students have been working on. This page will give you a folder-contents type list of all the student “names” each being a link to that student’s blog or podcast page. This link will take you to my podcast page which contains a class worth of book reviews by Mr. Corbett’s class.

Student Podcast List
My Podcast Page