donderdag 26 mei 2011

New Blog

The last few months I have been busy with my final project about large scale curriculum design. In the frame of this project, I am going to the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley to join the Seeds of Science/Roots of Reading (SEEDS) team.  

SEEDS is a large scale curriculum development initiative which aims to help children in the middle-primary grades develop the inquiry skills needed to make sense of the physical world while building fundamental literacy skills. Their products are highly praised, as is their design process. But their work is hardly known among the instructional design and design research communities. (see also: http://lawrencehallofscience.org/node/3107).

To share my time in Berkeley with you, I made a new blog which can be found here: http://maaikeh.blogspot.com/. I intend to post stories and photos every now and then :)

Cheers!
Maaike

maandag 3 januari 2011

Cool Kinect projects

Remember I was talking about the Microsoft visit? And how we played on the Kinect? Very cool, of course, and the device is at the moment only made for playing games. What they (obviously) did not tell me at Microsoft is that people already made some other awesome programs for the Kinect!

Take for example this 3D drawing program, shown in the first video below. The Kinect is designed to track motions in three dimensions. Although a lot of games are not using this unique feature (yet), this project resulted in program that uses this feature in 3D drawing. With one single hand the user can ‘paint’ lines on a ‘3D canvas’ and with two hands the user can rotate the drawing in different angles. In the video just a few random lines are drawn, but I can imagine that an artist or an industrial designer, for example, could create some nice 3D images or ‘sculptures’. The second video shows a program that creates 3D virtual reality. Someone managed to create an illusion of 3D images using the Kinect. This program is designed to follow the place of the user’s head in space, based on which it adapts the image on the screen to the place of the head. This way the image looks to be 3D, sticking out of your television (without glasses!).

Though these are still relatively simple applications/examples, I think programs like this have great potential. I also can imagine programs like this used in education! Wouldn’t that be cool?? Of course artistic related subjects could use these features, but also imagine applying these features to a mathematical program to learn more about geometry, symmetry or even Pythagoras. Or the Body Bowser program I was talking about in my previous post, see what happens to the bones structure or the muscles, when people bend. Maybe in medical education, to make a simulation more realistic (e.g. operations, dentist procedures).

3D drawing program on the Kinect

3D virtual reality program created with the Kinect


maandag 20 december 2010

Body Browser – a virtual biology book made by Google

Google is again launching a creative product, namely the Body Browser; a 3D animation program that learns you everything about the human body. This educational tool makes it able to explorer the human body in every ‘layer’. There is for example a view in which only the bones are visible, but also a view that enables you to see all the muscles. Next to that, it labels the names of every body-component.

Different layers in Body Browser

The nice thing of this virtual biology book is that you can look the body from every perspective. You can take a ‘tour’ through the human body, walk around it and stop at every moment. You can use a slide (on the left, see pictures) to make layers more or less visible smoothly, zoom in and out, and move the body in x and y directions. It works in your internet browser, and it is available for everyone (if you are willing to install Google chrome (beta) ;-)). This also means that eventually it could be used through your mobile phone. How cool is that! Although it could maybe use some improvements on for example adding the Latin names of body components (I mean, we did not chose Latin in the medical world for nothing) and maybe some more detail on bone protrusions when you zoom in.

It could (for example) be used as reference work, to look something up easily (for example by physical therapists, I know mine sometimes forgets the names of a bone), but also by students, to obtain new knowledge in the field. Though it might need some ‘scaffolds’ for the latter. It’s important for students to regulate their learning process through different guidance (scaffolding) techniques. So, here is a challenge for teachers and educational scientists!  

Look from different perspectives (left)
and select a muscle to see what it is called (right)


donderdag 16 december 2010

Christmas Story 2.0

With the upcoming holidays in mind and the theme of this blog, I would like to share Christmas story 2.0 with you :).  Particularly just for fun, and it is a different way of story writing. It connects the past to the everyday experiences we have now :). I guess that is a bit like what we are looking for in education as well, bridging certain subject matter to the everyday experiences of students ;-).

Enjoy!
Merry Christmas!

maandag 13 december 2010

Visiting Microsoft!

Last Friday (12-10-2010) we went to Microsoft in Brussels with 18 educational science students from the University of Twente. The intention was to follow a master class in which we would discover and experience Microsoft’s ‘newest’ technologies and brainstorm about how these new technologies could be used in education.  Petra Fisser also joined and blogged about it during the trip, so you can read a ‘live story’ on her blog! (in Dutch).
We gathered at 5 ‘o’ clock in the morning to drive to Brussels! Very early and still traffic jams, but with some candy, nice music and funny Belgium road signs we made it to Brussels in about 4.5 hours. Unfortunately we got lost In Brussels and needed another hour to find our way to Microsoft. Cheer for the nice road workers who drove us to the right place :)
At Microsoft, we started with a presentation about some new software (
e.g. Photosynth, Bing and software to manage cloud computing. The presentation was made in PowerPoint with the pptPlex add on tool (it works like Prezi). After that we started a tour to discover the newest technologies of Microsoft! The part I really looked forward to. Unfortunately the technologies were not as new as I expected, but maybe my expectations were a bit too unrealistic or too high. It does not mean I didn’t have fun! I like gadgets and stuff like that, so I enjoyed it anyhow! We ended with a workshop in which we thought about educational ideas combined with the technologies we saw during the tour.

The tour
Playing games on the surface table!
I will discuss a few of the technologies we came across with during the tour. We started with the surface table. This is a big touch screen table which allows multi touch (up to 58 different touch-points) and is even able to recognize chips (for example if you lay an ID card on top of the screen). This is a way to log on to a personal account, but in a more natural, user-friendly way. Of course there were also games! The table focuses on collaboration on the same device, which often is harder on a normal pc (more than two people behind one pc is getting difficult). This was not new for me, but I think these tables are fun and foster collaboration because more people are working together in the same, real life, shared space.
After that a touch screen attached to a pc was shown with the earth on it. You can zoom in and zoom out or move around by touching. The argument was that it works intuitively and is more realistic than the materials used in the classroom to show the earth. He talked about these big world maps but seemed to forget that we also have world globes. At least, that is what we used in school! But of course this touch screen has the advantage of zooming in and out to a great amount, which is great! However, this was not as new as I hoped. It would have been really cool if it could make a 3D image of the earth, one which you could walk around.
Controlling the mouse with your eyes. 
After that we saw technology that was developed specifically for less- and disabled people. There was for example a computer that could be controlled just by looking. It recognized your face and used this to move the mouse pointer around the screen. Focusing means double clicking. There was also software that could translate text to Braille and of course a speech program like the one I used before in writing a post. This was really nice!
Interactive whiteboard
Also an interactive whiteboard was present. This did not bring anything new for me. It was showed how the whiteboard could be used but it was a little shallow in my opinion. Just drawing graphs and using a digital ruler to measure distances. Well that is not much different from actually using a real life ruler to measure something, but of course this is more precise and can be saved. I think an interactive whiteboard can be used for more than that. Than the emphasis went to measures to keep control over students using computers in a classroom, for example remote control. This is not necessarily something to use with an interactive whiteboard. I remember using it when I had to help out my little niece years ago. I thought it was a pity that features like this focused so much on controlling the students instead of using this feature for collaboration or to help out. Or give students the right to remote control the computer connected to the interactive whiteboard, to for example, contribute to a concept map creating together, or report findings.
Photo made during the game
Playing a game on the Kinect 
Last I would like to discuss the Xbox kinect! That was about the newest technology standing there, which was really cool. And we could try it out! I saw other people use it, read about it, but never actually did it myself, so that was nice. After getting used to it, I think it will work pretty naturally. Actually I think this (technology reacting on you as a person) is the future. It even made a photo during the game :) 

All and all it was fun but I expected more from the technologies. It was not really as innovative as I thought, but maybe it was newer for others. I thought there would be more focus on distance flexibility; I think this is getting more common to students. For example, last week my boyfriend went shopping for a sweater. While trying it on, he sent me a picture, made with his phone, while wearing it to ask for my opinion. This is something that could also easily adapt to education. I hoped on more extreme examples of new technologies, for example technology combined with intelligent materials…. imagine a touch screen that adapts the feeling of a surface to the image it is showing, tiger, soft fur, stone, hard rough surface, etc. but that again was too farfetched of course :-). 
Anyhow I realy had a good time and it was nice that we could take a look around, so thank you for all the people who were involved from Microsoft and of course the organizers of this trip!

The workshop
The workshop started with a presentation that was focused on that education should be more learner centered, the teacher is a guide and that education should be more concrete and connected to the everyday experiences of students. Something I agree on, but of course again something we hear about everyday for the past few years.  He pushed it a little bit further by stating that the role of the teacher should change to a more coordinative one and that the student is the one determining what he/she wants to learn and when. Teachers should become a kind of ‘hatch’ that redirects students to the right places to learn by composing a tailored ‘learning package’. Then there was a Microsoft promotion talk. After that we brainstormed in groups about how the technologies we came across during the tour could be used in education. Our group had the idea of using technology to support the teacher in guiding students and making these tailored learning packages. In our worked out concept students could discover what they are interested in by, for example, playing games. Based on these interests a teacher could compose a learning package tailored to a student. We worked this out by using the surface table. Students and teachers could use an ID (chip) card to log on and see the data on the account. Teachers could add or remove data to the students. Next to that parents could also be more involved by choosing to add certain data about the student to their account. This is also something that could be used to make a study choice in secondary education.


zondag 21 november 2010

Teaching teachers about TPACK

In the lasts few posts I wrote about TPACK. Based on these thoughts I worked with three other students in a group on designing a professional development program for teachers during the past few weeks. The program intends to develop the TPACK of primary school teachers. The primary activity is that teachers work together to designing lesson plans for lessons that integrate ICT. In this program we did involve the whole school to foster implementation and curriculum alignment within the school. This not only includes the principal, remedial teacher and school counselor, but also 3th and 4ht year pre-service teachers doing an internship. This way pre- and in-service teacher share their knowledge and experiences while developing TPACK. As mentioned in the earlier post, the T could be a lot of things (materials that support teaching and/or learning). Therefore we narrowed this element down to ‘digital technologies’, focusing on ICT integration in education.
In this post I will reflect on the process we went through to design the professional development program, my experiences in working with TPACK and I will share my ideas about the way teachers can be stimulated to integrate (not just use) digital technology’s in education.

The process
In short, we started with defining context variables (e.g. facilities, infrastructure, culture, etc.), than reviewed the literature on TPACK, factors influencing ICT integration and implementation strategies. After that we designed the program based in the literature findings and context characteristics. To conclude we compared the designed program with other literature findings, for instance the development stages Niess (2009) defined, and developed an evaluation plan to formatively (half way) and summatively evaluate the designed program.
During this process we faced a few challenges, especially since we had to make the context up because we did not have enough time to work with a real one. Luckily we had different disciplines in our design team which really contributed to finding a solution. Our group consisted of a teacher (German), an educational program designer (India) and two students with a background in educational science (Dutch). This assignment showed again that it is important to use these different insights in the design process. For example we could use the teachers’ insights on how things would work out in practice and whether activities are feasible. Making up the context also showed that the context you design for is an important influence on the design. We noticed that some parts in the design could not be worked out properly without knowing the context variables.
Source:
http://www.vrijebasisschool-
heistcentrum.be/ouderraad.htm
The implementation is something we considered from the start, so we identified key actors, like teachers, a principal, etc. from the start. I believe support from key-stakeholders is crucial for successful implementation and therefore we involved the whole school.
Not only the implementation should be considered from the start, but also the evaluation of the program. We embedded activities to evaluate the impact of the program into the design. Embedding the activities means you need to consider these in the first phases of design; otherwise the coherence will be in ‘danger’.
I will share new insights I stumbled into during designing the program in the next parts.


Working with TPACK
Before I started this program I already had some experiences with TPACK. I used the model to evaluate how much TPACK teachers really used in practice during my bachelor assignment and therefore I (among other things) made an observation scheme based on the TPACK model. This is another way of using the model than we did during the last assignment and again is another way than we did use the model (in some classes) during the course. That is what I find so cool about TPACK. It gives a structured way to think about using technology in educational practice but at the same time you can use the model in a very flexible way, like designing and reflection. On the top of that, you can use different elements from the model as a starting point. All this flexible ways of using TPACK does however need abstract or/and out of the box thinking, something which might be hard for teachers since they need to take a step back from what they see in practice.

TPACK and the relation with other factors
During the last assignment I learned more about how TPACK relates to other factors of the teacher. When the context and stakeholders were set, we started on developing the program itself. But where to start? What should we focus on? In the last post I mentioned the ‘TPACK minded’ teacher and that getting TPACK minded starts with being aware of the added value TPACK can offer to teaching. This idea is what the program focused on. Focusing on ‘making teachers aware of TPACK’ is somewhat abstract, so to start we reviewed literature to identify factors that influence the teacher in this ‘getting TPACK minded process’. While digging in the literature I found out how the TPACK of a teacher is related to other aspects of the teacher such as attitudes and beliefs. So working with TPACK in this matter made us see the relations between other factors needed to develop TPACK. I simplified this in a model that include the factors we could focus on in the design. The model is shown in the figure below. These are elements that are feasible to consider in such program.

Relation  between factors.

Stimulating teachers in integrating technology
As I said in the previous post and in this post, making teachers aware of TPACK is one of the first steps. Next to that, a few other factors influence the way teachers use their TPACK in practice (see above). To get teachers to really integrate technology, and thus really use TPACK, it is important that teachers have positive experience, attitudes and beliefs towards ICT (in this case, could be another technology as well) in education. Good practices might help here, but also teachers telling other teachers about success stories might be a good start. Teachers self efficacy plays an important role in the process. To gain self efficacy, teachers need practice, learning by doing and on the job is the key. Of course teachers need to gain experiences with technology to increase their ICT-skills, but this is less effective if teachers gain these skills isolated from a subject- and pedagogy-specific context. This is what TPACK can be a great help in, gaining skills in an integrated way (the way teachers see it in practice) and not isolated from each other.
As also mentioned in the previous post, we need to start this process in teacher education but we should not forget the in-service teachers. I think that working on TPACK with pre- and in-service teachers might help to break the cultural barrier. By this I mean the (often) fixed culture in schools that is hard to change, especially by one teacher that just finished teacher education. Often these teachers have a lot of new insights but these are not used by the school they will get a job.
A shared vision throughout the whole school, motivation, willingness and voluntary teachers is the key but how do we initiate that? At the end, during presentations of the other groups, it was funny to see most of the people struggled with motivational issues since everyone made the assumption that the teachers were all very motivated to work with ICT en TPACK and all joined voluntary In reality this is most likely not the case; in general there are always some teachers that do not share the enthusiasm towards ICT integration. For these teachers this threshold is a lot higher, so they need to take a jump instead of a step to pass the first development phase. This is however also related to attitudes, beliefs and experiences. We tried to pay attention to these factors by letting teachers share their attitudes, beliefs and experiences in the beginning of the program. Next to that we embed different technologies in the program, and let the teachers work with different ones to foster positive experiences.
Though I think that this might help to take a step in the right way but it might not initiate teachers volunteering. I think we need to give teachers time and space to develop that willingness and voluntary behavior. It is like learning to cycle, fall and try again until you got it. But teachers need to get time to do so and they often do not get the time and space to do so. Their performances are important so trying something is out of the questions since it might risk their performances.

How to make teachers initiators instead of ‘just’ applicators?
Bottom up is the key, is often what is stated in literature. Easily said than done I would say, because how do we get teachers to come with ideas like working on their TPACK development? Most of the teachers feel probably that they are stuck in their day to day job; teaching. I believe that there should be a balance between bottom up and top down policy.
Source: http://smiledaily.org/101Volunteer.html
In companys like Google, they give their employees time to work on something (somehow related to their work) they chose themselves. Maybe this could also be a strategy for teachers, to stimulate their willingness to try something new or improve professional development (make it more bottom up). This might be a little bit far-fetched because to start something like that, teachers might need some guidance in the beginning. And of course we need to consider that there are children involved that should not become a victim of experimenting teachers, but I bet we can find a solution for that (peer-feedback before try outs or asking children after school time).

How to make teachers educational artists (creativity)?
As also mentioned in my earlier post and in this post, creativity could greatly influence the quality of education when using the TPACK model. Creativity is however something that cannot be teached. I do believe it can be stimulated though and I think helping teachers to think out of the box would improve working with the TPACK model. The creativity part the model implies should not be underestimated. Although this does not mean that with no creativity, a good TPACK based education cannot be reached (and the other way around).. To help teachers think out of the box they need to experience out of the box. I would like to point to the metaphor witch I used in the post about educational artist.
A tool to support teachers in this out of the box thinking with the TPACK model is maybe something that might be helpful (think about a ‘question card’ that states questions with every element in the TPACK model to help teachers think from a different perspective, used in collaboration with other teachers), but the pitfall of this is that the tool would create a ‘new box’ in which teachers get stuck.


I want to end with a question that came to me when I started to think about the way I tried to interpret the model. I am, whether I like it or not, automatically colored by the society in I live in. I look at TPACK from the Dutch educational system while in Africa and Kuwait people also ‘do TPACK’. Therefore I question: am I, as an educational designer, able to understand TPACK completely without being the real expert in the context of teaching? The actual expert is the teacher. We can’t design without the expertise teachers have and should always use their insights.




References used in text: 
Niess, M. L., Ronau, R. N., Shafer, K. G., Driskell, S. O., Harper S. R., Johnston, C., Browning, C., Özgün-Koca, S. A., & Kersaint, G. (2009). Mathematics teacher TPACK standards and development model. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 4-24.

zaterdag 30 oktober 2010

Facebook Lessons for students in London

The school of Business and Finance developed a lesson program available via a Facebook application. Students of the Master of Business Administration can follow the whole program online. The application is free and provides lesson materials by video’s and documents. Next to that, a discussion environment is available on Facebook. Only if students want to do an exam, they have to pay the fee.

Interesting! I am curious how that works out!