Philosophy of Education and Educational Philosophy
Erac presentation jan 10th 2011
1. Environmental Scan
Digital Learns Project Phase II
Presentation to ERAC,
January 10, 2012
Cyri Jones, ZEN Portfolio Networks Inc.
Jay Collier, The Compass LLC
3. Context
• Phase I – Vision
• Phase II – Environmental Scan
• Concurrently developed ERAC Commons
(May 2011) and Mobile Apps site (Jan. 2012)
– Seeing some of the social network components
and issues in action
12. Project Team
Cyri Jones, Principal
Digital Learners Roadmap ZEN Portfolio Networks Inc., North Vancouver, BC
Phase II Proposal
Environmental Scan Jay Collier, Executive Director
The Compass LLC, Topsham, Maine
By ZEN Portfolio Networks Inc.
Sept. 30th, 2011 Niklas Eriksson, Mobile Usability & Learning
Faculty, ARCADA Polytechnic, Helsinki, Finland
Elena Kuznetsova
Researcher
Collaboration tool & Google Maps specialist
Source: VSB website home page
14. Phase II - Project Deliverables
• Digital Learners Roadmap – Environmental Scan
– Scope
• What approaches are school districts, provinces, states, etc.
using to help students and teachers discover and access
learning resources
• How have they funded their initiatives including possible
grant source info
• Best practices for how they have rolled-out these type of
initiatives
• Regions:
– Detailed Summary of what jurisdictions are doing in the US and
Canada
– Genera Summary of what jurisdictions are doing in Europe and
Asia
15. Phase II - Project Deliverables
• Complete by Dec. 15th, 2011
– Present results in visual format
• Word/PDF/Excel document with links to relevant sites
– Data focused
– Links to resources
– Some case studies where applicable
– Contacts included
• Summary PowerPoint presentation
– Trends & Conclusions
• Possibility of Google Map overlays showing regional
data trends (depending on time)
23. Tight Technology Expiry Dates
Systems need to be flexible, adaptive and iterative with user input
to stay relevant, long planning cycles = irrelevant offering
24. Discovery of quality learning
resources
• Move to more granular
learning resources
• Millions of apps
• Billions of user generated
content items
• Need to support
personalized learning
• Crowdsourcing only
practical way to evaluate
34. Opportunity
• Lots of expertise at hand here in BC
• Compelling vision at provincial level and local
level
• A lot of teachers and administrators
embracing change
• Many jurisdictions faced similar questions 3 to
10 years ago
– Lots of lessons learned
37. Need to build a new, smart system from ground up
not just a “blend” that is “traditional face to face” + “online”
41. Education Trends
Blended Learning Consolidation of distance learning and face-to-face
classroom opportunities for accessing digital resources
and tools.
Raised expectations for digital tools in schools by Why can’t school tools be as usable as digital tools they
students and teachers. use in other areas of their life.
Mobile learning a game changer Students and teachers want to bring their personal
devices to the school and leverage.
Quality and quantity of learning resources Challenge is in finding the right resources for the task or
increasing learning outcome at hand.
Teachers and students becoming creators of Not just consuming traditional publisher content.
content, not just consumers Engaging project-based teaching involves creating
things and collaboration. Creative Commons licensing
facilitating this. Growth of service learning.
42. Education Trends
Repositories to registries Moving away from a siloed learning object
repository approach to one where only local
resources are stored, external resources hosted
with original content owner.
Growth of learning analytics Technology emerging to track para-data about
learning resources (e.g. ratings by teachers) and
consolidating to help filter. Ability to tie a learning
resource to specific learning outcomes and see
effectiveness of learning resource.
Consolidation of learning outcomes across Growing realization that most learning outcomes
jurisdictions from different jurisdictions are almost identical in
core subjects (e.g. Common Core initiative in US
with 42 states participating)
Cloud approach to learning technology Mirroring trend in other sectors, IT infrastructure is
delivery migrating from within the organization to external
providers saving money and improving service.
43. Education Trends
Innovations coming from outside traditional Organizations like Khan Academy are disrupting
education sector education sector. Traditional delivery approaches
are threatened with being redundant.
Growing awareness of important role of Many jurisdictions starting to set up social networks
social networked learning for their students and teachers.
Just-in-time instead of just-in-case learning Less important to “cover all the curriculum” than to
provide authentic, project based learning
experiences for students.
Importance of cross-functional teams Most meaningful work is done today in cross-
functional teams. Students need to go beyond
program and school siloes to get experience with
this.
71. • In Carnegie Mellon's rigorously evaluated
online statistics course, students learned a full
semester's worth of material in half as much
time—and performed as well or better than
students learning from traditional instruction.
88. • The future is already here — it's just not very
evenly distributed. – William Gibson
89. Summary
• Each region has mastered some aspects of the
overall vision, No one has mastered all the
components
• Main purpose
– Collaboration
– Communities of practice
– Finding learning resources
– Creating learning resources
90. Summary
• Main audience
– Students
– Parents
– Teachers
– Face to face students or online / distance learners
• Scale
– School district
– State / province
134. “A contract between the Indian
government and Canadian development
partner DataWind, should put between
10 and 12 million devices in the hands of
students across India by the end of 2012,
according to Computer World.”
Source: VentureBeat.com
136. Recommendations
• Usability more important than any other factor!
• Ensure process is transparent
– Include early adopter users
• Education Camps
• Ning Network
– Should give big players Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM chance to bid as well as smaller players like Edmodo
and open source approaches like WordPress/BuddyPress and Drupal
• Encourage K-20 co-operation
• Get definitive regulatory policy statement from government / legal advice
• Tool that is best for elementary may be different than best one for secondary
• Break into phases
– don’t launch by pilot districts
– Instead launch by functionality
• Start with “low hanging fruit”
– Target early adopters
– Let it grow organically
• Don’t build a white elephant
– But do put in sufficient resources to realistically support
• Clarify role of ERAC and School Districts
• Make sure efforts are forwards compatible
The official social network site for the members of Greek Schools’ Network (schools, teachers and students). A place to discuss and exchange ideas and to blog. Why it’s in the Showcase: Greek Schools’ network is the largest educational-focused BuddyPress installation in Greece. It currently has approximately 7,500 members and has the potential to grow much larger.