BYOD, the minilab & digital mastery

mini-lab: diverse school devices that teach digital fluency

Any digitally literate person has a tech cloud around them...

What do you wish your teaching tech-cloud would look like?

Imagine a cloud of technology that orbits a digital coach (a teacher who knows the equipment and is exploring and pushing back the boundaries of digital pedagogy). Now imagine empowering that teacher to support their less digitally literate colleagues...

A small grouping of heterogeneous devices around a digitally literate teacher that offer access to digital information, digital creation and online collaboration in a variety of forms

DIGITAL FLUENCIES TO BUILD IN BEGINNERS

• Computers as a learning & research tool - break habitual use patterns!
• Familiarity with personal usage in order to prepare for effective personalization of technology
• Internet as a source of information/not just entertainment
• Critical analysis skills
• Internet as a collaborative tool
• digital citizenship
• social computing (social media, cyber bullying, digital footprint awareness)

The goal: to develop digital fluency around something other than an entertainment paradigm

The problem: Educational technology that is poorly optimized to teach digital literacy

what do I believe about technology?

we need to be digitally agnostic!

if you don't understand it, it will use you!

what we use influences how we appear digitally

digital clouds?

MY

TECH CLOUD

... or is this technology revolution doing something deeper to us?

My personal technology choices

i7 Toshi laptop

my tech has to be fast & enduring

phablet!

i7 desktop multiboot: win7/8/OSx/Linux, 32Gb RAM, SSD, 2x4Tb drives

Is technology something that surrounds us?

Olympus EPL-3

pro quality super portable micro-SLR, bluetooth connectivity to the web, many lenses.

...has it begun to insinuate itself into our very sense of self?

introduction

Followed by a bad solution:

a desperate grab at BYOD without thinking about the true goal: enabling better learning through effective technological access

The State of Educational Technology

Who Am I?

DIVERSIFYING EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY lab-mini-lab-BYOD: a digital skills continuum

• I got my first computer when I was eleven (1980)
• I taught myself to program on it by modding games
• I first got on the internet in 1992, I was a regular user by '94
• if I'm a digital immigrant, I'm a very early one

no coherent development of digital skills

personalization of technology

generic educational technology

technology assisted individualized learning

Computer Technician

Network Administrator

mobilization

technical illiteracy

@tk1ng

Computer Engineering Qualified Instructor

social media

timothy.king@ugdsb.on.ca

2012

self-taught, habitual users

blogger

www.atking.ca

transparency

artist

GAMER!

writer

What relationship are we developing with digital technology?

Where are the implications of this relationship for education?

How can we integrate digital fluency into schools?

cloud computing

web designer

unfamiliarity with technology

digital empowerment

digital impoverishment

Follow me on some reflection...

BOOKS THAT INFORMED THIS TALK:

Yes! BYOD as a reward for proven skills!

It isn't the Alpha, it's the Omega!

http://singularity.com/

http://www.theshallowsbook.com/

http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/

With some invaluable PLN input on BYOD from Andrew Campbell (@acampbell99) and Gary Stager (@garystager)

http://stager.tv/blog/?p=2397

http://acampbell99.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/what-is-the-d-in-byod-discrimination-divide/

DIGITAL FLUENCY CONTINUUM

The Shallows synopsis: We are becoming low attention, widely dispersed thinkers - we are unable to think deeply about anything any more in a world of constant distraction and continual transformation

The Singularity Is Near synopsis: we are living on the cusp of a change in human evolution that will make the industrial revolution look like a blip. We are on the verge of creating greater than human intelligence, which by its very nature is beyond our ability to comprehend - the world is about to become stranger than we can comprehend

Journeyman

Mastery

Shop Class As Soulcraft synopsis: in a 'creative economy' we value management double talk and consumer based passivity over objective (ie: skills based) learning. It's a world of idiots who say much but can actually do nothing

Apprentice

byod: a reward for fluency

what we have now

where we could go:

School computer lab

NEVER as a starting point! It's like buying a car for someone who doesn't know how to drive!

The Ideal Digital Learner

Mini-lab Concept

the threat of habitual use creating negative feedback

transformative technology

the value of objective skillsets

apprenticeship learning - always personalized, hands on and dependent on demonstrable skills

the blind leading the blind

boundless optimism

technically competent/confident

Mid-level digital fluencies

Centralized IT

• no differentiation
• no digital diversity
• no opportunity to learn variations in technology
• irrelevant to the world students are graduated into
• results in poor digital literacy
• fair in the same way that making all students wear size 5 shoes is fair

Access to diverse equipment & online environments

undirected/School Lab/BYOD Edtech

developing digital literacy through differentiating technology

for beginners

basic labs for beginners

system designed to slowly open options as skills are demonstrated consistantly

SYNTHESIS

• awareness of various hardware and software approaches to digital access
• development of a personalized approach to effective digital skills
• ability to self moderate online behavior in a productive manner in an otherwise unstructured environment
• effective troubleshooting abilities

digitally self-aware (citizen, footprint)

I aim to take Kurzweil's boundless optimism and faith in our technological evolution, Carr's concerns about how we are losing our ability to think in a technological morass, and Crawford's belief in the value of objective skills development in order to build a digital skills curriculum based on increased access to differentiated tools that helps digital natives and immigrants both gain mastery of technology, instead of being habitual users

learning evolves into a more open system

(when students demonstrate an ability to cope with it)

(that's staff or students)

ability to choose effective digital tools to maximize effectiveness of digitally enhanced learning

curriculum continuum of digital fluency

an experienced digital coach/digital mentor

able to maximize effectiveness on a variety of digital tools

BYOD

• randomly instituted
• little oversight or training
• left to individual teachers, who then off load management due to lack of digital fluency
• played as a money saving move
• enhances digital divide
• no steps to earn/achieve it
• unpedagogically supported

develop familiarity with basic digital fluencies

secure, directed environment

interrogative: questioning of online content

development of awareness of personal style in approaching digital fluency

More Information:

Leverage digital mastery to spread deep, meaningful digital literacy

digital apprenticeships with clear developmental goals

What is a mini-lab you ask?

MY

TECH CLOUD

personalized electronics

The Mini-lab

size halving while speed doubling every 18 months - Moore's Law keeps happening!

slow

My personal technology choices

miniaturizing

massive

cheapening

expensive

i7 Toshi laptop

my tech has to be fast & enduring

general purpose, cheap, fast, personalized, common...

more commonplace

rare

phablet!

specialized

personalizing

Where's it going next?

The next step in our evolution toward decentralized, differentiated technology access in education

from scarce appliance to personal extension

cloud computing

bet it isn't this...

Centralized, remotely board controlled, error prone, limited access desktops

The School COMPUTER lab

• centrally administrated
• heavily intranet dependent
• costly to maintain
• bloated software image
• slow to change
• frequent breakage and vandalism (no on-site ownership)
• high student to computer ratio (30:1 per student:computer per school)
• limited access through school desktop labs
• poor digital literacy in staff & students (maintenance and repair is handed to off-site specialists - teachers & students have no chance to develop familiarity or ownership, and have no control)

differentiation of technology leads to deeper mastery

Educational technology for learning digital skills, not ease of management!

BYOD: highest level of demonstrated digital mastery

The Mini-lab

operations

http://prezi.com/h7ms3hw7jx7-/mini-lab/

... for the full Mini-Lab argument

• The digital coach (a teacher) maintains and monitors the hardware.
• A clear sense of ownership and responsibility (reduces vandalism).
• Teachers who want to use the mini-lab must demonstrate sufficient knowledge (yes, the digital literacy I'm asking for in students must be demonstrated by teachers too)
• DCs help to develop digital fluency across staff, administration and students

Don't think this is an expensive option,

We're doing the expensive option now!

To spoon-feed students board maintained clones is far more expensive than differentiating technology in order to develop real digital mastery!

http://prezi.com/qdrcjew4eerr/mechanics-of-future-school/

http://prezi.com/mlmks5pq65dz/dancing-in-the-datasphere/

Steps toward differentiation of educational technology - A VITAL CHANGE - and one of the main reasons edtech seems so out of touch with everything else!

recognize mastery - these are objective, measurable skills

open access to more technology as skills are proven

http://temkblog.blogspot.ca/2012/10/forming-ecoo-presentation.html

no more generic, system wide #edtech