Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced a new electronic book-reading device, the Kindle, just days after the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reported a continuing decline in reading among today's students.
...the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announces the release of To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence, a new and comprehensive analysis of reading patterns in the United States. ... The compendium reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society.
For example, about 54 percent of 9-year-olds read every day for "fun;" employers consider as "deficient" in writing 72 percent of high school graduates. Dana Gioia, NEA chair comments, "Kids are doing better (reading more) at 9, and at 11. At 13, they're doing no worse, but then you see this catastrophic falloff. If kids are put into this electronic culture without any counterbalancing efforts, they will stop reading."
The Kindle reading device uses a new, high-resolution display technology called electronic paper, which aims to give the reader a crisp, black-and-white screen that resembles the appearance and readability of printed paper.
The screen recognizes ink, just like books and newspapers, but displays the ink particles electronically. Watch for costs to decline from the $399 initial suggested manufacturer's retail price. Sony's Portable Reader System, for example, sells for about $300, and the ASUS Eee (a subnotebook PC) is in the same price range.
eBooks for the Kindle cost about $10.
The Kindle is thinner than most paperbacks, weighs 10.3 ounces, and can hold about 200 books, along with newspapers, magazines, and a dictionary. Users can purchase secure-digital (SD) memory cards to increase the device's memory.
Readers can buy and download books directly to the Kindle without a PC through SprintNextel Corp.'s high-speed EV-DO cellular network without fees or contract commitments. They also can take notes on what they read and store their notes on Amazon's servers.
Now seems an appropriate time for teachers to buy a Tablet PC, UMPC, Kindle, Eee, or Portable Reading Service in order to learn to use them. Then, as teachers we can have an informed place at the table to address content issues, content management and licensing, and other policy decisions about ways to increase student reading and related learning rates.
What do you think: Will Kindle go to school?
Hmm. I wonder whether the NEA looked at reading rates of teachers? It would be interesting to see data that indicates relationships between teacher reading and student reading. That would be a nice master's thesis review of lit and PhD. dissertation research for someone.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
We'll Miss You, Marc.
The Tablet PC and other mobile PC users community has buzzed for almost a week about the health condition of Marc Orchant, a friendly, super bright person. He passed away December 9, 2007. Joan and I join the many others around the globe who will miss him, and wish his family the best as they carry his memory foreward. He was a friend of our family. We shall miss his engaging manner and enthusiastic participation in mobile computing.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
A Classroom with Mobile PCs
Picture in your minds eye a classroom with the teacher and all 30 students each using a mobile PC. Place the classroom in whatever setting you choose. A demonstration likely exists of mobile PCs used in a similar setting. The following scene is assembled from reports of real classrooms repeated in variations probably a hundred thousand times a year worldwide in government and private schools.
It’s Tuesday morning, the second month of the school year. Upon entering the classroom, each student boots up his or her Tablet PC, signs onto the school network through a wireless connection, and then signs into the attendance roster, all without prompts from the teacher.
Ms. Yasmin, the teacher, walks around the classroom holding, watching the monitor and using her Tablet PC to assist students silently online as they require anywhere in the room.
Students include those typically classified as slow to fast learners, with special education to regular or normal to gifted and talented labels. The teacher learned to use her Tablet PC in three ways.
1. Ms. Yasmin attended school sponsored in-service training that introduced her to the machine’s features, to the school’s network and applications, and then to ways of using Tablet PCs with these applications to guide student learning.
2. She practiced on her own time with her Tablet PC the way a music student commits 30 minutes a day to mastering a new instrument. Sometimes this practice occurred at home, sometimes in a coffee shop hot spot, and sometimes in her classroom without anyone else present.
3. Ms. Yasmin and her students began interacting with their Tablet PCs in the classroom after students learned to use their machines during a school sponsored training program geared to them. It took a number of trials and errors for them to establish easily repeated routines to work together as a classroom.
Technologies, especially mobile PCs, have changed ways to fulfill social functions of education in three ways.
First, mobile PCs reduce the number of links between knower and learner in information supply chains. These notebooks and software supplement and replace conventional teacher practices of instruction and individual academic performance evaluations.
Second, the capacity of mobile PCs continues to increase in order to address on-demand routine electronic mediations that supplement transmission of information and skills from knower to individual learners. Hundreds of large to small scale mobile PC demonstrations in PK20 schools worldwide exist of the feasibility of learning on demand, one-to–one as well as group based learning in and out of schools.
Third, mobile PCs and other advanced communication technologies have inspired what I call an emerging mass market of independent learners (MMIL). They compete for time, attention and control with schooling practices to fulfill their personal learning interests that overlap irregularly with conventional academic expectations.
These changes contribute to an emerging new common sense about learning venues, timing, processes, and content: Schooling must adapt to global technologies in order to remain a relevant learning venue. This sense has profound implications for adjusting teacher selection, preparation, recruitment, and retention, as well as for research about teaching.
Together, changes, demonstrations and common sense indicate a potential for increased learning rates and qualities. These increases affect definitions and practices of schooling, including with people labeled disabled and those with special gifts and talents.
Implications
These changes, demonstrations, and common sense open previously unavailable implications for reviewing near and farther term teaching, learning, disabilities, and gifts as well as talents. They also offer newer vocabulary for discussing teaching-learning processes in and out of formal organizations, such as schools. I'm especially intrigued by the potential of the rise of perhaps the first ever (that sounds hyper, but I wonder if it's a fact) mass market of independent learners.
I'll address such implications in separate posts.
(Excerpt from Heiny, R. (to be released soon). Mobile PCs in Schools. tabletpcpost.com.
It’s Tuesday morning, the second month of the school year. Upon entering the classroom, each student boots up his or her Tablet PC, signs onto the school network through a wireless connection, and then signs into the attendance roster, all without prompts from the teacher.
Ms. Yasmin, the teacher, walks around the classroom holding, watching the monitor and using her Tablet PC to assist students silently online as they require anywhere in the room.
Students include those typically classified as slow to fast learners, with special education to regular or normal to gifted and talented labels. The teacher learned to use her Tablet PC in three ways.
1. Ms. Yasmin attended school sponsored in-service training that introduced her to the machine’s features, to the school’s network and applications, and then to ways of using Tablet PCs with these applications to guide student learning.
2. She practiced on her own time with her Tablet PC the way a music student commits 30 minutes a day to mastering a new instrument. Sometimes this practice occurred at home, sometimes in a coffee shop hot spot, and sometimes in her classroom without anyone else present.
3. Ms. Yasmin and her students began interacting with their Tablet PCs in the classroom after students learned to use their machines during a school sponsored training program geared to them. It took a number of trials and errors for them to establish easily repeated routines to work together as a classroom.
Technologies, especially mobile PCs, have changed ways to fulfill social functions of education in three ways.
First, mobile PCs reduce the number of links between knower and learner in information supply chains. These notebooks and software supplement and replace conventional teacher practices of instruction and individual academic performance evaluations.
Second, the capacity of mobile PCs continues to increase in order to address on-demand routine electronic mediations that supplement transmission of information and skills from knower to individual learners. Hundreds of large to small scale mobile PC demonstrations in PK20 schools worldwide exist of the feasibility of learning on demand, one-to–one as well as group based learning in and out of schools.
Third, mobile PCs and other advanced communication technologies have inspired what I call an emerging mass market of independent learners (MMIL). They compete for time, attention and control with schooling practices to fulfill their personal learning interests that overlap irregularly with conventional academic expectations.
These changes contribute to an emerging new common sense about learning venues, timing, processes, and content: Schooling must adapt to global technologies in order to remain a relevant learning venue. This sense has profound implications for adjusting teacher selection, preparation, recruitment, and retention, as well as for research about teaching.
Together, changes, demonstrations and common sense indicate a potential for increased learning rates and qualities. These increases affect definitions and practices of schooling, including with people labeled disabled and those with special gifts and talents.
Implications
These changes, demonstrations, and common sense open previously unavailable implications for reviewing near and farther term teaching, learning, disabilities, and gifts as well as talents. They also offer newer vocabulary for discussing teaching-learning processes in and out of formal organizations, such as schools. I'm especially intrigued by the potential of the rise of perhaps the first ever (that sounds hyper, but I wonder if it's a fact) mass market of independent learners.
I'll address such implications in separate posts.
(Excerpt from Heiny, R. (to be released soon). Mobile PCs in Schools. tabletpcpost.com.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Students Like Using Tablet PCs at BHHS
Ken Collura posts a useful summary of Carolyn Sommerich study of human factors (see page 8) involved in the Bishop Hartley High School (BHHS) Tablet PC program. BHHS offered the first uses of Tablet PCs in high schools.
It is important that students get on the right track from the start with computing technology, both cognitively and physically.
More than 80% of the BHHS students said that Tablet PCs made school more enjoyable, and that Tablets were replacing other tools for accoomplishing a variety of daily tasks.
For example, more students reported that using Tablets than paper-pen for taking class notes.
Eighty percent agreed that it was easier to access old lecture notes with their Tablets, easier for them to take notes during class with the Tablet, and easier to organize their notes with their Tablets.
It is important that students get on the right track from the start with computing technology, both cognitively and physically.
More than 80% of the BHHS students said that Tablet PCs made school more enjoyable, and that Tablets were replacing other tools for accoomplishing a variety of daily tasks.
For example, more students reported that using Tablets than paper-pen for taking class notes.
Eighty percent agreed that it was easier to access old lecture notes with their Tablets, easier for them to take notes during class with the Tablet, and easier to organize their notes with their Tablets.
Friday, December 07, 2007
HISD Student Tracking Data System Funded by Gates Foundation
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $4.5M to Houston Independent School District to create a data system to track individual student academic progress.
By tracking student results, teachers will be better able to identify individual strengths and weaknesses and target their support where it is needed most, helping all students to meet the high academic standards ...
Funding from the Gates Foundation will be used for ... professional-development opportunities for teachers to learn how the "value-added" data system can be used to guide planning and instruction. The grant will also support new communication systems and online tools to help share the knowledge across the district.
The system uses Dr. William Sanders' Education Value Added Assessment System (EVAAS®) model to measure student progress at the school, grade, teacher, and student levels. Using this value-added growth measurement, teachers, schools, and HISD leadership can begin interpreting the impact of the curriculum, instruction, and specific programs on student achievement.
While some chide Sanders' work, it should receive skeptical, but open support from teachers until someone offers a better option.
Kudos Houston and Sanders! We look forward to reports of your progress and accomplishments.
And kudos to those trying to generate better options for students to increase learning rates. There's room for more databased programs in schools and other learning venues.
I wonder how EVAAS works with one-on-one programs and with mobile PCs, including Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs. Please, if you know, point me to such reports. I'm interested.
By tracking student results, teachers will be better able to identify individual strengths and weaknesses and target their support where it is needed most, helping all students to meet the high academic standards ...
Funding from the Gates Foundation will be used for ... professional-development opportunities for teachers to learn how the "value-added" data system can be used to guide planning and instruction. The grant will also support new communication systems and online tools to help share the knowledge across the district.
The system uses Dr. William Sanders' Education Value Added Assessment System (EVAAS®) model to measure student progress at the school, grade, teacher, and student levels. Using this value-added growth measurement, teachers, schools, and HISD leadership can begin interpreting the impact of the curriculum, instruction, and specific programs on student achievement.
While some chide Sanders' work, it should receive skeptical, but open support from teachers until someone offers a better option.
Kudos Houston and Sanders! We look forward to reports of your progress and accomplishments.
And kudos to those trying to generate better options for students to increase learning rates. There's room for more databased programs in schools and other learning venues.
I wonder how EVAAS works with one-on-one programs and with mobile PCs, including Tablet PCs and Ultra Mobile PCs. Please, if you know, point me to such reports. I'm interested.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Empirical Evidence: Handheld Use Leads to Increased Achievement
Cathleen Norris and Elliot Soloway of GoKnow Learning released scientifically-based research that demonstrates handheld computer use in K-12 classrooms leads to student achievement gains.
The landmark research will help schools nationwide secure grant money to ... improve(d) test scores.
In two years of the University of Michigan study of 7th grade science achievement, the handheld computer group performed 2 percent and 13 percent better than the non-handheld group.
In a second study of 3rd grade mathematics, handheld computer group performed 7 percent better than the non-handheld group and the subset of low-achieving students performed 11 percent better.
Kudos to developers and users of learning software that takes advantage of mobile learning! Tablet PC and other mobile learning teachers can use these data to indicate potential learning gains in their schools also. Keep up the good work, Teachers!
(Name corrected 12-06-07AM)
The landmark research will help schools nationwide secure grant money to ... improve(d) test scores.
In two years of the University of Michigan study of 7th grade science achievement, the handheld computer group performed 2 percent and 13 percent better than the non-handheld group.
In a second study of 3rd grade mathematics, handheld computer group performed 7 percent better than the non-handheld group and the subset of low-achieving students performed 11 percent better.
Kudos to developers and users of learning software that takes advantage of mobile learning! Tablet PC and other mobile learning teachers can use these data to indicate potential learning gains in their schools also. Keep up the good work, Teachers!
(Name corrected 12-06-07AM)
Monday, December 03, 2007
Tableteers, Respond to ACM's Call for Papers
The Association for Computing Machinery offers a list of deadlines for submitting papers to present at several upcoming conferences.
ACM delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources.
As mobile PCs appear more frequently in the hands of teachers and students, it seems reasonable that some of these people will have data of interest to attendees at one or more of these conferences. Step up, Tableteer Teachers, and share what you know about ways to use them that results in increased student learning rates.
ACM delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession. ACM provides the computing field's premier Digital Library and serves its members and the computing profession with leading-edge publications, conferences, and career resources.
As mobile PCs appear more frequently in the hands of teachers and students, it seems reasonable that some of these people will have data of interest to attendees at one or more of these conferences. Step up, Tableteer Teachers, and share what you know about ways to use them that results in increased student learning rates.
Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook Available Free
TeacherMagazine released its first issue of Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook.
... a guide to ideas and resources on teacher learning (bold added).
Register for a free subscription to this periodical.
I look forward to seeing how commentators and reporters handle mobile PC learning. This looks like a venue for Tableteers to describe their successful processes, so others may emulate increased student learning rates.
... a guide to ideas and resources on teacher learning (bold added).
Register for a free subscription to this periodical.
I look forward to seeing how commentators and reporters handle mobile PC learning. This looks like a venue for Tableteers to describe their successful processes, so others may emulate increased student learning rates.
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