The Berkman Center recently asked me to provide an update on my work over recent months. Here it is:
Greetings!
Sorry for my tardiness. I've spent the the last two weeks in Singapore, serving as an Outstanding Educator in Residence with the Academy of Singapore Teachers. It has been an amazing exchange, and incredibly busy. Singapore's educational system has undergone an incredible transformation in the last thirty years, and they have a coherent, cohesive, centralized system that delivers one of the most effective, equitable educational systems in the world. As they transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, they have recognized the need to shift their education system to place greater emphasis on technology-rich learning environments that develop higher-order thinking skills. This transformation requires a profound cultural shift in the system--the culture they developed to deliver a rich, rigorous curriculum of numeracy and literacy will not support the kind of classroom and school level innovation required to promote self-directed and collaborative learning. It is a fascinating time to be here-- consulting, running workshops, observing classes, and examining what in the American system might be of service to Singaporeans. I've been blogging about the trip at edtechresearcher.org, for those interested in a glimpse of education in Singapore.
Working with Teachers
My life is generally divided between academic and practitioner fronts. My consulting firm, EdTechTeacher, continues to grow in multiple dimensions. We are expanding our summer workshop series for teachers, and continue to develop partnerships with schools and districts around the U.S. and other parts of the world. We have been taken aback by the very strong enthusiasm for the iPad as an educational platform, and our sense is that it may very quickly replace laptops and desktops as the device of choice in schools. We are rapidly scrambling to develop programs to support educators adopting iPads (resources, webinars, and workshops) From a business perspective we are trying to be first to market in providing these services and from a mission perspective we are trying desperately to prevent schools from spending bjillions on tablets which turn out to be sleek, sexy paperweights replacing previous generations of large clunky paperweights. I have also been spending a lot of time developing curriculum around the "flipped classroom" model, which involves a suite of pedagogical strategies that have a very promising role in education systems--especially in providing a framework for educators to think about leveraging open education resources in the classroom.
Working with School Leaders
Our other big effort at EdTechTeacher has been developing more opportunities for school and district leaders to think carefully about how technology can be used in the service of learning. One manifestation of this effort is our first ever Winter Conference, on the theme of Leading Change in Changing Times, that will be held at the Microsoft NERD on March 3. Sandra and some YAM affiliated youth will be supporting us in this effort, and I am grateful for the chance to bring Berkman folks into our orbit. I'm very excited to bring back insights front Singapore to share with this group. I've also been giving myself a crash course in education policy, as I continue to deepen my understanding of the notion that education technology needs education reform more than education reform needs education technology.
Working with Pre-Service Teachers
I'm also looking forward to teaching a class at MIT this spring on Understanding and Evaluating Education to undergraduates who are training to be math and science secondary teachers. I will probably continue to give occasional guest lectures at several courses at the Graduate School of Education.
Research Publications
On the academic front, my major accomplishment was completing my dissertation at the Graduate School of Education in November. The main findings from that work will be published any day now in Educational Researcher, in an article titled The State of Wiki Usage in U.S., K-12 schools. I also published online a new instrument, the Wiki Quality Instrument, and an extensive discussion of the methods of my work. One line of thinking emerging from that work has to do with issues of educational equality and the digital divide in a socially networked world. The Berkman Center has provided several terrific opportunities for me to formulate and disseminate ideas around these issues, including a fellows hour talk, a luncheon talk, and a forthcoming Radio Berkman episode. I also helped pilot a new video op-ed series at the GSE.
Over the fall, I published another article on using online social networks in pre-service teacher education, presented at the Open Education conference and Massachusetts Computer Using Educators Conference, and was a keynote speaker at the Tennessee Council of History Education conference. I have conference presentations forthcoming at the American Educational Research Association conference along with several local practitioner conferences. I am also looking forward to the upcoming Hewlett Grantee meeting hosted by the Berkman Center, and I've tried to offer constructive suggestions in the development of that program.
Next research steps
I have additional papers that I am working on emerging from my work on the use of wikis in U.S. K-12 settings, including a paper on collaboration in K-12 wikis that I hope to share with the collaboration working group soon. I'm also working on a paper examining how teacher rubrics for wikis and other Web 2.0 learning environments align poorly with their stated goals. I'm starting up a new round of data analysis, which has to do with correlating measures of wiki quality with survey measures of teacher attitudes and practices. I'm struggling to find a balance between publishing findings from aging data and moving forward with new projects.
Other Research Irons in the Fire
I have submitted a Cyberlearning grant with a number of colleagues, along with TechBoston, to pilot a program providing mobile devices to low income families in Boston along with training and pre-installed apps for location-based STEM learning activities in the city. Urs Gasser has kindly agreed to serve as an adviser on the grant as well, and I think it would be a great opportunity to connect the Berkman Center more closely with edtech working happening in our fair city. I'm also serving as a research adviser to the Vital Signs program at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.
In Conclusion
I have very much enjoyed and appreciated the opportunity to be affiliated with the Berkman Center, and I have especially appreciated the chance to learn from such a talented, diverse group of colleagues who have found so many different pathways to contributing to the challenges of a changing world. I look forward to future collaborations.
Best,
Justin