My take on it is that for instruction we have to take into effect the philosophy that the best determining factor of what a person will learn can depend on what they already know. If a person is situated and surrounded by technology, they likely expect technology to be the medium by which they receive instruction.

With that said, I was having a conversation with a faculty member yesterday about the most important role that technology places in curriculum. I go back to my own learning experiences, both self-directed and instructor-led, classroom or "life experience" and realize that the human factor has always been a big part of it. If I was the last person on earth and all I had left were the technology left behind, I wonder how I might go about continuing to learn all that I could about various subjects?

My take on it is that if students have an expectation of how best they learn we should be aware of that fact. At the same time, I like going back into history before the advances of technology that we have currently were available. My assessment is that some of the greatest teachers and learners still succeeded without it. Why? It could be a number of factors, but having proper motivation of self or of instructor was likely a factor.

Most of my colleagues in the field would agree that by nature human beings are built to learn all that they can. Whether or not they are successful in that aspect of their life largely depends on their environment. Therefore, there is still a great need for people who can be mentors, encouraging entities, tutors, coaches, and most importantly good parents. I think it’s useless to point fingers at things or people or place blame when it comes to poor learning outcomes. Rather we should work towards correcting and improving learning opportunities. Technology is a big portion of that, but being an influence and role model for successful living is priceless in a world filled with teaching and learning opportunities.

May we choose our technology wisely and seek the success of our students accordingly!

One of the things we came to a conclusion upon was the fact that it is EXTREMELY time-consuming to put together a good, engaging, and pedagogically sound audio presentation. Apple computer is putting together several tools to hopefully make that easier.

http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/podcasts.html

Given Apple’s success in making difficult things easier for people who are intimidated by technology, hopefully this would put this in the hands of instructors who can make good use of it.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071024/20071023006845.html?.v=1

What this means is that some of the work that I do hopefully will be able to be transferred to a teaching setting. It also shows that Adobe is committed to the educational environment by making this resource available to them at a price point that’s agreeable to both. Thanks Adobe!

I wouldn’t mind teaching this skill to other people. We’ll see what comes of it.

Here’s a version with some overlays to indicate those learning activities that are active and passive:

Active learning would include those activities that charge our brains and capacities to remember what we are experiencing. Passive learning would include those activities that people can still learn from, but not generally as effective as active learning.

Given this, we should realize that every human being is different. We as instructors and educators should be flexible to adapt to every person’s learning style and seek out their needs

As stated, I’m releasing this under a Creative Commons License under a variety of animated media presentation formats:

• MS PowerPoint (version 2003 or greater) Cone of Experience Media PowerPoint
• Adobe Captivate (version 1 or later) Cone of Experience Media Captivate
• Adobe Flash (version 8 or greater) Cone of Learning (Adobe Flash)
• Adobe Fireworks as an unflattened PNG file (still images only) Cone of Learning (Adobe Fireworks PNG)

Here’s the link to download them all as a zipped archive: Cone of Experience Media

As mentioned, anyone can use this stuff to their heart’s content as per the creative commons license below:

Edgar Dale Cone of Experience Media by Jeffrey Anderson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.edutechie.ws

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070924-google-testing-my-world-for-launch-later-this-year.html

I would classify this as more of breaking news, but also an opportunity for educational technologists who lament about teaching in a virtual environment that is yet to become devoid of unruly behavior. I’m referring to secondlife and its variants who propose themselves to be the next best thing to the real thing. I’m one to accept most forms of technology in its usage for education, but in my opinion the best place to learn things of a lasting nature IS real life. I know…, big shocker. I get the feeling that many of my co-workers and colleagues would disagree.

Can you learn things in a virtual 3D world? Of course you can. If given a choice of how you want to learn your favorite subject, what environment would you choose? I’m going to refer to a favorite resource of mine called Edgar Dale’s cone of experience/learning. Much like the food pyramid explains which types of food are best for our bodies, this model (if you buy into it as much as I do) explains what is best for our learning experience.

Today’s food pyramid is somewhat different than ones of yesteryear. Whereas before, the food pyramid would list the most important, the American government has now given us a new pyramid that is more in-depth and helps us make better choices about the important foods we eat.

If we transition this metaphor to the types of learning activities we choose for ourselves and others, we ought to give serious thought to the types of activities that will help us (ourselves, and our students) remember, retain, and grow as a result.

I would put virtual worlds in a category almost by themselves. While they are useful for lots of learning activities, I strongly advocate that we look for the real deal whenever possible. Learning space impossibilities such as dangerous conditions and training scenarios aside, the things that we remember most have to do with attention given to it in the first place. Often we don’t have the proper attention because our motivation isn’t there to begin with. Often our motivation is driven by some rooted emotional bias. As my Ed Psych professor from last semester quoted: “Emotion drives attention, which drives learning.”

I’d like to rephrase it into something a little more mnemonic:

Emotion drives attention which drives retention

By the way, I aim to render a really nice version of Edgar Dale’s cone of learning model using Fireworks soon. Hopefully google images will be able to pick it up in their indexing, because I’m going to be releasing it under the creative commons license.

Inside is an interesting reference on how technology is affecting instruction today. I like the fact that it focuses back on the teacher: (note that in the following quote, IT is referring to Information Technology and NOT Instructional Technology, but I think in the end it applies to both)

“IT is not a good substitute for good teaching. Good teachers are good with or without IT and students learn a great deal from them. Poor teachers are poor with or without IT and students learn little from them.”

Here’s the link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/17/it

I have to admit that I couldn’t pick out a favorite right away, so I went the other direction and mentioned some teachers that I have had with whome I did NOT particularly have a good experience being in their class. Here were my classifiers:

• Felt like the professor was there to pad their own ego
• Research was their primary function, therefore teaching a classroom full of college kids to them was a way they could continue their research and came secondary to their students’ learning

What my teacher did was turn this around and point out these two qualities boiled down to these respectively:

• Pride
• Disinterest in student outcome or performance

Over time, it has been pointed out to me that instruction at its root psychologically is a spiritual thing. Growth and change occurs in an individual as they are lead through effective teaching. Of course the student must be motivated, but we can teach our students to become motivated in our subject material. Paraphrasing a great religious leader, “Effective teaching is the very essence of leadership. [Growth/Achievement] will come only as men and women are taught with such effectiveness that they change and discipline their lives. They cannot be coerced,…They must be lead and that means teaching.

Granted, at this early stage of the semester it is difficult to pin down what I think of my teachers, but so far I don’t think I have anything to worry about. There are two parts to learning, learner motivation and instruction, that I think for me have been influential in my development as a person. Everybody is different, of course, so I’m being objective but as an educator I want to become a better motivator and an instructor. If nothing else, hopefully I will be able to accomplish this.

As I am looking for things to put together for this website, I’m trying to decide how often to post and what is of most worth to put on here. Part of my sabbatical proposal is that I would keep a blog or journal of what I would be doing and experiencing. Plus, keeping a journal is cool. Years down the road I will be reading this or others that care could read about this and know what it was like. With this in mind, I’m going to refrain from posting pretty much anything that is trivial or superfluous. — Of course I got up in the morning to check my email messages and went to class, worked on my project(s) late at night sometime during my leave. We’ll leave that part of my leave alone.

But that won’t stop me from putting things on here that I think about from time to time. After visiting some web resources I thought about putting a post that reflected some of my feelings about education in general from some great thinkers:

These are all from or attributed to Albert Einstein:

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

This one is by Henry L. Doherty:

“Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study.  Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life. “

I actually like that one because in a class once I had to introduce myself as having been a college student for most of my adult life. Some might think that being in school is a waste of time, (and it can be if you don’t learn to apply what you are taught in school) but I am a self-proclaimed life-long learner. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be in school forever, but I do hope that I can remain teachable well into my later years.