The “Science Fair” is dead! Long live the “Innovation Fair”!

Posted on October 13, 2012 by Tryggvi Thayer

The “Science Fair” is an age old institution, at least in US schools. Science Fairs can be a lot of fun and they have the potential to engage students while introducing them to research methods and the importance of science. But, they’ve become rather staid. It’s the same old experiments over and over again. It’s such a standardized format by now that if a student is stumped for ideas, she can go to the web and simply google “science fair projects” and get step-by-step instructions for a range of projects. The few really challenging projects tend to be more the product of parents than students (I’ve judged at my daughters’ science fair and, believe me overly involved parents, you’re not fooling anyone). What’s missing from all of this is the creative aspect of science; discovering new real-world problems that need to be solved and formulating solutions to them through the use of the scientific method. Some schools are adopting an alternative to the “Science Fair” and, instead, conducting “Innovation Fairs” which engage the students in the exploration of solutions to real problems, big and small, focusing on fostering young people’s natural inclination toward creativity and experimentation. Continue reading →

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What does Klout measure: social influence or size of ego?

Posted on October 9, 2012 by Tryggvi Thayer

Early this past summer I read about someone who had flunked out of a job interview because his Klout.com score wasn’t high enough (and here’s one about a teacher using Klout in a course). It was the first that I had heard about Klout and decided to check it out. Klout claims to provide “a representation of your overall social media influence” based on “more than 400 variables on multiple social networks beyond your number of followers and friends.” What I found was that Klout has little to do with measuring one’s social influence and more to do with stroking one’s ego. But, maybe that’s precisely what social media is about for a lot of people – less about influencing others and more about influencing our own perceptions of our self-worth. Whatever the case, my conclusion was that Klout provides no meaningful measure of what I wanted to know about my social influence. Au contraire, I think it’s more a measure of how much I let social media noise influence me. Here’s how I came to that conclusion… Continue reading →

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Strategic ambiguity in Finnish policy on technology in education

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Tryggvi Thayer

I teleported (or “jaunted” as Alfred Bester would have it) to Iceland yesterday morning to deliver a presentation at the University of Iceland’s yearly conference on educational research and development. In my presentation I described some of my research on educational policy in Finland, in particular, policy regarding information and communication technologies in education. In this research I explored “strategic ambiguity” in Finnish policy communications to allow for, and promote, diverse interpretations of policy to fit specific contexts and deal with rapid change. I find this a very interesting phenomenon because it goes against conventional thinking that policy should be clear, concise, and uniformly measurable.

I’ve included both a recording of the presentation (in English – requires Flash) and a link to the presentation slides. I ended up running over my time limit because I was trying to be mindful of the need to speak more clearly and slowly than I usually would to accommodate the international audience. So, I didn’t manage to speak directly to all of the slides but readers can see those in the presentation that I’ve shared below. If anyone has questions about those feel free to contact me at tryggvi@education4site.org or to post in the comments. Continue reading →

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“Booksprints” – fast track to rigorous open educational resources

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Tryggvi Thayer

A group of Finnish mathematics researchers, teachers and students got together this past weekend (Sept. 28-30, 2012) to produce a mathematics textbook in three days. They’re not quite done, but at almost 130 pages so far, they’re pretty darn close! Too bad my Finnish isn’t good enough (actually non-existent) to evaluate the results. Nevertheless, it’s a remarkable achievement any way you look at it. Especially when you consider that a group of teachers did something similar here in the Twin Cities last year and it took them an entire summer – which I then thought was a pretty remarkable achievement.

The Finnish group used a methodology called “Booksprint” which was developed to produce manuals for Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). The method has already been used to produce over 40 FLOSS manuals. Booksprints involve a large number of individuals with various relevant backgrounds working collaboratively, either remotely or locally, to produce published books, usually within 2-5 days. The method requires intensive pre-planning culminating in an “unconference” at which the text is written, edited and prepared for publication. Participants make extensive use of open source methodologies and tools to facilitate sharing, versioning, and tracking, ex. using GitHub.

The Finnish math textbook project is the first open educational resource project that I have come across that uses the Booksprint methodology (I love that they’ve included students in the process). It seems ideal to the task and, in fact, what I have tried to promote for many years now with little acceptance. Hopefully Booksprint is exactly the concrete methodology that is needed to push this way of working forward. I’m sure that the Finnish appreciation for collaborative work in education is helpful, too.

Posted in Education, ICTs, Information Society, Knowledge development, Technology foresight | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Shhh… My environment is talking to me

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Tryggvi Thayer

One of the ways that I like to describe augmented reality (AR) technologies is with the somewhat metaphorical, “AR makes it possible for your environment to tell you about itself.” Well, I guess it’s not a metaphor anymore! Google has just released its new Field Trip app for Android, with an iOS (iPad/iPhone) version to come soon. When enabled, the app sends notifications to your device about “interesting things” in your vicinity. If you have headphones connected (bluetooth or plug-in) it’ll even read the notifications to you.

I haven’t been able to really test the app yet to see what kind of info it passes along. I guess Google thinks I live in a rather uninteresting neighborhood. The only notification I’ve received is about a new restaurant a mile away from my home. It’ll be interesting to see what it tells me when I start moving around the city.

My biggest worry is that it’s going to be mostly advertising disguised as “useful info”. It is possible to adjust some settings to control the type of info it passes along. Some of the categories available are architecture, public art and historic places & events. I do worry, though, because I know that there are various interesting things around where I live (ex. the University of MN’s St. Paul campus – lots of public art there, Gibbs Museum – farming dating back to the mid 19th century) but, as I mentioned, the only thing the app has deemed worthy of my attention is this new restaurant.

I have yet to see how useful the app turns out to be for me. Although the app looks good and functions well, it has been getting some iffy reviews regarding its usefulness. It seems that others’ experiences are similar to mine, i.e. they know that there’s stuff out there, but the app isn’t showing it. Because of the seeming lack of info, the app is likely to be more of a fun toy to begin with than a reliable source of information. But, given time, it’s sure to get better.

Field Trip will have amazing potential for use in education once the current limitations of the app have been worked out. I’m sure that innovative teachers at all educational levels will have no problem finding ways to put the app to good use. One thing that would increase its usefulness for education is if data sources were customizable. That way instructors and learners could set up their own specialized “field trips” to fit specific learning objectives. Think how cool it would be if an instructor could integrate something like that in an electronic textbook!

 

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Honey, I shrunk your reality!

Posted on September 29, 2012 by Tryggvi Thayer

Why is Apple’s map fiasco such a big deal? It’s only one app of the hundreds of thousands available for it’s mobile platform. And it’s not like it doesn’t work entirely, there are just some glitches – albeit some pretty significant glitches, but not unfixable and not that render the app entirely unusable. Here’s why I think it’s a big deal: When Apple replaced a perfectly good, well-functioning mobile mapping app with one that is perceived as untrustworthy, they robbed users of a newly found sense of greatly expanded functional reality. In other words, they shrunk their users’ world. Continue reading →

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