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February 22, 2005 - Vol. 6, No. 8
TechLearning News
- Students across Ohio participated in a series of virtual college tours recently, using video conferencing technology to visit campuses throughout the state.
- The Heartland Education Agency, serving 55 districts in central Iowa, has been offering technology mentoring training for three years.
- In Texas, the chair of the House Public Education Committee has submitted a package of education reforms that call for major changes in the state testing program.
- Three of MITıs technology gurus, Nicholas Negroponte, Seymour Papert and Joseph Jacobson, are promoting a plan to provide laptop computers to schoolchildren in the developing world by the end of 2006.
Doing the College Tour Virtually
Students across Ohio participated in a series of virtual college tours recently. The Distance Learning Consortium Virtual College Tour offered students in 22 Ohio high schools the chance to visit, virtually, the campuses of a number of Ohioıs leading institutions of higher education. Each campus visit lasted 45 minutes and students were able to ask questions about the colleges, take a virtual tour of the campus and receive information about the schools. The participating colleges shared information on a variety of topics including their academic programs, extracurricular activities, scholarships, admission policies, dorm life and even food. At Fairland High School, the video conference was arranged by the schoolıs head librarian who was pleased to have a variety of colleges represented, ranging from Ohio State, the nationıs largest university, to a small school such as Lorain County Community College. Since building several new schools in the past two years, Fairland has used video conference extensively, allowing students to view a variety of educational opportunities ranging from jobs with NASA to a live open-heart surgery performed at a hospital in Columbus.
Source: The Herald Dispatch
Technology Mentoring Program
The Heartland Education Agency, serving 55 districts scattered across 11 counties in central Iowa, has been offering technology mentoring training for three years. The program is designed to help participants develop skills and strategies that prepare them to mentor other educators in the technology integration process. This year, Heartland has expanded the program to include administrators, since teachers found that they needed administrative-level support to fully implement the program in classrooms throughout their districts. Part of the program requires participating teams to develop an integration plan for their district, outlining the application of what they learned and how they will provide professional development to their staff. To ensure that participants are able to implement what they have learned, Heartland makes four instructional technology resource employees available to assist teams with implementation and a longer-term staff member to help with on-site training. Fifteen district teams will participate in this yearıs training. Past participants report that they continue to apply the strategies they developed in their training. Sharing ideas and approaches with the other district teams who participated in training has proven to be especially helpful.
Source: The Des Moines Register
Texas Explores Moving Testing Online
In Texas, Rep. Kent Grusendorf, the chair of the House Public Education Committee, has filed a package of education reforms that call for major changes in the state testing program. Whether any of the legislative proposals become law remains to be seen, but increasingly states are looking for ways to gain greater efficiency and economy in mandated testing programs. In Texas, the most ambitious proposal calls for computer-based administration of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) as soon as 2006. There is also a proposal to replace the TAKS in high school with a series of end-of-course tests. Grusendorf is proposing that the state use computer-adaptive testing, which adjusts the questions presented to students based on previous responses. He contends that such tests will cover the entire curriculum and provide immediate feedback on studentsı academic strengths and weaknesses. A major hurdle for the ambitious set of reforms will be funding. The Legislative Budget Board cautioned that the proposed testing changes carry a heavy price tag, without specifying how much. Currently, Texas' TAKS budget is about $45 million, which pays for developing, administering and scoring the test and releasing the test scores and questions. Virginia, which administers its high school testing online, spent $55 million to $60 million per year since 2000 to give its schools the hardware and network upgrades necessary to give state tests online. The Association of Texas Professional Educators has indicated that it believes it would be better for the Legislature to first study the impact of the current testing system on student learning and the time that teachers have to take to give the tests before making substantive changes to the testing system.
Source: Austin American Statesman
MIT Team Working on a $100 Laptop
The folks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think big. Three of MITıs star technology gurus, Nicholas Negroponte, Seymour Papert and Joseph Jacobson, are promoting a plan to provide 100,000,000 to 200,000,000 laptop computers to schoolchildren in the developing world by the end of 2006. The trick will be making the laptops very cheap. The target is $100 per laptop. The MIT team hopes to have the first working prototype ready by September 1 and samples by the end of the year. What are the tradeoffs? The proposed laptops will have a 12-inch color screen, feature Wi-Fi and 3G technologies, and many USB ports. They wonıt have much storage space and will not connect via conventional local area networks. Instead they will use mesh networks, where one laptop will act as the print server, one the DVD player, and another the mass storage device. The plan is not without its critics. For one thing, there must be sufficient training and support. Itıs not clear how this will be accomplished, but Negroponte, in particular, has hand-on experience providing ICT to schoolchildren in poor rural communities, having worked on such projects in Senegal, Costa Rica, India and, most recently, Cambodia. To those who argue that children in the third world have many more basic needs ı clean water, basic nutrition, adequate healthcare — that should be addressed first, Negroponte asks, "What is more basic than education?"
Source: The Guardian
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