It struck me last night that one really important topic we haven’t yet addressed – from a venture side – is self-publishing e-books. My understanding is that a number of prominent bloggers have self-published e-books, which they sell through their websites (payment is usually through paypal). Some of these authors, such as Chris Guillebeau who […]
Continue reading Another facet of e-books: Self-publishing Posted in: Week 06: eBooks Christopher Dawson and Adam Garry each offer 5 predictions to make up the ZDNet Top 10 EdTech predictions for 2011. Dawson is the ZDNet education blogger and vice-president of marketing for WizIQ, an online learning platform, while Garry is manager of global professional learning for Dell. While Dawson interviewed Garry for his predictions, Dawson remains […]
Continue reading ZDnet’s uneven 2011 predictions Posted in: Uncategorized, Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
Nice work. It seems a common problem that some people are gadget focused. I suppose in the Ed Tech realm this is similar to people who are “solution focused” meaning they don’t do a proper needs analysis to determine what the problems are and what root causes should be addressed.
I suspect the issue that “solutions-focused” people miss is the prerequisites of the community. Until a community has the required foundations in place (comfort level, supports, awareness of the problems that can be solved, willingness to take the risks required by the solution, etc.), a technology is not going to have much effect. With the proper foundations, a very basic technology can have huge effects. Without the proper foundations, an advanced technology can be a huge waste of resources.
The disconnect between futurists and users is the failure to develop the necessary community.
You are so right about persons being gadget focused. It is just frightening sometimes at the way we focus on the end product and ignore the process. Persons of that nature ignore the natural power of the brain and think that a piece of gadget must be involved in every task. There must always be a balance in the learning situation where we go beyond the gadget and even try and get more from it than its prescribed use.
Might this ‘community’ be better developed with more inclusion of learner’s in the needs assessment process? While this likely less possible in child education it is a key principle in adult education. I think in the case of some of the new technologies, the learners are left out of the needs assessment and developing process which can lead to missing root causes of the problems. As David mentions if a community of learners does not feel safe, supported or willing to take required risk, new technology is unlikely to solve the problem that stems from these deeper foundations.
Hi David and Jay,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments on my post! I’m in full agreement with you that the absence of a needs-assessment – or in this case the notion that needs assessment is paramount – is a real issue with the gadget or solutions-focused crowd. Thanks for hitting that one on the head :). I do find that Garry, whose predictions focus on shifts in education, is quite different from Dawson in this regard.
I wonder if somehow doing needs assessment *for* the gadget crowd could be a venture in and of itself?
Something that I like in both of your honing in on the idea of the community is that learning communities are diverse (amongst themselves, never mind within a given community), and no single technology will fit all. I suppose that’s why I feel a little uncomfortable with some of the overwhelming tablet enthusiasm.
Good observation. The diversity of learners in a given learning community presents a problem with the one-size fits all approach and requires educators to consider multi-faceted technologies that attempt to encompass different styles of learning…and teaching!
Wow! You said it all when you wrote “I’ll have to do a lot of legwork to see their applicability to educational practice.” Exactly and well put. I think this is the challenge for all teachers who wish to effectively use the avalanche of technology currently being purchased for schools. I wish a larger portion of the budgets would go towards paying for ongoing, long term support and professional development so teachers can wield these tools in precise and purposeful ways in their classrooms.
[…] read a very interesting critique of one of my articles the other day. A student at the University of British Columbia reviewed my “Top 10 Ed Tech predictions for 2011″ and concluded that the piece, a […]
Just wanted to share my roundabout response to your post:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/can-a-gadget-guy-also-be-an-education-guy/4692
Your points are well-taken and I especially like the idea you noted in the comments above about a business model around educational technology needs assessments. I often go back to the good old SDLC (and mention it in the presentation I embedded in my response) – but how many technical project managers make it into education? Not many, meaning there is a large, unmet need for people to handle at least the early parts of the lifecycle around defining problems and requirements.
Thanks again for your great post. While the blog format (and time constraints) don’t often allow for as much background or on-the-ground perspectives as I’d like, I’ll try to keep your critique in mind and include more “how does this impact student achievement and educational practice?” sorts of information in my posts.
Best,
Chris
[…] read a very interesting critique of one of my articles the other day. A student at the University of British Columbia reviewed my “Top 10 Ed Tech predictions for 2011″ and concluded that the piece, a combination […]
[…] read a very interesting critique of one of my articles the other day. A student at the University of British Columbia reviewed my “Top 10 Ed Tech predictions for 2011″ and concluded that the piece, a combination […]
I agree with Chris about the blog format because we talked for a while about my predictions and he showed a deep understanding for how the learning conversation must come first. In regards to a needs assessment, I believe it is critical in the process of determining what problem the technologies can help to solve. We actually engage in visioning days with school districts to help them determine what they want learning to look like and then begin to figure out if technology is a good fit to help them achieve their vision. The best part about this process is that we involve students in the conversation and their voice is very powerful. Thanks for keeping the conversation alive.
AG
I chose to focus on the IT issues as I am in part of the decision making team (the academic side) that works with the IT department (sometimes effectively, sometimes not) and so I wanted to explore what the survey participants felt were the barriers to good tech implementation. I found this article so useful […]
Continue reading Top Ten IT Issues Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
Hi Brenda,
About the critical questions to consider that are offered in this report, I think this is very useful. Currently I am working on coordinating a graduate program about new technologies for researchers and educators of Social Studies and Humanities. One of the issues that we are facing is that me and the instructors of the courses had agreed in the needed technologies to run this program, but we did not discuss this issue with other faculty members that are involved in the program (they did not show interest on knowing about it before). The thing is that we are about to start the program and there is one faculty member that does not agree with one of the technologies that we are going to use. If we had discussed about this before, and analyze the opportunities that we had based on reports like this, it would be very useful. I will definitely take a look to it and propose to use it as an option for future programs.
It sounds like a common problem – including all stakeholders in major decisions about a technology decision – one that I experience regularly in my board. I will much more vocal in insisting that I have a voice in some of these key decisions and I will make sure that others are included in my own projects thanks to this article.
Even if the IT Funding was not voted the most important, its importance cannot be understated. I can only imagine the juggling act that CIOs deal with when allocating resources to big ticket items such as ERP and security. This report really opened my eyes to another dimension that I hadn’t given much thought about in terms of education.
“after reading each one, and seeing how much cooperation and coordination there needs to be in making the various decisions about learning technologies, perhaps his lack of success was not all his fault!”
I highly recommend reading the short book “The five dysfunctions of a team” by Patrick Lencioni. I am recognizing more and more the importance of “preparing the garden” before you start planting seeds. This is an issue we are also currently discussing in our Advanced Human Performance Technology class: the differing value systems of each group that must work together to accomplish a task. Without taking concerted efforts to develop team trust, openness to conflict and debate, commitment to a fully debated but final decision, holding each other accountable for meeting specific commitments and focusing on the success of the team as a whole (rather than just the tech department for instance or worse, just individual career success), there is never any true teamwork. Instead you just have a bunch of people whose work causes necessary interactions and unfortunate stress: no synergies, no serendipity, no common understanding at all.
that sounds like a book I need to find. True teamwork can be a difficult ideal to achieve, yet what organization can really succeed without it? The differing value systems is something I deal with every day…business groups worried only about the balanced budgets, IT worried about a well-oiled tech machine, and the academics worried about best delivery of learning..not well suited for collaborative discussion when the values are so divergent!
Before you publish your posting, please make sure that you select a category (eg. Introductions) as well as assign some meaningful tags (keywords).
Adam Garry, 
kstooshnov 9:07 pm on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thank you for bringing up this topic, Allie,
One recent success story for the eBook format in publishing comes from the 2010 Giller Prize winner, The Sentimentalist by Johanna Skibsrud. Of course, it wasn’t intended to be the hottest selling electronic text, as the novel was originally handcrafted by a small town publisher, Gaspereau Press, could only release so many copies. When the novel was selected by the national literary award, big time publishing house Douglas & McIntyre stepped in, and eBook editions were the most convenient way to get this story into the hands of eager readers from sea to shining sea. One wrinkle in this story might be that if the story had been originally released as an eBook, it would not have been noticed by judges and the general population.
It would also be good to consider how students could get in on the creation of eBooks. Perhaps there will be some students, as they become more familiar with the features of enhanced editions, whose writing takes off in this evolving format. And what better way to get the class involved with a writing project than to have peer reviews, similar to Goodread’s stars and comments, posted on-line. It would be more engaging than stapling together handwritten loose-leaf paper and pinning them to the school’s notice board. Being able to blog well is a more relevant skill than drawing an eye-catching title page, and will become more of a focus in 21st century classrooms.
jenaca 5:05 am on October 14, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey Allie,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I didn’t really think such a thing was possible, but I think it would be a great way to get learners excited about writing and help motivate them! How neat would that be to create a classroom book online through this process!
Jenaca
Angela Novoa 12:18 pm on October 14, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hy Allie, as Jenaca I did not think about this issue. But it is relevant. It would be interesting to think about students and self-publishing. I think we would gain wonderful learning experiences.