Tag: Educatinal Technology

Blame the Tools, It’s Easier

On By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, Pedagogy1 Comment

“PowerPoint is the Rodney Dangerfield of software. It gets no respect.”
Ken Goldberg

“Universities should ban PowerPoint. It makes students stupid and professors boring.” That is the title of an article from the Business Insider that recently came up in my LinkedIn feed.  While I generally agree with the author’s statement that schools usually measure student satisfaction instead of student learning.  I do take exception to the idea that PowerPoint is the root of all evil.  The core of the author’s argument seems to be that lectures are generally not effective learning tools.  Again, I generally agree with the idea that lectures are not effective.  However, the author seems to blame PowerPoint for the persistence of lectures in education.

To quote the author, “Overreliance on slides has contributed to the absurd belief that expecting and requiring students to read books, attend classes, take notes, and do homework is unreasonable.”  I, however, find this statement a little strange.  For starters in almost all college-level courses, students don’t read in class.  Students are expected to do their reading, textbook, novel, manuscript, and articles, either as preparation for class or review after class.  How does the use of PowerPoint in class effect students reading out of class? 

While I expect students being bored with poor lecturers could lead to decreases in attendance.  I suspect attendance has more to do with faculty policy then the technology used in the classroom.  In many undergraduate course’s faculty say it is up to the students to determine if they are going to attend or not.  They often call it “treating them like adults.”  If you think attendance is essential, require it, and then make the class time worthwhile, don’t blame random tech.

Homework, just like reading, is done outside of class.  Of all the complaints, the only one that might be valid is note taking. After all, how the instructor presents the material will affect the student’s ability to take notes.  However, is this the fault of the program or the failure of the presenter.

 Whenever people start blaming educational problems exclusively on technology, I remember a quote I heard years ago. “The students got distracted by Facebook, so we took away the Internet. The students got distracted playing Solitaire, so we took away their computers, the students got distracted doodling, so we took away their pencils.”  -Anonymous. This quote always reminds me of how easy it is to blame other things when the individual ultimately responsible for the classroom is the teacher.

So is the presentation tool PowerPoint responsible for poor classroom engagement and bad lectures or is the real problem that individuals don’t learn how to use PowerPoint.  Let’s start with the basics, suppose I’m teaching An Introduction to Circuits course. First, we need to create a new slide presentation, and PowerPoint gives us lots of choices.  Never use just a plain white background. With a white background; you can get chromatic aberration; the projector produces rainbows on the screen.  The critical thing to remember is, I don’t want anything showing up on my slides that I don’t put there.

Look at the three slides below they are all available in PowerPoint which slide do you think would be the best.

Three PowerPoint Title slides with Title An Introduction to Circuits and subtitle CH1-Voltage. Slide A has a pretty but busy background and white text in a black box. Slide B has a light blue background with a dark gradient toward the bottom right corner and a circuit pattern along the left edge. The text is white. Slide C has a light blue background with white text.
Three PowerPoint Title slides with Title An Introduction to Circuits and subtitle CH1-Voltage. Slide A has a pretty but busy background and white text in a black box. Slide B has a light blue background with a dark gradient toward the bottom right corner and a circuit pattern along the left edge. The text is white. Slide C has a light blue background with white text.

How many of you choose C as the best option?  Slide A is to use an old saying too busy.  The circuit drawings on the side of B might be a distraction.  The color gradient is not that bad an idea? We read slides from left to right and top to bottom a color gradient that uses the same pattern can help direct the eyes across the slide. However, you will have to keep this directionality in mind with everything you put on the slide. That leaves slide C, which is honestly not great.  Modern projectors are bright, light text on a light background is hard to read.  Creating an excellent presentation is all about fighting the defaults. So instead of light text use dark text, this gives us the slide below.

A PowerPoint title slide with a light blue background and black text
A PowerPoint title slide with a light blue background and black text

The next point concerning text is readability.  The most significant impact on readability is room size.  The larger the room, the bigger the text needs to be on the screen.  Dave Paradi wrote a great article on text size for presentations Selecting the correct font size.  Using Paradi’s work using a 10’ screen in a classroom where the furthest student is ~45’ away (100 student lecture hall) the smallest usable font size is 24 point.  In a 500-student lecture hall (most distant student ~150’ away) the smallest usable font is 44 point.  See the slides below.

Two PowerPoint title slides The two slide the first uses 24 Point text as the smallest and is for viewing form a maximum of 45 ft the second uses 44 point text as the smallest and is for viewing from a maximum of 150 ft.
Two PowerPoint title slides The two slide the first uses 24 Point text as the smallest and is for viewing form a maximum of 45 ft the second uses 44 point text as the smallest and is for viewing from a maximum of 150 ft.

That is a significant change in the appearance of the slides for a difference of about 100’.

Beyond text size and color, the most common complaint I hear is that PowerPoint forces you to use bullets.  However, you can change bullets. You can turn them off, or not use them.  Textboxes and other slide layouts mean you can place text anywhere you want.  Remember an excellent PowerPoint presentation requires you to fight the defaults.

Now let’s be honest while I believe most if not all the problems with PowerPoint presentation are because of a lack of training the solution is not easy.  After all, I only covered the basics of background and font size in a PowerPoint presentation.  There are also issues concerning images, slide layouts, and presentation lengths to discuss.  It is also possible to add questions to use with student response systems. Lastly, instructors can use PowerPoint presentations for active engagement. Maybe I should write a few more posts on this topic?

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

Should You be Replaced By A Computer?

On By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, Education Reform, ResearchLeave a comment

“Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.”
David Thornburg

Whether as part of a talk, training session, or some other event everyone that has worked in educational technology has probably been asked the question “Are you trying to replace teachers with a computer?” Or heard the statement “You are trying to replace teachers with computers!”

Educational technologists are not trying to replace teachers. Educational technology is meant to enhance the teaching and learning experience. The goal of ed tech is to help the teacher and student so they can focus on learning efficiently. Ed tech is meant to solve problems in the learning environment so that teachers can get back to the job of guiding and interacting with the student. One of the uses of educational technology is to help with basic tasks so the teacher can focus on the things only they can do.

The core idea behind David Thornburg statement “Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be.” Is there are things that only a live teacher can do. Therefore, if a computer can do the things a teacher is doing, there is no point in having the teacher. Teachers should focus on the tasks that only they can do. However, like all types of technology in the classroom, we should discuss the idea of computer run education before it happens.

As a starting point for a discussion of computer run education, we should start with the questions; “what can technology do right now?” The reason for this discussion is that at some point technology is going to reach a point that from at least a financial standpoint people will consider replacing teachers with computers.

There are two places where computers can replace teachers in the face-to-face classroom and the online classroom. Let’s start with the online class. Most online classrooms are asynchronous. That means the students do not have a lot of real-time interactions with their teachers. Most of the communication is through email, text messages, and hopefully phone calls or audio conferences. While it is possible it is difficult to make connections and have real personal interactions with students in this environment.

Starting with communication can computers answer email, text, and voice chats/calls? Historically, automated computer response systems suffer from the inability to understand common spoken or written language what is called natural language. However, in 2011 IBM’s unveiled an Artificial Intelligence (AI) questions answering system (Q&A) named Watson. The systems competed on the game show Jeopardy and won, you can read about it here. Watson showed that natural language understanding in a computer had arrived. Since then Watson has only improved and is now used in many industries including finance, healthcare, and education.

Two of Watson’s tools are especially useful to education. A one-to-one tutoring tool that gives real-time tutoring to students when its covenant for them. The other is a natural language chatbot. These AI tools allows the students to ask questions and get feedback in real-time. Additionally, both tools can respond to typed and spoken language.

So a natural language Q&A system like Watson can cover the basic communication needs, usually done through email, text messaging, and voice. What about assignments and tests? All current generation learning management systems can already handle multiple choice, true/false, matching, and single word answer questions.

That leaves the short answer, discussion boards, essays, and reports. There is a software tool called General Architecture for Text Engineering (GATE) a natural language text analysis tool that uses both rule-based analysis and neural net learning. Using this tool students would be able to get feedback on written assignments as well as automated grading on final drafts.

The tools discussed here are only some of the options developed in the last 10 to 15 years. However, looking at just the tools discussed in this blog and based on the modern structure of most online classes we already have the means to replace teachers. Again our research and discussions are lagging what we can do.

Concerning face-to-face classes, the national language AI’s are not quite at the point where they can run multiple participant discussions and give lectures — assuming we except lectures out of thin air. However, natural language AI systems will probably have the ability to run multi-person discussions or give lectures within the next 5-10 years. Augmented reality, virtual reality, and projection systems will also provide natural language AI systems the ability to have a physical presence in the next 10 to 20 years.

Contrary to previous times AI systems with natural language understanding are reaching a point where at least in theory they could replace teachers. We are desperately in need of research that shows what impact AI “teachers” have on learning and the classroom. Additionally, now is the time to have real thoughtful discussions about AI tools in education not in a couple of years when government/administration starts adding them to classrooms. We need to decide not merely what we are willing to let the AI system do in education but why we are making these decisions.

Thanks for Listening To My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

The Three Rules of Programming, Sort of

On By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, PedagogyLeave a comment

“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”
Martin Fowler

The advance of technology has been staggering. In 1947 the transistor was invented. The transistor allowed the inventions of the Integrated Circuit (IC), which is what modern computer chips are. In 1971 the first IC was built, all modern computer technology has been developed in the 48 years since. Today everywhere you look there is a computer.

This explosion of computer technology has created whole classes of devices that did not exist 50 years ago, cell phones, tablet computers, digital cameras, the internet, the internet of things, augmented reality, virtual reality, and the global position system to name a few.

This explosion of technology is affecting education either through changes in society or because the technology is useful for learning. The question of how we deal with the ever growing and changing technological landscape in education is an important one. Most importantly how do we make sure pedagogy drives the technology and not the “cool” factor?

To make sure the tools have a pedagogical value we will probably have to understand the technology and build it our-self. What exactly does it take to create these tools? What does it take to understand the technology that surrounds us? First, we need to understand what is at the core of modern technology. That core is software, computer programs, without software all that fancy technology is just a paperweight. So do we all need degrees in computer science and programming?

No, we don’t need all need degrees in computer science and programming. I might argue that a few classes in computer literacy and programming would be beneficial to understanding and living in the modern world, but that for another day. So if you don’t need a degree in computer science, how are you are supposed to develop and build educational technology? You do what we always do in education you collaborate. You either team up with or hire programmers. You bring the pedagogy and content knowledge they bring the programming skills.

OK, so we collaborate how do you do this? For a start, you need to have a clear idea of what your end product is going to be. You need to develop a detailed list of what your technology will do. However, when you are developing software, there are three rules you need to understand.

  1. You can have it good.
  2. You can have it fast.
  3. You can have it cheap.

The important thing about these three rules is you only get to pick 2. Realistically, everyone is going to choose good (at least I hope so). So, in reality, you get to pick one.

What do these three rules mean and why can’t you have them all. Let’s come back to good in a minute and deal with fast and cheap first. These two rules are inversely related to each other. In a project, I was involved with we had hired a group of programmers to develop software. I was talking to the software architect concerning deadlines. One of our partners made changes to their needs which lead to changes in the software.

I asked the software architect what this was going to do to our timeline. He said that if the deadline started to slip, we could always add more programmers to the project. Modern software is often composed of multiple subprograms that each do a specific thing. Think about the calculator on your computer. One subprogram would deal with addition another subtraction and so on. Because of this modeler nature, it can be easy for multiple programmers to work together they can each work on a separate subprogram.

However, as anyone that has ever managed a budget will tell you personnel is usually one of if not the most substantial cost. That, of course, means more programmers can get the job done faster, but it costs more. Specifically, each new programmer will increase your cost by 100%. Two programmers cost 200% what one does, and three programmers cost 300% what one does as you can see costs multiply. So you can have your software program fast or cheap.

Now let’s get back to good. When it comes to a software program good is a lot more than how it looks and how fast it runs. Good computer software will have a detailed and exhaustive testing phase. Specifically, the programming team will develop a plan and possibly testing software to try and break the software and identify bugs. A properly built program will behave in predictable ways even when it fails.

So as you can see good software is a lot more than looking pretty and working. Getting to the working stage takes a lot of specific skills. So now that you know, the three rules start thinking up new educational technology and get out there and collaborate.

Thanks For Listing To My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

There is a Lot of Pressure, Partially, Involved

On By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, Pedagogy, Research, STEM EducationLeave a comment

“Gases are distinguished from other forms of matter, not only by their power of indefinite expansion so as to fill any vessel, however large, and by the great effect heat has in dilating them, but by the uniformity and simplicity of the laws which regulate these changes.”
James Clerk Maxwell

When learning chemistry gasses get a lot of attention. There are a lot of laws and formulas that relate to gasses. Here is a list of gas laws:

1) Avogadro’s Law
2) Boyle’s Law
3) Charles’s Law
4) Gay-Lussac’s Law
5) The Ideal Gas Law
6) Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures
7) van der Waals Equation (Non-Ideal gases)

I want to talk about Dalton’s Law of Partial Pressures. If you look up Dalton’s law like most students would Wikipedia via Google we see that the definition of Dalton’s law is: “Dalton’s law (also called Dalton’s law of partial pressures) states that in a mixture of non-reacting gases, the total pressure exerted is equal to the sum of the partial pressures of the individual gases.” Which comes from Silberberg, Martin S. (2009). Chemistry: the molecular nature of matter and change (5th ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill. p. 206. ISBN 9780073048598.

I have not thought about Dalton’s law in years. The last time was when I was helping develop some chemistry labs. Then two weeks ago I ran across a YouTube video from Cody’sLab called Demonstrating The Law of Partial Pressures.

What I found interesting about this video is that Cody built a physical device to demonstrate the law. The device is two pressure chambers made out of copper plumbing parts and glass tubs attached with a simple valve. A quick search online suggests that one of these devices could cost less than $100.00. He uses the device to demonstrate several principles of Dalton’s Law. What I find fascinating about the device is that in many ways this device did a better job demonstrating Dalton’s law then any device I encounter in my high school or early chemistry classes.

With a small amount of work, it should be possible to build a device that was composed entirely of parts that could be screwed together allowing assembly into multiple configurations. A device students use in multiple configurations would expand the options for open-ended inquiry. Multiple configurations would let chemistry students conduct inquiry-based labs. Students could assemble the appropriates so that they could combine 2, 3, 4 or even more samples.

We know that hands-on experiences improve student learning. In the article Physical Experiences Enhance Science Learning, the authors show that physical experiments lead to increased test scores. Additionally, they showed that later recall of the information activated the brains sensorimotor region. Which suggest a mechanism by which hands-on teaching can improve learning. Since hands-on learning enhances science education, we could argue that the current model where we have a 3-4 credit lecturer class and a one-credit laboratory class is backward and we should be running 3-4 credit labs with one credit lectures or recitations. That, however, is an argument for another day.

Since we know the value of hands-on learning lets takes this idea to the next step. Suppose the students not only ran an experiment to confirm and explore Dalton’s Law but they also built and designed the equipment to do the experiment. Would this enhance learning even more? I could see a couple of ways building your equipment could enhance learning. One, this would be a way to expand the amount of hands-on time. Two, building the test apparatus could give the students a better understanding of how the device works. Three, the designing and building process could potentially lead to enhanced ownership in the experiment. The impact of building your research equipment is an area where more research is needed.

However, even with the evidence that shows hands-on learning enhances science education laboratory classes are under increasing attack. One of the most common arguments I hear against hands-on science education is the cost. The device Cody built for his video is relatively cheap if you were to build it for less then $100 this is less then some microscope slides or chemical reagents. There are of course questions about the equipment used in labs. There are many arguments that the lab is the place for students to learn about research equipment. I have had many discussions concerning the design of laboratory activities that started with “my students need to know how to use X piece of equipment.”

While there are some types of equipment that students should have a familiarity with the idea that students need to learn a specific piece of equipment is ridiculous. First, what is the likely hood that a specific piece of equipment is still going to be in use when they end up working in a research laboratory? Second, what are you trying to teach the students? As an example suppose I design a lab to demonstrate the Mendelian laws of inheritance. The students will need to use a dissecting scope to determine the sex of their fruit flies. Should I devote half the laboratory activities and time to the use of the dissecting microscope? Of course not, the microscope is not part of the principle of inheritance.

Beyond the fixation on specific pieces of equipment, there is also a belief that low-cost equipment is unusable. Whether the cost of equipment affects its educational value is an interesting question. Generally, the cost of equipment is directly related to precision, how much precision do we need. If the purpose of a laboratory activity is to show that acceleration due to gravity is independent of mass, do the student need precision out to 10 decimal places? As long as the equipment meets the need for the activity, we do not need to go with the most expensive thing. When we design STEM activities, we need to focus on the learning goals what has the best chance of enhancing the students learning. In regards to student learning, learning is not proportional to the cost of the equipment, and it is not dependent on a specific piece of equipment. Our instructional design needs to be informed and based on what the research says not ideas about the “best” piece of equipment.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings
The Teaching Cyborg

We Can Rebuild It, Better, Stronger: The Augmented Textbook

On By teachingcyborgIn Ed Tech, Education Reform, TextbookLeave a comment

“VR and AR will eventually converge, and smart glasses will take over our digital interactions.”
Carlos López (Founder @ Oarsis)

Augmented Reality (AR) is a process that uses technology to overlay digital content on real-world objects.  The digital content can be provided by, smartphones, glasses, and screens.  While AR is still an emerging technology, the buy-in from major companies like Microsoft with the HoloLens, WebAR support in Google Chrome using ARCore, and Apple’s augmented reality development kit ARKit, likely mean this technology is here to stay.

While the form factor used in AR will undoubtedly go through multiple iterations the primary function overlying digital content will remain constant.  AR is a great place for higher education to embrace technology and stay current rather than playing catch-up.  While wearable AR tech is not yet coming place, we can use the near ubiquitous smartphone with augmented reality.

There are already educational AR tools developed both inside and outside of education.  The Dinosaur 4D+ flash cards by octagon studio bring Dinosaurs to life.  Using an app installed on an Android or Apple device the flash cards allow you to explore and interact with the cards, as you can see here.

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has a blog post by Larysa Nadolny Worksheets for the digital age: AR interactive print.  The author gives a brief overview of the creation of these AR worksheets using existing technology.  Case Western Reserve is using AR to help teach anatomy, using the Microsoft HoloLens.  Students can see the anatomical process in active 3D.

Publishing companies are also starting to use AR in their books.  Carlton Books has two categories of AR books an educational category including titles like Explore 360: The Tomb of Tutankhamun and iExplore – Bugs that use AR apps to bring the content to life and let the readers interact with it.  They also have a new category of fiction novels they are working on; the first is The Ghostkeeper’s Journal and Field Guide a book that uses AR to enhance the story and engage the reader.

Many companies are producing AR books. Currently, the publishers are mostly focusing on the children and youth market.  These books have evolved from some simple animations like moving gears and simple 3D animals to full multimedia that include animations, sound, and interactivity.  Some of these books like the previously mentioned The Ghostkeeper’s Journal and Field Guide were written to include the book and its AR content as part of the story.

I have previously discussed how storytelling is a powerful educational tool (you can read about it here), I wish it was used more in textbooks.  If AR can enhance storytelling like these publishers are suggesting it should also enhance learning. While some people think the AR in books is gimmicky, I think anything that increases engagement with books is good.  Also, with regards to AR being gimmicky while Arthur C Clark said: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” technology doesn’t have to be “magical” to be effective in learning.

This discussion of AR and books brings me back to the idea of textbooks.  The addition of augmented reality to textbooks can enhance education.  Let’s start by thinking about the basic content in a textbook.  We could add something simple like sound.  Imagine a music appreciation course; the textbook could describe techniques used in improvisational jazz.  Say for instance arpeggio, where the musician plays the notes of a chord one after the other instead of together.  Think how much easier this would be to understand if the textbook could play clips of music with and without arpeggio.

In biology, we often talk about how seasonal changes affect the local ecology and behaviors of organisms.  A great example of this is the Amazon Floodplain forests.  A large area of the Amazonian forest that is flooded every year in the rainy session when the Amazon river is overflowing its banks. Textbooks will often show flooded, and dry pictures to show the effects of the flooding.  With AR you could show a time-lapse video of the flooding and retreating water to get a better idea of how the water affects the landscape.

Something I remember from my days as an undergraduate in chemistry and biology is the difficulty students have learning to translate a 2D model into 3D.  Molecules are 3D objects when writing about them; we need to represent them on paper.  A simple model would be the wedge and dash model used for methane below.

Structure of Methane By NEUROtiker Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.
Structure of Methane By NEUROtiker Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons.

In the diagram, the solid wedge means the atom is projecting out of the paper towards you while the dotted wedge means the atom is projecting away. I was one of the lucky students I have always been able to picture the 3D shape of from these drawings rather easily. However, I have known a lot of people that have real trouble seeing the 3D form.

Now imagine if the textbook had AR we could design interactions that not only projected the molecule in 3D but let the students manipulate, rotate, and zoom in and out to examine them.  AR projections would be especially useful when you get into more complex structural issues like stereochemistry, were molecules have the same formula but differ in their shape.

A textbook on public speaking could include actual audio and video clips of famous speeches.  A math book could include video clips were professors solve example problems with explanations.  We already know that publishers are taking advantage of AR especially in the case of books for young audiences.  However, AR textbooks are starting to appear, Introductions to Graphics Communication is a college-level textbook using Ricoh’s Clickable Paper.  Publishing companies in Japan have released textbooks with AR; you can read about them here.

Even with the availability of many AR platforms some of which are Augment, Blippar, HP Reveal, Daqri and Layar that offer educational pricing.  I have not seen any Open Educational Resource (OER) textbooks with AR content even the textbooks developed with large federal or privet grants.  In addition to whether governmental and privet organizations will be willing to pay to update these OER textbooks in a few years, are we also going to end up in a situation where we have different classes of textbooks? Is there going to a case where if you can afford it you get a different textbook?

Augmented Reality is a technology that higher education needs to embrace.  We need to develop not only resources using AR but the tools, preferably in a free and opensource platform, we can use to incorporate into any resource where it makes sense.  Textbooks are a resource where AR makes a lot of sense.  Like I have said before we are in the middle of a revolution regarding textbooks it is critical that we don’t focus on just one aspect of the textbook.  We need to think about what we want a textbook to be in total, and one of the things we should add is AR.

Thanks for Listing to My Musings

The Teaching Cyborg