It’s kind of the TiVoing of education.
14/01/10 23:33 Filed in: Collectanea
In a recent Wired article they looked at how Abilene
Christian University is using Apple’s iPhone or iPod
Touch as the core for how undergraduate students are
educated.
“The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone might revolutionize the classroom experience with a dash of digital interactivity. Think web apps to turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. For classroom participation, there’s even polling software for Abilene students to digitally raise their hand.”
One professor interviewed for the Wired article notes that students have stopped taking notes or are taking them differently. I have noticed the same in my life. I spend less time capturing information that I want to save for later as I know I can just look it up when I need it.
One professor has shifted the lecture format to what I take to be something closer to a classic British Oxbridge style.
“Instead of standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour, [Professor] Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.”
One of the issues that a professor has to address is how to identify information that is useful, that is accurate or otherwise worth using vs. the junk that might appear on the web. In some ways this is training the students to think about what they are seeing, hearing, reading or otherwise receiving. They need to learn how to filter information and understand that many times the context in which the information exists is more important than the specific piece of information.
Other professors on campus have taken a different approach.
“In some classrooms, professors project discussion questions onscreen in a PowerPoint presentation. Then, using polling software that Abilene coded for the iPhone, students can answer the questions anonymously by sending responses electronically with their iPhones. The software can also quickly quiz students to gauge whether they’re understanding the lesson.”
OK, not all that different than how a corporate presentation might happen if you remove the ability to ask questions. Maybe it is similar to what happens at a conference where there is a screen displaying the tweets being posted with a conference specific hashtag.
There is another level to the change that has some interesting social implications.
“Most importantly, by allowing the students to participate in polls anonymously with the iPhone, it relieves them of any social pressure to appear intelligent in front of their peers. If they answer wrong, nobody will know who it was, ridding students of humiliation. And if students don’t understand a lesson, they can ask the teacher to repeat it by simply tapping a button on the iPhone.”
Let’s close with a quote from a student:
“They’re preparing us for the real world — not a place where you’re not allowed to use anything.”
I find the quote a bit funny given a meeting I attended at BNP Paribas London where we were discussing the use of Social Media in Commercial Real Estate. A few people in the room where saying that they are from the Facebook generation and some firms block Facebook or other social networks from work computers. How can a professional how has built their networking using online tools function when the company is blocking access? What does it mean to have a network of contacts for work where the contact details never really exist on the company’s database? The personal brand will be more important than the corporate brand when it becomes clear that the client details are mostly hosted outside the company on our iPhones and other devices that are connected to the cloud.
-John Corey
How the iPhone Could Reboot Education
Wired
Brian X Chen
08 Dec 2009
“The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone might revolutionize the classroom experience with a dash of digital interactivity. Think web apps to turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. For classroom participation, there’s even polling software for Abilene students to digitally raise their hand.”
One professor interviewed for the Wired article notes that students have stopped taking notes or are taking them differently. I have noticed the same in my life. I spend less time capturing information that I want to save for later as I know I can just look it up when I need it.
One professor has shifted the lecture format to what I take to be something closer to a classic British Oxbridge style.
“Instead of standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour, [Professor] Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.”
One of the issues that a professor has to address is how to identify information that is useful, that is accurate or otherwise worth using vs. the junk that might appear on the web. In some ways this is training the students to think about what they are seeing, hearing, reading or otherwise receiving. They need to learn how to filter information and understand that many times the context in which the information exists is more important than the specific piece of information.
Other professors on campus have taken a different approach.
“In some classrooms, professors project discussion questions onscreen in a PowerPoint presentation. Then, using polling software that Abilene coded for the iPhone, students can answer the questions anonymously by sending responses electronically with their iPhones. The software can also quickly quiz students to gauge whether they’re understanding the lesson.”
OK, not all that different than how a corporate presentation might happen if you remove the ability to ask questions. Maybe it is similar to what happens at a conference where there is a screen displaying the tweets being posted with a conference specific hashtag.
There is another level to the change that has some interesting social implications.
“Most importantly, by allowing the students to participate in polls anonymously with the iPhone, it relieves them of any social pressure to appear intelligent in front of their peers. If they answer wrong, nobody will know who it was, ridding students of humiliation. And if students don’t understand a lesson, they can ask the teacher to repeat it by simply tapping a button on the iPhone.”
Let’s close with a quote from a student:
“They’re preparing us for the real world — not a place where you’re not allowed to use anything.”
I find the quote a bit funny given a meeting I attended at BNP Paribas London where we were discussing the use of Social Media in Commercial Real Estate. A few people in the room where saying that they are from the Facebook generation and some firms block Facebook or other social networks from work computers. How can a professional how has built their networking using online tools function when the company is blocking access? What does it mean to have a network of contacts for work where the contact details never really exist on the company’s database? The personal brand will be more important than the corporate brand when it becomes clear that the client details are mostly hosted outside the company on our iPhones and other devices that are connected to the cloud.
-John Corey
How the iPhone Could Reboot Education
Wired
Brian X Chen
08 Dec 2009
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