TME Week 11A Notes

A bit of background

Humberstone doesn’t take a position on technology and its use in the classroom in his MOOC, but there are definitely some things where technology is NOT necessary e.g. Orff on iPads instead of real xylophones
We need an approach that doesn’t just leave us behind but also doesn’t leave us prey to every new technological fad
Antisthenes: Being a ‘cynic’ for music education: if there was a silver bullet for music education or technology in music education, we would probably be doing the one model more often --> the reality is that few things work all the time
Being a Cynic in philosophy meant living in virtue and in agreement with nature
Blendspace – you put up your work for students, and then they can respond with your own space
In schools in China where James has been teaching, they are doing the physical hands on learning, but then using technology as well

Latest research = disruptive technologies in music education

This is when the latest technology is so powerful that it is implemented widely in education without any planning
Many technologies early on are pretty crap, but after the dust settles you can work out whether the technology is useful, and how it can be integrated into class
On Wikipedia it’s called a ‘disruptive innovation’
Aptly, Wikipedia is a disruptive innovation
“You are not normal” because our own experiences of music education does not match most people in this state
None of us hated our classroom teacher AND ensembles AND private lessons and ended up at the Con

Some more research

25% of Australians have a bachelor degree or higher
39% if you went to private school
The Con has the lowest percentage of private schoolers of any faculty at USyd
In 2012, 27% of Australians who didn’t start year 12 (ABS)
20% start year 12 but don’t finish
So 47% of Australians have done nothing after school
If neither of your parents went to university, the chances of you getting a degree in Australia are around 20%
The stats are even more challenging for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children

The Internet

In 1997, less than 17% of Australians had access to the internet
In 2009, less than 75%
By 2011, it’s around 92%
It used to be people accessing the internet in the library or at work
Now mobile devices are much more popular
The long and short of it: we have moved from a position where information was locked up inside the teacher’s head and books --> you did well in life based on your ability to learn that stuff and do standardised testing
Now: even though children have always learnt from play-based learning outside of school, they can now do a lot of research and academic learning on their own

Communication technology

1974: letter writing and landlines
1985-1995 it’s the same
By 1995 there was early email
1997 – there was early mobile phone technology
By 2000 everyone had a Nokia phone
2005 – the first smartphone; 2007 – the first iPhone
Mark Pesce – ‘the next billion seconds’ (book) looking at the rate of change on technology

More research – teenagers and technology

ACMA – government research communications website
Every year they do a report on how teenagers are using the internet and social media
Smart phones have moved from 23% among teenagers to 80% now – SES is not a factor for smart phone usage
Teenagers are more likely to use the internet on tablets and gaming than other demographics
Teens are more likely to use their phone to access the internet than a computer
The ACMA internet use types doesn’t have a category for education which is interesting
Looking at the internet two ways:
Ubiquitous access – we can get anything all the time! Yay!
Filter bubble: information is being filtered and edited for my entertainment
“I liked everything I saw on facebook for two days. Here’s what it did to me.”

PLE and PLN

Personal Learning Environment – the things that you used to learn
Personal Learning Network – where you go outwards to find things; outside of yourself – the internet etc.

Howard Gardner

The App Generation – looking at how learning has changed
Dark side
Apps foreclose a sense of identity
Apps encourage superficial relationships
Apps stunt creativity
Light side
Apps can provide a strong sense of identity
They can bring about deep relationships
Apps can lead to greater creativity
So contradiction? It’s probably more about how you use technology than whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ per se
“Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer… should be” Arthur C Clarke
This is not quite right – wrote in the 1960s
But maybe you could say “Any teacher that can be replaced by YouTube should be”

Hype Cycle for Education, 2012

This is the cycle of hype (hence the name) for new kinds of musical technology
It’s possible to get to the bottom of the slope and drop off
There are a bunch of stages:
Technology trigger – the crowdsourced launch has happened, and the technology suddenly gets used a lot
Peak of inflated expectations – this is the silver bullet stage, where people think the technology is going to change things forever
Trough of disillusionment – “actually the world won’t change forever after this new technology”
Slope of enlightenment – working out what the tool is actually useful for
Plateau of productivity – the best stage where the technology slots in to other kinds of learning

Quality of computer-assisted learning over time

Data sheet based on meta-analysis, looking at how learning quality is influenced by computer use
New technologies actually decreasing learning at the start (e.g. PCs, the world wide web, smartphones etc.)

The ABCs of what we’ll use

We need to look at the research and see how technology is affecting learning, from a BUNCH of studies, not just one
Empirical research has shown some baseline things that are very solid

Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller) – Thinking about PowerPoint and other similar kinds of learning being presented

If you read OR listen alone, you’ll learn more
If we are going to use images, they should complete the story of what we are saying
If you’ve got a quote you want people to read, you can just stop talking and let them read!
You’ll still be tempted to write bullet points, but people will skip to the end and read while you are talking – they won’t listen to you!
You could use text as punctuation marks – so you put up the key words of a big quote, where you just time the words to fit in with the right part of your quotes
So like you are reading a long quote, and 5-10 key words come up in time with when you say them

Research from music education

High school kids: half of the groups listen to a recording with a video of performance, while the other half listen while the score have; then asked kids questions about the music with no music or video and the kids who watched it remembered more

One final thing – viewing patterns on computers

The F shape pattern – looking at what your eye looks at
When we look at websites, we tend to look left to right, and then we look more at the top than the bottom, and we look less from left to right as we go further down
We know from research that people look at the left hand side of the screen 69% of the time and the right hand side 30% of the time
We should design websites/blogs/resources to work with this
So navigation should be up the top or on the left

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