Pre-k kids and computers

Pre-k children are learning about their world at an astounding rate. Months before they were just babies, tasting things to learn. Interactive learning rather than canned programs and screen viewing must be our focus. To move along the TIMS our best practice may be recording children talking about their learning, letting them have face time with their parents to summarize their day. We would be laying the foundation for technology as a meta cognition tool to think about their thinking.

Transforming the computer lab

The reality in education and the work place is that collaboration is the norm. Rows of computer desks similar to rows of sewing machines operated by an army of garment workers should be an image of the past. So you can imagine how frustrated I was when the architect designing our new campus brought us plans he said he had been using in computer labs since the late 1980's. Ten student stations in a center island. twenty more around the outside walls of the room, with one wall left open for a ten foot screen, printers, and the like. He also had a larger and smaller storage rooms accessible from that wall.

We explained that instruction is no longer about a single lesson presented to the group followed by individualized work at their own learning station. Instruction is project based, collaborative, and needs room for learners to spread out with each doing their own part of a larger project. It is not about drill & kill.

At that point he pointed out that he could put an open teaching area next to the computer room and have three glass walls that open up to kiva area of teaching space that would have a short throw projector and room for the class to sit around it as a group when needed instructionally. We showed him the following picture and we agreed to six tables seating five students. Five of the tables would come with a wall mounted flat panel that could display that table's project, or be captured by the teacher to show one image to all class members.  I've pasted in my research on the topic below:

http://www.novadesk.com/blog/bid/56574/The-5-Key-Components-Of-Modern-Classroom-Design

The photo above shows a design that empowers Collaborative Grouping. I would add that each group needs room to spread out for projects, manipulative, experiments they are working with and recording. Having each zone with individual video conferencing capability to access off site experts would be important in today’s environment. This could be done with a laptop or tablets, but one central web camera with a good microphone would be helpful. The desk and floor space would need room for tablets with keyboards and power, so some type of docking – but modular for changing to updated devices over the years, would be an asset.

Multimedia is so important, yet effective audio seems to be an afterthought for most classrooms. We would need a design to synchronize all screens. We want tablets or projects on thumb drives or in the cloud to be easily accessible and to sound good when played. We would want the teacher and students to be able to listen to just their group’s sound. We don’t want a lot of cable mess and headphones thrown around.

We were at a training this month with professionals from Intel’s Teach for the Future department. The trainers were bemoaning the fact that a few weeks before they were in a brand new building, all plugs and power sources were on the walls, nothing available in the center of the room from the floor or ceiling for tablet use. Our learning labs need to have existing machines and display capabilities, but also room to accept 30 students with individual tablet devices with room to spread out and work with built in or portable keyboards and mice. For that matter, every school desk in a foreword looking building needs power. We are not using paper textbooks anymore; we are using individualized devices that have plugs.

We need a kiva area for presenting the daily activity to young children. It would be best with a large touch screen at one end, with a small stage. We want it high enough to be easily seen from around the room. We want pre-k children to be able to reach up and interact with the digital resources being displayed. I’ve always recommended that in a half-hour to 45 minute computer lab time, teachers should plan for three distinct activities – start with an opening , have an on machine activity, and follow with a third activity for individuals or the group if the finish early. We would often start in a circle around the Smartboard, move to computers, then have small groups move back to the smartboard as they finish or on to another individual or small group engaging activity. Young children usually play “parallel”, not in groups, so planning enough space and learning zones is critical to successful learning times. Having young children sit at a screen for up to 45 minutes is not usually educationally productive.

There needs to be an area for recording audio narrations that has reduced room noise. Individually recorded projects describing or showing what students are learning will be the norm, so we need to design with that view in mind.

The text below can be found at the link above:

1.      Collaborative classroom furniture. Collaboration means interaction between students and teachers and among students, as well. Problem-solving and group projects require learning furniture that adjusts to multiple learners, then quickly reconfigures to individual mode for activities like testing and independent reading.

2.      Sufficient electrical resources. The image is common: Students in a school library or elsewhere crowding around a single available AC outlet to charge devices like tablet computers or laptops. Schools must realize that electricity is a teaching and learning resource today and that making it conveniently available (I would say at each desk) is an asset to the educational experience. 

3.      Intelligent lecterns. Teachers need a technological home base in the classroom. The lectern can fulfill that need if it incorporates features such as a recessed flat-screen monitor, USB ports, interactive whiteboard controls and audio/visual capabilities.  

4.      Flexible lighting levels. On/off lighting is not sufficient for the needs of the 21st-century classroom. Lighting levels that adjust to a wide range of learning activities better accommodates today’s realities. It must be easily dimmed or enhanced according to the needs of the moment. Electronic displays must be viewable and students should be able to read projection screens and whiteboards whether they are closest or furthest away from the presentation. 

5.      Downsized gathering areas. Space utilized for large auditoriums may have better uses divided into smaller gathering areas that host the students of a few classrooms at once. Maintaining smaller size  preserves collaborative and group possibilities. This more closely aligns with the experience students will encounter in today’s working world.

  

http://teachingthursday.org/2011/03/03/the-future-of-the-computer-lab/

The Future of the Computer Lab

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Bill Caraher | 3 Comments

Bill Caraher, Department of History, University of North Dakota

This year, I’ve been serving on a committee that distributes technology funding for teaching within my college.  One of things that these funds do is maintain computer labs in departments and programs across campus. Many of the computer labs that these funds will renovate are difficult to keep up to date (and currently rely upon computers purchased more than 5 years ago which is an eternity amidst today’s fast moving technology cycle),  relatively small with fewer than 40 computers, and serve relatively focused constituencies (typically limited to particular departments or programs). These three issues: the difficulty in keeping labs up to date, their small size, and their focused constituencies led me to think a bit about the future and function of the computer lab in the modern university.

As a preemptive caveat, I’ll admit that I do not teach in a computer lab and our department does not make use of one.  On the other hand, I have been involved with building a lab and have observed student behavior and the tech scene over the past 10 years.  So with that framework, I’ll offer some observations here and invite everyone to critique, expand, explode, or reject my observation in the comments!

1. The desktop computer is on the verge of extinction.  Computer labs are almost always associated with the desktop computer.  At the same time, a Pew Study (h/t to Mark Grabe) released last month has shown that just over half (57%) college-aged students have desktop computers whereas 70% of them have laptops.  The reasons for this are pretty clear.  Laptops are now powerful enough to handle all but the most robust computing needs. To be sure, the limitations of laptop computers – particularly at the extreme high end of, say, complex graphics production, video editing, controlling scientific equipment, or other processes that require significant computing power – still require desktop work stations with massive, multicore processes, massive amounts of storage, and robust cooling capacities, and ability to be customized and expanded. These environments, however, are fairly rare outside of upper-level or even graduate research programs.  Few students ever explore the fringes of their laptop’s computational power (except perhaps when they are playing games).  The growing preference for laptop computers among “millennials” makes clear that fewer users and ultimately software makers require the kind of performance limited to desktop hardware.

2. The cloud can do almost everything.  My suspicion is that while personal computers will continue to become more powerful, the real growth in computer power will come through leveraging “cloud” based computing.  In other words, powerful, remote computers with many, many times the power of even the most robust desktop will be available to handle the most demanding processes. Unlike a desktop or even a laptop which is designed for a single individual, cloud based computers can accommodate many users, sometimes simultaneous, and thereby reduce unnecessary duplication of processing power common to a computer lab where processing loads are often distributed unevenly across all users.  For example, processor intensive functions – like graphics rendering – now typically reserved for the most powerful desktop computers, can be sent out to the cloud where clusters of powerful computer can more efficiently and quickly handle demanding tasks.

Moreover, companies like CiTRIX are working to bring even common software to the cloud (like the Adobe suite of image editing software) making it possible for students to use specialized software which is not running on their computer, but in the cloud. The student’s computer become just an access point for the computer power of the cloud and the software running in that environment.  This both eliminates the need for students to purchase expensive, specialized software for one or two classes and eliminates the need to limit software on a group of designated machines in a computer lab environment.

So cloud computing is not only more powerful, but more efficient. If a student can leverage the power of cloud computing from their laptop, why do we need to provide a lab full of powerful desktop computers?

3. Decentralized learning.  Cloud based computing will become more and more important as programs turn toward increasingly decentralized models of instruction. The physical computer lab is based on residential, spatially local models of instruction.  While it is my hope that universities will always have classrooms, labs, and physical locations, I am also aware that the move toward online instruction will make some of these facilities less important for the definition of university education.  Students taking a class from around the world will no long be able to use a computer lab located in a particular building with particular hours and particular physical hardware.  Just as cloud based course management software like Blackboard or Moodle facilitate spatially decentralized learning models, more specialized software will also gradually become available in an online environment making the hardwire computer lab as marginal as the bricks-and-mortar classroom.

4. The line between a classroom and lab is increasingly blurred.  As Anne Kelsch has discussed, new models for classrooms – particularly those designed around the principles of active learning – have incorporated many of the features of the traditional computer lab directly into classroom space. While computer labs do have the benefit of physically concentrating students working on similar projects and problems, the classroom as computer lab brings that focus to even a finer point.  Spaces like the SCALE-UP classroom take computers from the lab (where my mind’s eye sees banks of computers facing the wall or arranged in ranks) and organizes them both in physical space and through software to encourage students to work together.  While labs have always been teaching spaces, the line between the lab and the classroom will become increasingly blurred.

5. The new economic normal. Computer hardware is expensive to buy, to maintain, and to keep current. Public universities are under increased pressure to trim budgets and use resources more wisely. Traditional computer labs will not remain a cost-efficient way to provide students with access to computer power, software, or a sophisticated instructional environment.  Specialized labs will continue to exist for particular kinds of highly-specialized computing needs or to support certain learning environments, departmental or program based computer labs designed to serve diverse constituencies will soon fall victim to the changing economic realities of American university life.  While many of the more powerful and specialized cloud based solutions are not inexpensive, they offer structural advancement over desktop computing by leveraging economies of scale.

_____

These are simply my reflections on the role of the computer lab in the teaching and learning environment. What do you think the future holds for the computer lab in the 21st century university?

This entry was posted in Bill Caraher, Computer Labs, Technology. Bookmark thepermalink.

3 RESPONSES TO THE FUTURE OF THE COMPUTER LAB

1.       Timothy Pasch | March 3, 2011 at 10:15 pm | Reply

Thank you Bill for your thoughtful article. While I agree with many of the points raised, I will argue for the continued support of the computer lab, although alternately framed.
Rather than thinking of a computer lab in its current sense, where students access computers and software that they cannot access at home, I am conceiving of the lab as an iteration of “docking station” for student mobile technologies.

Universities such as Stanford, the University of Washington and Duke, have been offering a variety of campus services accessible via student mobile devices. (http://mobile.stanford.edu/) A variety of datasources point to the fact that mobile usage is increasing dramatically on university campuses (please contact me for precise references and requests for data). With the release of the dual-core ipad2 yesterday, we can see that CPU speed should not be a factor in mobile devices for the foreseeable future.
Hard disk space is also not an issue with the advent of SSDs (solid state drives). The effectiveness of Moore’s Law combined with the fond farewell to moving parts (optical and platter), and we are entering into an era of truly mobile computation.

When I argue for labs therefore, I will approach this narrative from the perspective that labs should not be conceived as replacements for student laptops and mobile devices, but as enhancements for them. I envision rooms with collaborative technologies, printing stations (xerox phasers, plotters), high resolution scanners, and docks so that students can link into the high-performance computing, or high-speed communications that are generally not available to the public.

Today’s EPSCoR conference on cyberinfrastructure focused in large part on supercomputing and the concept of parallel computing. It should not be underestimated that unused resources on campuses, including labs, can be harnessed using technologies such as the CONDOR pool, http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/ to function as clusters that may empower projects ranging from DNA strand computation, to weather pattern recognition, and beyond. Parallel computing enables “things that are too big, too small, too fast, too expensive or too dangerous… to be studied in real life” (spoken today by the director of supercomputing at the University of Oklahoma).http://www.oscer.ou.edu/

The kind of processing that supercomputing through parallel cluster computing via harnessing unused computer labs can enable, is the kind of computation that can take enormous mountains of information and start to generate meaning. I personally am excited by a newer development in EPSCoR that was seen today, in that the Digital Humanities were mentioned for (what I believe) is the first time. Projects such as those created by Geoffrey Rockwell athttp://portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal in partnership with six Canadian universities, demonstrate the financial clout that digital humanities and cultural analytics can share along with STEM as fruitful and supportive research neighbors.

Timothy J. Pasch, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Communication
University of North Dakota

2.       Kathleen Vacek | March 14, 2011 at 5:44 pm | Reply

I have no doubt that universities are headed toward a computing future that is built around the students’ (and faculty’s?) own mobile devices. I don’t think the situation is inherently good or bad; it’s just the way things are. I have some concern, though, about students falling through the cracks during the transition. As universities transfer the expense of computer purchases to the student body, low income students are potentially disadvantaged. Computer labs open to all students may actually have mitigated the digital divide. Will laptops available for checkout be included in our future labs?

3.       Bill Caraher | March 14, 2011 at 6:26 pm | Reply

Kathleen,

I can’t imagine that will be necessary. Even now personal computers have come down in price to such a degree that they can cost less than a year’s worth of text books. As more and more software becomes cloud based and computing power increases, the price of a laptop will only come down more. We tend to think of mobile computing as just phones, but in fact, this category will come to embrace computers as well.

So I would imagine the days when students will see computers as not the service that the university provides, but as an personal access point for these services. It wasn’t that long ago when people expected the phone companies to provide them with phones, but now phones are highly personalized accessories that allow us to access a range of services from the phone companies.

I suspect computing will move in the same direction.

Bill

Wow! Technology options for education are changing faster than the speed of light it seams. Today I want to discuss technology in Pre-K classrooms.

Some of my peers in this district reported that young children are trying to swipe the screen of classroom computers - most of ours are five years old or older - and are surprised that they have to learn to input using a keyboard and mouse. It is a whole new world for those growing up in a touch environment and instruction will adapt. One thing that I will be pushing my District to try is the simple integration of video into pre-k classrooms. By that I mean, we should have an iPad app on tablets that is a video journal that allows young children to record themselves talking about their learning - what they did that day and have it email an entry link to their parents. Getting children used to talking about their learning should be the norm in our young child classrooms. What technology uses are you seeing in Pre-Kindergarten or what technology usage would you like to see?

Tablets

From the studies I've seen, 1-1 computing will be an essential adoption to improve our educational process. Scores on achievement tests raise 2%. Engagement goes up and discipline refferal's  go down. This was for schools that did it badly. If schools take a look at the SAMR model or other research to adapt their curriculum to the devices, gains have been as great as 16%. Clearly, always on access to learning on individual devices coupled with transformed schools where the student learns they, not their teacher / coach, are responsible for learning, works well.

While Tech is important to education, knowing how to use our technology effectively is paramount. Below is a quote from my favorite digital photography blog that speaks to the importance of what is in the visual images we use:

We take photos to communicate visually. With our photographs we aim to tell stories or to convey a mood, an atmosphere—what it was like to be at a place or with a certain person. This fact is very important to keep in mind because it helps us put everything in perspective. It helps us realize that ultimately our use of natural light is nothing more and nothing less than one of the means to communicate visually.

Read more: http://digital-photography-school.com/are-you-practicing-these-5-natural-lighting-tips#ixzz1tGoxBmQn

Wow!!! it has been a while since I posted.

Two big changes are in the forefront of educational transition.

1. Flipped Classrooms are a picture of the future of education. Teachers being able to find or create short "QUALITY" instructional videos, assign them to students to learn on their own, and then provide effective "schoolwork" time where students practice the learned skills in the presence of a master teacher, is a transformational model. Thanks to video, screen capture, cloud access and the like; Fantastic instruction is available to all.

2. The I-pad type of device is transforming instructional technology. We have one portable device, when linked with a large display, that can transform itself to be all the current instructional technology.

• Splashtop - I pad as a tablet http://youtu.be/4jgh4qjWIus
• I pad as a white board http://drtimtyson.com/blog/archives/2011/03/turn_your_ipad_1_or_2_into_an.html
• Use I-tv to connect a pad and student devices to a dispaly http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/apple_tv?afid=p219%7CGOUS&cid=AOS-US-KWG
• Reviews of the ipad as a whiteboard: http://youtu.be/4jgh4qjWIus
• I pad as a "clicker" survey tool  http://www.eclicker.com/
• With the new camera light, the I-pad 3 can now replace classroom document cameras, movie cameras, and still cameras. All we need is an integrated "sent do" button so students may send the images they collect directly to their personal cloud storage area.
• Shared Cloud Storage & legal access for students younger than 13 would be the next big deal.

Tech Apps Textbook Adoption

We are in the process of selecting "textbooks" for Elementary Technology Applications in our school district. The adoption we choose will be used by our teachers for about the next ten years. After reviewing our choices I think and immortal word from candidate Dean sums my feelings up best: AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGWWWWWWW!

The state should already be asking for its money back. Maybe they could cut a deal with the major players to combine their best parts to make one acceptable resource.

Thompson: Who wants to store and be responsible for another class set of textbooks in student desks? Do you really want to have to check them out and in? Maybe they could fill that empty space in your class bookshelf. Certainly the district and state are excited about a publisher ignoring the directive to produce and electronic tool that if adopted they will have to hire thugs to hall and find warehouse space for storage. In my view Thomson failed the Following Instructions part of the lesson. F - Did not do the assignment

Tom Snyder Productions: The Graph Club 2.0 is certainly a fine program but a Technology application curriculum it is not. F - Incomplete

Classroom Connect: My favorite after leaving the presentations. I like the project based concept for integration. I like the promise of tutorials for our core applications - Kidspiration, Kidpix, Word, Excel, and Net Treker. Their reputation for quality technology training seminars shows in that their concept is clearly the best thought out and presented of the offerings. Unfortunately, when you actually use their materials, the execution falls far short of the ideals they set for themselves.

• Keyboarding program is excellent. I wish we could use it with the other vendors.
• Workbooks are well laid out with good integration ideas.
• The hands on teacher book they can thumb through are a plus for integration. The many Full page testimonials - like on page 54 of the Kinder book is one example of how they resorted to filler to complete a resource that is light on resources.
• The online quizzes function well and are well written.
• The Core curriculum training lessons is a wonderful idea that fell flat in their implementation. They use two to four screens to display the steps to something with no practice or animation. I could get that from the help screens in word. All online text based. No animations and then practice. I was VERY disappointed.
• Ease of use by teachers I would subjectively say is So-so
  Automatic record keeping - little to none.
• They brag about thousands of web sites that are teacher tested. In the 5th grade Inventors Biography Lesson I did a search on Marie Curie (one of the ten inventors they recommended) and got nothing. I kept trying and eventually got a search to return results, but the four sites displayed had nothing to do with Marie Curie as an inventor. Students will rarely type a search strings perfectly. They need to find a better search tool for their thousands of sites or offer students the chance to click on names to begin a search.
• Their Tech Standards report showing what standards have been fulfilled by the lessons a teacher has assigned was good.
• Extension ideas for curriculum differentiation were a plus
• I tried to view the Kinder "Electronic Research Simulations and Interactions, Weather and Seasons" simulation but it was not up yet.

SRA TECH Knowledge: A well rounded program with annoying shortcomings
Good animation on the splash page. I like that all the resources are available on the splash page, allowing the teacher to direct the students to a specific area without having a lot of class-lessons setup. It also leaves students free to explore, rather than using the assigned lesson approach many others have adopted. Who has time to do all the assigning? For that matter, the demo showed us how some of the management functions are "supposed" to look, but I did not get a chance to experience how a teacher would enroll a new student in the middle of the year or how I would download and entire school set of names and scores or see how the data could be moved from one campus to another as students move around.

• Keyboarding - LAME - The demo's take way too long. They introduce a key, then have you watch while the computer types alas all alas all automatically for four full lines before it gives you a chance to practice the exact same lines. Then it finally moves on to a practice session. Really bad. I would not want our students doing this for the next ten years. Worse yet, it forces the kids into the habit of pressing the return key at the end of each and every line. That is NOT something we want to ingrain in our students. This is a horrible program and reason enough to drop this choice and I would vote no just on this unless the company agrees to send site licenses to quality keyboarding programs for both young and older children.
• Nothing was in lesson 88
• The online program crashed while I was moving around
• Is it me, or are the voices a little annoying - they must have scraped the bottom of the talent pool. The WWW character sounds like he is mumbling.
• The Boolean Search lesson demo's and then uses the exact same word - Boring. It will only finish searches if you type the Boolean term in all caps.
• The TAKS quizzes were a good example of online testing - showing SRA's background and our future as Teach - Test - Teach becomes further entrenched. Ten quizzes with ten questions each that score themselves is a good start for those looking for another benchmark type tool. I might complain about TAKS materials thrown in, but then this is the format our students will be seeing if we continue on this national education path.

Learning.com: Our district has been using this for several years so I did not do a specific review. Maybe it is our closeness to it, or maybe it really is just a bit too much of the same old thing for every time kids come to computers. They have the best simulations and internal feedback by far. It is too easy to keep the kids sitting at computers, just doing the simulations/lessons and then saying there, we have done our duty and taught technology. Rarely do I see teachers using Learning.com's integration activities. The activities were an afterthought - the last part produced by the company - and it shows up in the execution or lack of integration. I just want something more for our kids "computer" time.

One person with whom I agree stated, they wondered if our kids will get a little bored with the same format throughout elementary. Would it be good to adopt different resources so that students see other tools at different ages?

If SRA could get simulations like learning.com's, add a project based design from the start from classroom connect, and get classroom connect's keyboarding program, or Mavis Beacon, Kids Keys or another, we could probable end up with a resource worthy of the funds Texas will be investing. As it stands all fall seriously short.