Fortnightly Mailing

"Into something rich and strange" - making sense of the sea-change: call for proposals for the 2010 ALT conference

Next year's Association for Learning Technology conference will be in Nottingham, England, between 7 and 9 September 2010. Keynote speakers will be Barbara Wasson, Sugata Mitra, and Donald Clark.

Last week ALT (for which I work part time) published the calls for papers and abstracts. Links to these are as follows:

• Call and Guidelines for Proceedings Papers [9 page 113 kB PDF file];
• Proceedings Paper Template [4 page 56 kB DOC file];
• Call and Guidelines for Short Papers, Posters, Symposia, Workshops and Demonstrations [10 page 59 kB PDF file].

The submission system will open in mid December, and will close on 15 February 2010.

Google Wave - revolutionary tool for computer supported collaborative work, or overestimated hype?

The former, says Johanna Hane in a snazzy 10 page study [32 kB PDF] undertaken as part of a course at Gothenburg University.

[Via Dick Moore and Phil Candy.]

2007 report - How the world's best performing school systems come out on top

A report from McKinsey [10 MB PDF] more or less builds its brief conclusions into the titles of its three main chapters:

1. The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers - therefore get the right people to become teachers;
2. The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction - therefore develop them into effective instructors;
3. Delivery for every child - therefore ensure that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.

There is a striking table at the end of the report "Key questions and parameters in system development".

Question	Best in the world
Getting the right people to become teachers
What is the average academic calibre of people who become teachers?	Among the top 10% of each cohort
How is the teaching profession viewed by university students and recent graduates?	One of the top 3 career choices
How rigorous are selection processes into teacher training?	Rigorous checks designed to assess teaching potential: e.g. teaching practice, literacy and numeracy tests
What is the ratio of places on initial teacher education courses to applicants?	1:10
How does starting compensation for teaching compare to other graduate salaries	In line with other graduate salaries
Developing effective instructors
What is the total amount of coaching new teachers receive in schools?	>20 weeks
What proportion of each teacher's time is spend on professional development?	10% of working time is used for professional development
Does each teacher have an exact knowledge of specific weaknesses in their practice?	Yes, as a result of everyday activities occurring in schools
Can teachers observe and understand better teaching practice in a school setting?	Yes, teachers regularly invite each other into each other's classes to observe and coach
Do teachers reflect on and discuss practice?	Yes, through both formal and informal practices in schools
What role do school leaders play in developing effective instructors?	The best coaches and teachers are selected as school leaders
How much focused, systematic research is conducted into effective instruction and then fed back into policy and classroom practice?	Research budget equivalent to $50 per student each year focused on improving instruction
Ensuring every student performs well
What standards exist for what students should know, understand, and be able to do?	Clear standards appropriate to system performance
What system-wide checks exist on the quality of school performance?	All schools are aware of their strengths and weaknesses
What action is taken to tackle under-performance?	Effective mechanisms to support all failing students, minimal performance variation between schools
How is funding and support organised?	Funding and support are focused where it can have most impact

Google Translate - new "live translating" interface. Stunning and transformational.

You must try the new version of Google Translate, which provides machine translation in real time (between over 50 language pairs) as well as the "old" capacity to translate a web site, a new document upload and translation feature, and, for translations into English, a "now hear it spoken" button.

The Google Blog has more.

I'm interested in whether users submit "better" translations, and if yes to what extent; and, spam permitting, whether such better translations are integrated into the body of data from the which the translator derives its output.

Clayton Wright's vast listing of conferences with a learning technology component

Here is the 22nd edition of Clayton Wright's amazing conference list [1 MB DOC]. There are over 650 events listed, mostly concentrated between January and June 2010, but with some confirmed events running through into 2011.

Tim Berners-Lee - 12 minute video interview in the Economist

This link should open a pop-up with a 12 minute video of an Economist Magazine interview with Tim Berners-Lee about building the web. The interview provides Berners Lee's perspectives on the work of the World Wide Web Consortium, which he heads, about the semantic web, which he believes is on its way, and about the crucial importance of net neutrality (the principle that data on the Internet should be treated equally irrespective of whose it is, and whether or not the carrier has a commercial interest in the content formed by the data).

There are nearly 300 other audio, video, and multimedia resources here on the Economist web site.

US National Survey of Student Engagement

[With thanks to Ray Schroeder]

The well organised and informative 2009 National Survey of Student Engagement [50 pages, 20 MB PDF] report is produced by Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research in cooperation with the Indiana University Center for Survey Research. The report aims to provide data to colleges and universities to "assess and improve undergraduate education, inform state accountability and accreditation efforts, and facilitate national and sector benchmarking efforts". This year's report has a two page section (go to pages 19 and 20) about Teaching and Learning Technologies, including a tantalising but all-too-briefly explained table (below, with its rubric) "Relationship Between Technology and Engagement, Deep Learning, and Gains".

"How Do These New Technologies Relate to Student Learning and Engagement?

Course management and interactive technologies were positively related to student engagement, self-reported learning outcomes, and deep approaches to learning (Table 7). Course management technology was most strongly related to student-faculty interaction and self-reported gains in personal and social development. It is possible that the use of this type of organizational technology encourages contact among classmates as well as between students and their instructors. Interactive technologies corresponded most strongly with students’ self-reported gains and the supportive campus environment benchmark. Students who use interactive technologies are also more likely to say their campus environment is supportive and contributes to their knowledge, skills, and personal development."

We must ..... a call to action to create the university of the future

Here are five tasks prioritised las month at a "create the university of the future" meeting sponsored by the Open University of Catalonia and the US based and led New Media Consortium, and attended by "forty leaders in open education and technology" Barcelona. Source [140 kB PDF], with thanks to Phil Candy.

EDUCAUSE - 7 things you should know about Google Wave

Via Stephen Downes, here is a link to a new EDUCAUSE outline: 7 things you should know about Google Wave - [380 kB PDF - two pages]. Given that Wave is only in its early stage of roll-out, EDUCAUSE is taking a gamble asserting much about it. And when you read in the guide that "answers to questions about who in higher education is likely to find value in it and how exactly they will use it remain speculative" you realise that publication is possibly premature. (I have some spare Wave invitations which I am happy to share.)