TCEA 2011

Okay, TCEA was last week, but I had three sessions, well 2 sessions and a field trip. Henry Neeman, Director of the OU Supercomputer Center for Education and Research, and Bonnie Bracy Sutton, Director of the Power of US Foundation joined me to present Supercomputing in Plain English (actually Henry had the lead on this one) and a reprise of the session we did at T+L The Real 21st Century Literacies. (The slides from the two sessions can be found on SlideShare; Supercomputing is here and here for 21st Century Literacies.)

I'd also submitted a proposal for a field trip to TACC (Texas Advanced Computing Center). TCEA was excited and we ended up offering two, one to the supercomputer site at research campus and the other to the visualization lab on the main campus. We only got the numbers to run the field trip so see the world's highest resolution tiled display. So along with Faith Singer-Villalobos from TACC we hosted the field trip.

We were told by many of our participants that this was the first time supercomputing had been a part of TCEA and we hope to continue bringing supercomputing to TCEA.

Obama pushing for new Ed-Tech agency.

Here's an interesting article from eSchoolNews. Apparently the President has proposed a new agency to " support research on breakthrough technologies to enhance learning." (See if you can determine which comment is mine.)

This isn't necessary if we'd only revise some of the grant programs that both ED and NSF funded.

The Department of Education under the current Secretary has shown little interest in funding true innovation. The I3 program was basically doing more of the same, just in different locations.

We need to see real innovation, and we need to change the discussion about the fundamental models of education that we hope to see in really preparing students for the 21st Century.

The risk of shifting instruction to social media

There's a blog post by Daniel Margolis on Chief Learning Officer about the risks of informal learning delivery. While the focus of CLS is generally on corporate training, many of their articles are relevant to learning in general.

The point behind this posting is that while informal learning has great stories to illustrate how learning can take place in social media settings, the lack of structure has risks. I think this is an important warning.

I see the excitement educators feel when they find a new tool. And while the instructional approach du jour may be fun to explore, I get concerned that the tools may be used without adequate study.

I have repeatedly commented about the lack of study on the most effective approach to the use of synchronous online education. I'm still looking for a research study on effective synchronous online instruction. If you know of one, or have conducted the research please let me know.

And, I'm always looking for examples of how to make online learning effective.

Will change in leadership at Google impact education?

Here's an article on Google's change in leadership and implications for higher ed.