Voice from the Field
What Teachers Want in Digital Tech: The Video
Frank Catalano, Principal, Intrinsic Strategy — Friday, July 16, 2010
In the technology industry, it’s called eating your own dog food.At the Association of Educational Publishers’ Content in Context Conference, that approach was applied to the education industry: teachers who wanted more digital materials in their classrooms were asked to use digital technology to make their requests directly to the publishers.
AEP traditionally has represented supplemental publishers, companies that create educational resource materials. That traditionally meant materials on paper. So it was a major shift last month when the long-standing annual AEP Summit became the first-ever Content in Context Conference, and the emphasis at its Washington, D.C., site switched from print materials to the transition toward digital.
To kick off the new conference emphasis, AEP asked teachers to submit brief videos on YouTube detailing their digital needs, successes, and dreams. Up to 20 of the videos would be played in the opening general session. Production values weren’t important; passion was.
As the session moderator and organizer, I saw every video several times. I also saw a number of themes that kept recurring whether the submission was from California or Georgia, Saskatchewan or Alberta (we received videos from 14 states and two provinces). Even though this was a tech-savvy, self-selecting group of teachers and not anything vaguely resembling a scientific sample, the common themes may be important to all providers of educational materials—because teachers who are willing to speak out, on video, in front of 300 educational publishing execs are also likely to be the greatest promoters, or detractors, of whatever the same companies have to offer their schools.
The top five themes, in no particular order:
1) All digital content should work with all classroom technology devices.
“Seamless” was the term used—make it possible to take any digital content from any publisher and use it on laptops, interactive whiteboards, student response devices…whatever happened to be in a particular classroom. One sixth grade teacher noted that while he enjoyed integrating technology into all areas of the curriculum, it was time-consuming.
While many companies would simply be happy to get to a time when all of their own technology products worked seamlessly with each other, the point the teachers made—to get to when teachers could return to thinking primarily about the teaching, not the technology underlying the resources—shows that incompatible formats are often obstacles to getting full use out of digital materials. Or, to put it into recess language, products should play well with others.
2) Provide collaboration and content creation tools for students to use.
Several teachers created their videos with free tools, such as text-to-video Xtranormal (www.xtranormal.com). Noted teacher Lisa Caswell from Perrysburg Schools in Ohio, “The students love turning their stories into videos on this site.” Rather than just providing digital content, teachers wanted publishers to provide tools that allowed students to shape and change and share the content with other students. “There is tremendous potential for students to create their own learning in an inquiry-based environment,” said Dean Vendramin of Archbishop M.C. O’Neill High School in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. “If publishers can help provide resources that can be used in a variety of ways, or ‘mashed up’ to create content, that would help students become active learners in the digital age.”
While this might strike fear into the hearts of staff copyright attorneys (yes, they have them), the reality is many students are already modifying content for class work, with or without permission. Publishers providing the tools along with the content may actually help put a box around how the content can be used acceptably. Or perhaps partnerships with existing content creation and collaboration toolmakers could help meet teacher needs.
3) Provide teacher training both for using and integrating technology tools and resources.
This request is nothing new. But it’s pervasive—and probably will continue to be as school and district training budgets are squeezed over the next several years. One educator was participating in a special training program, the eMINTS program developed by the University of Missouri (www.emints.org), and noted, “This extensive program has allowed us to receive over 300 hours of training in the use of technology in the classroom.”
But if this kind of training isn’t likely for most, there’s a potential flipside: Publishers can create technology tools and resources that are insanely easy to integrate (including materials that adhere to request number one). In today’s time-crunched, hassle-filled school environment, observed instructional technology coach Sandy Armstrong of Drake Middle School in Auburn, Alabama, “If it’s not easy to use, no one is going to use it.”
4) Make digital materials editable and searchable.
If publishers are going to provide digital materials, they shouldn’t be locked down so they can’t be modified or are impossible to quickly search. Illinois mathematics teacher David Sladkey of Naperville Central High School commented, “So many times classroom materials aren’t changeable. We as teachers need to be given the power to change and edit them.” Otherwise, some teachers noted, materials may not work well with teacher-created lesson plans.
I think I hear the attorneys sighing again, clutching their copyright symbols to their, uh, hearts.
5) Include more video and music in digital resources.
While this was explicitly stated only a handful of times across the 20 videos, what was shown and implicit in many more were students using interactive whiteboards and personal computers to become further engaged with the subject matter through video or audio. Plus there was one video with an entire class singing a geography song. Really!
Yet this request makes sense without having to mull it over: If you’re going to move to a new medium, wouldn’t you take advantage of what the new medium can offer that the old one can’t? These teachers expect that, and iPad-smartphone-laptop-enabled students certainly will.
The AEP session wasn’t all “give me a pony and we’ll have world peace!” euphoria. A responding panel made up of administrators and a state education policy expert tempered the pixilated presentations with stark realities that there are still many “chicken or egg” infrastructure and policy issues that need addressing, that there are generational differences among teachers on their willingness to use such technological resources, and even that traditional paper methods still work best for certain instructional areas (such as reading).
But all that said, these self-motivated, tech-happy teachers are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Companies in education can either choose to actively steer to match its course—or do nothing and blindly crash right into it.
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Frank Catalano is the principal of Intrinsic Strategy (http://intrinsicstrategy.com), a strategic marketing and business consulting firm for education and technology companies. He tweets from http://twitter.com/FrankCatalano. Videos from the Content in Context session are viewable on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/edpublishing in the Teacher Video Challenge playlist, and comments about the videos are online in the Classrooms in the Digital Age community on edWeb.net.
