School 1.0

• Rituals, rules, and routines
• Focus on the right answers
• This is okay.

School 2.0

• Engaged
• Self-directed
• Project-driven
•  Independent problem solvers
• Teachers and students are empowered
• Learning community

Meaningfulness + Significance + Connectedness =  Contribution

EXAMPLE:

Conrad calls the school during summer vacation, wants to come to school to work on his video project.  He won’t take no for an answer.  The school secretary forwards the call to Principal Tim Tyson.  The principal explains that it is too late to make your class grade better, the report cards have already been printed.  “But Dr. Tyson, I got an A”, Conrad explained.   “You said if the project was perfect, you would put it on the school website and into the iTunes Store for the whole world to see”, he continued.  The next day, Conrad showed up at 9am with two of his partners to get back to work on his project.

For the first time, schools can have access to true global distribution.

MabryOnline & iTunes

• School website serves up 1.5 million files per month on average.
• In June 2007, it served up 4 million files.
• People can subscribe to school content via iTunes.

The deal that Dr. Tyson put forth to his students:

• Your work has to be the best of the best
• Ask yourself: “What is it about your work that is so great that it needs to be out there for the entire world to see?”
• Students from New Dehli, Tasmania, Beijing, Shanghai, Peru, Georgia, Australia, UK are viewing their work.
• Students feel a great deal of satisfaction when their work is globally relevant.
• This is authentic assessment: when an A is not good enough for a student.

When does meaningfulness start?

• First job?
• Graduate college?
• Right now!
• We need to have a meaningful activities for students right now.

Project on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research

• The students approached Dr. Tyson with their topic.
• Two weeks later, the students (on their own) had already scheduled a field trip to Emory University to spend two hours with Dr. Chetta in her research lab.  She presented one of the same intro presentations that she does for her doctoral students and physicians.
• Produced a movie that Patrice Weaver said was the best thing she’d ever seen.  Won the film festival.

Students wanted to make a difference, not just report:

• Commercialization of Drinking Water
• Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research
  • Shot everything but the video of the sonogram.
• Child Slave Labor on the Ivory Coast
  • “Social studies, but more grown up.”
• Saving African lives from Malaria
• Captivity of Elephants
• Poverty in China
• Organ Donation
  • Done like the series 24.
  • Students created every scene except for two that were recorded in the operating room by Emory University.
• Immigration in United States
• Genetically Modified Food
  • Students changed the way their principal buys his food.

Not all about technology and connectivity

• “I wish we could get away from this argument in our profession.”
• The effective educator is the one who bridges the gap between technology and meaningfulness.
• Students want to go beyond preparing for the next year, they want to make a contribution today.
• School 1.0 = Taking it in
• School 2.0 = Giving it out
• We need to stop simplifying our students’ education into tiny little segments.

Dr. Tyson’s closing keynote video/slides can be found here.

Link to session information page here.

Driving forces behind Wikitext:

• Students were not using textbooks, often sold back to bookstore with shrink wrap still on them.
• Dissatisfaction with timeliness of textbooks.

Theory behind Wikitext:

• Enhance student learning by increasing involvement in course content and encouraging higher level thinking.
• Introduce collaborative environments.
• Use technology as an instructional tool.

Designing the Wikitext:

• Developed an online text book by adapting content from existing textbook as a guide.
• Started with grad students, chose topics and wrote sample articles.
• Support sessions created, written support developed (formatting guidelines, resources, sidebars, composing quality questions, navigation, etc.)

Implementation of the Wikitext:

• Done in introduction to education course.
• 227 students, online and face to face.
• All students had to choose a topic to write a 1,000 word article. Needed to include 5 multiple choice questions, 1 essay questions, and a sidebar discussion.
• Students were put into groups. Each group reviewed and rated all articles.
• Rated on a three point scale (outstanding, satisfactory, unsatisfactory). Changed to five point scale in the next semester.
• Best version of each topic’s article was published in the wiki. This was the article that students were responsible for knowing on their exams.
• Ratings of articles were averaged into final course grade.
• Ratings tracked by student ID number. Edits tracked by TA’s.
• Students were then responsible for one major edit to an article (> 150 words).

Methods of the Wikitext:

• A lot of research was done on this process. Eight different studies done (attitudinal, student response to process, holistic approach to the process, comparison of student-assigned to teacher-assigned grades, pre-course, during course, and post-course etc.)
• Most data self-reported

Results of the studies:

• Student concerns: 28.3% research for article, 20.1% writing composition, 19.5% concerns on technology, 15.7% worry about quality of content
• Final grades were slightly higher than when using normal textbook.
• 22% reported high involvement in traditional course, 61% reported high involvement with Wikitext.
• 100% no spent ~2 hours, 50% spent no time out of class with traditional, 89% reported 1-4 hours a week with Wikitext.
• 69% agreed that they experienced active learning after the course was over
• 53% got a lot of worth out of the class.
• 79% said content currency was higher or much higher, 47% said quality was better.
• One student said it was the most inspiring undertaking of education revamping he had ever experienced.
• Some said they didn’t want to read articles by their “idiot peers” and that they didn’t want to do “the instructor’s work for them”. These students expected a more top-down pedagogy model.
• 62% wanted to use Wikitext again.
• 70% reported increase in technology skills.
• Conclusion: student centered learning increased, active-learning increased, technology skill level increased.

Link to the final versions of the book created here.

Link to session page here.