NYTimes - The Medium Is the Medium

July 8, 2010

By DAVID BROOKS
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school year. They did this for three successive years.

Then the researchers, led by Richard Allington of the University of Tennessee, looked at those students’ test scores. They found that the students who brought the books home had significantly higher reading scores than other students. These students were less affected by the “summer slide” — the decline that especially afflicts lower-income students during the vacation months. In fact, just having those 12 books seemed to have as much positive effect as attending summer school.

This study, along with many others, illustrates the tremendous power of books. We already knew, from research in 27 countries, that kids who grow up in a home with 500 books stay in school longer and do better. This new study suggests that introducing books into homes that may not have them also produces significant educational gains.

Recently, Internet mavens got some bad news. Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd of Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy examined computer use among a half-million 5th through 8th graders in North Carolina. They found that the spread of home computers and high-speed Internet access was associated with significant declines in math and reading scores.

This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter and Facebook took off.

These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.

Carr’s argument has been challenged. His critics point to evidence that suggests that playing computer games and performing Internet searches actually improves a person’s ability to process information and focus attention. The Internet, they say, is a boon to schooling, not a threat.

But there was one interesting observation made by a philanthropist who gives books to disadvantaged kids. It’s not the physical presence of the books that produces the biggest impact, she suggested. It’s the change in the way the students see themselves as they build a home library. They see themselves as readers, as members of a different group.

The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.

A person enters this world as a novice, and slowly studies the works of great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep, alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting wisdom. Respect is paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.

A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.

These different cultures foster different types of learning. The great essayist Joseph Epstein once distinguished between being well informed, being hip and being cultivated. The Internet helps you become well informed — knowledgeable about current events, the latest controversies and important trends. The Internet also helps you become hip — to learn about what’s going on, as Epstein writes, “in those lively waters outside the boring mainstream.”

But the literary world is still better at helping you become cultivated, mastering significant things of lasting import. To learn these sorts of things, you have to defer to greater minds than your own. You have to take the time to immerse yourself in a great writer’s world. You have to respect the authority of the teacher.

Right now, the literary world is better at encouraging this kind of identity. The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists, but the literary culture still produces better students.

It’s better at distinguishing the important from the unimportant, and making the important more prestigious.

Perhaps that will change. Already, more “old-fashioned” outposts are opening up across the Web. It could be that the real debate will not be books versus the Internet but how to build an Internet counterculture that will better attract people to serious learning.

EDSConnect on Google

EDSConnect now has a google site thanks to Chris Carr. Check it out here!

Web based videoconference options

Essay comparing various web conference tools:
Online Learning 101: Part IIITools for Web Conferencing and Learning-Management Systems
By Susan Landay

Elearn Magazine

June 17, 2010

Some Webconference products:

• Adobe Connect Pro (Adobe) (Adobe Feature and Price Comparison)
• Adobe Connect Now
• Dim Dim
• GoTo Meeting (Citrix)
• Live Meeting (Microsoft)
• Mega Meeting
• WebEx (Cisco)

Wainhouse Research White Papers

Critical Success Factors for Deploying Distance Education Technologies, Alan Greenberg,September 2009

Based on research conducted by CILC and sponsored by TANDBERG, this paper explores the ways in which organizations that adopt technologies like interactive whiteboards, lecture capture, streaming video, learning management systems, videoconferencing, and web conferencing can face barriers to success, and ways of overcoming those barriers.

Two factors are cited as the major obstacles to successful distance education: 1) lack of bandwidth and technology infrastructure or old equipment; and 2) staffing. These and other obstacles fortunately can be overcome through proactive methods described by WR; the white paper includes practical suggestions for vendors and service providers as well as end user organizations.


The 2009 Update: Taking the Wraps off Videoconferencing in the U.S. Classroom: A National and State-by-State Analysis
Wainhouse Research - Alan Greenberg

Not many people realize that almost 30,000 videoconferencing systems were located in U.S. schools, service centers, district offices, and departments of education as of April 2009. Almost 1.2% of classrooms have group systems -- not counting PC-based technologies. Penetration varies widely state by state, with California, Texas, New York, Florida, and MIchigan having the most systems, while Hawaii, Nebraska, Alaska, Maine, and New Hampshire have the most systems as a percentage of their total schools. Almost 80% (4 out of 5 of the individuals in 43 states who felt they could answer the question) indicate that classroom-based videoconferencing is helping their educators meet academic goals.



For almost 20 years videoconferencing in the U.S. classroom has been adopted in a number of growth stages, or waves. Wave I consisted of using videoconferencing to access remote resources. Wave II, which Wainhouse Research believes crested 2004-2007, consisted of the shift to IP technologies and an explosion of content providers delivering rich resources to the classroom. Wave III will consist of increased student collaborative projects and student creation and delivery of content, which will include a shift to desktop videoconferencing and other collaborative technologies over time.

Based on interviews with educators and administrators in almost all states and the District of Columbia, this white paper will be useful to policymakers, content providers, and educators wishing to understand the dynamics of successfully deploying videoconferencing in the classroom. This study was sponsored by Tandberg and the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC).

Distance Education

Combatting Myths about Distance Education,Todd Gilman (Feb 22, 2010)