Selection of publications, papers
& abstracts:
John LeBaron and co-authors
© All material copyrighted, 1995-2004
Cynthia's Challenges in Cyber School: Circa 2020
A TRAVEL AGENT IN CYBER SCHOOL:
THE INTERNET, SCHOOLS and the LIBRARY MEDIA PROGRAM
published (©
1997) by Libraries Unlimited, Littleton, Colorado
To explore a limited beta version of the Home Page (Chapter 1 only) for
the book,
A Travel Agent in Cyber School . . . , please click below:
Eleventh grader Cynthia Berkeley winds up two hours of biotechnology research using her personal digital assistant (PDA). This school-supplied portable PDA is connected to the school's information network center, which in turn is connected by high-speed network to a worldwide array of resources and interactive communications sites. Cynthia has been examining microscopic images of damaged brain cells with her mentor lab technologist at the nearby medical center. Through her hand-held PDA, she can simultaneously communicate with her mentor, tap into microscopic laboratory images, and meet via live videoconference with her teachers, schoolmates, and other skilled resource people collaborating on a research project on Alzheimer's disease prevention.
Several years ago, Cynthia and her peers gave up commuting to school every day. It really wasn't necessary, except when she needed face-to-face interaction with her teachers and student colleagues. When away from school, she is required every hour to log in from another approved work site, such as her Town's Public Information Center (formally called "the Town Library"). At other times, she logs in from the medical center, or works at some alternative curriculum-centered worksite.
Cynthia's PDA has no keyboard. It has a fold-out flat panel screen that offers twenty inches of viewing space. Every PDA function is launched either by voice, by electronic pen, or by mouse. Earlier today, with her PDA's nano-cam feature, Cynthia conducted a live "video-huddle" with Toshiro, Olga, Jean-Claude and Samidh, all members of an international work cluster on politics and civil rights. Language was no problem. The PDA translation protocol provided clear voice and text in the language of each user.
As she folds up her PDA, Cynthia's thoughts turn to the evening's activity. Using her own home CyberSurfer (or HCS -- a consumer-equipped version of her PDA), Cynthia decides to "go" to a virtual music event. Yeah sure, virtuality is no substitute for the real thing, but through a virtuality software plug-in, Cynthia can sample sensory-enhanced music that she could never afford in live concert.
Just as she is launching her HCS to access an affordable file on the Virtual Entertainment Network, an incoming message overrides her network start-up. It is her cyber-challenged dad, saying he is coming home with a new "palmputer" featuring SpeedLINK, a wireless networking device. Dad asks Cynthia to help get it up and running. Darn! There goes the virtual concert! An HCS may provide full immersion in musical virtuality, but it will not configure her dad's new computer.
How educators find resources on the Internet: A discussion of independent search behaviors by graduate education students
Today's educators are demonstrating an explosion of interest in the Internet as a tool for teaching. Neophytes confront the challenge of finding specific, curriculum-appropriate resources in a virtual ocean of available information. Given a choice, how do educators actually make sense of the informational chaos, particularly on the World Wide Web?
In Spring 1996, the UMass Lowell introductory graduate course, Exploring the Internet for Educators, featured a variety of student assignments, one of which was the semester-long development of an electronic journal of student-discovered Internet resources for education. To accommodate the student contributions, a dedicated e-mail listserv was established for the course. Following a specific format, students submitted the results of their explorations to a database for the whole class. More than 200 Internet sites were contributed.
Students were asked to indicate how they found each contributed resource. Results were fed into the database, and sorted by category (e.g., search engine, printed publication, peer recommendation, newspaper article). Analysis of these data produced a profile of how practicing educators, working from an academic course framework, found the resources reccommended for subsequent educational use. This article presents the results of a database analysis from contributions to the course listserv, accompanied by background information on the student population, course design, other student outcomes, and implications for future research and action.
To explore a fuller description of this project,
please click below:
In partnership with the Lawrence, Massachusetts public schools, the UMass Lowell College of Education developed a graduate education technology course based on a "service learning" model. The goal was to apply academic theory to the practical requirements of a resource-strapped school district by assigning advanced graduate students to jointly identified education technology needs. In addition to on-site consulting, the student team produced a major report keyed to priorities determined by school personnel.
Evaluation results indicated agreement among all stakeholders that the project was a success. However, weaknesses were identified. School personnel felt that more on-site training and support was needed from the participating students. University personnel believed that its various independent partnerships with the Lawrence schools should be better coordinated. All felt that needs should be identified before the first class meeting, so that students could devote the entire semester to problem-solving.
All parties are eager to develop a more in-depth future partnership. Looking ahead, the project will respond to the lessons of Phase One. The College of Education will seek links with the University's Department of Computer Science, which has partnered with the Lawrence schools on staff and infrastructure development. From a stronger foundation, all parties will seek additional resources and a broader-based long term partnership.
Americans are urging a major transformation of our schools. Many schools are responding by integrating technology throughout their whole structure. Pre-service teacher education is not keeping pace. By the Year 2000, a majority of an aging teacher workforce will have retired or resigned, creating a window of opportunity for technology leadership in teacher education. Distance education can help seize this opportunity.
By infusing distance education strategies into the whole fabric of pre-service instruction, teacher educators can design constructivist pedagogical models for students to emulate in their own subsequent teaching. Through the judicious combination of interactive technologies during and between instruction, faculty can choreograph student-centered, problem-oriented events for students located at remote sites.
The failure of teacher preparation institutions to take immediate action in reforming their practices in line with changes occurring in schools threatens to render them irrelevant to the educational transformations predicted for the coming decade.
In recent years, two Massachusetts-based organizations, a state university and a non-government service agency, have collaborated to provide inservice and preservice assistance to teachers seeking to integrate Internet access into their curricula. Such assistance has ranged from simple workshops to full scale graduate-level courses. Over time, the workshops and courses have been re-shaped in the light of participant feedback and the escalating changes in the nature of Internet access.
From an "early era" (1993) of command and text based Internet exploration, workshops and courses have moved almost completely toward an examination of graphic user interface (GUI) tools such as MOSAIC and Netscape. Such a shift has created the conflict, however, of how to reconcile the constricted, low bandwidth Internet access of many schools with the need to examine state-of-the-art tools and resources for teachers.
This article examines how two educational organizations have addressed this dilemma, accompanied by a discussion of the importance of leadership and coordination among diverse kinds of agencies serving the professional development needs of technology-adopting elementary and secondary schools.
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© 1995-2004 John F. LeBaron
03/04/04
