Tag: Edtech

Last March Break I attended an industry focused future of the workplace conference in Toronto.  That event aggressively underlined the importance of micro-credentials in the modern workplace.  The idea of years long programs, especially in technology where changes are happening regularly, suddenly feels like a lumbering has-been rather than a vital foundation to your workplace success.  The same conference caused me to examine the purpose of public education (there is much more to it than simply preparing students for work), but the gulf between school and the world beyond our classrooms continues to expand.


Since then I’ve worked with ICTC on a badging system for Focus on IT students that would allow them to micro-credential their progress through the program.  Anyone involved with the scouting program will know all about analogue badges well before there were any digital ones; badging has a long history of marking progress and expertise.  The military has always used badging to denote rank and expertise.  More recently badging has become popular in gaming culture to show skills and achievements and this has crossed over into the real world in terms of gamification of learning in education.  Badging as a form of micro-credentialing is a cultural phenomenon familiar to everyone, so micro-credentialing is nothing new.

We spent the afternoon yesterday attending the 4th annual CAN-CWiC Conference in Mississauga.  For someone who has been struggling against genderized pathways in his rural high school, attending a conference with hundreds of women in digital technology was like stepping into a future we may never reach where I teach, and isn’t the case in the vast majority of Ontario digital technology classrooms.


A couple of conversations prompted by the indomitable Alanna about how some of the women at the conference got into tech were very telling.  We’re both on the pathways committee at our school and the divide between high school career planning and what’s happening in the real world was shocking.  While we’re busy running a system that divides students by some pretty arbitrary standards and then builds up a marks history that defines student pathways into traditional post secondary learning, the rest of the world is struggling to find life long learners, something we only pay lip service to in our schools (don’t believe me? Find out how much PD time was spent on EQAO and how much was spent on life long learning).  What we view as a static, established learning schedules (one the vast majority of teachers work in very successfully), is pretty much meaningless in 2019 beyond the walls of our ivory towers.


We just did a staff survey on the last PD day and the data aligned with my anecdotal experience in secondary education.  When you fill a school with university graduates, many of whom have never worked in anything other than than the academic education system as either a successful student or teacher, you end up with a very blinkered view of the where the majority of our graduates go.  Academics tend to overly value their own experience and encourage students to do the same.  Students are directed to follow that long academic trajectory over developing lifelong learning skills valued elsewhere.  The students that do follow it are considered ‘the best’ ones.


What is happening in the workplace?  Digital disruption is rippling across all industry and is doing what it does, upturning traditional standards of practice and demanding agility before allegiance to tradition.  In everyone we talked to at CAN-CWiC, traditional credentials were nice to have, but by no means were they the standard requirement they used to be.  Industry people said that, sure, they have some post-secondary graduates in specific fields, but even in their case there was something that trumped any other credential:  the willingness to adapt and learn more, even if you have a Ph.D.


Danielle at IBM had a background typical of what many of our strongest female students experience.  She did well in high school, and especially English, but took no tech because she wasn’t encouraged to take it – it isn’t what academic girls do.  She went to the University of Guelph, ran the student newspaper, got a degree in English and then worked in radio as a writer for a couple of years until this shrinking traditional medium laid her off.  She then found a ten week full time boot camp training program on full stack developing and is now a web developer with IBM Canada.  She said that she greatly values her degree and time spent at Guelph and wouldn’t change any of it, but she wishes she’d had access to technology training in high school and university so she wasn’t getting into it with no experience in her twenties.  Our tradition education systems plays to traditional stereotypes.


I had what I consider a feminist/woke colleague tell me about how her daughter is now taking bio-technology.  I never saw her once in my computer engineering classes, but if it’s an academic girl aiming for university you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in high school telling them to take any applied technology course, even when that’s what they’re aiming at in post secondary.  It’s much more important that all your classes end in a U and are in an academic situation (rows of desks) that prepare you for university.  She’s now coding and is glad I put her on to Codecademy.  That’s like being handed water wings when there is an olympic swim team you could have trained with in the building.


Whether talking to post-secondary education, skills training organizations or companies, the idea that we need to be able to quickly adapt in a rapidly evolving workplace probably sounds like it’s from another planet to an Ontario educator inured in our factory shift driven system.  We aren’t skills focused, we’re shift focused.  You might be miles ahead of what’s happening in your 3U maths class, but that’s your shift and you’re going to sit through it, for months on end.  You might be miles behind in your 4U English class, but you’ll get passed along with the rest of your cohort with a mark that is pretty much meaningless.  What does a 60% in 4U English do for you?  What does a 100% in 3U math mean?  It keeps you with your cohort and does very little in terms actual learning.  We’re all held prisoner by our 19th Century education production line schedule that churns out grades.  Every time the bell goes off to signal a shift change I wonder what year I’m in.  But considering how difficult it is to timetable a grossly simplistic, generalized curriculum, I shudder to think what would happen if the system actually did need to schedule itself around individual student need.


Does this mean the end of traditional, years long learning programs?  No, specialists still need that depth of training, but for many these years long, financially crippling programs aren’t leading to a job, so we have to change that expectation.  I had a student last year who struggled in traditional classrooms but had good hands.  He went to college because that’s what everyone expected him to do but dropped out in the first semester due to a lack of maths fundamentals (he probably got passed through everything with a 60% – gotta keep ’em with their cohorts!).  My suggestion before and after all that was to start knocking out industry ICT qualifications and gaining experience in the workplace.  Demonstration of your willingness to learn and evidence showing that you have a good work ethic will take you where a college diploma won’t.  ICT is still a pretty new industry, so it doesn’t have the embedded, historically recognized apprenticeship pathways that other technology  pathways do, but it should.  Apprenticeship training with its mentored, skills focused, individualized learning is what the majority of applied training should be modelled around, but that system is foreign to all the Bachelor carrying people doing the teaching.

Nice eh? One of only a handful of people in Canada with this qualification, but it doesn’t count in our academics-only education system.

After my degree I went to work in ICT and ended up getting my qualifications as a technician.  Those were micro-credential bootcamp style courses I was taking way back in 2000.  I AQ’d (AQs are micro-credentials) frequently when I started teaching and recently did two more ICT qualifications just to stay current and give my students access to material.  OCT is very stingy around what it shows in teachers qualifications – mine shows only academic qualifications, but none of the technical qualifications including my apprenticeship because they are “less than” in our academically focused education system.  Teacher training only matters if a university had a hand in it.  Ironically, my board paid me nothing for my technical upgrading, even though it directly serves my students (thankfully my union did help me cover it).


Micro-credentialing is the new normal in the world beyond our school walls.  A big degree or diploma also shows your willingness to learn, but if it’s all you’ve got in 15 years on the job, then most companies will ignore you.  If you think it’s your passport to a good paying job, you’ll find yourself stuck in customs.  Micro-credentialing shows an employer that you’re always willing to upgrade your learning and stay relevant in a changeable workplace.  What they’re looking for is life long learners, not a one trick pony with a single degree or diploma from years ago, no matter what your grades.  Aiming for an outcome like that (earn my degree and I’m set) is aiming for failure in 2019, no matter what grades you’re getting and how excited guidance counsellors are about your opportunities.  If we were focusing our students on developing the confidence needed to always be open to learning something new, and the hunger and resiliency needed to leap into learning opportunities, they’d be in the right mindset to survive in the 21st Century workplace.  Dragging unwilling kids through months of instruction isn’t doing that.


What this has done for me is underline all the extracurricular training and competition work we do in our program.  All of those awards and the effort that goes into them highlights that go-the-extra-mile lifelong-learning skills that are so in demand in the world.  That these efforts aren’t integrated into our curriculum is yet another failure of our marks based, traditional model.


Maybe in the future Ontario classrooms we’ll begin to break down our schedules into micro-credentials.  Students aiming at current and emerging technologies could take quickly updated, personalized, micro-credentials that focus them on the specific skills they need without months long classes.  Traditional subjects like English could be broken down into their fundamental components.  While everyone would need to take the literacy strand, not everyone needs to take the historical literature piece.  What would our maths and sciences classes look like if students were working on particular, skills based micro credentials rather than grinding through months long, generalized curriculum aimed at a mythical average student?   Digital disruption has produced differentiated production lines focused on more high value, bespoke products. Education could follow the same evolution and begin using ICT to differentiate student scheduling and specify learning so that it wasn’t locked into a pedantic and ineffective 19th Century model.


In 2011 I imagined a fictional account of what a system designed around student differentiation rather than enabling our traditional model would look like.  The divide between what’s happening in our classrooms and the digitally disrupted workplace our students are graduating into has never been wider.  If the various stakeholders in the education system can rejig the system while maintaining the highest standards (this isn’t about cheaper, it’s about greater flexibility in service of our students), then it needs to happen yesterday – we’re falling further and further out of relevance for too many of our students.

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Back in the day when I was doing IT full time (pre-2004), we were doing a lot of local area networking builds for big companies.  There was web access, but never for enterprise software.  All that mission-critical data was locked down tight locally on servers in a back room.  When I returned from Japan in 2000, one of my jobs as IT Coordinator at a small company was to do full tape backups off our server at the end of each day and drop off the tapes in our offsite data storage centre.  Network technology has leapt ahead in the fifteen years since, and as bandwidth has improved the idea of locally stored data and our responsibility for it has become antiquated.


We were beginning to run into security headaches from networked threats in the early zeroes when our sales force would come in off the road to the main office and plug their laptops into the network.  That’s how we got Code Redded, and Fissered, and it helped me convince our manager to install a wireless network with different permissions so ethernet plugged laptops wouldn’t cronk our otherwise pristine and secure network where all our locally stored, critical business data lived.  We had internet access on our desktops, but with everyone sipping through the same straw, it was easy to manage and moderate that data flow.  Three years later I was helping the library at my first teaching job install the first wireless router in Peel Board so students could BYOD – that was in 2005.


Back around Y2K,  IT hygiene and maintenance were becoming more important as data started to get very slippery and ubiquitous.  In a networked world you’re taking real risks by not keeping up with software updates. This is still an issue in 2019, at least in education.  We’re currently running into all sorts of headaches at school because our Windows 7 image is no longer covered by Microsoft.  Last year one of our math teachers got infected by a virus sent from a parent that would be unable to survive in a modern operating system, but thanks to old software still infesting the internet, even old trojans get a second and third chance.  Our networked world demands a degree of keep-up if everyone is going to share the same online data – you can’t be ten paces behind and expect to survive in an online environment like that, you’re begging to be attacked.


Last summer I took Cisco’s Cyber Operations Instructor’s Program, which was a crash course in just how fluidly connected the modern world is, and how dangerous that can be.  After logging live data on networks and seeing just how much traffic is happening out there from such a wide range of old and new technology, it’s a wonder that it works as well as it does.  Many cybersecurity professionals feel the same way, our networks aren’t nearly as always on as you think.


This past week I attended Cisco’s Connect event which once again underlined how much IT has changed since I was building LANs in the 90s and early 00s.  The drive to cloud computing where we save everything into data centres connected to the internet comes from a desire for convenience, dependability and the huge leap in bandwidth on our networks – and you ain’t seen nothing yet.  There was a time when you had to go out and buy some floppy disks and then organize and store them yourself when you wanted to save data.  Now that Google and the rest are doing it for you, you can find your stuff and it’s always there because you’ve handed off that local responsibility to professionally managed multi-nationals who have made a lot of money from the process, but there is no doubt it’s faster and more efficient than what we did before with our ‘sneaker-nets‘.

You probably spend most of your day with a browser open.  Ever bothered to understand how they work?  Google’s Chrome Intro Comic is a great place to start.

If you ever look behind the curtain, you’ll be staggered by how many processes and how much memory web based applications like Google Chrome use.  Modern browsers are essentially another operating system working on top of your local operating system, but that repetition will soon fade as local operating systems atrophy and evolve into the cloud.


At Cisco Connect there was a lot of talk around how to secure a mission critical, cloud based business network full of proprietary IP when the network isn’t physically local, has no real border and really only exists virtually.

Cisco Umbrella and other full service cloud computing security suites do this by logging you into their always on, cloud based network through specific software.  Your entire internet experience happens through the lens of their software management portal.  When you lookup a website, you’re directed to an Umbrella DNS server that checks to make sure you’re not up to no good and doing what you’re supposed to be doing.  Systems like this are called IaaS – infrastructure as a service, and they not only provide secure software, but also integrate with physical networking hardware so that the IaaS provider can control everything from what you see to how the hardware delivers it.


In 2019 the expectation is for your business data to be available everywhere all the time.  It’s this push towards access and connectedness, built on the back of our much faster network, that has prompted the explosion of cloud based IT infrastructure.  In such an environment, you don’t need big, clunky, physically local  computer operating systems like Windows and OSx.  Since everything happens inside one of the browser OSes, like Chrome, all you need is a thin client with fast network access.

The irony in Chromebooked classrooms is that the fast network and software designed to work on it aren’t necessarily there, especially for heavy duty software like Office or Autocad, so education systems have migrated to thin clients and found that they can’t do what they need them to do.  If you’ve ever spent too much time each day waiting for something to load in your classroom, you know what I’m talking about.  A cloud based, networked environment isn’t necessarily cheaper because you should be building network bandwidth and redundancy out of the savings from moving to thin clients.  What happened in education was a cash grab moving to thin clients without the subsequent network and software upgrades.  This lack of understanding or foresight has produced a lot of dead ended classrooms where choked networks mean slow, minimalist digital skills development.  Ask any business department how useful it is teaching students spreadsheets on Google Sheets when every business expectation starts macros in Excel.

Seeing how business is doing things before diving back into my classroom is never wasted time.  The stable, redundant wireless networks in any modern office put our bandwidth and connectivity at school to shame.  In those high speed networks employees can expect flawless connectivity and collaboration regardless of location with high gain software, even doing complex, media heavy tasks like 3d modelling and video editing in the cloud – something that is simply impossible from the data that drips into too many classrooms onto emaciated thin clients.  Data starvation for the less fortunate is the new normal – as William Gibson said, the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.


Seeing the state of the art in AI driven cybersecurity systems is staggering when returning to static, easily compromised education networks still struggling to get by with out of date software and philosophies.  The heaps of students on VPNs bypassing locks and the teachers swimming through malware emails will tell you the truth of this.  The technicians in education IT departments are more than capable of running with current business practices, but administration in educational IT has neither the budget nor the vision to make it happen.  I have nothing but sympathy for IT professionals working in education.  Business admin makes the argument that poor IT infrastructure hurts their bottom line, but relevant, quality digital learning for our students doesn’t carry the same weight for educational IT budgets.


In addition to the state of the ICT art display put on at Cisco’s conference, I’m also thinking about the University of Waterloo’s Cybersecurity & Privacy Conference from last month.  The academic research in that conference talked at length about our expectations of privacy in 2019.  Even a nuanced understanding of privacy would probably find some discomfort with the IaaS systems that cloud computing is making commonplace.  The business perspective was very clear: you’re here to work for us and should be doing that 24/7 now that we’ve got you hooked up to a data drip (smartphone) in your pocket.  Now that we can quantify every moment of your day, you’re expected to be producing. All. The. Time.  I imagine education technology will be quick to pick up on this trend in the next few years.  Most current IaaS systems, increasingly built on machine learning in order to manage big data that no person could grasp, offer increasingly detailed analysis (and control) of all user interaction.  Expect future report cards to show detailed time wasted by your child data on report cards, especially if it can reduce the number of humans on the payroll.


These blanket IaaS systems are a handy way of managing the chaos that is an edgeless network, and from an IT Technician and Cybersec Operator point of view I totally get the value of them, but if the system gives you that much control over your users, what happens when it is put in the hands of someone that doesn’t have their best interests at heart?

WIRED had an article on how technology is both enabling and disabling Hong Kong protestors in the latest edition.  While protestors are using networked technology to organize themselves, an authoritarian government is able to co-opt the network and use it against its own citizens.  I wonder if they’re using business IaaS software that they purchased.  I wonder if many of the monitoring systems my students and I are becoming familiar with in our cybersecurity research is being purchased by people trying to hurt other people.




As usual, after an interesting week of exploring digital technology I’m split on where things are going.  We’ve seen enough nonsense in cybersecurity by criminals and government supported bad actors on the international stage that there is real concern around whether the internet can survive as an open information sharing medium.  Between that and business pushing for greater data access on increasingly AI controlled internets of their own that could (and probably are) used by authoritarian governments to subjugate people, I’m left wondering how much longer it’ll be before we’re all online through the lens of big brother.  If you’re thinking this sounds a bit panicky, listen to the guy who invented the world wide web.


The internet might feel like the wild west, but I’d rather that than blanket, authoritarian control.  Inevitably, the moneyed interests that maintain that control will carve up the internet, reserving clean, usable data for those that they think deserve it and withholding it, or leaving polluted information from everyone else.  I get frustrated at the cybercriminals and state run bad actors that poison the internet, but I get even more frustrated at the apathy of the billions who use it every day.  If we were all more engaged internet citizens, the bad actors would be diminished and we wouldn’t keep looking for easy answers from self-serving multinationals looking to cash in on our laziness.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if I could help make a SkyNet that would protect the highest ideals of the internet as its only function, I’d press START immediately.


The internet could be one of the most powerful tools we’ve ever invented for resolving historical equity issues and allowing us to thrive as a species, but between criminality, user apathy and a relentless focus on cloud computing and the control creep it demands, we’re in real danger of turning this invention for collaboration and equity into a weapon for short term gain and authoritarian rule.

https://webfoundation.org/2019/10/as-the-internet-turns-50-we-must-protect-it-as-a-force-for-good/

“It’s astonishing to think the internet is already half a century old. But its birthday is not altogether a happy one. The internet — and the World Wide Web it enabled — have changed our lives for the better and have the power to transform millions more in the future. But increasingly we’re seeing that power for good being subverted, whether by scammers, people spreading hatred or vested interests threatening democracy.”

“The internet could be our greatest collaborative tool for overcoming historical inequity and building a fair future, or it could be the most despotic tool for tyranny in human history.  What we do now will decide which way this sword will fall.  Freely available information for all will maximize our population’s potential and lead to a brighter future.  The internet should always be in service of that, and we should all be fighting for that outcome in order to fill in the digital divide and give everyone access to accurate information.  Fecundity for everyone should be an embedded function of the internet – not voracious capitalism for short term gain, not cyber criminality and not nation state weaponization.  Only an engaged internet citizenship will make that happen.”

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What followed was an insightful keynote into Blackberry’s work in developing secure systems in an industry famous for fail fast and early.  Companies that take a more measured approach to digital technology can sometimes seem out of step with the rock-star Silicon Valley crowd, but after a day of listening to software engineers from various companies lamenting ‘some companies’ (no one said the G-word), who tend to throw unfinished software out and then iterate (and consider that a virtue), the hard work of securing a sustainable digital ecosystem seems further and further out of reach.  The frustration in the air was palpable and many expressed a wish for more stringent engineering in online applications.

From Sarah Tatsis I learned about Cylance, Blackberry’s AI driven cybersecurity system.  This reminded me of an article I read in WIRED recently about Mike Beck, a (very) experienced cybersec analyst who has been working on a system called Darktrace, that uses artificial intelligence to mimic his skills and experience as a cybersecurity analyst in tracking down incursions.

Automating our tech doesn’t reduce our effort.  If anything it amplifies it.  The genius of Marc Marquez can only be really understood in slow motion as he drifts a 280hp bike at over 100mph.  That’s what an AI arms race in cybersec will look like too – you’ll only be able to watch it played back in slow motion to understand what is happening.

Once a vulnerability is found in software it’s often held back and sold to the highest bidder.  If you discovered a backdoor into banking software, imagine what that might sell for.  Did you know that there is a huge market for zero day threats online?  Between zero day attacks, nation-state cyberwar on a level never seen before and increasingly complex cybercriminals (some of whom were trained in those nation state cyber war operations), the digital space we spend so much of our time in and more and more of our critical infrastructure relies on is only going to get more fraught.  If you feel like our networked world and all this cybersecurity stuff is coming out of nowhere, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  AI may very well help shore up the weakest parts of our cyber-defence, but the need for people going into this underserved field isn’t going away any time soon.


***

Where did the Cybersecurity & Privacy Conference turn next?  To privacy!  Which is (like most things) more complicated than you think.  The experts on stage ranged from legal experts to sociologists and tackled the concept from many sides, with an eye on trying to expose how our digitally networked world is eroding expectations of private information.


I found the discussion fascinating, as did my business colleague, but many of the students were finding this lecture style information delivery to be exhausting.  When I asked who wanted to stick around in the afternoon for the industry panel on ‘can we fix the internet’, only a handful had the will and interest.  We had an interesting discussion after about whether or not university is a good fit for most students.  Based on our time at the conference, I’d say it isn’t – or they just haven’t grown into the brain they need to manage it yet.  What’s worrying is that in our increasingly student centred, digital classrooms we’re not graduating students who can handle this kind of information delivery.  That kind of metacognitive awareness is gold if you can find it in high school, and field trips like this one are a great way to highlight it.


The conference (for us anyway) wrapped up with an industry panel asking the question, “Can the Internet be saved?”  In the course of the discussion big ideas, like public, secure internet for all (ie: treating our critical ICT infrastructure with the same level of intent as we do our water, electrical and gas systems) were bandied about.  One of my students pointed out that people don’t pirate software or media for fun, they do it because they can’t afford it, which leads to potential hazards.  There was no immediate answer for this, but many of the people up there were frustrated at the digital divide.  As William Gibson so eloquently said, “the future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”  That lack of equity in entering our shared digital space and the system insecurity this desperation causes was a recurring theme.  One speaker pointed out that a company only fixated on number of users has a dangerously single minded obsession that is undermining the digital infrastructure that increasingly manages our critical systems.  If society is going to embrace digital, then that future better reach everyone, or there are always going to be people upsetting the boat if they aren’t afforded a seat on it.  That’s also assuming the people building the boats are more interested in including everyone rather than chasing next quarter earnings.


This conversation wandered in many directions, yet it always came back to something that should be self-evident to everyone.  If we had better users, most of our problems would disappear.  I’ve been trying to drive this ‘education is the answer‘ approach for a while now, but interest in picking up this responsibility seems to slip off everyone from students and teachers to administration at all levels.  We’re all happy to use digital tools to save money and increase efficiencies, but want to take no individual responsibility for them.

I’ve been banging this drum to half empty rooms for over a year now.  You say the c-word (cybersecurity) and people run away, and then get on their networked devices and keep doing the same silly things they’ve always done.  Our ubiquitous use of digital technology is like everyone getting a new car that’s half finished and full of safety hazards and then driving it on roads where no one can be bothered to learn the rules.  We could do so much better.  How digital skills isn’t a mandatory course in Ontario high schools is a mystery, especially when every class uses the technology.

I was surprised to bump into Diana Barbosa, ICTC’s Director of Education and Standards at the conference.  She was thrilled to see a troop of CyberTitans walk in and interrupt the opening keynote.  The students themselves, including a number of Terabytches from last year’s national finalist team who met Diana in Ottawa, were excited to have a chat and catch up.  This kind of networking is yet another advantage of getting out of the classroom on field trips like this.  If our pathways lead at the board hadn’t helped us out, all of that would have been lost.


We left the conference early to get everyone back in time for the end of the school day.  When I told them we’d been invited back on the bus ride home they all gave out a cheer.  Being told you belong in a foreign environment like an industry and academic conference full of expert adults is going to change even more student trajectories.  If our goal is to open up new possibilities to students, this opportunity hit the mark.


From a professional point of view, I’m frustrated with the lack of cohesion and will in government and industry to repair the fractured digital infrastructure they’ve made.  Lots of people have made a lot of money driving our society onto the internet.  The least they could do is ensure that the technology we’re using is as safe as it can be, but there seems to be no short term gain in it.

The US hacked a drone out of the sky this summer.

Some governments have militarized their cyber-capabilities and are building weapons grade hacks that will trickle down into civilian and criminal organizations.  In this inflationary threat-scape, cybersecurity is gearing up with AI and operational improvements to better face these threats, but it’s still a very asymmetrical situation.  The bad actors have a lot more going for them than the too few who stand trying to protect our critical digital infrastructure.  


Western governments have stood by and let this happen with little oversight, and the result has been a wild west of fake news, election tampering, destabilizing hacks and hackneyed software.  There are organizations in this that are playing a long game.  If this digital revolution is to become a permanent part of our social structure, a part that runs our critical infrastructure, then we all need to start taking networked infrastructure as something more than an entertaining diversion.


One of the most poignant moments for me was when one of the speakers asked the audience full of cybersecurity experts who they should call, police wise, if their company has been hacked.  There was silence.  In a room full of experts no one could answer because there is no answer.  That tells you something about just how asymetrical the threat-scape is these days.  Criminals and foreign powers can hack at will and know there are no repercussions, because there are none.


Feel safer now?  Reading this?  Online?  I didn’t even tell you about how many exploit kits drop hidden iframe links into web pages without their owners even knowing and then infect any machine that looks at the page anonymously.  Or the explosion of tracking cookies designed to sell your browsing habits to any interested party.

***

I’m beating this drum again at ECOO’s #BIT19 #edtech Conference in Niagara Falls on November 6, 7 and 8…

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This year I applied for a Ministry grant for student driven experiential research. I’ve tried this before without much success, but this time we got OK’d!

Describe how students were involved in designing or co-constructing the learning experience.

CW students were encouraged to volunteer for a school wide VR research group where they got priority access to the VR sets during lunch. 30+ students joined this group but only two finished their projects.  Many faded away after midterm when they needed to focus on missed school work rather than volunteer projects. Early self directed research led students into 3d modelling using VR applications, but subsequent groups and individuals looked at curriculum wide VR possibilities.

VR is also integrated into the software engineering courses we run in grades 11 and 12. Two groups elected to develop VR based applications using Unity & Blender. These groups were student directed and managed through the entire development process. HexVR is a reflex action game running on the HTC Vive. Co/Labs focused on creating a virtual classroom that would allow people to meet in virtual space from anywhere to problem solve collaboratively.

https://twitter.com/3204games
https://twitter.com/CoSlashLabs
http://ift.tt/2uvSjpY

Describe how students developed and applied the knowledge and skills associated with education and career/life planning.

Software engineering students follow SWEBOK and

engineering design process planning when developing their software. The purpose of this course is to develop real world planning, collaboration and leadership skills. Many of our grads take the software they developed in class and use it as portfolio work to get into challenging post secondary programs, and in some cases to earn income to pay for their post secondary educations. As a stepping stone into post-secondary and career skills, the leadership skills learned in software engineering are a vital stepping stone.

The engineering design process we follow in software is closely linked to the iterative career/life planning process outlined in the document above – both are self correcting systems.


Describe how students reflected on and applied their learning.

In the voluntary group a rigorous reflection process was not possible and probably led to the lower outcome. In the more structured software engineering class reflection is baked into the iterative engineering design process and students were pressed to constantly assess their progress and change their course depending on how possible their final goals were. This demanding process of reflection on student knowledge and skill, and how effective it was in realizing project goals, was vital to the positive outcomes achieved.

The ministry is particularly interested in projects that promote inclusion and foster equity by focusing on the role of experiential learning to improve outcomes for a diverse group of students. What strategies did you use to ensure that every student participated and was able to derive personal meaning from the experience? *

At CW we offer computer technology courses at open levels in junior grades and at essential to M level/post secondary focused at senior grades. Students of all levels were able to access our VR technology. In addition the VR set was offered school wide and was used by students of all levels in a variety of curriculum learning situations. Our computer teacher (who is writing this) is autistic, as is his son, and his program is especially welcoming to autistic and other neuro-atypical students. Computer classes at CW tend to have very high rates of IEPed students who are able to develop complex technology skills using advanced hardware like our virtual reality sets.

Describe the planned outcomes / learning goals for students.

Students designed projects that would develop virtual reality software. These students were already experienced with 3d modelling and rendering software (Blender & Unity), but VR is such a new thing that there is very little out there to support development. In many cases these student projects were using software that was only weeks old that no one else was using. As an engineering project this was a unique goal: to build something without online support or previous versions to copy from – a completely unique piece of software engineering. Both groups working in this manner acheived working prototypes, and one group has been asked to continue developing their project by a number of interested industry partners. This may end up being the most genuine kind of project imaginable – one that becomes a published piece of software.

Describe the skills, knowledge and habits that students demonstrated related to each of the outcomes / learning goals. Cite data that speaks to the project’s impact on students’ attitudes, achievement and/or behaviour. Refer to Appendix E: Evidence of Impact in the Community-Connected Experiential Learning Project Handbook at http://ift.tt/2uvHN1Z.

Resiliency and self-direction were the main goals of this research work, and the students who stuck with it developed a stick-to-it-ness that will benefit them for the rest of their lives. From our grade 9s who were researching and essential beta testing unfinished software in a brand new piece of hardware to our seniors who were trying to develop software for it, real-world engineering practices were vital to success. Organization and an adherence to the engineering process allowed our successful students to exceed extremely challenging goals while other students benefited from a truly unique set of peer driven exemplars.

Our greatest success came from seniors who developed software both in and out of class, but several juniors also stuck with the voluntary research and produced satisfying and complex results (shared in subsequent answers).


The failure to produce output rate of volunteer non-class related students was exceptionally high while the completion rate of students with in-class support and access was significantly better.  While student directed research has merit, it should be noted that teachers have a strong role to play in helping less developed students plan and execute such work.

Reflect on your collection of project artifacts. Select and submit at least one artifact in each category that you think would be the most valuable to other teachers who may have an interest in exploring community-connected experiential learning in their programs. Where applicable, ensure that you have necessary consents/permissions to share. Refer to Appendix D: What Makes A Good Artifact? in the Community-Connected Experiential Learning Project Handbook at http://ift.tt/2tWKgW5.

CW exemplars:
MEDIUM: Oculus Rift 3d modelling software: (grade 9 analysis & review)

Check out Co/Labs on Twitter…

documentation: http://ift.tt/2uvv4w8
presentation:
http://ift.tt/2tWPaT2

Software research (grade 9):
http://ift.tt/2uvFJXy

Grade 11 VR software research
http://ift.tt/2tWGr2XiGC_cvbIoLc/edit?usp=sharing

Check out HexVR on Twitter…

Grade 12 Software development:
http://ift.tt/2uvv53a

HexVR: The pinnacle of CW’s VR research this semester:
http://ift.tt/2tWK4WM




A good examplar needs to show not just student work, but how the student played a part in designing that work.  An exemplar of a worksheet designed and given by a teacher is probably aiming for the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy and wasn’t what we were aiming for in this project.






Involvement of community partner: Describe the artifact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artifact. *

Our community began when our board SHSM lead offered to support us in rolling out VR sets to schools around the board as a pilot program. That roll out created a local community of users. Our grant application grew naturally out of our independent research as we already knew of each other and were keen to work together exploring this technological learning opportunity.

Some early adopters, most significantly TJ Neal at ODSS, had been into VR since before it went public using engineering samples of early VR sets, but he was working in isolation. Our local community, started by SHSM and then supported by this Ministry grant has created fertile ground for new technology research to occur.

TJ’s early work had also put him in touch with Foundry10, a Seattle based educational research group with an interest in VR. Their support early on in providing hardware and, more importantly best practices from other schools all across the continent, allowed us to quickly overcome or avoid obstacles and get our sets running in a sustainable and safe manner.

Community involvement both locally, at the board level, and even internationally online (and in person when Foundry10 came to visit) was key to our success in HexVR as well as our other projects related to this grant.


The artifact chosen would be Foundry10’s VR research which we both participated in and benefited from:  http://ift.tt/2li1qbC

Student involvement in the design/planning: Describe the artifact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artifact.

HexVR is an astonishing piece of software – a live action 3d game that already works well after only half a semester of in-class development by our senior software engineering class. Our valedictorian designed and built most of it while guiding and mentoring a number of junior engineers. HTC is interested in seeing if he can complete his development and our board SHSM has supplied him with a VR set for the summer to do that.


To technically understand what it means to design a working VR interface like this you have to understand how complicated it would be to ray cast both hands and head in 3d space in a continuous manner in a rendered virtual space.  It’s a complex and brutal piece of engineering.

This project was entirely designed and built by our valedictorian (who wants to go into software engineering). His work not only produced a working prototype, but also helped us clarify how and what to teach in future classes.  His understanding of how to implement object based programming will drive future engineering work in our class.   As an exceptional student about to pursue a professional interest, this is powerful exemplar of student directed planning, design and effective engineering process and helps define what is possible.

HexVR: http://ift.tt/2tWK4WM

Connection to the education and career/life planning program: Describe the artefact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artefact.

Up until three years ago we did not offer any software engineering course at CW. This course, which runs at cap each year, allows students to experience the engineering process involved in building software using industry rules, goals and expectations.

We already have graduates who have published software and many have gone on to successfully complete in-demand, high-expectation post secondary programs in digital technologies with great success.

Cameron’s work, like the work of other grads, will go on to produce a working software title.  The difference is that Cam did it using emerging hardware and software.  As an example of industry grade engineering by an Ontario high school student, there is little better.

Application of the experiential learning cycle: Describe the artifact you’ve chosen to submit. Explain why you selected this artifact.

A great example of the experiential learning cycle was grade 9 Kathryn’s research into Oculus Medium.

With less than a year under her belt in high school and with little experience in self directed research and while looking at days old software on weeks old new hardware, Kathryn self organized, planned an approach and executed it, all without any grades hanging on it (she wasn’t even my student at that point, she’d finished grade 9 computer tech in semester one).

A key aspect of experiential learning is self direction. In Shopclass As Soulcraft (a book any tech teacher or maker interested instructor should read), Matt Crawford proves the importance of self direction both in skills mastery and, ultimately, professionalism. Someone who is unable to self direct their work is not a professional. To see this kind of dedication and professional focus in a grade 9 student is exceptional and underlies the importance of offering the self directed planning of projects at the high school level.

What did you learn about the development, delivery and impact of community-connected experiential learning? What worked well? What will you do differently next time? *

Offer access to a large number of interested students, you’ll lose many of them in the process, but a big group means more people still working on it at the finish (we had 3 juniors out of 40 complete their research work).

Tying it to a course so there is more support (as in the senior engineering course) made a bit difference in completion rates (100% vs 8%). Offering more support to juniors might improve that, but I’m a big believer in a sink or swim approach to technology learning, and the students not willing to get organized will expect you to end up doing it for them, which isn’t the point of the grant, nor the point of why I teach technology. Having said that, I think I’ll still offer a bit more in the way of initial organizational support to juniors if we do this again because many of them can’t see the point of doing anything unless there is a mark tied to it (and sometimes not even then).  That would be a good habit to break if we’re in the business of producing life long learners.

How can the Ministry of Education continue to support your efforts to provide community-connected experiential learning opportunities that promote student engagement, improve achievement, and foster well-being and life-long learning? *

Emerging technology is a sign of our times. The nature of digitization means everyone currently in education needs to be conversant in it – just like literacy or numeracy. Digital Fluency in Ontario education is at best an afterthought. The MoE should be looking to support digital fluency in both its staff and its students. We make grade 9 Geography and Art mandatory but there is no mandatory digital technology course, yet every student is expected to know how to use it both in their learning and in any future career they might have. Thinking that students magically know technology because they were born into it is ludicrous. Do you know how to replace a clutch in a car because cars were prevalent when you were a child? Or even just change a tire? Basic digital fluency is an expected foundational skill in 2017, but we don’t treat it like one. If the Ministry wants to help at all, start there.

Digital technology is connecting us both locally and virtually in ways unprecedented in history. Teaching all of our students how to do the digital equivalent of learning to drive, change a tire or look after the oil means they keep themselves on the road and get to experience and exploit that connectivity.   You want community connected experiential learning opportunities?  Digital technology is the grease the makes that wheel turn.

I teach students from grade 9s with little experience or interest in computers to grade 12s who are going to make it their life’s work, and every single one of them across that massive spectrum of skill and experience would benefit from a province wide focus on digital skills; it would make everything work more smoothly in a changing world and prepare our graduates for whatever job they may eventually inhabit.

Experiential learning is amplified with technology (VR is an excellent example of just how

powerful that can be – try standing in a ruined Auschwitz on a misty morning alone in VR and see if it isn’t). Student engagement is spiked by technology (assuming they are capable of using those tools effectively), achievement is improved as technology skills open the door to opportunities like elearning and other non-geographically limited learning. Student well being is improved with the ability to communicate with like minded people and seek out help when it’s needed, and lifelong learning is encouraged and enabled when you can make effective use of technology and then apply it non-habitually and functionally in your learning. The future’s so bright, but only if we’re ready for it, and we get ready for it by developing our hard skills in a focused, curriculum driven structure.  We all become more literate if we’re all more literate.

Research work like we did in this project seems far fetched and theoretical, but it’s what is coming next, and allowing us to explore this emerging technology and see what it can do for experiential learning allows us early adopters to improve our advanced skills while laying the groundwork for wider adoption down the road. This is differentiated instruction that helps us all, and for that I thank you for the chance to do it.

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