Teaching Nirvana

So much of what I am about to write has been said before, but it is my job to put all of these concepts together into a meaningful solution that makes teaching and learning more effective for teachers and students. So, consider the following truths and trends.

1). Today's students require an education that includes the rich media (audio and video ) which they have grown up with and are accustomed to seeing in every other aspect of their lives. There are some students whom you simply cannot engage at all without using video. I would argue that video has become even more of an essential teaching tool than a textbook in the second decade of the 21st century.

2). Video presents many challenges to K-12, including how to handle the ever- growing strains that audiovisual resources place on a school district's various data networks. SAFARI Montage has been providing content at an average variable bitrate of 825Kbps, which our customers have told us needs to be increased. So, in March 2011, we will be releasing a third, higher resolution bitrate at 1.6Mbps, which looks absolutely spectacular. It uses twice the bandwidth as our current files, which will be left in place as an option.

As districts across the country move to one-to-one initiatives with mobile devices, netbooks or standard computers, these digital resources require enormous amounts of bandwidth on their wired and wireless networks. Also much of this content is not just being delivered; it’s actually being produced at the teacher and student level. These initiatives that utilize higher level thinking skills, project based learning and the need for real-time assessment with video information require a strong network. I could go on and on about why video grows quantitatively in schools annually, how we can help to overcome the challenges associated with the increase of video in classrooms, and why it has become a focal point of K-12's efforts to significantly change the way students learn in our schools today.

3). So, what about the hard-working, dedicated teachers who are being asked to use more and more technology in the classroom (interactive whiteboards, student response systems, document and web cams, audio enhancement, mobile devices and more) with less and less training (due to budgetary constraints)? The challenge here for all but the most tech-savvy teachers is to utilize digital teaching tools and content in a full digital curriculum without fumbling with technology and losing valuable teaching time.

4). The notion of delivering a true digital curriculum has been with us for at least 10 ten years. There are four reasons why I think it is different this time.

The first and probably the most significant factor is one that is really a shame: declining K-12 budgets. The last data that I saw on this topic was that close to half of today's school districts that should be buying new textbooks were not doing so simply due to financial pressures. That extraordinary fact has led school districts to seek alternative and less expensive ways for teachers to teach students in a more cost-effective manner.

Secondly, there's enough bandwidth inside many school district's wide area networks and local area networks now to actually support these initiatives. Early attempts to deliver a digital curriculum over the Internet (ASP model) into classrooms failed miserably because there wasn’t enough Internet bandwidth to stream video in from the outside and/or there weren't tools that took advantage of the WAN or LAN bandwidth. When anyone tells you that video is moving to "the cloud" (servers off-site on the Internet that share data storage and programs), you can tell them that if you put video on the cloud, it will surely stay there, because I only know of two school districts in the entire U.S. that could efficiently and consistently play back that video straight through to the classroom. Remember, schools are different than our homes. In our homes, we might have two people at once trying to play video at the same time. In school, it might be 50, 100 or more.

Third, there's been enough time to work out the kinks.

And, the final reason that it is different this time, is that there are some companies—namely us—that have put it all together to make something that actually works. Something simple for the teacher, engaging for the student, affordable for the district, and reliable for all. Remove any one of those factors, and you don't have a real solution. All you have is just a sales pitch that may be successful, but for which the implemention and effectiveness of the solution is destined to fail.

So, what do these observations mean to people like Tim Beekman and me?

Digital Curriculum Presenter!

Digital Curriculum Presenter, our newest module, is in beta release now and scheduled for general release in March 2011. DCP, as we call it, is designed to enhance your LMS by handling video and other digital resources far more elegantly, and to simplify digital teaching in the classroom for the teacher. Not only will it work , but our visual assessment (called Get It?) its everything educator have been asked for and it will change the industry I've been playing with the beta version for months now, and I have never escaped the thought that I would love to be either a student, teacher or parent today...this is really fun stuff! DCP uses thumbnails of the learning objects to support a visual interface, uses one media player—ours—to access 40 file types, which include interactive 3D (wait until you see that!), doc cam, web cam, web resources, eBooks and more. DCP provides a district with a tool, built to support IMS Common Cartridge and QTI standard, that will support a true digital curriculum or an educational publisher with a platform to properly deliver their digital curriculum. It also provides a platform for interactive assessment on virtually any mobile device, but that is a subject for another article.

In the meantime, ask your SAFARI Montage account executive why they haven't shown you a preview yet of teaching nirvana. 

For in-depth discussion on this topic, please visit the forum:

Digital Curriculum Presenter