Friday night keynote commissions audience to innovate

By Colter Hettich
Features Editor

ConnectED Summit 2009 drew to a close Friday night with a relaxed dinner and keynote address by Jason Ediger, director of iTunes U and mobile learning for Apple, Inc.

Ediger began his career in education teaching eighth-graders. After nine years, Ediger moved from the middle school classroom to an administrative position with the Orange County Department of Education, where he helped integrate technology and distance learning into Orange County classrooms. Now, Ediger manages the team responsible for iPhone, iPod and iTunes U in K-12 higher education, according to acu.edu.

Dr. Eric Mazur, Balkanski professor of physics and applied physics at Harvard University, took the stage before Ediger and answered questions from those in attendance. One guest expressed his skepticism regarding the opportunity mobile devices provide for distraction.

"It is the teacher's task, in a sense, to compete with those [distractions] and provide something more interesting," Mazur responded.

In his keynote address, Ediger gave his opinion on the topic.

"To me, I would challenge the concept of blocking internet in the classroom," Ediger said. "Why is it that classrooms would be the only place that [students] don't have access at their fingertips?"

He began his presentation by reminding his audience where their focus should be.

"We are not the customer. We used to be; Today it's the students," Ediger said. "It's important to think about how can we get ourselves in the minds of today's students."

After describing his 10-month-old son's iPhone skills, Ediger informed his listeners of their duty to create, experiment and continue pushing the frontier of mobile learning.

"[Apple] will continue to make great products," Ediger said. "When we bring those products to the market, we are passing the baton to you. What we ask of you is that you cross the finish line; and we promise we will be running with all along the way, cheering you on."

Ediger left the stage at approximately 8 p.m. ConnectED guests followed his lead and began their own journeys, taking all they learned back to their respective homes.

AT&T representative supports iPhone endeavors

By Kelline Linton
Chief Copy Editor

John Regan, the lunch keynote speaker Friday, reinforced AT&T’s commitment to place technology in the educational sphere.

Regan, vice president of Government and Education group for AT&T, said technology has transformed campuses and WiFi is the future for universities.

He said today’s students have grown up with technology and integrated technology in their lives. For schools to interact effectively with these students, they need the right tools, infrastructures and commitment.

AT&T’s vision to “connect people with their world, everywhere they live and work, and do it better than anyone else,” will play a pivotal role in implementing iPhone technology in the classroom, Regan said.

AT&T is the exclusive iPhone service provider, and Regan said he thinks his company can offer solutions to support iPhone development.

“We let people choose when and how they want to connect,” he said. “Mobility is a growing asset.”

He concluded by stressing AT&T’s dedication to future technological endeavors.

“It excites us,” he said. “It gives us great opportunity and hope.”

Harvard professor uses technology to engage audience

By Kelline Linton
Chief Copy Editor

Dr. Eric Mazur, Friday’s breakfast keynote speaker at the ACU ConnectEd Summit, used his Peer Instruction method to actively engage his listening audience.

Mazur, professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University, developed this method as a means to interactively teach large lecture classes.

The technique incorporates the “clicker method,” where his students or Friday’s audience members answered multiple-choice questions on their iPhones or iPod touches. The feedback is immediately displayed on a screen at the front of the room. But Mazur does not stop with this. He gets his audience to answer the same question again, this time after discussing their reasoning and first answers with their peers. After the feedback and audience responses are displayed a second time, he finally discusses the question and answer. Mazur said this process is interactive, not merely a polling technique.

“This technique engages. Lectures focus on delivering information,” he said. “Despite Gutenberg’s invention, we are clinging to our monopoly on information.”

Mazur stressed education is more than information transfer.

“We are not using our books to their full potential, yet,” he said. For this very reason, Mazur developed the “clicker method” for the classroom environment.

As he stressed to his audience, active engagement greatly improves learning gains. And, technology is the catalyst that will help transform the classic classroom to a more engaging environment conducive to a higher learning curve.

Guests eager to see if ACU Mobile Learning Initiative is a success

Daniel Johnson-Kim
Editor in Chief

More than 400 people from four different continents, eight different countries and more than 30 U.S. states convened at Abilene Christian University for the ConnectEd Summit, but not everyone made the trek to West Texas for the same reason or to represent an educational institution.

In all, 146 organizations — universities, primary and secondary school districts and corporations — compose the list of attendees at ACU’s conference devoted to exploring, collaborating and discussing the growth of mobile technology and how to apply it to education.

Priya Nihalani, a graduate student studying educational psychology at the University of Texas, made the more than 200 mile drive to Abilene to see firsthand the implementation of ACU Mobile Learning Initiative — a state-of-the-art program in which the private Church of Christ university dished out more than 950 Apple iPhones or iPod touches to its incoming freshman class and a host of faculty, staff and administrators in August 2008.

Nihalani’s field of study is not focused on taking notes, while a client sits on a couch; she said her research interweaves with her work with a private company called GetYa Learn On. Nihalani said the company draws from its owners’ expertise in educational psychology, instructional technology, evaluation and assessment and software development to build applications and games for touch-screen devices like Apple’s iPhone. The applications GetYa Learn On strives to design are meant to tap into the well of touch-screen computers and cell phones' educational potential for interactivity, experimental learning and engagement.

And she said the ConnectEd Summit is the perfect place for her to explore and gather ideas and offer her insight.

“You’ve got this great technology and a lot of research shows it is not being used as well as it could be…but it looks cool,” she said jokingly.

Ken Thothero, coordinator of external and special projects at the University of Texas, said he is impressed by the portability of mobile devices, but is not sure its users are limited by the lack of creativity provided by the devices' operating capabilities that other technology has.

“What [the iPhone] is allowing students to do in the classroom you couldn’t do before,” Thothero said. “If you go out to a UT size lecture hall and say how many people have laptop, maybe four people raise their hand? But if you say how many have a cell phone, how many raise their hand then?”

“Like 100,” Nihalani said. “Probably everyone in the room.”

Tothero has witnessed and helped orchestrate successful initiatives where a university gave laptops to its students. But as for the effectiveness of ACU's Mobile Learning Initiative, and their dissemination of the hand-held Apple products, he does not know if it actually is affective in an educational environment.

"That's what I'm here to see," Tothero said. "That's what I'm going to find out tomorrow."

Speaker urges technology must change educational methods, not be used as a different way to do the same thing

By Kelline Linton
Chief Copy Editor

Dr. Steve Molyneux, the first keynote speaker for the ACU ConnectEd Summit, discussed how educators should deliver content to the Neo-Millennial learner.

Molyneux, who is from the United Kingdom, stressed technology by itself is nothing. What educators and students do with the technology is what matters.

To date, the UK government has invested $8 billion in information technology for classes, kindergarten to 12th grade. Molyneux said this money mainly was used to automate, not innovate. He said educators should not use funds to streamline existing educational practices; instead, the investment should focus on developing new ways of teaching.

“We need transformation for the 21st century,” he said. “We need to engage students and empower the learner, so the educational experience has meaning.”

Placing a book on the Internet and allowing students to read it from a computer screen is not an engaging experience. Molyneux called this dilemma the “emperor’s new clothes.”

“The value in the textbook is not in the content, but in how we use it,” he said.

Although the educational content found in the traditional classroom is identical to the content found in the new technological environment, the structure should not be the same, he said.

Molyneux recommends content be reformatted in innovative ways. Both teachers and students can create the content for the digital lessons. By creating, the students engage in the technology.

“True educational transformation will take place when empowering learning tools and corresponding content are put in their hands,” he said.

He said if educators are imaginative and bold, they can create a 2nd Renaissance fit for the digital age.

But both students and teachers need to be open to change, he said. Molyneux recommends a peer-to-peer support group, where technologically skilled students can provide support for other students and faculty.

He said the main thing is the need for a symbiotic relationship between the students and teacher because teaching should be about student engagement, especially since the future of the world rests in the students’ hands.

“Predicting the future is a difficult task,” Molyneux said. “Some roads lead to innovation; some lead to blind alleys. The best way to invent the future is to do it yourself.”

Molyneux concluded by praising his Texan hosts and their state.

“I have never met such a hospitable state in all the visits I do,” he joked.

Day One of ConnectEd Summit

By Jozie Sands
Staff Photographer

A look at the first day of the ACU ConnectEd Summit:

Guests arrive at ConnectED Summit

By Colter Hettich
Features Editor

Vendors set up their booths Thursday afternoon, and ACU faculty and staff prepped the Teague Special Events Center for the night's keynote event. At 6:45 p.m., crowds anxious for the impending conference flooded the Teague Center, most individuals with their mobile device in hand.

Guests had an hour to peruse vendor booths and get in a game of Wii sports before the evening commenced at 8 p.m. Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Blackboard, Genesis Network Solutions, Moodle, Pearson and Pharos were among the vendors.

John Matthews, Alcatel-Lucent system engineer, described Alcatel-Lucent's presence as a natural response to its ongoing relationship with the university.

"We've been doing business with ACU for about seven or eight years now," Matthews said. "We've been working on several innovative projects, and this is just an extension of that."

Chad Martin, owner of webfirecracker.com and designer of ACU’s mobile interface, greeted visitors from his booth. Martin said he most looks forward to the sharing of information with other designers.

“The part I’m excited about is getting to share what I know,” Martin said. “Tomorrow I will be walking people through the [ACU Mobile design] process, going all the way back to the early sketches.”

Chris Murman, software tech for Genesis Network Solutions, said Genesis partnered with ACU years ago and hopes to join ACU in leading the mobile learning field.

“This is an area of software development that is wide open right now,” Murman said. “Genesis wants to be one of the pioneers.”