The NYSED Technology Plan’s first goal addresses digital content:
Standards-based, accessible digital content supports all curricula for all learners.
Accessible is defined as: content available anywhere, easy to retrieve using multiple technology devices, and content is universally designed. Aligning digital content to the New York State learning standards is how we will ensure quality and relevance in the PreK-12 environment.
Learners and practitioners both need access to rich digital media. Alignment with standards help make appropriate content more easily accessed by all.
New York has moved in this direction already through the auspices of state public broadcasting stations. EDVideoOnline is a portal to PowerMediaPlus which provides teachers with access to downloadable video, audio, and images for use with their students. They also include worksheets and quizzes.
Unfortunately, this is a subset of what was available in the past. When I started using this program, it included full access to the Discovery Education library. Public stations scaled back the program to the current offerings. They said too few were using it to justify the expense. I didn’t see a lot of teachers using it either, but those who did were excited about it.
Beyond PowerMediaPlus and Discovery Education, New York needs go further in digitizing and providing access to its own holdings. New York museums and libraries hold a treasure trove of material. Some institutions have done a great job digitizing materials and providing access, while others have done little.
I hope this means access to more content in the future. Access to a broader audience is also essential. While everyone can access some of the material, students are shut out of PowerMediaPlus. This repository could provided a wealth of content for independent study, exploration, and working on assignments.
Access to digital content also encompasses licensing. Let me relate my own experience. I have spent countless hours creating media rich presentations for delivering engaging social studies lessons for my class. They include historical documents, images, maps, and embedded digital video. Under fair use, there is no question that I was legally using these materials for my own classroom.
I thought it would be great to share these materials with other practitioners throughout the state (and ideally beyond), so I contacted PowerMediaPlus about doing such. In essence, they replied that there was no way I could do such legally.
We need to be able share what we create with this digital media with other learners and practitioners. They need to be able to reuse and remix that work to adapt it to their individual needs. NYSED should explore Creative Commons Licensing for content that is state owned and that of state funded institutions. They need to negotiate for means to more broadly share the content they pay for through entities such as PowerMediaPlus. Further, it needs to create a platform to facilitate such sharing.
In conclusion, there is more to digital content than availability. There needs to be access and the ability to remix it and share with others.
I will continue a discussion of New York State’s Educational Technology Plan in future posts, including a discussion of each of the six broad goals. I look forward to hearing your comments.
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Tags: access, creative commons, digital content, nysed, policy, powermediaplus, tech plan
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This is only the tip of the iceberg, I think. We can have unlimited access to content.. and tools for that matter. For many, that changes absolutely nothing. Many teachers continue to use the brown manila folders of ditto-generated content year after year. After all, they have spent years populating those folders with materials they consider good/useful. Even, as you point out, when rich media is made available online, it goes underused. As Larry Cuban, Neil Postman, and many others have observed, access is an important step toward change, but it must not, it cannot stop there. Until we (myself included here) seriously reevaluate what teaching and learning can be in this highly digital, social, connected, limitless age with tools that allow the learner to achieve things never before imaginable with relative low cost and currently ubiquitous technologies, very little will change. As Gary Stager often says, it IS about the tools. But it IS about so much more. Teachers need to be continually pushed, challenged, supported and empowered toward the goal of a learner-centered classroom. The teacher-centered model is quickly becoming redundant in an age where information and access to tools and experts and all the exciting learning opportunities that these can afford is no longer a scarcity.
We can support curriculum all we want, but we must begin supporting the learners… to be learners. That includes teachers.
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Stay tuned because that comes up in the discussion of Goal 2 of the NYSED Tech Plan.
I think the decision makers pulled the plug too early on Discovery Ed. Change takes time. Perhaps they should have entered into a different licensing agreement with Discovery rather than the blanket licenses for schools. If 10% of the practitioners use it (which was about the number in our school), then pay for the access of those that request it.
As you say, there is a world of rich digital content out there. Not only do we fail to harness it, we block it with our filters with broad nets that prevent us from harnessing these tools and content. Our school, for example, blocks ALL image searches.
Yes, learners must include teachers, but they also need to include administrators, school board members, BOCES personnel, right up to those in NYSED.
Thanks for commenting! I look forward to ongoing discussions.
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Amen!
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