Thinking about this concept in relation to how technology is implemented in the curriculum, I wondered:  what are some common curriculum design patterns in the application of technology in education that would provide guidance to teachers trying to improve how subjects are taught?  Can we provide a common language to the different ways technology can be applied in order to simplify our conversations?  Perhaps abstracting things somewhat will give teachers a better way to discuss and improve upon technology in education much the same way developers have been able to do in software design.

Here are a few that I came up with.  There are many more I’m sure but think about the ways you see technology applied in the classroom.  Can they fall under one of these categories or do they need a pattern of their own?

• Alternative Media for projects / assignments: Using technology to provide students with alternative ways of communicating their knowledge and understanding.  Example:  Instead of an essay, a short video commercial,  a historical radio show, a graphical collage in Photoshop, a blog post.
• Assignment workflow: Using technology for the distribution, creation, submission, marking and returning of assignments.
• Information Front-loading information:  using videos, websites, or other engaging media to ensure students enter the class with background in order to make the face-to-face discussion more worthwhile.
• Skill front-loading: Best explained with an example.  Titration experiments in Chemistry take a lot of time before, during and after a class.  Using titration simulations, students can do many experiments quickly to “get the feel” for the experiment before actually performing the true physical lab.   With the prior understanding, they can garner more from the lap experience when they go to do it.   A similar example might be using software to experiment with mixing colours before entering an painting class in Art.
• Crowd sourcing knowledge to make topics more relevant / interesting.  For example, when discussing social issues, a teacher might leverage the students’ access to SMS on their cell phones or a social network to obtain “real world” statistics relevant to the topic.
• Visualization: Use of technology to allow students to visualize difficult concepts more effectively.  Tools like Wordle, Efofex’s FX MathPack, and many others. would fall into this category.
• Providing Context: Using technology to provide better context to what’s being discussed.  For example,  when discussing Gangis Khan’s conquest in History, Google Earth might be used to give students a better perspective of the regions affected.

In the original “Design Patterns” book, the authors known as the “Gang of Four” outlined 23 patterns in software development.  Now there are many more.  How many “patterns” are there for applying technology to bettering education?

• How do you balance innovation with standardization in a school?  You want to have and encourage innovative teachers but there does need to be a common experience for students both across sections and across courses within a school.
• Cloud services – huge wave hitting IT across industries…  where is it going and how will schools ultimately benefit from them?
• Google Apps For Education vs. Microsoft Live @ EDU – both are very attractive offerings for schools (especially considering the price tag).  What’s the better offering?  Will one win out?
• Frictionless collaboration – see this amazing post by Andy McAfee (a blog on Web 2.0 worth following) for more details
• Microblogging tools like Twitter and Yammer- how can these change / improve collaboration within an organization?

I have more questions than answers these days but hopefully over the next while I can post some thoughts and results from my ongoing research.

My goal as an IT Director for so long has been to “shield” the details and complexity of technology from the average user. “It just needs to work and they shouldn’t need to understand how”, was my mantra. When I entered into the field of IT 10 years, I felt this to be a good strategy and arguably it was. I found success and a decent degree of customer satisfaction in the solutions and services that myself and my IT department have provided. However, I believe times are changing and this article highlights it well. Applications, devices, websites… all technology is becoming increasing configurable. Office applications can really be bent and molded to do all kinds of tasks they weren’t originally intended for. Even newer programming languages are becoming more and more accessible to “non-programmers”. Having the necessary skills to make technology do what you want, should no longer lie in the hands of a few geeks like me. Those who are able to bend technology, whether it be your productivity software, your iPod or the applications you require at work, will ultimately be able to add more value and be more effective in their organizations and communities.

The strange thing is that, simultaneous to this increasing requirement to “programming” the tools around you, there is little emphasis on computer science in K-12 education (particularly as a requirement for post-secondary education) and an “enrollment crisis” in computer science at the post-secondary level. I do not suggest and, neither does the author of this article, that everyone in the world become professional programmers. However, the core skills of programming (such functions, logic, input/output, understanding the basic principles of computers etc.) are part of the necessary “literacy” one needs to remain effective and competitive in the world.

I’m becoming an advocate for mandatory early computer science education in K-12. Kids should be exposed to programming concepts at least at the grade 9 or 10 level if not much sooner. This will increase the digital literacy of our kids. It will also serve to encourage more kids into computer related studies and ultimately aid in solving the decreased enrollment in post secondary computer science.