C+-+sections

C - What media ('suite' of tools) must be provided by the institution and/or made available to 21st century learners? What role(s) can we expect such media to play in the 21st century learning environment? Are institutions being held captive by the spiraling costs of innovation being driven by software providers?

A moral imperative for teachers to engage in learning must be articulated and the ethical reasons to engage are best explained through Sork’s (2000), Question-Based Approach to Planning. He maintains that, “planners who achieve a more advanced level of ethical responsibility continuously challenge themselves and others they work with to: make explicit the moral questions and issues embedded in planning, [and] confront the conflicting moral positions brought to the planning table by various stakeholders” (p. 178). In the K-12 context, competing interests often make the attempts to support teacher education seem superficial and insincere due primarily to differences in stakeholder values. The employer, or School Board, will have political and financial issues as a priority. This body will support a learning program for teachers if it is cost efficient and guarantees an increase in student achievement reflected in data gathered by way of standardized test results. Teachers and their professional association do not place the same value on this information and are primarily committed to improving student motivation, authentic student engagement and the use of formative assessment. While both parties ultimately seek the same result - success for students - the ethical basis of their goals is seemingly contradictory. Cost pressures compound the problem of these competing viewpoints in that there is a paucity of education dollars. The financial implications are of such importance that the Bates and Poole SECTIONS model specifically identifies “Cost Factors” (p. 92) as a significant consideration in program planning. Two obvious cost factors will entail technical support as well as adequate hardware and software. These cost factors overlap the SECTIONS model segment “E - ease of use” (p. 87) and largely explain why the K-12 system is lagging so far behind in its commitment to Technology-Mediated Learning. On an optimistic note, K-12 educators have the luxury of assessing the success of TML in other educational settings (i.e. post-secondary) when making decisions about blending technology with current teaching methodology and pedagogy. Digital platforms like wikis, blogs and collaborative writing tools like Google docs, Etherpad and Writeboard make for cheap and practical alternatives to Moodle or WebCT, for example. Many of the free, digital tools are easily run on even the most outdated computers and require little to no technical support. The hurdle here is awareness of and familiarity with the variety of platforms - if one tool is not ideal, another can be utilized with no additional expense incurred. In this case, the “N - novelty” (p. 103) criteria of the SECTIONS model is, again, an asset.

Software costs may be spiraling but I also believe the software developers and companies are in touch with education and recognize the value of having their software inside the educational institutions. Software giants such as Microsoft do provide significant discounts to the educational sector and software companies will often partner with institutions to provide exposure and continued support. As an example in the program I teach at BCIT we pay a yearly subscription to Microsoft as an Education IT Academy. This allows students and instructors in our program access to Microsoft software that would be far too expensive for our department to consider. For instance we are able to download beta versions of operating systems and stay current.

I doubt there is a an exact predefined "suite of tools" but a major software package is a Learning Management System (LMS). BCIT has now moved to Desire2Learn as an LMS and this is available across the BCIT community. I'm sure this has not been a low cost adoption but the decision was made by a team of confident individuals who collaborated with the BCIT community. Other collaborative tools such as Skype, or WebX might be part of the suite and this might apply to blended distance or on-line programs only. One tool that has been in place for decades is e-mail and still a primary method of communication. Many institutions [] have decided the cost to maintain a private e-mail system is too great and have outsourced this to giants such as Google and Microsoft [] Institutions that opt for outsourcing their e-mail system have the added benefit of a "suite of tools" which provide low cost, up to date, widely deployed applications for students and faculty.