Owens travels to China, shares how TTU teaches with technology
klykins@tntech.edu
Office of Communications & Marketing
At 7 a.m. one Tuesday morning—or 6 p.m. the Monday before, depending on which side of the world they were on—Carl Owens sat with two professors in China as his Tennessee Tech University graduate education class spent almost two hours discussing technology.
Using Skype video chat to see and hear each other, the two Zhejiang University’s College of Education professors asked the TTU class about their facilities, cell phone use in teaching and learning, and other technology issues that affected their teaching abilities.
Few professors enjoy technology more than Owens, TTU’s Learning Resources Center director and education professor. And even fewer carry the credentials associated with using technology to teach students from pre-k through graduate school. That’s how Owens found himself in Shanghai for 11 days on the invitation of Hangzhou Normal University to present at the “Conference on 21st Century Learning.”
With an iPod Touch, a laptop and a good Wi-Fi connection, Owens—a self-described “toy guy”— says he experienced authentic learning through technology at every turn on his recent trip to China. And his students benefited from seeing how all the toys become tools that enhanced, even changed, how they can learn.
“The true value of the experience is to make everything they learn about technology real and useful,” said Owens.
“Technology allows authentic learning,” he said. “What is in a book or on a web page can be out of date in very little time. Virtual conversations with people who are experiencing what you are studying is authentic learning.”
That’s part of the vision Owens shared with Chinese colleagues during his stay, a visit that served as a culmination of more than a decade of experience testing and promoting technology as well as a beginning of collaborative efforts with teacher education specialists across the globe.
Owens, an Apple Distinguished Educator since 1998, shared the advantages reaped from partnerships he and TTU hold with Apple, SMART Technologies, Ken-A-Vision, Westone, Promethean, M-audio and other leading companies in education technology. Owens says the Chinese university education classrooms he visited are on par with TTU classrooms, with similar teacher stations.
“They have the technology you would expect, including studios, video capabilities and the ability to critique,” he said.
Owens says the Chinese are not familiar with hand-held mobile computing for learning, but collaborations will likely shorten the time it will take for them to adopt a lot of the uses being taught in U.S. classrooms.
At the conference, he made a presentation on collaborations among teacher education technology programs, rural K-12 schools and corporate sponsorships. He talked about facilities, training for teacher education candidates and how what universities teach filters to K-12 schools.
“Many administrators in K-12 can’t seem to see the value of doing this, but to be a true visionary, you ultimately are going to have to stop all these restrictions on embracing technology to really study the world,” said Owens.
But it was on the streets and in the marketplace exploring that Owens says he truly understood how technology weaves learning into every day existence.
“The first thing I did as a ‘tech’ boy was to use my iPod Touch for Mandarin translation,” he said. “Sometimes I would just let the device speak for me, and this allowed me to interact with people in a way that would not have been possible because of the language barrier.”
On his iPod Touch he used a currency converter in the marketplace, and he calculated the how many miles per hour the magnetic levitation high speed train he took was traveling — he was shocked to realize it was going about 187 mph. One day he studied the history of silk.
“What is learning? It’s finding something interesting and needing to learn and finding it at that moment,” said Owens. “That’s what I experienced through technology.”
He used Skype to call TTU and routinely chat with administrative staff and the dean. He regularly checked e-mail and found few wi-fi glitches.
“I could use technology without spending a lot of money, about $10 for four or five hours of communication,” he explained.
And on the 13-hour plane rides both over and back, he took advantage of on-demand video and his laptop to pass time.
This summer, Owens will travel to Australia and New Zealand to broaden his and TTU’s international reach into teacher education. He’ll use a presentation based on his visit to China to illustrate how authentic learning goes beyond googling for answers and to break down apprehensions about technology.
"This visit was one of the most powerful events of my life,” said Owens. “I was looking through the eyes of both teachers and students along with likeminded people who understood the excitement of all the things we want to do and that could be done through technology.”
