Techno Constructivist: constructivism

Showing posts with label constructivism. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

#Edreform The Ultimate Rube Goldberg Machine

One of my favorite YouTube related learning experiences occurred about this time last year. At that time I had just showed my then 4 year old daughter how to navigate YouTube through the related videos posted on the side of the page. We had just bought a couple boxes of dominoes and had been experimenting with setting them up and knocking them down. I thought it would be fun for us to watch some videos of people who had set up thousands of dominoes.

Then, she began clicking away, navigating through video after video of things falling down. Dominoes, cards,

blocks,

and other amazing videos of motion

until she came across this video by O.K. Go and her eyes grew wide:

Then, after watching the full video in stunned silence she exasperatedly said, "Daddy! I want to do that!"

That sparked a full two months of intense exploration of physics in our household. Every day I would come home from work and would ask my wife, "Where is Christiane?" She would grudgingly reply, "In her lab." You see, a few years ago I was working at a school that had removed all their chalkboards and replaced them with dry erase whiteboards. I took these chalk boards home to serve as walls in our unfinished basement and they have been a fantastic canvas for her exploration of the world. Since our basement is unfinished we let our two girls create whatever kind of mess they want down there and try to keep the space as inviting of projects as possible. This space has transitioned from art studio, to science lab, to a replica of her kindergarten classroom, to a race track over the past year. Over those two months she was into Rube Goldbergs these boards developed into a complex schematic of how different household items from the two boxes of dominoes, to the electric Thomas the Train set, to things hanging from strings, to balls that could roll across the room, to sound activated crawling baby dolls, to water raising in buckets in the sink, to things that floated and were attached to strings that fed through screw eyes placed throughout the house could interact with each other. She had, over those months, developed blueprints for something truly awe inspiring. It would take us all day on the weekend to set up her Rube Goldberg that eventually spanned the entire house by the time she was done.

In the process, she would go back to that video, watch it over and over. Study it, get ideas, try things out, then go back to the video again and again. She took a keen interest in how things moved and while she explored I would often sneak in terms like kinetic and velocity. I could never be quite sure whether she was really grasping the Newtonian concepts or picking up the correct definitions of the terms I would interject until one day in the summer, long past this Rube Goldberg phase she went through, we were at the park. She climbed up to the top of the playset and sitting at the top of the tallest slide poised to make her descent, she said, "Daddy! Look at all my potential energy!"

While we both got some strange looks from other parents at the playground I remember thinking to myself that this is how school should be. She constructed those Rube Goldbergs, she did the heavy mental lifting, she determined what experiments made their way onto the master blueprint on the chalkboard. She did these things because she was in control and because of that the path mattered to her. It was not some programmed curriculum, not some one right way to discover these things, they happened naturally. YouTube was there to serve up a plethora of examples for her to draw from and I was there to help make suggestions but never did I take over and plan an activity. I simply created the conditions for discovery and nurtured the interest for as long as I could.

Instead, what happens in most classrooms, and I have been as guilty of this as any other teacher, is that the teacher is the one who plots the course, who sets up the dominoes and connects the dots. Too often our school curriculum, no matter the subject, is free of student discovery and comprised entirely of experiences crafted and planned by the teacher to meet the teacher's, or worse the state's, learning objectives. "I'd love to let you play with those gears and Tinker Toys kids but it would be more efficient if I just told you what it is you are supposed to learn from them. Here is a worksheet for you to fill out as you follow along so you can remember it for the test." Never mind whether absent spontaneity of discovery what gets told gets learned or not, or what gets learned gets understood.

When we plan our lessons...when we craft our syllabi...when we decide which courses are offered...when we decide who gets to be in this class or that...when we decide to separate children by age...when we construct elaborate systems of sorting kids by grades...when we construct elaborate methods of collecting data...when we take that data and develop complex methods of converting it into methods to determine how we make changes to the original design of our school machine...when we differentiate instruction based on that data for kids...when we take that data and use it to determine how to more efficiently make our machine and trim those things in the machine that may be valuable and beautiful but don't forward the momentum...when we bend and contort and poke and prod we are the ones engaged in constructing a Rube Goldberg. We forget that it should be the student building this machine. And, in our madness we make our students part of the senseless kinetic energy machine. Some fall, some get smashed, some get flung far away, and some just get paint thrown in their faces like the guys from OK Go.

I love Rube Goldbergs. I love watching them fall. Perhaps next time we can help the students decide how to set it back up.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Weekly Tech Tip - Self Organizing Learning Environments in the 3rd Grade (inspired by Sugata Mitra's TED Talk)

Weekly Tech Tip:

Friday, May 7, 2010

Weekly Tech Tips - The Elephant in the Room: Learning Theories & Technology Integration

Weekly Tech Tip:

The Elephant in the Room: Learning Theories & Technology Integration

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Open Letter to Diane Ravitch @DianeRav #edchat #lrnchat

Dear Diane Ravitch:

This week I watched your interview with Book.TV where you explain why you think we need to focus on good strong curriculum. This focus concerns me.

When I first began teaching I was committed to the idea that k-12 schools should, above all else, provide students with a rigorous curriculum. As an art teacher I saw what many teachers did in their classrooms as simply putting paints and crayons in front of kids and saying, "have at it, now don't make too big a mess." I spent countless hours writing curriculum and developing lesson plans that would expose students to the splendors of art history, the thought provoking ideas in art philosophy, and a strong foundation in aesthetic theory. I loaded those lessons full of such rich content that I thought there would be no way my students would be bored in my class or that they would walk away from eighteen weeks in my classroom not knowing more than I did when I took high school art. Why then was I always surprised when most of my students did not find the content as riveting and inspirational as I did? Sure, occasionally I would expose them to an idea or introduce them to an artist that would capture their attentions and their imaginations but not always, not by a long shot.

Six years of working with "at risk" or "non-traditional" students later in environments both traditional and online and three years spent with the majority of my time in the back of the classroom observing, I have a far different perspective. I think I understand why my original beliefs about teaching and learning were false. The more time I spend in the back of the classroom the more strongly I feel that there is nothing, no matter how hard they try or how good they are, that a teacher can do to impart knowledge or information to a learner. Learning comes from the learner, not the teacher, and the only thing a teacher can do is set conditions for the learner to discover the understanding for themselves.

What I failed to realize when I was a new teacher was that in so carefully crafting a rigorous curriculum for my students I was robbing them of the element that made the curriculum exciting for me. I was robbing them of the opportunity to discover many of these things for themselves. Discovery is fun, discovery is the ingredient in the learning equation that provides the fuel to keep going. It is why we like adventures and exploring. It is this thrill of discovery that can motivate lab researchers to spend years on painstakingly boring and repetitive tasks in the pursuit of knowledge. And, it is what was largely lacking in my classroom my first four years as a teacher.

What makes this story even more perplexing is every time an administrator or mentor observed my teaching in those years, while they all recognized that something was missing, no one identified this problem. I have a theory for why that was. The model of teaching and learning that has become so synonymous with school that it is etched into the vision nearly every teacher, student, and community member has is based largely on two resounding principle beliefs: 1. students learn through instruction; and 2. The depth & breadth of the curriculum define the level of learning in a course. These are false assumptions and there is very little data that I have seen that prove otherwise.

Last week I posted a clip where as part of it Alan Kay very eloquently describes the Montessori model of school and how the Macintosh OS was based on Montessori principles. Users of the computer discover how to use it by encountering cues in the digital environment. This discovery propels the user to dig deeper and explore more until soon they understand how to navigate and use the computer. Our classrooms need to be more like the Macintosh OS. I started to come to this realization about teaching and learning about four years ago, just before I started this blog and titled it Techno Constructivist.

In that same clip Seymour Papert goes on to explain, with precision, exactly why it is so hard to change the education establishment. There is a lot of money invested and people's jobs that depend on the proliferation of the curriculum and instruction myth. However, just as with my early experience teaching a rigorous art curriculum, the pressure schools have had to be more rigorous under NCLB have diminished a vitally important variable in the learning equation. I fear Race To The Top (RTTT) will only work to further extinguish the flame.

A rigorous curriculum poses another problem. Even if it doesn't extinguish the thrill of discovery in students it still represents a fundamental and troubling truth about the purpose of school. Curriculum always discriminates by what it includes and especially what it excludes. Howard Zinn knew this and made it his life's work to explore this equity issue within the context of US History curriculum. At it's best, curriculum reinforces mainstream values. At its worst, it oppressess and excludes people and ideas. But, maybe that is what the goal of NCLB and RTTT is. If you deprive someone of the thrill of discovery they loose the love of learning and diminish their ability to engage in critical thought. If you focus on rigor in the curriculum you reinforce the values and biases in that curriculum.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Seymour Papert on what schools of the future might look like #edchat

Another great clip from the 1995 House Committee Hearing on Technology in Education. In this clip Seymour Papert describes what he thinks schools might look like in the future. He describes mixed age one-room schoolhouse type settings where students work with their teacher(s) to complete constructive projects. One interesting quote from this clip, addressing David Shaw's criticism of this vision, Papert says:

"I did preface my remarks, I think there is an education establishment with its head wedged in a culture that grew up over a century of which there was the most lethargic progress of education in all fields of human activity."

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Stager, Papert, & the War Path

I would like to juxtapose a two videos today that I think do a great job of describing the issue of change in school and the relationship technology has with that change. I recommend pressing play on this YouTube video as soon as Gary Stager takes the mic on the Vimeo clip:

Gary Stager Excerpts from NECC '09 Keynote Debate from Gary Stager on Vimeo.

Next, lets examine this excerpt of Seymour Papert's testamony from the October 12, 1995 House Committee Economic and Educational Opportunities Hearing on Technology in Education. Papert masterfully describes the uphill battle we have ahead.

Amazing he was saying these things 15 years ago and still little has changed.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

What is 21st Century Education?

We often hear of school districts heralding an initiative as promoting 21st Century Learning and we often hear people talk about needing to have 21st Century Classrooms or adopting a 21st Century pedagogy. However, as near as I can tell most of the time "21st Century _____" is used it lacks a concrete definition or consensual understanding of what it means. Instead, it becomes a handy buzz word or phrase that can be used to beef up public relations. While everyone talks about it, no one ever defines it. On close inspection, most of the times it is used one can discern that the party using it to describe or promote something doesn't have a firm grasp of what it means either. I propose that this has reached a point where the nebulous nature of this idea is potentially harmful and potentially corrupting of the major decisions our teachers, school administrators, schools, districts, and universities make. If we are going to continue making important and expensive decisions based on the notion of 21st Century Learning we need to have no more than two or three possible definitions of what it means (preferably one definition).

Back in August Wesley Fryer posted an article to his blog that set off a lively debate about electronic whiteboard use. That topic was recently brought up again on the Learning in Maine blog but put into the context of whether electronic whiteboards support 21st Century Education. I highly recommend both of these articles and the comment streams that follow them as they begin to seriously address this question of defining 21st Century Education.

So, what is 21st Century Education and how does it differ from 20th Century Education? How far from the trees do we need to look to see this forest? In August of 2007 I put together a video called Why We Need to Teach Technology in School which attempts to make people think about how technology might be changing education. The video offers no solution, nor does it offer any definition of what 21st Century Education looks like. In many ways I was not sure I could answer those questions at that time. This blog post is an attempt of mine to take this discussion to the next step and try and work out these big ideas.

21st Century Education is defined by what technologies available to us today make possible and what they render obsolete. The technology that effects education the most is networked digital electronics such as computers, the internet, cell phones, portable media players, digital cameras, digital camcorders, etc. and the software developed to use with them. Daniel Pink says that in our new economy everything that can either be outsourced or automated will be. I don't think this is anything new. We have seen this story again and again throughout history. When photography was invented in the 1800s much of the work previously done by painters was automated by the camera. Nearly every time an invention comes along that can get something done more efficiently an industry suffers. This idea has been well explained and detailed by Clayton Christensen and his theory of disruptive innovation.

When the camera was invented it set the art world into a century long identity crisis known as Modernism. Since painting could not primarily be about creating images it had to be about something else. Modernism was all about defining what art is minus the prior dominant attribute of image rendering. This time was marked by many artistic movements, all with their own philosophies, definitions, and manifestos. Examples of this include Impressionism, Expressionsim, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. All radically different but share the same absence of image rendering being their primary attribute. This is where I think we are with 21st Century Schools.

21st Century Schools are in the middle of an identity crisis. New technologies render unnecessary some major elements of pedagogy that have, since the inception of the industrial revolution, become indoctrinated and so ingrained into what we think of as school that the absence of such pedagogical constructs throws into question whether what we are talking about is school at all. For example, with online digital video and open courseware there is no longer a need for teachers to lecture. In fact, we can take the very best lecturers on a subject, record their presentations, and upload them to YouTube where students can view them at any time. In many ways this is better because if they miss something they can rewind or if they are not ready to watch and listen now they can wait until they are ready. Also, through digital quiz or survey tools students can be pretested to identify what their learning needs are before they take a course. These same digital tools can be used to automate some forms of assessment. So, essentially we can outsource lectures and automate objective assessment. With these learning resources available anytime anywhere there eliminates a need to move all students along at the same pace. There also eliminates the need for all students to learn in the same way or even be physically present with the teacher and other students in the same classroom at the same time.

Online schools have been described by many as being "21st Century." While this is in part true because the school would not be possible without 21st Century technology there are as many learning theories applied to online schools as are applied in traditional classrooms. Many online schools simply take what would have been done in a traditional classroom and put it online so students can attend remotely. I would not use online schools as being the single exemplar of "21st Century Schools." Rather the terms "Online Learning" and "Online Schools" refer to a medium, not a pedagogy. If we use the medium to define 21st Century ______ as most of us have been then that definition will keep changing at a rate that we will not be able to keep up with. An online school can be "21st Century" but not all are.

One thing our pre-digital schools were not very good at was differentiated instruction. Another thing they did not have the proper resources to fully implement was authentic assessment. Research studies done by Caine and Caine (1991), Brooks and Brooks (1993), and many others exploring the effect of constructivist teaching strategies have overwhelmingly illustrated the power constructivist approaches like project-based learning have to promote both achievement and incite intrinsic motivation to learning objectives. Outsourcing and automating things that in the traditional classroom take a lot of time and energy frees the teacher up to be able to facilitate a true project-based, authentic learning, constructivist classroom. It is the pedagogy made possible by 21st century technology that is what defines a 21st Century School or 21st Century Learning. Right now the EdVisions schools like New Country School and Avalon are more pure examples of 21st Century schools.

So, this changes the question to whether 21 Century Education necessitates a replacement of prior models of schooling. I argue no. While Dan Willingham might disagree, I believe there is a kernel of truth behind learning style theories. Most specifically I believe the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner is important and valid. I believe that students have different learning needs depending upon what subject they are studying. These needs are different for each student. One student may benefit more from a traditional class in Math while learning more in Social Studies by a constructivist approach. Another student may learn Social Studies better in a traditional class and math with project-based learning. It really depends for each individual on what kind of motivation they need and what kind of social environment the individual needs to study a subject.

What I advocate for is blend of the traditional and the 21st Century. I would like to see schools opperate in dual fashion. Think of it as two schools in one (not necessarily a school within a school). Students learning needs and interests can be identified and students can be placed either in a traditional classroom or work indepenedently with the help of an advisor based on whichever learning modality is optimal for each student in each subject.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Engagement as Consumers or Engagement as Producers

Last week as we were wrapping things up for the school year at end of year teacher meetings the topic turned to technology changes we will be making over the summer. Through Computers For Learning, a federal program providing surplus computer equipment to schools from federal government offices, we will be tripling our districts number of student use computers. We are also upgrading our servers, switches, and hubs including the server that our terminal computers run from. We are also switching all student use machines to open source software. Last year the two big initiatives were SMARTboards and laptops for teachers. Almost every teacher got a SMARTboard for their classroom and a laptop by the end of this year. However, there still were some classrooms that for both functional and budgetary purposes went without one or the other (or both).

After our tech people (including me) presented a synopsis of what to expect in the fall one of the teachers who did not get a SMARTboard asked if the district would be purchasing any new boards for next year. Now I have never been a huge supporter of SMARTboards as a caveat for student engagement. They are expensive and the payoff I have always suspected is not nearly as great nor is as learner centered as other investments that put the technology in the hands of the students rather than the teachers. However, I do see the benefits after watching the majority of our staff put them into action this past year.

After explaining to the teacher that it is not in the tech budget but that she could request one from the administration or pay for one out of her own budget I offered her another solution. Rather than spend the $1500 or so on a SMARTboard that can only track one pen or touchpoint at a time I could install a Wii Remote interactive whiteboard for her that could track 4 simultaneous points for under $100. She declined. This makes me wonder if she really wanted one of these interactive whiteboards because she knows how it could improve student learning in her classroom or if she just wanted one because other teachers had one and she didn't. However, that is for another post.

This got me thinking. The original reason for the SMARTboard initiative was to improve or increase student engagement in the classroom. Now I must add that this initiative was begun before I was brought on board but it has been my responsibility to help show teachers how to use this tool to engage students. It seems to me that, with the exception of interactive learning games and exercises that rely on a single click interface where one student can be in control at a time, the SMARTboard (and other brands of interactive whiteboards) are largely a teacher tool and not a student tool. The type of engagement they improve is engagement as consumers.

The question of engagement has long been looked at in education as something more along the lines of entertainment or edutainment. "How am I going to engage my students?" too often becomes "How am I going to keep my students entertained?" This definition of engagement fits well with those educators who look at teaching as performance. If you feel the engagement level of your students is directly related to how entertaining your presentations, lectures, and class demonstrations are than the SMARTboard is truly your allay. More so is the projector you need to make it work. You can show educational videos on it (you can also do this with a TV/DVD player), you can show PowerPoint presentations without needing to go back to your computer to change slides (you can also do this with a $10 clicker), you can write notes and diagrams on it and have the computer convert your handwriting to print (marginally helpful), and you can save what you wrote on the board as a PDF file that you can send to others or put on your teacher website (you can do this with any PC by pressing "Print Screen"). For a meager $1500 plus the additional $1000 you have to spend on the projector, you can have a nice tool that can make your 20th century teaching style look real professional.

However, is this engagement or entertainment? One could argue that when students are entertained they are engaged but is entertainment really what they come to school for? The real smart ones end up dropping out when they realize they can get better entertainment at home watching television, playing video games, and chatting with friends online. It is nice when we are entertained but what people go to school for is learning (or at least it should be) and entertainment should never get in the way of that. There must be a better way to engage students without having to make it look like entertainment.

Maybe we need to stop thinking of engagement as being akin to entertainment and start thinking about the things we do that we find engaging. What are the qualities of those things? I am engaged when I am doing my taxes but I certainly am not entertained. I am engaged when I am planning a camping trip but I don't find this entertaining. I am engaged when I am editing Wikipedia though I can't say this much ever feels like entertainment. I am engaged when I am working on a home improvement project but I certainly never find it entertaining. What is common about all of these activities? The only conclusion I derive is all engaging tasks require something meaningful of me. I am not passive when I am engaged. The times I can think of watching TV or watching a movie when I am engaged I am engaged because mentally I am doing something. I am analyzing the plot or I am comparing and contrasting what I see with what I already know, or I am finding information there that can support one of my other projects I am working on or it meaningfully informs something else I am interested in. Any way I look at it, engagement comes from my own activity in something.

This is why students drop out of high school, this is why some sleep in class, this is why SMARTboards rarely cure a teacher's problem with engagement in the classroom. Because, as soon as the novelty of the new wares off you are still left with trying to guess what to show to a class that will make them actively engaged mentally. It is much easier to achieve an engaged student by presenting them with problems to solve or projects to work through. It is far easier and more effective to think of how you are going to engage your students as producers of products and knowledge than how you are going to engage them as of consumers of information.

Now, if you have $2500 to spend on technology for your classroom with the goal of improving student engagement with it there are quite a few options you have that are likely to produce better results than a SMARTboard and projector. $2500 will buy a class set of digital cameras, or it will buy six Asus eee laptops, or it will buy quite a few digital audio recorders, or it will buy a printer that will print poster size images, or it will buy a ton of Legos (have you ever seen a kid not engaged with Legos?). I could go on and on.

The point is, when you are talking about how to get more student engagement in your classroom you need to think about what the students are going to be engaged with, not how the teacher is going to be engaging for the students. If you have the dollars to supply both student-based and teacher-based technology to support engagement than by all means purchase an interactive whiteboard. They are cool and there is a lot of good you can do with one. However, please don't neglect needs to get at the wants.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Student Centered Pedagogies - Part 2

see part 1

The Underlying Problem: Overcoming personal bias:

For the first three years of my career as a teacher I was perfectly happy to do things status quo. I had an idea of what good teaching was based on how I was taught and thought my job was to emulate those who came before. The truth is I didn't care all that much about students. What attracted me to teaching was the content. Being an art teacher meant I could support myself while engaging in the field of study I loved. I expected that there would be a certain percentage of students that would fall through the cracks because I believed the system of school was designed in a way to weed out those who could not "play the game." Because I was successful in school I had a personal bias toward the style of learning that suited me. Since the methods my own teachers used suited me I felt these were probably best. And, since I was successful in this system I saw those who were not successful as somehow inferior and believed that the system sorted people out to either prepare them for future success or show them where their place in the world should be. It wasn't until I became aware of my own bias and saw my own world view from the perspective I just described that I began to change how I viewed the "system" and more so, how I viewed my own classroom.

The status quo works and is allowed to survive in environments where sufficient numbers of students do at least moderately well and a select few excel. Status quo views all learners as having the same learning style and says what is best for the middle child is best for all. This is how NCLB has been interpreted by most schools. However, if you take a situation where no student fits the status quo model you are forced to do some analysis. For me this was when I took a job at an alternative high school. For the first time I was placed in a classroom where all my students were like my prior low performing students. All students were students who did not learn well with established pedagogies. Each child had an extremely different way of seeing the world and processing information. Each child had something about their personality or background that did not make the status quo school a good place for them.

What I discovered was that while some of these students were low functioning, most were extremely bright. However, teaching them using the same methods I used in the status quo high school got me nowhere. If these students are this bright, why should the system return results placing them at the bottom of the ladder? This is how I came to the realization, a position realized by many before, that the problem was my teaching methods and the pedagogical exemplars I had. I had to unlearn what I knew about teaching and reconstruct my understanding of learning. Suddenly I was more concerned with my students than the content. Suddenly I felt more compassion in the classroom. Gradually I saw improvements.

Community Building:

In my time in alternative ed I found I got the greatest bang for my pedagogical buck by investing heavily in community building. It is far more important to establish relationships with students than get through the curriculum. Every time I had a discipline problem, an attendance problem, or a problem with comprehension it could be traced back to the student-teacher relationship. Those students I made an effort to know always were eager to do well and invest their attention in what I had to say. Those who for one reason or another I did not get to know very well were always the ones where I saw problems.

I would make room for this. First, I would not even approach my curriculum for the first 3-5 days of a term. I would take this week to also do some metacognitive reflection.

Metacognitive Reflection:

All of my students in the ALC were there because their learning styles conflicted with the pedagogies at the status quo high school. Much of the reason these students have been unsuccessful was due to either being unaware of their own learning styles or their teachers unaware of their learning styles. We would take this week to talk about times in their life when they felt they learned a lot (school or non school). We would brainstorm what qualities were present in those environemnts that contributed positively to them finding it effective for learning. We also discussed classes they have taken in the past where they did not feel they learned anything and tried to figure out why. From these two lists we established a blueprint for how learning was to occur in the classroom.

Curriculum Compacting:

Every teacher has standards they have to "cover" in a given course. What I see a lot in status quo high is teachers rushing through things to make sure they hit every point. What effect does this have if the student doesn't digest it? One trick I have seen and used effectively is curriculum compacting.

In a traditional classroom the teacher goes over the information, the students read the chapter and do their worksheets, then at the end of the week they take a quiz on it. With curriculum compacting you reverse this order. First quiz the students on what you want to "cover" that week. Some stuff the students will already know...why spend time on it? This is where online survey tools are useful. This diagnosis can be done quickly and results shown immediately. Results can be aggregated to show immediately which questions all students missed and which ones they all got right. This will drive the week's activities. In most cases this method will allow the teacher to go beyond the standards.

continue to part 3

Monday, April 14, 2008

Student Centered Pedagogies - Part 1

It has come to my attention that while I have (through this blog, district workshops, informal discussions, and conference presentations) done well at identifying a need for a more student driven approach to teaching, an approach I have long felt is met through constructivist and connectivist teaching methods. I have also done well at describing and introducing the tools that make these kinds of learning environments effective with technology. However, what has been lacking is concrete examples or an explicit explanation of what these two pedagogical approaches really mean. I plan on devoting the next few blogposts to exploring this topic and attempt to provide concrete examples of how these theories can be applied in a classroom.

I have and will continue to argue that our traditional school systems are not adequately set up for ideal student-centered learning. This goes beyond teaching methods and plays itself out in nearly all aspects of how we have organized schools. The bell schedule segments learning into time slots that are not necessarily optimized for learning and fail to recognize that the topic of the class goes on 24/7. Our system of reporting progress through grades and standardized test scores and our use of those final marks as a commodity to be traded for future advancement, success, or acclaim reduce what is naturally intrinsically motivating and forces it to become an extrinsic chore. Students no longer learn because they want to know things, they learn because they have to. More so, grades and test scores tend to put a lid on things telling students that the learning has stopped, that the issue is over, that there is no need to revisit topics. The calendar crams learning into nine months without much break causing fatigue for both teachers and students in the late winter and loss of practice in the summer months.

I feel this video illustrates why there is a need to look at learner-centered approaches to teaching:

I could argue these points for many pages but I would prefer these next few blogposts have a much more local effect. In those posts I will attempt to show how learning theories that support the student-centered approach can be utilized in the structured schedule, calendar, and grade reporting structure of a traditional school setting.

The following videos and web resources describe/explain the learning theories I will be building on in the next few blog posts:

Constructivism:

Links to sites on constructivism

Project Based Learning (PBL):

Challenge 2000: Project Based Learning & Multimedia Website
PBL Research Summary: Studies Validate Project-Based Learning
The Mindset of Project-Based Learning

Understanding By Design (Backwards Design):

ASCD: Understanding by Design Resources
Understanding by Design
Wiggins & McTighe: A Brief Introduction

Maintaining Classroom Discipline by using Democratic Methods:

Connectivism:

Connectivism: Learning as Network-Creation
By George Siemens

Part 2

Monday, March 31, 2008

Hot Off The Press

Full Color Version:

Virtual World WebQuests: Principle elements of research supported learning experiences within virtual learning environments by Carl Anderson (Book) in Education & Language via kwout

Black and White Version:

Virtual World WebQuests: Principle elements of research supported learning experiences within virtual learning environments by Carl Anderson (Book) in Education & Language via kwout

I just published for the first time using Lulu.com. For those who don't know about Lulu, it is a service that lets you independently publish books for on-demand publication. That means, if you have 3 people who want the book they print 3 copies, if you ahve 300,000 people wanting the book they print 300,000 copies. Pretty cool.

Anyway, this book is my masters capstone. It is a detailed description of how virtual worlds can be utilized to effectively create cost effective 3d immersive WebQuests. Building on research done in the fields of game based learning, virtual worlds, constructivism, and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation I built an art curriculum that utilizes the pedagogical structure of a WebQuest but utilize a virtual world to house it. A platform evaluation is also present. I have to note that this platform evaluation was performed in the fall of 2007. Since then there have been more platforms that have surfaced. The results of this evaluation is not meant to be an end all be all off virtual world assessment for education but rather a suggested guide for educators to apply in search of the correct tool to fit their own needs.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Clifford Stoll on Teaching

While I disagree with Clifford Stoll's opinion that computers should not be in our schools his thoughts on the matter have been influential to me in forming my own opinions and beliefs about education and technology. Particularly when it comes to assessing technology. Whenever a new tool comes out Clifford's voice always sounds in the back of my head reminding me to question its necessity and question its value. The conclusion I usually come to is somewhere between Clifford Stoll's extreme view that computers should not be integrated into the classroom and the other extreme. In this very entertaining TED talk he talks about teaching and children and very eloquently illustrates what a great constructivist classroom should look like. I remember back in the early '90s Clifford giving speeches and being very vocal on his view of technology in the classroom and have wondered what he has been doing since he has not been in the public eye much the past 10 years. Evidently he is teaching 8th grade physics, or rather teaching 8th graders college physics.

If the embed doesn't work click here for the TED site with this video.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Mandating Participation - What Exactly Are We Trying To Achieve

I overheard a conversation the other day that I just can't get out of my head. The conversation revolved around how we might get more students to participate in extra curricular activities at school. One solution that was tossed around was to extend the lunch hour and require students to participate in something at that time. This really bothered me at first but I did not know why at the time. It took some reflection for me to come to this conclusion. The problem is not that this would get more students participating in extra curricular activities or that there would be some benefit in their participation but rather that this solution would negate the fundamental positive benefits extra curricular activities provide. This issue gets at the heart of motivation and encompasses a whole host of other external factors that schools don't have control over.

The argument is that studies have shown a positive correlation between participation in extra curricular activities and academic performance. Therefore, if we require all students to participate in at least one activity we will see increases in their academic performance. To me this is logic follows the same lines as is described in this clip from South Park:

What we need to ask is WHY is there a positive correlation? I suspect the active variable here is not participation but rather what leads a student to become involved in extra curricular activities. I see two main factors involved here:

Intrinsic Motivation
Involved Parental Structure

Many students participate in these activities because they want to. These students do so out of enjoyment of the activities the extra curricular clubs and teams provide. Mandating their participation will turn the motivation extrinsic because there will be consequences for non participation. Of course, many students will still find these activities intrinsically motivating but the presence of those who are there for purely extrinsic reasons will diminish the quality of the experience for everyone and for them their participation will not likely lead to further academic success.

There are a fair number of students who participate in extra curricular activities for extrinsic reasons already. Usually these reasons involve pressure from others. In this case this pressure is positive. Often parents will require students to participate in something. My parents made me take band, participate in at least one school sport, and participate in at least one school club. I dreaded some of these activities as a high school student but I willfully participated in others for pure intrinsic reasons. The benefit here for the student motivated extrinsically is the strong parental structure and the involvement of parents in a student's life. If it is not a parent providing this extrinsic motivation it might be peer pressure that when applied in this way has a positive effect. The resultant academic success tied to extra curricular involvement for these students is not the result of involvement in the activity but rather the support structure that student has.

If we want to increase student achievement by looking at how those students who participate in extra curricular activities have excelled we need to dig deeper. We need to find ways to support students who find intrinsic reasons to be involved in positive activities. We also need to find ways of strengthening a student's support structure. I believe the key here is community building, not mandating participation. Just because one person got profits after collecting underpants doesn't mean that collecting underpants led to profits.

I think this same analogy applies to 1:1 laptop initiatives. This one has been even more difficult for me to conclude given my obvious bias for technology enhanced learning environments. I love my laptop, I love the internet, and I love what I can do with technology. When I was a classroom art teacher I loved seeing what my students could do with technology and I loved the positive results I saw because of it.

Many school districts are jumping into the 1:1 initiative. There have been studies done that show the positive result of implementing a program like this. However, I suspect this is similar to the debate about extra curricular activities and similar to the underpants analogy. I believe it would be foolhardy for any teacher, school, or district to say, "That school went to 1:1 and saw gains so we need laptops too." Is it the technology that produces these gains? I suspect the technology enables or rather encourages other changes to occur in the classroom that are the direct correlatives to academic gains.

When each student has a laptop or access to a computer in a 1:1 setting the teacher can plan instruction or rather learning activities that involve more independently tailored tasks and assessments. Having more tools to work with promotes a constructivist approach to learning. Effective 1:1 teachers are having students solve real world problems using digital tools to create, manipulate, solve, and innovate. They are approaching curriculum from a project-based inquiry model and sharing their time with students as co-learner, not "sage on the stage."

However, just plopping laptops in each classroom does not a constructivist teacher make. I believe for this to truly be effective the pedagogical shift has to occur first. Technology clearly enhances PBL in a way that academic gains can be measured. Technology enhances a behaviorist classroom by making presentations more pretty and entertaining but not really engaging. I feel engage is often equated to entertain by educators. The truth is that true engagement, the type that leads to knowledge construction and true understanding, is not entertainment. True engagement often is not fun. We need to take a close look at our practice and decide for ourselves how we will best engage our students in authentic learning and then decide what the tools are that will make this happen. It may vary well be that we will need a 1:1 laptop environment to achieve these goals but the machine is just a tool to assist in the process. The real actor in this is pedagogy. If the teachers in a school are not ready to adopt a constructivist pedagogy the money spent on 1:1 will be wasted and I fear will actually show a negative correlation with academic achievement. For those schools it might be best to start small. Place 5-10 computers in each classroom before jumping in and doing a 1:1. Otherwise we are just collecting underpants and hoping to get profits.