Alan Kay & Seymour Papert on teachers as learners vs curriculum implementation #edchat #lrnchat

This, I think is a key point that Alan Kay brings up and Seymour Papert builds upon, in their testimony before the 1995 House Committee Hearing on Technology in Education, that teachers and schools need to be more humble about what they teach and focus more on how to model learning. I will come back to this clip in a later reflective post (I promise). They both agree here that what is important in a teacher is that they are good learners, not so much that they have extensive knowledge of their subjects. This concept flies in the face of what I believed when I started teaching eleven years ago but have come now to embrace as absolute truth about teaching, learning, and education. Curriculum, after all, is nothing more than a political weapon designed to elevate and highlight some while repressing others (see Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States) but metacognition and knowledge acquisition skills empower all who are taught them.

Weekly Tech Tip: Using Social Networks in the Classroom

In last week's tech tip I showed you how many teachers are using social networks for professional development. This week I will show you how some teachers are utilizing social networks with students and how to set up a similar project yourself:

Weekly Tech Tip:

Social Networking in the Classroom from Carl Anderson on Vimeo.

Link Stew:

• New additions to the Digital Backpack
• 3 Types of Web-based Instructional Activites (w/examples) - from Learning Today
• Writing, Technology and Teens - Interesting research how texting and social networking is improving teen writing - Pew Research Center Publications
• Texting 'improves language skill' - Interesting study done at Coventry University and reported here on BBC News that shows positive effects of SMS texting on student spelling and writing skills.
• 12 Free Online Quiz Makers to Create Online Quizzes
• Google to build ultra-fast broadband networks
• Technology changing how we work, play, shop - great article on emerging technologies from The Wichita Eagle
• How to Teach with Tech Tools - Fantastic examples of successful tech integration in this article
• A Thought Experiment: Why grade? Why test? What if? by Cathy Davidson on DML central: digital media and learning.the power of participation
• Free Moodle Accounts for Teachers - provided by
• Ninja Hunter - Learn to type by killing ninjas
• LOTR prequel made by fan using her life savings scores 500K views on the internet. http://j.mp/aiJN5g
• QRstuff - kind of like YouTube for Augmented Reality QR codes
  

Blog Carnival:

• Google Docs Does Not Violate CIPA (or COPPA*) by Mark Wagner, Ph.D. on Educational Technology and Life
• The Importance of Managing Your Online Reputation by Vanessa Miemis on emergent by design
• I wouldn't do it if it weren't for credit from Scott McLeod on Mind Dump
• Schools that are serious have someone at the top who is willing to focus on the learning from Scott McLeod on Mind Dump
• Blogging Alliance-Essential Educational Blogs by Kelly Tenkely on iLearn Technology
• The Teacher Salary Project: Changing the Way We See Teachers By Sara Bernard on Change.org
• "Just tell me what to do" by Scott McLeod on Dangerously Irrelevant
• running to stand still by Scott Schwister on Higher Edison
• SMART Boards lacking intelligence? by Bill Feriter on Plethora of Technology
• Educon: Harnessing Chaos By Rodd Lucier on The Clever Sheep
  

Weekly Tech Tip - Distributed Research with Google Forms

Now that school has started, we are over the beginning of the year hurdles, and homecoming is out of the way the time is right to resume our weekly technology tips. Each week I will create a video with an education technology tip and post links (listed under "Link Stew") of interesting and useful websites, literature, videos, or other online content I come across. I am adding a new category this year called the blog carnival where from time to time I will post a series links to interesting and thought provoking education blog posts.

Weekly Tech Tip:

Related links:

• Michael Wesch -How to get students to find and read 94 articles before the next class
• Google Docs

Links Stew:

This week's link stew is really a highlights list of sites I found over the summer.

• World Texting - Send free text messages to cell phones from your computer (I have used this with students in the past to curb problems with cell phone use in the classroom. Text questions to students, send private messages such as "Pay attention!," or give quizzes.
• Poll Everywhere - Create online polls and allow your audience (or students) to submit answers via SMS text messaging, Twitter, or on an online website.
• ZuiTube - Kind of like YouTube for younger kids.
• Lectr - YouTube for school lectures.
• Storybird - Storybird is a site perfect for creative writing assignments. Students are given a bunch of photos that they are prompted to create a story around. The site allows you to arrange the photos and your text however you like in as many pages as you like. When you are done you get an ebook of your story. On the site it says that soon they will be adding the ability to order print copies of the books you create.
• twittearth - This is sort of a mix between Twitter and Google Earth. It displays a globe and shows where people are Tweeting from.
• Librivox - From this site you can dowload free audio books of books in the public domain. You can also volunteer to contribute by sending them recordings of book chapters you read. Could be a service learning project for any class.

Blog Carnival:

• How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City | Business | guardian.co.uk
• Correlation or causation? Teacher resistance to state technology initiatives
• Shush and Sit Down
• Reaching those that don't care about grades
• Social Reproduction
• "Evaluate that!" - Schools for Children
• Corporations, Democracy, & Schooling

Open Source & Education

I came across this panel discussion of education fellows today at Pop!Tech. Fascinating and powerful discussion regarding open source principles in education and education reform.

@ Yahoo! Video

At the end of this video a question is asked, "With all of this technology, what is lost?" What are your thoughts?

21st Century Pedagogy

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:

1. Intrinsic Motivation
2. 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.