EdTechTrek

Ever notice that in education, we love to wax poetic in terms of how things should be, yet when it comes to the day to day running of our classrooms, we tend to taste the realities of how it is a little more and often fall short of the very goals and ideals we give lip service to?

There have been so many challenging messages that I have been chewing on over the past months. The latest is David Perkins’ new book, Making Learning Whole: How Seven Principles of Teaching Can Transform Education, has really hammered some things home for me. I am not even half way through it and I am seriously convicted. He discusses how learning is most effective and relevant when students have the opportunity to apply learning within the context of “the game” – situating learning in relevant, meaningful and authentic contexts.

Tonight in class my students were to learn about WebQuests. With a limited amount of time, I struggled with how best to approach this. A number of very good ideas came to mind, all of which would have taken a great deal more time than was available. Then I stumbled upon WebQuests about WebQuests by Bernie Dodge. After a very short overview, I decided to have my students, in groups of 4, complete a webquest of their choice listed on this page. It was almost magical to watch them engage… engage in ways not possible when I am “waxing poetic” at the front of the classroom. They managed various roles/perspectives, evaluated 5 webquests on a number of domains, compared notes and perspectives, discussed what made some webquests “better” than others, negotiated a winner and loser, and justified their positions with each other. They were deeply engaged in a high level of discourse and evaluation that I hadn’t seen before.

Then it occurred to me that they were, as David Perkins describes it, playing the game. In his book, he outlines seven principles of learning by wholes. They are:
1. Play the whole game
2. Make the game worth playing
3. Work on the hard parts
4. Play out of town.
5. Uncover the hidden game
6. Learn from the team… and other teams
7. Learn the game of learning

But there are different kinds of games. Perkins writes,

“Schools and other settings of learning ask us to do many things that aren’t all that enthralling. We feel as though we are playing the school game and not the real game.” – the whole game.

This reminded me of a sign I used to have on my office door:

I have so much more I’d like to share about Perkins’ book… and will. But we… I need to let students play the game – the whole game whenever possible. Focusing on the small components is fine and essential at times, just like getting in the batting cage. But the real excitement and passion is cultivated when the teams take to the field, the crowds are in the stands, and the pitch is thrown toward home plate. It gives practice meaning. Purpose. Relevance. Authenticity.

I don’t know about you, but I have to get my students playing the game more often… And I will.

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Why do we learn? Many learn because they have to. It’s the law up to a certain age in this country. Others learn because they are expected to. Yet others learn because they are interested or even passionate about a topic. Some learning is a by-product of other life activities.

While reading the latest issue (August 2008) of Learning & Leading with Technology, I ran across something that made me think. If you are not familiar with this periodical, for a while now they have had a current issue in educational technology where opposing views are represented. This issue’s topic: “Is educational technology shortening student attention span?” (PDF)

David Marcovitz, an associate professor at Loyola College in Maryland presents the “Yes” argument (I suggest you read it. He has worded it quite well) while the CIO of a school district and VP of that state’s association of technology coordinators presents the opposing view.

Now, there is no doubt that the use of current tools by students in schools is a motivating factor for them. For some reason, when a traditional worksheet is digitized and put on line for students to complete with a few glitzy animated graphics and a little feedback, it is a whole new experience for students. They attend better and persist longer. However, this form of learning is no more meaningful and certainly no more powerful than the paper/pencil activity done at their desks. So much with educational technologies can be described this way… simply digitizing traditional forms of learning and calling it innovation – 21st Century Learning… Blah! Is it just about controlling students… getting them to do what we want in the easiest way possible… even if that way is inferior to others, less messy… almost “effortless”?

What bothers me most about the “NO” view presented here is the following quotation:

“Technology has the power to capture our children’s attention by making learning interactive and fun. I have walked into classrooms where students were using technology to share, create, and explore. Those students were excited and engaged in the content being presented to them.”

The latter part of the quotation has some merit in the right contexts. However, the first part of the quotation is what does not sit well with me. Yes – technology does have the power to capture children’s attention by making learning interactive and fun. But what worries me is the seductive nature of this. Let me add a few words to this statement:

Technology has the power to capture our children’s attention by making (disguising) disconnected, rote learning interactive and fun.

The result – we are able to maintain the status quo and change very little simply by making it more fun and interactive.

Later in in this same issue, there is an article on Mathcasts. To make this contrast even greater, a quotation from this piece states:

“Perhaps the greatest motivation for your students will be their increasing self-confidence and improving attitude toward math. Students who regularly create mathcasts take ownership of the math concepts they explain. Mathematical ideas become more meaningful to students…”

So, what do you think? Is motivation best when it results from increased self-confidence and improved attitude that comes from meaningful learning? Or, do we just shoot for “interactive and fun”, keeping kids entertained?

Back to the initial arguments about technology and shortening attention spans… which type of learning described above may lead more to shortened attention spans? As David Marcovitz and Neil Postman suggest (in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business), that every technology is a Faustian Bargain (and here)- “for every positive benefit, there is an often unseen and very serious downside”.

So, how best are we to motivate children? With technology or with powerful, meaningful, relevant learning opportunities (that may or may not involve newer technologies). Sorry, I know the question is redundant. I have always told my preservice college students who want to put “fun” first in their lessons that “fun” is a result of developmentally-appropriate, relevant and meaningful learning. Engagement comes from that. Fun is a by-product – not a goal.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on all of this, as I am thinking out loud here.