EdTechTrek

Value Beyond School

I have been reading and re-reading some of the ideas found in the Apple Classroom of Tomorrow 2 (ACOT2) document and this idea struck me as quite relevant. In the section that discusses the concepts of authenticity and relevance, they site the work of Fred Newmann (1995) from University of Wisconsin who has defined a set of standards for Authentic Instruction, Authentic Student Performance, and Authentic Assessment Tasks which are organized into the following three areas:

-Construction of Knowledge
-Disciplined Inquiry
-Value Beyond School

To quote the section on Value Beyond School,

“The performance must have value beyond the school; that is, the work must have meaning or value that transcends the student-teacher relationship and is not simply used to rate the performance of the student for grading purposes. This value may be a result of sharing the work in a meaningful way with an audience outside the classroom. It may also have value simply because the topic and product are personally valued by the student. Or it may be that the product or task closely mirrors the kind of work done in the real world and that relationship is clearly evident to the student.”

The authors of the ACOT2 document state that of Newmann’s three areas listed above , this one has been the most difficult to realize. But with the addition of so many new publishing tools like blogs and wikis, it has become much easier to realize.

This is where I began to see things differently. The implication here is that it is the tools that bring value to student work beyond school. Granted, these new Internet-based publishing and collaborative tools make student work and thinking more accessible to a global audience, but the work of the students must still be important, relevant, and worthy of a global audience. I remember a while back when Gary Stager was criticizing (scroll down to post titled, “Mind-mapping What?”) the zeal of teachers who were putting up student-created “mind maps” generated with Inspiration. At first I reacted quite defensively, but then I began to understand what he was getting at. Students were creating “mind candy” with this potentially powerful tool. The tool’s strength lies in one’s ability to semantically map out and represent a concept or idea in detail. To produce documents that have the word apple in the middle with three adjectives stemming outward does not even come close to the potential power of this tool to make one’s thinking visible and to expose flaws or misconceptions in understanding or thinking.

The same holds true in the use of new publishing and collaborative tools like blogs and wikis. Students can share shallow thinking and contrived work or share valuable, meaningful, relevant and powerful ideas. The tools used to publish and share do not discriminate. It is up to the teacher to guide students and demand high-quality work and critical thinking.

And THAT is still just as hard to realize in a web 2.0 world. I think the authors of ACOT2 missed this critical idea in relating it to web 2.0 tools in this section. However, they more than redeem themselves a little later on in the document when they introduce the importance of “Deep Learning”:

“Deep Learning requires deep teaching. Teachers must give students challenging tasks that require them to wrestle with core concepts in the curriculum and the time to do so.”

To me, this is the linch pin upon which all else hinges. To learn well means to teach well. Effective and meaningful pedagogies have not really changed all that much over the years, but there are a great many new tools and new learning opportunities that can be harnessed and found via new technologies. Deep teaching is still required.

And, part of relevance is not just content of the concepts, but the tools used to express ideas.

To quote,

“If student work is to be truly authentic, the tools and methodologies that are used to do that work need to be authentic as well.”

Authenticity and relevance are certainly at risk in schools today…
So is deep teaching/learning. Can we have one without the other?

Well, it’s day two of the NYSCATE conference and I am just a little jaded. We KNOW that it is how teachers teach that makes learning meaningful and engaging for students, not the tools that they use. However, so much of the discussion about these things is about the tools. Granted, folks come to these things in large part just for that reason. But Here are some of the comments I have overheard while sitting down quietly eating lunch from Subway (not paying the $45 to sit at a table in the banquet hall).

– “I just heard the greatest idea… have kids write haikus in PowerPoint!”

– “Did you know that we shouldn’t use serif fonts in our presentations… we should use “sans-serif” (teacher struggling with the pronunciation here)”. Colleague asks, “Why?” Response: “I think it’s harder to read?… and did you know, using Comic Sans is illegal?”

-”I went to two of the Troxell presentations yesterday trying to win a document camera.” (Troxell and other vendor-driven sessions rob attendees of potential professional knowledge they could gain from sessions that actually might make a difference).

Then, to top it off, Marc Prensky’s keynote… sigh. Here it is in a nutshell:
-YouTube rules the world.
-Let kids make “YouTubes” and the world will be a better place.
-All you need to do is use digital tools and wisdom will abound.
-Digital tools somehow make age old, good teaching pedagogy built on the shoulders of giants like Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Papert… somehow new and sexy.
-I am a digital immigrant… a 21st century retard.
-He invites up a panel of “digital natives”, of which only two are in high school and one is 38 with children of her own. Then he asks the hundred million dollar question: “How many of you have cell phones and how many of you use Facebook?” Gary Stager tweets out that his 92 year old grandmother has one and so what?

Granted, he did make some good points, but by and large, I wanted to stand up and scream. Perhaps I should have. I could have competed with his obnoxious beeps that he had strategically placed in his linear 197 slide presentation to keep the audience awake.

After that keynote, I tried to find a presentation that was not solely about cool tools or cool stuff. I tried one, then another. A third sounded hopeful, but the presentation was dreadful. If you’re going to talk about assessment, you’d better be relevant and engaging – that’s all I have to say about that. Thankfully, I ended up in Sylvia Martinez’s session on GenYes. And thankfully, she set Prensky straight on his failure to realize that good has always been good teaching – teaching engages and creates valuable and relevant learning opportunity, not the tools. The tools help… that good teaching is not easy and that it requires more than YouTube and cellphones. Gary Stager talks a great deal about using computers for powerful ideas, but I don’t hear much about powerful ideas

Anyway, I’m really not trying to complain… although I guess that I am. Oh, how I am wishing for sessions that couch new tools within teaching excellence. How I wish I could sense an atmosphere of hungering to improve one’s own teaching craft. Oh, to overhear conversations about how new ideas on more effective teaching have been gleaned rather than which font should be used or isn’t ________ (you fill in the blank) so cool. We all need help… but not help in how to create stunning. gimmicky Powerpoints, flashy podcasts, “interactive” white board lessons, fancy document camera acrobatics, cool videos, clicker quizzes, … We (myself included here) need help on teaching our students in powerful ways and learning how to relinquish some of the control in order to empower them as learners, creators, communicators, problem-solvers, collaborators, meaning-makers,… students who make a difference and who feel empowered.

What if… what if we did away altogether with technology professional development/training and focused solely on effective and meaningful pedagogies while embedding in those pedagogies the necessary tools both teachers and students can use to make learning meaningful, relevant, and powerful?

The day ended with some good conversation in a session with Peter Riley and other leaders in their own right… conversation that needs to continue as we all struggle with how to best negotiate this new digital landscape and continue (or perhaps begin?) to meet the needs of students. I’m hoping that I will find more of these little nuggets – these types of conversations that I missed when the podcasts are available.

My fear is that these conferences do as much (if not more) to preserve the status quo as they do challenge it.

Am I off base here?

The concept of creativity and the great opportunities for problem solving that present themselves when individuals are given the luxury to be creative in schools has been on my mind for the past few days. I have been watching my son “play” with the design game, Phun, and it has been very interesting. If you are not familiar with Phun, it is a free, cross-platform creative design environment where the  user can draw what he/she conceives and watch it work. David Perkins would describe this type of software as a “construction kit“. David Jonassen would define it as a “mindtool“. Physical attributes like gravity, wind, water, slope, motor speed and direction… and so much more can all be manipulated. The Phun website describes it in this way:

“The playful synergy of science and art is novel, and makes Phun as educational as it is entertaining.”

and

“Phun is a fantastic toy for children, where they can learn and appreciate physics, science and simulations in an open ended gameplay with rich creative and artistic freedom, including colorful freehand drawing.”

But, the name is so well chosen because it is just so much fun! My son has now spent a great deal of time trying to design creations that work according to his ideas. Because he has had no formal lessons in how to use Phun, it is all trial-and-error and studying some of the predesigned scenes that come with Phun. Through his creative exploration and problem-solving, he is wrestling with concepts that drive the physical world, like gravity, surface tension of water, how water takes the shape of it’s container, how motors can drive actions that get work done, cause and effect – and I could never list them all. We have also been working at things together because I have been so engaged with it as well and want to figure out how to design things that I can conceive in my mind. The social and collaborative aspect of this has been fantastic as we learn together. He shows me as much as I show him. However, my knowledge and experience allows me to ask him the questions he need to be thinking about and considering as he builds… a perfect scaffolding opportunity and chance to make metacognition explicit.

So, how much will happen like this in school this year? How much room is there in the tightly controlled curriculum with preparation for the myriad of tests he will have to take this year for creative problem-solving and strategic opportunities for social, collaborative metacognitive problem-solving and scaffolding? I like the following quoation found on NCREL’s website:

“Recognizing what you do know in a problem, as well as what you don’t yet understand, are aspects of metacognition in problem solving that are similar to a scaffolding approach. Perkins & Solomon (1989) point out that an expert’s behavior appears to be strongly driven by prior knowledge. When faced with an unfamiliar problem, he or she may construct a similar but simpler problem. In this way, the expert learner manages his/her own gradual self-regulation and enables him/herself to grow to meet the new task successfully.”

So, watch the video below, and, if you can indulge yourself, download it and have some Phun. Challenge your students, your children, your neighbors… to have some Phun. It may be the only opportunity for this type of learning they get all year.

(Disclaimer: This post is not meant to be critical of the democratic party nominee per se… only critical of empty rhetoric)

There have been a number of critics (here, here, here) who have critiqued the commonly used term, “21st century skills” to represent a new skillset that students and workers must possess in this global and highly digital society and economy.

But from this article, it is pretty clear that Obama does not have a clue what 21st century skills really entails. In ths Eschoolnews article, he is quoted as saying (my thoughts in red):

“Without a workforce trained in math, science and technology, and the other skills of the 21st century (so now math and science are skills of the 21st century?), our companies will innovate less, our economy will grow less, and our nation will be less competitive. If we want to out-compete the world tomorrow, we must out-educate (test?) the world today,” Obama said. He added: “While technology has transformed just about every aspect of our lives–from the way we travel, to the way we communicate, to the way we look after our health–one of the places where we’ve failed to seize its full potential is in the classroom. (This is quite true. I have no problem with this statement.)

“Imagine a future where our children are more motivated because they aren’t just learning on blackboards, but on new whiteboards with digital touch screens (So, simply replacing chalkboards…(they aren’t all black these days, senator) with digital whiteboards will revolutionize education. Huh.); where every student in a classroom has a laptop at [his or her] desk; where [students] don’t just do book reports but design PowerPoint presentations (Great! Let’s spend all of that money on technology infrastructure, software, and hardware so students can do PowerPoint book report presentations from their laptops. There’s innovation for you!) ; where they don’t just write papers, but they build web sites (with text copied and pasted from the Internet and from textbooks?); where research isn’t done just by taking a book out of the library, but by eMailing experts in the field (Okay…that’s actually a great idea.); and where teachers are less a source of knowledge than a coach for how best to use it and obtain knowledge(Again, a great idea, but not new in the 21st century either.). By fostering innovation (But what’s the innovation in all of this?), we can help make sure every school in America is a school of the future.

“And that’s what we’re going to do when I’m president. We will help schools integrate technology into their curriculum, so we can make sure public school students are fluent in the digital language of the 21st-century economy. We’ll teach our students not only math and science, but teamwork and critical thinking and communication skills (I hate to be a party pooper here, but these are not new in the 21st century.), because that’s how we’ll make sure they’re prepared for today’s workplace.”

So, what are we left with here? A plug for digital whiteboards, laptops, authoring websites, PowerPoint ad nauseum, and a little constructivist philosophy thrown in the mix. Oh yes, math and science is important. This is not the stuff that great speeches are made of. This is not the rhetoric of an informed politician. And the biggest slap is the subheading to the article: “GOP largely silent on 21st-century skills”. I guess they need to throw some of these terms around as well to make us all happy. Well, I certainly am not happy about what I read. I hope you are not, either. We have been struggling with these learning issues for decades now. Throwing technology into the mix is not the silver bullet. We know that. And funny, but there is no mention of any (with the exception of math and science and the hint of technology-based standardized testing) of this on his webpage regarding educational policy.

So, Mr. Obama (you should read through this), what really needs to happen to see teaching and learning innovation in our nation’s schools? Unless you have that figured out, all of the money you allocate to your “plan for change” will just be more of the same. At least we can use a digital white board to project PowerPoint presentations, right?

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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.