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.

I am reading the book, Blocks to Robots, by Marina Umaschi Bers, and I must say – the first few chapters do a fantastic job at putting technology into perspective as it applies to not only young learners, but adolescent learners as well. In particular, the second chapter presents to perspectives of how children should learn with and about technology: computer literacy and technological fluency.

Computer literacy “relies heavily on developing instrumental skills” whereas technological fluency “focuses on enabling individuals to express themselves creatively with technology.” Both are important and compliment each other. But what I appreciated in addition to this was the following statement that brings much needed balance to many on-going discussions today.

“While developing technological fluency is important for understanding the world of bits and atoms around us, it is just as important to provide children with the vision that technology can also be used to make a better world.”

So often this important dimension of ALL educational practice gets lost in our philosophical discussions and rants about which tool, pedagogy, style, approach, perspective, system, etc… is best. One of the primary goals of a democratic education is to contribute to humanity and make the world a better place for all. With this perspective, we need to think long and hard as to the purpose of our students’ PowerPoint on ________________ (you fill in the blank).

But amongst other great points, Bers  presents six assets or characteristics of thriving individuals taken from the work of applied developmental scientists whereby learners not only learn content, but also “to contribute in positive ways to themselves, their communities, and the world.” These six assets are:

1. competence – in intellectual endeavors and the acquisition of computer literacy and technological fluency
2. confidence – in their own learning potential through technology and their own ability to solve technical problems
3. caring – about others expressed by using technology to engage in collaboration and to help each other when needed
4. connection – with peers or adults to use technologies to form face-to-face or virtual communities and social support networks
5. character – to become aware of their own personal values, be respectful of other people’s values, and assume a responsible use of technology
6. contribution – by conceiving positive ways of using technology to make a better learning environment, community, and society.

This set of assets puts to shame any list of skills and proficiencies that have been generated over the years. It contextualizes isolated skills and gives them meaning. Aren’t we all looking for meaning? Do we really need to evaluate students’ ability to right-click or highlight rows, cells, or columns on a spreadsheet? Are we communicating to teachers and students alike that isolated skills make up learning? ISTE has spent countless hours developing, revising, rewriting, and “refreshing” a list of standards. On the NETS page, there it is: “What you and your students need to know to be tech savvy” and “Today’s Students Need Digital Age Skills”. How about a book that contextualizes skills and gives them meaning… gives them purpose.

Learning should be a gateway to better things… a better world. We forget this far too often. I forget this far too often as I get caught up in the “stuff”. Technology brings so many valuable tools to empower the learner. But meaningful learning contexts are still required.

So, what problems face your students and your community locally that they could tackle? Could they prepare a presentation to present to the school board, the town, the city… It makes me think of this video of a young girl presenting some compelling ideas at the UN titled, “The girl that made the UN silent“…. all done without PowerPoint, too