Tag Archive for 'technology'

Trick or Tweet?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 27, 2009 in Students and Teaching. 2 Comments

Some months ago, I challenged teachers to give examples of good classroom uses of Twitter without using the term “engagement.”  In other words, is it possible to use the micro-blogging site to extend learning or create understanding in a superior way to other teaching methods?  It led to a lively discussion, but I’m not sure I ever heard a compelling answer.

Along comes a recent EdWeek look at classroom uses of Twitter, which describes how teachers “first found Twitter valuable for reaching out to colleagues and locating instructional resources. Now, they’re trying it out in the classroom as an efficient way to distribute assignments and to foster collaboration among students.”  Kathleen Kennedy Manzo’s piece also sounds a cautious and skeptical tone, noting the educational effectiveness of Twitter “or the implications those quick, short-form communications may have for students’ thinking and learning are not known.”

The piece reproduces a series of Tweets from an 11th grade history class in Virginia:

teacher From slavery 2 White House, Michelle Obama’s slave roots revealed. Comments please!
7:46 PM Oct 8th from web

student 1 @fhsush this is really shocking that they traced it back that far and found a tie it really just amazing
8:07 PM Oct 8th from web

student 2 @fhsush thats AMAZING. times have really changed. that is amazing that they can trace back that far.
8:11 PM Oct 8th from web in reply to fhsush

student 1 @fhsush WOW! i would have never guessed that. its awesome to see such a connections to slavery in our own White House. amazing
8:19 PM Oct 8th from web in reply to fhsush

I don’t wish to be unkind, but this is not exactly a riveting exchange for 11th graders, although to be fair, 140 characters is not a lot to work with unless you write headlines for the New York Post.   Lucas Ames, the history teacher in the above exchange apparently gives students the choice of “participating in the Twitter feed or writing an extra research paper.” (Somewhere Will Fitzhugh is clutching his chest and gasping for breath.)

“These students are not always sure about how to use the Internet to find and filter information, so this is forcing them to do that,” said Mr. Ames, who requires students to submit only school-related tweets. “It’s getting kids who aren’t necessarily engaged in class engaged in some sort of conversation.”

Manzo quotes Dan Willingham extensively in the piece.  His attitude seems more agnostic than skeptical. 

Like any other tool, the way we make it useful is to consider very carefully what this particular tool is very good at, rather than simply say, ‘I like Twitter, so how can I use it?’ ” said Mr. Willingham, who is the author of the new book, Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom.  “The medium is not enough,” he added. “People talk about the vital importance of Web 2.0 and 3.0, and that kids have got to acquire those skills. But we can’t all just be contributing to wikis and tweeting each other. Somebody’s got to create something worth tweeting.”

Having started out as a Twitter skeptic, I’ve warmed to it a little.  I’ve certainly found it helpful, as Manzo writes, as a way to share resources and keep up with what others are saying and reading.  But it’s not very satisfying for anything other than one-way communication—sending or receiving.   It’s the equivalent of scanning the headlines of the paper.  When something intrigues me, I need more than the headline offers.  Thus my challenge to describe a learning activity for which Twitter offers more than student engagement may be a fool’s errand.  In the end, that might be the alpha and omega of what Twitter is good at, per Willingham.  That’s not nothing.  But engagement isn’t learning–it’s a prerequisite to learning.

Time On-Text

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 19, 2009 in Students. 0 Comments

American teenagers pound out an extraordinary number of text messages.  We knew this.  But a poll reported by USA Today indicates that one-fourth of their texts are sent during class, despite widespread cellphone bans. 

The survey of 1,013 teens — 84% of whom have cellphones — also shows that a significant number have stored information on a cellphone to look at during a test or have texted friends about answers. More than half of all students say people at their school have done the same.  Only about half of teens say either of the practices is a “serious offense,” suggesting that students may have developed different personal standards about handwritten information vs. material stored on cellphones, says pollster Joel Benenson.

Serious offense? Haven’t you heard? Using technology to get answers isn’t cheating. Dude, it’s a 21st-freakin’-century skill! 

USA Today’s Greg Toppo notes the poll’s reported average of 440 text messages a week on average — 110 of them during class–works out to more than three texts per class period. “The findings also reveal a split in perception between teens and parents: Only 23% of parents whose children have cellphones think they are using them at school; 65% of students say they do,” he reports.

Concerns Over “False Transparency”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 4, 2009 in Teaching. 4 Comments

What makes two smart but small and decidedly non-athletic middle school boys want to risk life and limb to try out for the school football team?  Their teacher Bill Ferriter was shocked at their answer.  “”We’re going to be great at football,” they replied.  “We completely dominate in Madden 2008 on our PlayStations.  No one can beat us!”

These two boys who had never played an organized sport in their life—-let alone an organized sport where physicality is essential for success and where brutal hits are commonplace—-had convinced themselves that football was the right sport for them because of their video game prowess.  In their minds, mastering skills with digital players on an electronic field in their living rooms translated somehow into an belief that they would excel on a real field wearing real pads trying to tackle 200-pound kids without breaking their necks!

Ferriter, a North Carolina teacher who writes the superb blog The Tempered Radical, is concerned about the “false transparency” created by video games.  Kids claim to be good at playing the guitar because they’ve mastered Guitar Hero.  Or they express an interest in becoming soldiers because “war seems fun” after playing Call of Duty.  “Becoming more ‘realistic’ by the year, new digital toys seem to provide the ‘complete experience’for users who walk away believing that they ‘know’ just what it means to be a rock star, battlefield general, or super-jock,” Ferriter writes.

Deeply strange.  And disturbing.  Ferriter, who is typically bullish on technology-assisted learning, worries this false transparency is hurting kids.

I’m just starting to wonder whether one of the unintended consequences of easy access to electronic experience is that we’re raising a generation of children who have a flawed sense of their personal strengths and weaknesses?  Are middle schoolers—-who love fantasy and imagination to begin with—confused, failing to find the line between fiction and reality when determining what they “know” and “can do?”

Interesting and provocative insights from one of our most thoughtful classroom observers. 

(HT: Anthony Rebora)

When in Rome…

Published by Robert Pondiscio on April 9, 2009 in Curriculum and Teaching. 0 Comments

I’ve expressed the opinion on this blog and elsewhere that a good test of technology in education is whether the technology deepens student understanding.  If a technology-driven lesson would work just as well on any work of literature, bit of history, etc., then it’s about the tool, not the subject under study. 

Courtesy of my new BFF, Clay Burell, comes this outstanding example of how technology can truly add value.  Google Earth’s 3D views of Ancient Rome are eye-popping and would probably do more to help students see Rome as a vibrant, thriving metropolis than even walking the ruins.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=MqMXIRwQniA">http://youtube.com/watch?v=MqMXIRwQniA</a>

I missed this at the time, but Google had a contest for teachers to come up with the best lesson plans using the site, reports Ed Week’s Digital Education.

21st Century Sales Pitch

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 17, 2009 in Education News and Research and Reports. 6 Comments

A study released today shows that using cell phones in math class improves test results. Well, it seems to show improvement.  Skeptics will note the study was financed by cellphone-maker Qualcomm. The New York Times reports it’s an opening salvo in an effort to position cellphones as educational tools.

Some critics already are denouncing the effort as a blatantly self-serving maneuver to break into the big educational market. But proponents of selling cellphones to schools counter that they are simply making the same kind of pitch that the computer industry has been profitably making to educators since the 1980s.

9th and 10th grade math students in four North Carolina schools in low-income neighborhoods were given “smartphones” meant to help them with their algebra studies. “The students used the phones for a variety of tasks, including recording themselves solving problems and posting the videos to a private social networking site, where classmates could watch,” the Times reports.  “The study found that students with the phones performed 25 percent better on the end-of-the-year algebra exam than did students without the devices in similar classes.”

“Texting, ringing, vibrating,” the AFT’s Janet Bass tells the Times. “Cellphones so far haven’t been an educational tool. They’ve been a distraction.” She adds that it’s “almost laughable that the cellphone industry is pushing a study showing that cellphones will make kids smarter.”

The issue of business interests in education is thorny and tough to unwind.  The board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, for example, has representatives from Intel, HP, Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Cisco and other tech companies.  While they are wise to be concerned about the capabilities of their future employees, they may also stand to benefit from building their share of the education market.  The ability to weigh the interests of sources of information, and think critically about their value is, of course, a key 21st Century skill.

A Measure of Privacy

Published by Diana Senechal on February 11, 2009 in Essay, Teaching and accountability. 1 Comment

Shhh…. Stop thinking, spout out some keywords, earn us some points, and be done with it! What are you waiting for? You have been sitting there for like a minute saying nothing! Say something, anything, just get some words out there for the group! Hello? Hello? What are you, a mummy or something? Come on, it’s so easy, just read these words! That’s it, we’re getting a new group member. You’re bringing down our stats! Oh, look, Miss Cameron’s coming our way! She’s onto you!

Recently Robert Pondiscio sent me a link to an article about new software enabling teachers to monitor small-group online discussion in the classroom. Developed by European and Israeli researchers involved in the “Argunaut project,” this software offers real-time statistics on students’ patterns of conversation during class. Teachers can view instantaneous data on groupwork and receive automated alerts. The new software can:

… alert the teacher when one student is not contributing, or is being ignored, or is dominating the conversation. It also renders exchanges in a graphic manner, readily describing the ongoing discussion at a glance. And teachers can program the software to signal when certain keywords occur, such as when Napoleon appears in a conversation about the French revolution.

I will leave aside the implications for the future. The present is grim enough. The software casts light on conditions in our classrooms today, for instance: (a) the emphasis on process over content; (b) the changes to the teachers’ role; and (c) the influence of technology on curriculum. All of these merit analysis, but I will focus on a problem rarely discussed: (d) the erosion of privacy in the classroom. It is not that the teachers can read students’ thoughts, but rather that students are prevented from thinking privately in the first place.

The problem of lost privacy is elusive and rampant. We have become more isolated and less private at once. On the train we are treated to rude and raging cell phone conversations. On internet networks like Facebook, users keep their “friends” informed of their latest actions: taking a sip of coffee, confronting an employee, patching a leak in the ceiling, or calling an ex-spouse. We must step back from this revelatory muddle in order to keep something to ourselves. We must teach children to do the same.

Can schools teach privacy or even honor it? For the most part, a school is not a private place, nor can it be. Students regularly submit their work to their teachers. Administrators visit classrooms and observe lessons in progress. Visitors come to evaluate schools. Schools send reports to their districts. Adults must look out for the welfare of the children; nothing should escape their eye. Yet much learning takes place in the seclusion of the mind. To think independently and well, we must think alone, removing ourselves from distractions and passing influences. We do this when solving a math problem, pondering a historical question, or memorizing a poem. Schools may have forgotten the importance of this. In their mania for “student engagement,” they blithely discard private thought with no regard for consequences.

Classrooms around the country, from kindergarten into college, have replaced teacher-led instruction with the “workshop model,” typically a short lesson followed by small-group activity in which each group member has a specific task. One member may be the note-taker, another the timer, another the spokesperson, and another the moderator. As the group busies itself, the teacher actively monitors the groups and records their behavior on forms and checklists. Is everyone engaged? Are they practicing Accountable Talk®? Does everyone have a specific role? Are they producing evidence of their work?

Teachers must submit to the same model in their professional development sessions. In a typical PD, teachers are placed in small groups with chart paper and a task to complete. The facilitator moves from group to group, looking over teachers’ shoulders and making sure they are working. The session is supposed to serve as a model for the teachers’ own classroom processes. Everyone is supposed to be active all the time; everyone is accountable to the task.

When I was growing up, teachers did not peer over our shoulders or take notes on our behaviors. We were expected to participate, but we had the option of retreating into our minds. The subject was the main focus. Class time was not task-heavy; it was mainly devoted to the learning of new concepts and information. If, on a given day, we chose to stay silent, we could. Even if the teacher called on us, that would only last a few minutes, and then we could return to our thoughts. Certain classes (such as language classes) demanded more active participation, but others let us stay quiet for stretches of time.

Of course this had its own drawbacks: some students would participate much more than others. Some might make the most of their mental autonomy; others might doodle, pass notes, or hold back from asking questions. In a large class it is hard for the teacher to call on everyone or keep track of everyone’s understanding. Some students slip behind and then have difficulty catching up. Others pull through but with little interest.

For these reasons, some believe that the “workshop model” offers something that the “traditional” classroom cannot. It promises to involve all children in the lesson and to bring out those who rarely speak. Proponents of the workshop model sincerely believe that children will come to a better understanding of the subject through small-group discussion and activity. Not only that, but they see the model improving with technology. Soon teachers will be able to keep track of everyone at all times!

This is already happening. M.I.T. has abandoned introductory physics lectures in favor of Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL), a variant of the workshop model combined with technology. According to a New York Times article, TEAL relies heavily on handheld gadgets:

One of the newer professors, Gabriella Sciolla, who arrived in 2003, was teaching a TEAL class on circuits recently. She gauged the level of understanding in the room by throwing out a series of multiple-choice questions. The students “voted” with their wireless “personal response clickers” – the clickers are essential to TEAL – which transmitted the answers to a computer monitored by the professor and her assistants.

If any students value the life of the mind, M.I.T. students likely do. Do M.I.T. students regard these clickers lovingly? The article sings only praises of the program, but some comments clang dissent. One student scoffs: “‘Personal response clickers’? Ask any student how they feel about them and discover that they’d much rather hurl them into the Charles than actually use them, if not for the fact that participation points are oftentimes given out as inducements for clicking.” Another student observes: “The clickers, which have receivers positioned around the room on the ceiling, distract students from the physics concepts themselves.”

Ah, the concepts themselves! Students of all ages need privacy of mind. It may vary by grade, subject, or student, but it should not go away. Workshops and gadgets must not take over education, even if they have a modest role in it. If privacy of mind brings some risk of failure, we need that risk. Otherwise we give up the sanctuary of thought: the slow struggle with a problem, the frustrations and breakthroughs, the questions and insights, the romance with the subject. This is too great a loss. In the classroom we need just a measure of privacy, but that measure we must defend.

Diana Senechal teaches theatre and ESL at P.S. 108, an official Core Knowledge school in New York City.  She has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale. Her translations of the Lithuanian poetry of Tomas Venclova appeared last fall in a new volume, The Junction.

Report: Visual Media Hampers Critical Thinking Skills

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 9, 2009 in Education News and Research and Reports. 5 Comments

The “informal learning environments” of television, video games, and the Internet are producing learners with a new profile of cognitive skills, says UCLA psychology professor Patricia Greenfield.  Our visual skills are improving, while our critical thinking abilities are in decline, according to a review of 50 studies on learning and technology conducted by Greenfield and published in the journal Science. 

Formal education must adapt to these changes, taking advantage of new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence and compensating for new weaknesses in higher-order cognitive processes: abstract vocabulary, mindfulness, reflection, inductive problem solving, critical thinking, and imagination. These develop through the use of an older technology, reading, which, along with audio media such as radio, also stimulates imagination. Informal education therefore requires a balanced media diet using each technology’s specific strengths in order to develop a complete profile of cognitive skills. 

What’s the upshot for educators?  At ARS Technica, John Trimmer notes because she recognizes that both forms of skills have their place, “Greenfield advocates a balanced approach to the rising tide of visual content obtained through informal education. First, she argues that schools should emphasize textual materials during the learning process in order to provide a counterbalance to the informal learning environment. But, for testing purposes, we could do a better job of providing a more balanced approach than the typical all-text method of evaluating skills and recall. “

Student-Delivered PD?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 5, 2008 in Teacher Training. 6 Comments

I like Scott McLeod’s thoughtful and often provocative ed tech blog Dangerously Irrelevant.  But I’m a little skeptical about an idea he’s floating.  He starts off a new post with two self-evident observations:  1) Most staff development is awful, and 2) Kids are often technology “experts” on technology.  No argument there. But he follows those ideas off a cliff, proposing a Big Idea:  Have students deliver technology-related professional development for teachers.

The kids get the learning power and social/emotional benefit of being teachers and leaders. Adults and other students learn from the true experts. All we have to do is walk away from our egos and our fear and embrace our mission statements, the ones that say that we all should be learners and say nothing about from whom we must learn. How about it? You ready to start doing this?

How about no?  I applaud McLeod’s premise and agree that we should give kids every opportunity to be the experts.   Letting them be responsible for classroom computer maintenance and training for parents and younger students would be useful and “authentic.”  Perhaps I’m just quibbling about the what constitutes “professional development.”  But training that simply tells teachers how to use tech tools doesn’t meet my definition of professional development.  Good technology P.D. should be focused on effective instruction using technology — technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself – and that is (one assumes) beyond what a student can deliver.  We should be past the point of thinking we’re teaching with technology because we have computers and smart boards in the classroom.

$68 Laptops for Students

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 14, 2008 in Education News. 5 Comments

The Portuguese government today began an ambitious plan to distribute half a million super-cheap “Magellan” laptops to school children at a subsidized price of 50 euros –about $68 U.S — in a bid to boost the computer literacy of Portugal’s elementary age school children. 

Portugal has some of the lowest school achievement levels in western Europe and Prime Minister Jose Socrates has made boosting education a key priority. The project’s goal is two create a two-student-per-laptop ration in the country’s schools by 2010.

The computers cost just under $400 without the government subsidy.

Digital Divide

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 3, 2008 in Educational Policy. 0 Comments

Utah’s Board of Education today will take up a proposal to require the state’s school districts to put guidelines in place governing the use of cell phones and other electronic devices in classrooms.  Past board discussions have run the gamut from banning cell phones from campus to using them for educational purposes, the Deseret News notes. 

Utah’s education officials and lawmakers point to recent incidents of students using camera phones to take nude photos of themselves and others. Texting is being used for harassment or bullying. But many adults admit there is an opportunity to harness this technology that teens are so obsessed with and potentially use it to promote education.

The state’s legislators rejected a measure earlier this year to require all school districts to adopt an electronic-device policy. The bill didn’t pass, the paper notes, but state education officials took notice.

Meanwhile over at The Tempered Radical, teacher Bill Ferriter worries that “those who are in the position to make decisions about how dollars are spent or how instruction should change struggle to understand the range of ways that digital tools can be used to facilitate the work of groups or the learning of individuals.”