Shoes for Industry

I’ve read many acknowledgements from our group that there’s a major need to incorporate technology into our teaching and cater more to the needs of modern day learners. I think we would all agree that this is important and that there are major institutional hurdles such as standardized testing and restrictive funding which are standing in the way.

One of the factors that is perhaps most influential in preventing better use of technology in teaching is the fact that no one really knows how to do it properly. We’ve seen plenty of interesting examples such as the MCC podcast lessons. A common one in my area is using a PowerPoint to teach (once in a while some brave teachers will have their own students create a PowerPoint showing what they’ve learned or researched). Internet research is obviously faster than going to the library. You see lots of kids playing some sort of Sponge Bob spelling game on their portable LeapFrog. Attempts at using technology to teach are out these but at the end of the day the research to support any of its validity is lacking.

I read an article when I was taking computer courses at Tarleton that came out in 2008 in which a fellow named Roderick Sims pointed out that teaching has a certain pedagogy which doesn’t translate to these new technologies so well. “Theories of behaviorism, cognitivism, and contructivism…fall short when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arenas.” (The article was in Distance Education, it was called “Rethinking (e)learning: a manifesto for connected generations”).

We have all of these models for teaching that were tried and tested back in the 70s once the flaws of the factory model of education were being realized. We teach them in our education classes. They work really well if they’re used properly. But when you begin to think about a kid who can use Google at any hour of the day or night to try to learn something and that many students would love to learn collaboratively with others via blogs or “tweets”, they begin to be inadequate. They are NOT useless or failed. But they’re perhaps the Left Brain of teaching. They’re important but no longer adequate by themselves. We can’t throw them away but maybe the Right Brain side that needs to come in for balance will involve taking all new looks at teaching.

I met a man in Cincinnati at a Primary Years Programme conference (J.T. was my roommate) who had put together his own charter school. Students there spent very little time with teachers. Their teachers assigned daily tasks, scheduled brief mini-lessons, floated around and helped but they didn’t hold classes or hand out tests. Learning was collaborative and self-directed. The teacher/student relationship was much more equal. The kids worked alone, with one another, and with their teachers to achieve the tasks that they had been assigned and the ones they had created for themselves. I asked him about the students’ levels and he said a lot of them were labeled Special Ed. He also said that the only test prep they did for the standardized tests in New York was a few brief lessons explaining the format of questions. Apparently they did quite well.

Removing some institutional barriers like huge schools with large numbers of students, restrictive funding, and standards that may not even be all that appropriate in the Conceptual Age would help to open the door for more schools following that Montessori-esque model.

I’m jumping around here a bit. I guess my point is that a lot of experimentation needs to be done before we can really say that we’re incorporating technology in a meaningful way. There are lots of ideas from simulations to games to podcasting and texting but there needs to be some concerted, systemic efforts to try lots of different approaches and to measure the results in both qualitative and quantitative ways.  

In the end, I anticipate that the answers we find are likely to follow Sims’ manifesto in which students and teachers have a much more equal relationship. Students learn from teachers but teachers will learn from students as well as they strive to offer learning experiences that are relevant in a changing world. Curriculum and scope and sequence may go out the window as student needs change yearly. Collaboration between learners worldwide will foster shared experiences and understanding and more diverse citizens. I think the PYP school described above is being brave enough to create a learning environment unlike most and is moving towards shared learning and collaboration and it’s this kind of situation that will open the door to discovering the best uses of technology and adjusting our pedagogy to match.