I snipped this image from a PDF of a scholarly article I’m reading about a new tool (at the time) that was designed for inquiry-based learning in science classrooms. The actual article and the actual tool are not important, but the challenge listed here is. I should note that this challenge (or some form of it) was mentioned at least 4 times throughout the article.

Although the article is more than 10 years old, it highlights so many things that I think are wrong with the current state of tech in education.

What do you think?

Edelson, D.C., Gordin, D.N., & Pea, R.D. (1999). Addressing the challenges of inquiry-based learning through technology and curriculum design. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 8(3&4), 391-450.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago why I don’t think games will be big in schools, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell you why. I simply haven’t been able to articulate the reason why I don’t think they will ever really be incorporated and integrated into schools.

Until now.

I read this article by Constance Steinkuehler at the University of Madison-Wisconsin and Dmitri Williams at the University of Illinois: “Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as ‘Third Places’.” (BTW, you can see the article with my highlights and annotations via Diigo here, in case you are interested.) The article is about how online games, in a social-networking kind of way, provide “Third Places” for users to hang out, share, explore, and learn. I totally agree with this comparison. The article goes into depths comparing various games and users to the definition of Third Places as defined by Ray Oldenburg in The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

The epiphany happened for me when I read this quote (emphasis mine):

First and foremost, third places are defined as neutral grounds where individuals can enter and leave as they see fit without having to ask permission or receive an invitation (as one might in a private space) and without having to “play host” for anyone else. Compare, for example, weekday attendance at the workplace to happy hour attendance at the neighborhood tavern. The former is a second place, marked by financial obligation and rules that structure who is expected to be where and for how long; the latter is a third place, marked by relative freedom of movement. [. . . ] To oblige any one person to play requires that explicit agreements be entered into by parties (much like making arrangements for a recreational team sport), since the default assumption is that no one person is compelled to participate legally, financially, or otherwise. Unless one transforms the virtual world of the game into a workplace (e.g., by taking on gainful employment as a virtual currency “farmer” for example, Dibbell, 2006; Steinkuehler, 2006a) or enters into such agreement, no one person is obligated to log in.

Do As I Say by Viewmaker
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

And then it hit me: I think this is why we will never see games take off in current schools. The game cannot be the Third Place because school is a Second Place. Students are required to be there, required to participate, and marked by rules that structure it.

So, it’s my current belief that until schools are reformed into neutral grounds marked by relative freedom of movement, we’re not likely to see games become something big within them.

To me it was a fascinating look at how engagement and presentation of information leads to learning. It also leads to the discussion in the classroom why some teachers stuggle with students getting on Facebook and others don’t have any trouble at all. Here were administrators who came to the second keynote with all intentions to “screw off” in the chat room…and yet they found the information and presentation so engaging that it didn’t happen.

What Jeff says about engagement and presentation being key to learning really resonates with me. I have been reading about several different cognitive theories of learning and how they apply to using technology in education. Gavriel Salomon was one of the academics (in the ’80s and ’90s) who was saying pretty much what Jeff just narrated: that technology itself cannot simply imply the learning, but that mindfulness needs to be applied for it to be relevant. It sounds like what Jeff is saying in his post is that in the first keynote, the content was not engaging nor presented as something for learning — and therefore the backchannel chat was not aiding learning, either. But on the second day, the keynote was all of these things, and therefore the backchannel was, too.

now what? by dak under CC 2.0

This is part of the reason that I get a bit concerned when educators look to that next “great tool” to help them with all the learning in their classroom. At times I wonder if they want the tool to do all the work for them, as if the tech or media itself will facilitate learning. While this is sometimes true, particularly with software that has been developed specifically for learning, most of the time we are taking tools which have been created with other goals in mind – such as productivity, or content manipulation, or sharing ideas – and trying to make them fit into our learning goals. I don’t necessarily see this as always being a bad thing, but sometimes I feel like the learning is lost at the expense of the tool, because educators are not mindful of the environment needed for learning. As Saloman, Perkins, and Globerson (1991) said, “One can plan, design, experiment, and simulate in ways not possible until now. But does this partnership make students any smarter, better skilled communicators, or better skilled learners (or alternatively, less skilled) as a result?”

In turn, what this means is that without mindful, pedagogical use of a tool on the part of the teacher, we then get students who use tools just for the sake of using them, and not in a way that is mindful. This applies, I feel, whether we are talking about Voicethread, or GoogleDocs, or a calculator. They are all tools that allow us to redefine or restructure the learning task, but they do not implicitly demand effort of our mental processes. It is reminiscent also of this conversation on Wes Freyer’s blog, about how simply having the technology does not mean that students are going to learn.

One of the things that drives me most crazy is when a teacher comes to me saying, “I’ve just heard about this great new thing called [fill-in-the-blank]! It sounds so great! How can I use it in my classroom?” I know that often my colleagues come to me because I seem to be using all sorts of “new cool tools” that perhaps they are not, and so they come to me in earnest, wanting to know how they, too, can enhance learning in their classrooms. But asking a question like this is putting the cart before the horse. What many of these teachers do not realize is that I arrived at that “new cool tool” by asking the question the other way around: “Hey, I really want my kids to be able to [fill-in-the-blank] by the end of this unit. What kind of tool will facilitate that?” … and thus begins my search. And whatever “new cool tool” I’ve used, I’ve tried to support it with scaffolds, differentiation, and mindful learning activities that allow students to think and reflect about what they are learning. I’ll readily admit that it’s not always successful, and I usually can tell right away when I’ve chosen the right or wrong tool for the job, but my learning is a work-in-progress, too, right?

So really, what I wonder is, technology aside:

Where is the meta-cognition in our teaching and learning? When are we thinking about thinking? When — and how — are we asking our students to do the same?

Reference:

Salomon, G, Perkins, D.N., & Globerson, T. (1991). Partners in Cognition: Extending Human Intelligence with Intelligent Technologies. Educational Researcher 20(3), 2-9.

General media comparisons and studies pertaining to their overall instructional impact have yielded little that warrants optimism. Even in the few cases where dramatic changes in achievement or ability were found to result from the introduction of a medium such as television, . . .  it was not the medium per se that caused the change, but rather the curricular reform that its introduction enabled.

I am Here for the Learning Revolution by Wesley Fryer
Attribution-ShareAlike License

This is why, in my opinion, the state of education is so sucky today. Our (educators’) use of technology for learning is hampered by the glass ceiling of curriculum. Only when the curriculum changes will dramatic changes in learning occur. Currently, too many schools are trying to fit square pegs into round holes; that is, teachers are using fabulous technology (IWBs, Tablet PCs, iPod Touch, VoiceThread, and more) to teach curriculum that is still content-based.

These technologies should be reforming curriculum. Why aren’t they?

How can we move this forward? How can we change curricula so that it allows teachers and students “dramatic change”? What is standing in the way, and how can we overcome this obstacle?

Clark, R.E., & Salomon, G. (1986). Media in teaching. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd ed., pp.464-478). New York: Macmillan.

Stay Warm by Erik Charlton
Attribution License

Frank gives us a few web resources now and then that he wants us to look at; whether for inspiration or understanding, I’m unsure. Whatever the case, they are usually interesting reading / viewing, and probably things I would not find myself were I surfing around on the ‘net. Communication Arts magazine has reviewed many different kinds of interaction designs, and given awards to a few. They’re worth checking out, if for no other reason than just to see some of the new, cool, hot designs on the market these days — everything from web design to physical spaces. I’ve been bouncing around their site, looking at different designs and trying to understand what makes them “good.” While sometimes that is obvious, what I find even more fascinating than the designs themselves are the responses to the question CA mag asks of the designer:

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?

Some responses: (emphasis mine)

• “The most challenging part of this project was keeping it simple, staying true to the core ideas and avoiding ‘feature creep.’ . . . I had to stay focused on the original goal—not reinventing the wheel but rather enhancing it.” Sebastian Bettencourt, art director/writer/interface designer/information architect/project design and development, Beyond The Fold
• “One of the primary challenges to designing TokBox was understanding and embracing user interactions that are unique to live video calling.” Chris Fox, design director, TokBox
• “For the Loudspeaker team, the big challenge was caring for the original idea—amplifying the voice of a great cause—as we built the site.” Scott Brown, creative director, The LoudspeakerSite
• “It was a challenge to keep each individual story entertaining and short (there were many ideas that were thrown out because they were too long or just not fun to watch).” Trevor Van Meter, creative director; Luke Lutman, Flash programmer; and Brian McBrearty, composer, Crappy Cat

And this question:

Did you learn anything new during the process?

Responses:

• “I learned that inspiration comes from experience. It comes from rethinking everyday activities and from reconsidering everyday interactions.” Sebastian Bettencourt, art director/writer/interface designer/information architect/project design and development of Beyond The Fold
• “One of the first things we had to face was the huge risk of that transparency, and what it really meant. No approvals. No editing. In the end, it was actually freeing to give up all control to the audience.” Gary Koepke and Lance Jensen, executive creative directors, Modernista!

This has got me wondering about how design influences learning. How conscious are educators of keeping it simple, staying true to the original goals, giving students experiences (rather than instruction), and giving up control to the users? How would schools be different if we did all of this, all of the time? Would there still be schools? If so, what would they look like?

First things first — I am still alive and around.

Yes, this blog has been neglected as of recent months. But I have been around on Twitter, Skype, IM, and a few other places. I haven’t disappeared altogether. It’s just that I find it so hard to properly upkeep this blog when life gets insanely, ridiculously busy. I wish I could be the kind of person that hammers out blog posts whenever I have an idea. But I just can’t. Am I a slow-blogger? I’m not sure. I think it’s just that I am constantly in editing / re-writing mode. So, for me to write a quality post usually takes a long time — at least a couple of dedicated hours, and not fragmented hours. I need time all in one space to write.

Secondly — are you still here?

Is anyone still reading? Or have you all stopped checking into the blogosphere and simply are relying on Twitter and Facebook to keep you in the loop? And really — is anyone still reading my blog? I’ll be honest, if I were a reader of connect. create. question. , I’d be wondering what the heck is going on.  So, here is what has been going on since May 15, 2009 (the date of my last post).

The Nut-shell Version

• The Final Four Weeks: Not only were the final weeks of the school year at UNIS Hanoi busy with exams, assessments, and clean-up like the end of any academic year, but they were particularly emotional for me as I prepared to leave UNIS and Hanoi, my home for the past three years. There is not enough space here for me to adequately describe my feelings about leaving. (I’m terrible at endings.) Let’s just say that it was difficult, scary, and yet exciting on so many levels. I was a bit of a mess for a little while, trying to sort through all the debris, both figurative and literal. Not to mention packing up my house, cats, and international life to return to the very developed world of the USA. I realize I am highly condensing a very intense time and by doing so I am probably not giving it the full respect it deserves, but I am not certain that this blog is the outlet for such things. Thus, I leave it at that for now…
• Travel: My final hurrahs in Asia included a lovely trip to Hoi An, a true getaway to my favorite island of Bali, and a brief check-in with a dear friend in Bangkok. All were fabulous, memorable, and a perfect send-off.
• The Death of the iBook: In the middle of a much-needed creative writing session — in fact, in the middle of the 2nd draft of a poem about the lessons of grief, inspired by Sark — my beloved 5-year-old iBook crashed and died, as I sat on the balcony of my bungalow on Nusa Lembongan, sipping a Bintan and gazing at the sunset. I cried.
• The Return: because my visa documents for study in the USA could not be sent to Vietnam (postal woes), I had to return to Canada for a few weeks. Plus, there’s family and friends of course, whom I wanted to see. I was able to take in the Calgary Folk Festival, a true treat, and mix & mingle with several cool people whom I love dearly. It was good to be home. I spent a week at my grandmother’s house and thoroughly enjoyed picking garden lettuce, playing bocce, and eating my grandmother’s cooking! Deeeee-lightful. Yet, the stress of The Visa Papers lingered… would they arrive in time?
• The Fall: shortly after my return to Calgary, I received word that one of my cats, Scout, had fallen off the balcony of the 8th-floor apartment where she was being cared for. She did not survive the fall. This heartbreak arrived the same day as I learned that Michael Franti had to cancel his Folk Festival show due to illness, and I got a $95 parking ticket because my ticket was not completely upright on the dashboard. It was a crappy day all around.
• The Move: within a very short time, It All Happened. The Visa Papers arrived, I booked a flight, and BOOM — I landed in NYC.

And Here We Are

So, I’ve been in NYC for about 3 weeks now. I have a (very small) apartment, and I am a registered full-time graduate student in NYU’s Educational Communication & Technology M.A. program. To say I am experiencing rapid lifestyle changes across the board would still be an understatement. I am adjusting to a major life upheaval. The main challenges for me so far, and in this order, are:

1. adjusting to being in a very developed consumerist society, after having witnessed abject poverty in far-flung corners of this planet
2. wrapping my head around being a full-time student, with no $ coming in and lots going out
3. wrapping my head around being a full-time student in the 21st century, and understanding how to read, take notes, and BE a student in a tertiary program when it has been 11+ years since I’ve had to think about academia. I feel like I am learning a new language and modality, and it’s difficult.
4. finding my niche in NYC, a huge intimidating city with many micro-communities
5. managing my time between unpacking boxes and all this school work that is already piling up, while at the same time trying to make new friends (I know very few people here) and take in all that this city has to offer
6. finding space in my Teeny Tiny Apartment for the whack of stuff I have accumulated over the last 8 years overseas — and that’s after 4 boxes already went in storage in Calgary. I have already called Manhattan Mini Storage for a quote…

The Education: What’s in Store

Classes started last week. So far, so good. (I still have not unpacked all my boxes, nor visited Ikea, but they will have to wait.) I haven’t even bought all my books yet. But my classes seem pretty cool and so do my classmates — a very diverse group of people from a plethora of backgrounds. My courseload this semester:

• Representation & Interaction Design for Learning
• Educational Design for Media Environments
• Cognitive Science and Educational Technology
• Professional Applications of Educational Media

(You can find descriptions of these courses here.)

So far I am finding my readings to be really heavy on the design aspect, which for me is good. Coming from an educator’s perspective, my understanding of the design process has all been about instructional design and I am quite comfortable with it. However, looking at design from the perspective of media and technology in learning is something new to me, and I daresay it’s one of the main reasons I’m here. But more on that later. I will be blogging about my readings for several of these courses, and will save such thoughts for those posts.

Lastly

Thanks for reading, if you’re still kickin’ around! I can safely say that I will be blogging more often now that school has begun. Several of my professors have requirements for us to journal about what we read and learn (I love that they implement pedagogy like this) and I intend to use this space for some of that.

P.S. I do now have a new MacBook Pro and an iPhone, and quite happy about both!

Image credits:

Is Anybody Home? Free Girl Looking in Window by D Sharon Pruitt under this license

Bathmophobia III by Tarnishedrose under this license

Other times, change hits you like a sledgehammer and you sit straight upright in your chair, wondering, “When and how the heck did this happen?”

Today is one of the latter: I’ve been hit with the Change Sledgehammer. 

While on Twitter, Karl Fisch tweeted about his latest post titled “Things Just Changed. Again.” Intrigued, I clicked the link. Within minutes, my world has changed.

• Read Karl’s post.
• Watch the screencast, which will introduce you to Wolfram Alpha, a “computational knowledge engine.”
• Pick your jaw up off the floor. 
• Tell everyone you know, especially educators.

We’re trying to take as much of the world’s knowledge as possible, and make it computable.

One of the many wonderful teachers I have had the pleasure of working with is Twee Merrigan. Twee is a dynamic and focused teacher whose openness and generosity is not only overflowing, but infectious. Her energy is genuine, and she wants her students to be genuine, too. I think this is what I appreciate most about Twee — that she expects you to be no one other than who you are. However, Twee recognizes that sometimes things get out of balance. And, let’s face it: things are often out of balance for various reasons.

Let’s look at education for a minute. (Not forgetting, of course, that this is an education blog, first and foremost!) One of the reasons I began this blog was an effort to balance some inequities I saw that were unaddressed in The System:

• the unfairness of some prevalent methods of assessment and grading practices
• the treatment of viewing and speaking skills as secondary to reading and writing
• the lack of access to technology in schools, or — even worse — the use of abundantly available technology being used to “do” teaching and learning the way we did 15 or even 5 years ago, despite the fact that our world has changed
• the lack of student choice in “standard” classrooms, being primarily driven by choices made by curriculum, teachers’ backgrounds, or admin decisions

Twee has recently written about how to, in the words of The Doors, “Break on through to the other side.” She suggests we re-name Global Warming and Economic Crisis to Global Balancing and Economic Re-alignment. Think about this for a minute. This is really what we are trying to do: we are trying to balance everything in the world.

So my question of the moment is this: How do we re-align education? 

My initial response is, “I have no idea.” My second response is, “I have a thousand ideas!” And then I get overwhelmed — out of balance again. 

Secondary questions, beneath the “How do we re-align education?” umbrella are:

• Can we re-align education? or does it have to be completely re-designed — that is, do we have to throw it all away and start all over?
• What parts of education need the most alignment attention? Is it the issues of academic vs. creative knowledge, as Ken Robinson emphasizes in Out of Our Minds? Or is it something else?

Thus ends my initial post on how I hope to approach education issues: with the hope of re-aligning and putting things in balance. I don’t profess to have any answers — only more questions. But please feel free to post your own ideas in comments. Or Tweet ‘em to me.

Dear Adrienne,
The ECT Faculty Admissions Committee is pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Fall 2009 Master of Arts class in the Program in Educational Communication and Technology. This is our pre-notification to you. You will receive your official acceptance package from the Steinhardt Office of Graduate Admissions within the next week to 10 days.

The ECT faculty hope you continue to view the focus of our program — the design of technology-based learning environments, informed by theory in the learning sciences — an excellent match with your professional interests and goals.

You Can Go Your Own Way by andy in nyc
Attribution-NonCommercial License

This post is a response to Clay Burell, blogger for Education on Change.org, one of my new favorite online networks. I’ve followed Clay for a long time both on his personal blog, Beyond School, and in his new home. He’s one of the few educators whose ideas truly make me think, and I admire him for his tenacity and his forthright initiatives, which are all too often very difficult to maintaing in this field. This is not the first time Clay and I have disagreed, but it is perhaps the first time we have disagreed so strongly. You might want to read Clay’s original post first, and the comments that follow — a lengthy debate about Bill Gates’ TED talk and Clay’s response to it. Clay’s last comment to me challenged me to find and quote him on the unjustified assertions I accuse him of. Before I go further, please note that I see this as very healthy banter.

Well, maybe it’s gone past banter now…?

Clay, the links you reference to KIPP schools *are* valid. But I thought you were writing this post about Bill Gates and his TED Talk, not KIPP schools. Therefore, many of the references to KIPP don’t really belong in this argument about whether Gates is attacking teachers. Perhaps instead you’d like to write a(nother) post on why KIPP schools don’t work and why people like Gates shouldn’t support them. But your post title references Gate’s TED Talk, of which KIPP is a part, not the whole.

On making connections and jumping to conclusions

There are many places in your post and your comments where you make links between ideas, words, and concepts which simply are not logical or obvious. What follows are examples of your doing this.

“I think what Gates is getting at is firing teachers and dismantling public schools in favor of privatized charters”

The word dismantling means taking them apart, destroying them. Thus, I think it’s reasonable for myself (and others) to have concluded that you were referring to the end of public schools.

“Mosquitos cause pestilence. Let’s drive that point home with massive projections of them – and then release them into the audience.

Then let’s talk about undesireable people that our society can do without.”

And later,

“Let’s close the ‘pestilence’ – ‘teachers’ pattern with the final frame of two more diseases: pneumonia and AIDS.”

Really Random? by Dan Morelle
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Here, and in your video, you make a connection between pestilence and teachers, but Gates doesn’t do that. Gates simply says mosquitos cause malaria. Poor structure on his part, yes, but he’s NOT talking about undesirable people that our society can do without – that’s your unfounded and unsupported conclusion. Nowhere does Gates use the word “pestilence” or anything resembling it.

“Then let’s sell two things: technology that will collect test scores we can use to fire teachers (he doesn’t say this, but that’s why “Some people are threatened by this stuff,” as he so dismissively puts it); and a book on the “great teachers” at KIPP schools (two of which are currently accused of intimidating teachers for moving to unionize).

It’s a push for technology and charter schools.”

Gates is not making a plea here to push the technology for standardized testing. He’s pushing a new model, KIPP, yes. But technology? Huh? He’s saying that some people are threatened by new models and new ways of thinking of education. Your jump to it being “a push for technology and charter schools” is an unreasonable one. (I’ll come back to the charter schools issue in a minute.)

Another instance of you making an assumption and judgment is when Gates says: “the teacher improvement data could not be made available and used in the tenure decision for the teachers. And so that’s sort of working in the opposite direction. But I’m optimistic about this, I think there are some clear things we can do.”

But you translate this as:

“He does liken teachers who resist test-based evaluations to ‘the problem.’ “

No, he does not “liken teachers who resist test-based evaluations to ‘the problem’.” He talks about teacher improvement data – which could, actually be a LOT of different kinds of data, not necessarily test-based – and how it could not be used to decide tenure, and how THAT is a problem. (And, it is a problem.)

“Gates doesn’t have time for those studies, apparently. To him it’s ’simple.’ We need KIPP schools and no more unions.”

Again, Gates doesn’t mention unions, and he uses KIPP only as an example. Which reminds me, I think we are talking at cross-purposes regarding the “privatization of public education.”  To me, privatization means tuition or business ownership. Charter schools are, as far as I know, publicly funded — ie., taxpayers dollars. So what do you mean when you say “privatization of public education”?

One more jump-into-the-inaccurate-accusation lake: when you mention Gates’s

“use of statistics and scientific-looking graphs to justify the scapegoating.”

So the next time any teacher or tech integrationist  — or anyone for that matter — uses statistics and graphs to prove a point, and that point happens to be about specific group of people, they are propaganda-ists?

On Emotion and Blogging

I observe the similar juxtaposition between the structure, symbolism, and rhetoric of Gates’ talk and a propaganda film that happens to have been a product of an historical era that causes emotional reactions from people.

That’s just it – I think you’ve made this too emotional. It’s not. It’s a big-name CEO sharing his thoughts about what he thinks needs to be changed about teachers. You are taking it personally, for reasons unbeknowst to your blog audience.

Yes, propaganda relies on emotional appeals – like yours, I’d say. But Gates? I didn’t see any emotional appeals in there. None at all.

Blogging about an intial reaction, finally, is not a problem. That’s what bloggers do. The reaction was justified with the similarities I’ve already repeated ad infinitum.

Perhaps this is what bloggers do when they are simply sharing and not aiming to convince. If you want us to believe you (and Change.org exists, well, for regular people like us to create change), you will provide reasoned and logical responses, not knee-jerk first reactions. So tell me please, what was your purpose in writing this post? Was it simply to express an emotion? or was it to persuade? This is, I think, what Jean was getting at with the reference to the selling. It seems as though you were trying to sell an idea, and doing so in an emotionally charged way (as Jean says) just doesn’t hold water with me. In fact it makes your points, even if they are worth listening to, less credible. My point here: if you want to express emotion and outrage in an initial reaction, go ahead. But perhaps the Change.org venue is not the place. Or, you can title your post differently. Purpose and audience: you know they are the two golden keys to effective writing.

It’s a JUMP to CONCLUSIONS mat! Get it!?
by Katkreig Attribution-NonCommercial License

You know, Clay, that I respect you greatly and have keenly followed your work and ideas for some time now. But this post has really rubbed me the wrong way. Even if your points are not valid, the method in which you’ve chosen to present them is inflammatory and rash.

This week, you win the Jump-to-Conclusions Award… which reminds me of a funny scene from one of my favorite movies, Office Space. If you haven’t seen it — a must-see for anyone who has ever worked in a corporate American-style office — watch the clip below. [Warning: this clip has some strong language]

(And yes, I did know Gates was a college, not HS, dropout. Thanks to Carl and Alfred for correcting that. Sorry – I was writing rather quickly.)