We are conditioned to believe that the mode of learning in our classrooms should involve a very high degree of control on the part of the teacher. Maybe thats why we persist in trying to integrate technology into the teacher-centred classroom by replacing her with a computer (see Chicago's VOISE academy).
Since we first started having serious discussions about "technology integration", we have looked for ways to replace the teacher with some form of virtual instruction. I was a willing and eager participant in the search for an integration formula at a Canadian University in the early 90's. First, we tried whole-course multimedia development - even great teachers, people with an exceptional rapport with their students, pulled themselves out of the classroom to create multimedia courseware.
Months or frustration (climbing steep learning curves), and many thousands of dollars later, we found that modules did not hold students’ attention and that student performance declined. More tellingly, students who had been expected to love the new medium, felt shortchanged - they had wanted the great teacher, not some digital facsimile.
Amazingly, the conclusion of our school and many others was not to abandon multimedia courseware but to hire dedicated (and expensive) artists and programmers with the expertise to build more attractive and interactive courseware (much of which turned-out to lack the substance that would have been injected by the subject-matter expert). We were not alone. Large US companies, betting on predictions from big names that elearning would make huge profits, lost millions of dollars developing multimedia that wouldn't sell (Tony Bates, 2005).
One of the reasons why coureware didn't work is that it often came from one of 2 flawed sources: 1. companies who put it in the hands of designers and programmers who made it pretty and functional but very light on content OR 2. post secondary institutions and other groups with subject-area expertise who created content-rich product that gave little or no consideration to the teachers and their curriculum. As someone who spent up to 10 days designing an individual screen on a CD ROM (to be viewed by the user for 2 seconds or less - what is the educational value in that?), I can say that development costs were often underestimated in these multimedia projects as well.
In the late 90s, laptop programs began to pop-up around North America. At Acadia University, Canada's first post-secondary laptop school, the program exploded onto campus with 4,000 notebooks; 928 online courses; 215,000 online e-discussion groups by 2002. The response to mandatory integration by the terrified faculty? Powerpoint mania, and the subsequent revelation of "powerpointlessness": after spending countless hours converting lectures into PowerPoint, students only learned LESS, and grew more discontented (and were thankful for the escape offered by ICQ).
Still searching for the ideal digital prof, we grasped at the promise of learning objects (LO). Many believed they offered the best possible approach to developing support material for the classroom. Still used often, learning objects can be woven seamlessly into a great learning experience and can harness multimedia to illustrate a concept very compellingly. On the other hand, LO's can be little more than a TV ad, selling concepts rather than constructing understanding. At worst, they are little more than a powerful and very effective means of communicating the developer's bias.
Of course there are great examples of PowerPoint use, of Learning Objects and even of modules and courseware but in all of the successful examples, there IS no formula. They vary hugely for one another and for every success, there are many apparent "failures" that look superficially identical...except for 2 things:
1. the successes all started from the question of how to improve learning, period.
2. they are all student-centred.
So much of the search for a 'formula' has been about supporting, facilitating and injecting technology into the traditional teacher-controlled classroom...which doesn't work.
For the first time in history, teachers (who are brave enough to integrate technology into their teaching) are facing classrooms full of experts. So, for the first time, "student-centred" is not just another teaching strategy, it is the only strategy.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Oust the petty kings and queens from our classrooms
Looking for a small corner of the world to reign over? Please don't go into teaching.
So many who lack power elsewhere in their lives are mistakenly drawn back to the classroom. Maybe they picture it as a place where they can close the door and dominate willing and compliant young people.
But we all know that doesn't work out...not for the young people, and not for the insecure adult either. She ends-up hiding in the staff room, complaining to anyone who will listen about "kids these days". Miserable, she runs her classroom unsmilingly and with a false authority that garners little respect.
Sadly, The Insecure Controller is not alone in her school - she will always have peers who share her approach. These miserable teachers are rightly despised by their students whose derision fills the halls between classes with a palpable frustration tinged with fear.
Controllers fear creativity and change, and are so inflexible that their curriculum remains constant across years, sometimes even whole generations of students. The longer they teach, the more miserable they become, and the less likely they are to step outside the protective walls of the school to try any other profession.
We have all known a teacher like this...we dismiss him from our life come June. But what damage has he done, really? He may be powerless to inspire curiosity or respect, but even if he leaves only the faintest sour taste in a student's mouth...he can change the course of a life. And he should not be tolerated.
So many who lack power elsewhere in their lives are mistakenly drawn back to the classroom. Maybe they picture it as a place where they can close the door and dominate willing and compliant young people.
But we all know that doesn't work out...not for the young people, and not for the insecure adult either. She ends-up hiding in the staff room, complaining to anyone who will listen about "kids these days". Miserable, she runs her classroom unsmilingly and with a false authority that garners little respect.
Sadly, The Insecure Controller is not alone in her school - she will always have peers who share her approach. These miserable teachers are rightly despised by their students whose derision fills the halls between classes with a palpable frustration tinged with fear.
Controllers fear creativity and change, and are so inflexible that their curriculum remains constant across years, sometimes even whole generations of students. The longer they teach, the more miserable they become, and the less likely they are to step outside the protective walls of the school to try any other profession.
We have all known a teacher like this...we dismiss him from our life come June. But what damage has he done, really? He may be powerless to inspire curiosity or respect, but even if he leaves only the faintest sour taste in a student's mouth...he can change the course of a life. And he should not be tolerated.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
"Student-centered" is the only choice in the wired classroom
I was at a conference about effective use of technology in the post secondary classroom. Since I was teaching at a university where every student had a laptop, I was keen to attend a session on classroom management in a wired school. The presenters were from a college in the states that had a "laptop program" (students were required to purchase a laptop as part of their tuition) and they had been struggling with ICQ - the instant messaging software of choice at that time. Their faculty were clinging to the traditional lecture-style and it wasn't working - students were just ignoring them and chatting online. I hoped to hear about some innovative teaching.
To prevent students from messaging one another, they had placed mirrors all around the walls of one classroom and then positioned the students facing away from the instructor. The students could see him in the mirrors, and he could keep an eye on their computer screens while he lectured at them.
I also visited an elementary school in Maine shortly after their Maine Learning Technology Initiative had been launched - putting a laptop into the hands of every student. In this grade 7 classroom, the teacher was not working nearly so hard to maintain CONTROL - no mirrors. She was working with her students on a problem that involved some internet research, and her students were enthralled by their beautiful new iMacs. In fact, the students were working with each other while the teacher circulated, helping-out.
What seems so brilliant to me about technology in the classroom is not that computers themselves are so powerful, or even that they provide the teacher with so many more options for teaching (although they certainly do). A computer in the student's hands gives her a window outside the very narrow possibilities of the dull classroom. And to escape through that window, she needs a certain set of skills - an ability to solve the hundreds of problems that arise from even simple computing. In those students in Maine, I saw energy and enthusiasm...they had been entrusted with some real power over their own experience.
Choosing to take a student-centered approach to teaching used to be up to the teacher. Arguably, a teacher-centered approach has never really resulted in effective learning, but it might have looked effective - once. In the wired classroom, it is all the more obvious that students don't learn well from "the sage on the stage". In the wired classroom, student-centered is the only way.
To prevent students from messaging one another, they had placed mirrors all around the walls of one classroom and then positioned the students facing away from the instructor. The students could see him in the mirrors, and he could keep an eye on their computer screens while he lectured at them.
I also visited an elementary school in Maine shortly after their Maine Learning Technology Initiative had been launched - putting a laptop into the hands of every student. In this grade 7 classroom, the teacher was not working nearly so hard to maintain CONTROL - no mirrors. She was working with her students on a problem that involved some internet research, and her students were enthralled by their beautiful new iMacs. In fact, the students were working with each other while the teacher circulated, helping-out.
What seems so brilliant to me about technology in the classroom is not that computers themselves are so powerful, or even that they provide the teacher with so many more options for teaching (although they certainly do). A computer in the student's hands gives her a window outside the very narrow possibilities of the dull classroom. And to escape through that window, she needs a certain set of skills - an ability to solve the hundreds of problems that arise from even simple computing. In those students in Maine, I saw energy and enthusiasm...they had been entrusted with some real power over their own experience.
Choosing to take a student-centered approach to teaching used to be up to the teacher. Arguably, a teacher-centered approach has never really resulted in effective learning, but it might have looked effective - once. In the wired classroom, it is all the more obvious that students don't learn well from "the sage on the stage". In the wired classroom, student-centered is the only way.
Born creative
We are born creative and curious, but schooling soon changes that.
Babies are wired to explore with every sense, learning at a rate that is beyond measure. Toddlers devour the world, feeling, smelling and tasting with gusto - by 2 years old, they are expert learners. By age 4, children are brimming with questions - not just feeling and testing thier way but also stretching their limited vocabulary to ask about anything and everything.
The chaos of the JK classroom is proof that childrens' creative hunger is still driving them hard when we first expel them into the public school system. But 20-30 individuals sharing one small space and one teacher is too many, so that teacher is forced to preserve her sanity by immediately imposing order in whatever way she can. We teachers curb enthusiasm and quell excitement. Students are disappointed to have got the wrong idea about learning...what they thought would be fun actually happens in an uncomfortable chair, under stark lighting, pencil in hand. Learning quickly transforms from energetic, thrilling and colourful to silent, solitary and dull.
And children are rewarded for staying quiet, doing as they are told, and passively taking information in rather than seeking it out on their own. These children take pleasure in the positive reinforcement, but when there is no pleasure in learning, the pat on the head becomes their only motivator.
What does a successful preschooler look like? She is boysterous and loud, hurling herself into new arenas with curiosity and confidence. By grade 2, success starts to look very different.
A grade 2 student who earns her teacher's praise is quiet, waits for permission before showing interest and does as she is told without pausing to question. Sometimes, students awaken from this school-induced stupour sometime in highschool, and drop out.
The rest, the so-called "cream of the crop", heard off to university still believing that if you do as you are told and wait passively for the lecture to begin, success will somehow follow. Time to wake up, I think. Better still, time to stop puting them to sleep in the first place.
Babies are wired to explore with every sense, learning at a rate that is beyond measure. Toddlers devour the world, feeling, smelling and tasting with gusto - by 2 years old, they are expert learners. By age 4, children are brimming with questions - not just feeling and testing thier way but also stretching their limited vocabulary to ask about anything and everything.
The chaos of the JK classroom is proof that childrens' creative hunger is still driving them hard when we first expel them into the public school system. But 20-30 individuals sharing one small space and one teacher is too many, so that teacher is forced to preserve her sanity by immediately imposing order in whatever way she can. We teachers curb enthusiasm and quell excitement. Students are disappointed to have got the wrong idea about learning...what they thought would be fun actually happens in an uncomfortable chair, under stark lighting, pencil in hand. Learning quickly transforms from energetic, thrilling and colourful to silent, solitary and dull.
And children are rewarded for staying quiet, doing as they are told, and passively taking information in rather than seeking it out on their own. These children take pleasure in the positive reinforcement, but when there is no pleasure in learning, the pat on the head becomes their only motivator.
What does a successful preschooler look like? She is boysterous and loud, hurling herself into new arenas with curiosity and confidence. By grade 2, success starts to look very different.
A grade 2 student who earns her teacher's praise is quiet, waits for permission before showing interest and does as she is told without pausing to question. Sometimes, students awaken from this school-induced stupour sometime in highschool, and drop out.
The rest, the so-called "cream of the crop", heard off to university still believing that if you do as you are told and wait passively for the lecture to begin, success will somehow follow. Time to wake up, I think. Better still, time to stop puting them to sleep in the first place.
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