Due to the similarity of these two readings, I shall consider them as a unit rather than individually.
The idea of cognitive tutor computer programs is rather intriguing. I agree that in an ideal world, every student would have his or her own tutor to help them with school work. So creating a program (in this case an Algebra program) that mimics the way a tutor interacts with a student is on the right track to creating useful, beneficial educational technology.
I like the fact that besides just improving the test scores of students, the students themselves seemed to enjoy this software. (Although I highly doubt that two students would have really engaged in a "fist fight" over the availability of a computer terminal just to use this software as one of the readings reported.) What matters the most is that students like receiving computer-based instruction. Even if their test scores stayed the same, rather than improving, I would still say that it was successful if students found math (algebra) more favorable as a result of interacting with the computer.
However, one aspect that I did not like about Cognitive Tutor Algebra is the way it monitors the student's skill or progress level so obviously on the computer screen. Having been a slow math learner, I think I would have felt ashamed to have my skill level visible to other students in the class. While this feature may help teachers to tell at a glance who needs more help, I still don't like the idea of a student's progress known to all.
Perhaps because they are both mathematically based programs, reading our two chapters for this week reminded me a lot of reading the SimCalc articles, or even the Jasper Woodbury articles. Written by the program's designer, they are so overwhelmingly positive that I begin to feel that I am reading the same article all over again. Although to give Cognitive Tutor Algebra credit, its unique take on trying to mimic one-on-one human tutoring seems to me to make the most sense of all.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Is This Week 10?
Note: Pressed again for time, this will be a short blog in which I give my overall impression of the readings together instead of considering them individually.
It was with great interest that I read about the rise and demise of film, radio, and television as the instructional medium for classrooms. (I like history.) Although radio and television are useful for broadcasting news and emergency events, today we think of all three (film, radio, and television) as being more for entertainment than for educational purposes.
[As for the demise of the silent film and radio as a means of instruction, I am glad to see their departure. Both of these mediums are inherently flawed by nature. The former medium would tend to benefit visual learners far more than auditory learners and vise-versa for the latter.]
However, I admit it was rather disconcerting to read the "Digital Disconnect" article and realize that teachers, or the American educational system, seem to be treating the internet with the same disregard that film, radio, and television received in their own heyday. While film, radio, and television are used primarily for entertainment, the internet is being used by students just as much for educational purposes as for a source of entertainment.
Hm, perhaps that is the factor that will make all the difference: students, both high school and elementary, are using the internet to help them with their schoolwork. Instead of being prescribed by school administers above, the embrace of this technology has started from below at the student level.
It seems to me that more teachers would want to take advantage of what the internet offers, especially because some of the old excuses as to why audio-visual technologies of the past did not catch on do not apply now. For instance, the issues of program scheduling need not apply to the internet. With the exception of scheduled chats, the internet has an open schedule. By this, I mean teachers need not worry that a certain television program occurs at 1:00p.m. Internet websites can be accessed at anytime (unless they are down due to site maintenance.)
When it comes to the internet usage in education, the limits that occur seem to be ones that the administration or teachers are imposing themselves rather than being constraints of the technology. For instance, why couldn't homework assignments be geared to take more advantage of the internet? Why can't more teachers be accessible by email outside of the classroom?
I have a fear (that may be completely unfounded) that teachers and schools who neglect the internet in their scholastic programs are asking for trouble in terms of students who are internet savvy being left unchallenged by traditional schooling. Moreover, what's to stop these students from becoming lazy and using the internet to cheat more and more (ripping papers off the internet, etc.) if their usage isn't being monitored in some fashion or if they do not perceive that it is being monitored?
I happen to find the internet to be a great resource and a tremendous help scholastically. I can search hundreds, even thousands of online journals for a topic I need, much faster than if I had to manually gather those journals myself. Using the internet to conduct research is also an efficient use of time. No wonder teenagers say that they can do homework faster with the internet than they can without. And speaking of time, I am now out of it...
It was with great interest that I read about the rise and demise of film, radio, and television as the instructional medium for classrooms. (I like history.) Although radio and television are useful for broadcasting news and emergency events, today we think of all three (film, radio, and television) as being more for entertainment than for educational purposes.
[As for the demise of the silent film and radio as a means of instruction, I am glad to see their departure. Both of these mediums are inherently flawed by nature. The former medium would tend to benefit visual learners far more than auditory learners and vise-versa for the latter.]
However, I admit it was rather disconcerting to read the "Digital Disconnect" article and realize that teachers, or the American educational system, seem to be treating the internet with the same disregard that film, radio, and television received in their own heyday. While film, radio, and television are used primarily for entertainment, the internet is being used by students just as much for educational purposes as for a source of entertainment.
Hm, perhaps that is the factor that will make all the difference: students, both high school and elementary, are using the internet to help them with their schoolwork. Instead of being prescribed by school administers above, the embrace of this technology has started from below at the student level.
It seems to me that more teachers would want to take advantage of what the internet offers, especially because some of the old excuses as to why audio-visual technologies of the past did not catch on do not apply now. For instance, the issues of program scheduling need not apply to the internet. With the exception of scheduled chats, the internet has an open schedule. By this, I mean teachers need not worry that a certain television program occurs at 1:00p.m. Internet websites can be accessed at anytime (unless they are down due to site maintenance.)
When it comes to the internet usage in education, the limits that occur seem to be ones that the administration or teachers are imposing themselves rather than being constraints of the technology. For instance, why couldn't homework assignments be geared to take more advantage of the internet? Why can't more teachers be accessible by email outside of the classroom?
I have a fear (that may be completely unfounded) that teachers and schools who neglect the internet in their scholastic programs are asking for trouble in terms of students who are internet savvy being left unchallenged by traditional schooling. Moreover, what's to stop these students from becoming lazy and using the internet to cheat more and more (ripping papers off the internet, etc.) if their usage isn't being monitored in some fashion or if they do not perceive that it is being monitored?
I happen to find the internet to be a great resource and a tremendous help scholastically. I can search hundreds, even thousands of online journals for a topic I need, much faster than if I had to manually gather those journals myself. Using the internet to conduct research is also an efficient use of time. No wonder teenagers say that they can do homework faster with the internet than they can without. And speaking of time, I am now out of it...
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Week 8 Readings...
SimCalc: Accelerating Students' Engagement with the Mathematics of Change
I made the mistake of trying to tackle this Roschelle et al. paper first. This paper was entirely too versed in the mathematical language of calculus for me to understand the details. (Terms such as "piecewise linear functions" are simply beyond me.) Instead, what I got from the reading was more of a broad overview of what SimCalc is all about.
From what I understand, Roschelle et al. believe that a type of mathematics, called "the mathematics of change and variation" (p. 1) or MCV, is important and necessary in our 21st century world of technological change and innovation. Yet, students must wait until calculus (if they last that long - I cut out after trig) before being exposed to MCV concepts.
Roschelle et al. wanted to find a way to introduce these calculus MCV concepts to middle school students through the use of technology since (among other things) "In education, simulations and animations that display conceptual objects have proven particularly valuable in advancing children's thinking." (p. 10) They hoped to use today's computer technology to help further the math skills that the students have already learned by providing them with a visual display of graphs connected to the idea of motion and velocity, such as what the graph looks like over time of a descending elevator as it decreases in speed. (Or something like that.)
Rather than slow learning speed down to insure that "no child is left behind," Roschelle et al. believe the better approach is to take the higher level MCV calculus concepts and (through the use of educational technology) make them accessible to younger students. They point out that a hundred years ago, most high school students never took algebra, whereas now it is a basic high school requirement. With SimCalc's help, perhaps this century will see a new high school revolution - one where calculus is taught to the majority, rather than a minority, of students.
Getting to Scale With Innovations That Deeply Restructure How Students Come to Know Mathematics
This paper is about the history and current status of SimCalc. I should have read it first, and I would have better understood what SimCalc is all about. The idea for SimCalc apparently originated in the early nineties with the idea that calculus should be democratized so that instead of only a small handful of students taking it, it could be available to all students, especially minorities, who usually never make it that far.
I am oversimplifying the situation, but from what I understand the way SimCalc approaches this task is by through use of a software program that links "motion phenomena to mathematical formalisms." (p.7) This paper goes on to enumerate six phases consisting of design, testing, implementation, and so forth of SimCalc on an increasingly larger scale. (What Roschelle et al. call "scaling up.") The current phase is now being implemented in the state of Texas to seventh and eighth graders. Roschelle et al. caution us to remember that changing curriculum takes years to implement and "some educational reforms take multiple decades to implement." (p.21)
Based on their previous limited research, it is clear that Roschelle et al. are confident in SimCalc's ability to make an improvement in the way middle schoolers learn math. Once more we see the important role that computers can play in the classroom to help ease the acquisition of knowledge. I would be interested in knowing the outcome of the Texas results. I was always told that calculus was too hard to be taught to anyone lower than high school. The fact that certain calculus principles can be taught to middle school students is interesting to me.
Technology Meets Math Education: Envisioning a Practical Future Forum on the Future of Technology in Education
This reading was to the field of mathematics, what the readings of week six were to the field of history. In it Rubin describes "five powerful uses of technology in math education." (p. 2) One use is "Dynamic Connections" (p. 3) in which technology can help students draw connections between mathematical principles. He mentions the example of Geometer's Sketchpad that graphically shows that a parabola with a coefficient of zero is basically a straight line.
Another use of technology in math education has to do with using "sophisticated tools" (p.6) such as graphing calculators to help make math more understandable and accessible to students.
A third use of technology in math education are "resource-rich mathematical communities" (p.8) that help to connect students and teachers via the web. He mentions a web site called "The Math Forum" that reminds me a lot of a community of practice for mathematically inclined people and also sort of resembles "Tapped In" with its ability to connect math teachers together online.
Another use of technology in math education is through "construction and design" tools. (p.10) He gives the example of LOGO here.
The final use of technology in math education that Rubin gives is "tools for exploring complexity." (p.12) Here he mentions SimCalc as an example.
Rubin goes on to state certain conditions that must be met for technology to have a significant effect on math education, such as more support for development, curriculum integration, professional development, and public education. He also lists his concerns about technology in math education that include equity concerns (i.e., girls and minorities being left behind), risks of inappropriate use (causing students to rely too much on their calculators without understanding the theory behind the math), trying to replace teachers (which no software can do) and succumbing to "web ecstasy." (p.17)
I made the mistake of trying to tackle this Roschelle et al. paper first. This paper was entirely too versed in the mathematical language of calculus for me to understand the details. (Terms such as "piecewise linear functions" are simply beyond me.) Instead, what I got from the reading was more of a broad overview of what SimCalc is all about.
From what I understand, Roschelle et al. believe that a type of mathematics, called "the mathematics of change and variation" (p. 1) or MCV, is important and necessary in our 21st century world of technological change and innovation. Yet, students must wait until calculus (if they last that long - I cut out after trig) before being exposed to MCV concepts.
Roschelle et al. wanted to find a way to introduce these calculus MCV concepts to middle school students through the use of technology since (among other things) "In education, simulations and animations that display conceptual objects have proven particularly valuable in advancing children's thinking." (p. 10) They hoped to use today's computer technology to help further the math skills that the students have already learned by providing them with a visual display of graphs connected to the idea of motion and velocity, such as what the graph looks like over time of a descending elevator as it decreases in speed. (Or something like that.)
Rather than slow learning speed down to insure that "no child is left behind," Roschelle et al. believe the better approach is to take the higher level MCV calculus concepts and (through the use of educational technology) make them accessible to younger students. They point out that a hundred years ago, most high school students never took algebra, whereas now it is a basic high school requirement. With SimCalc's help, perhaps this century will see a new high school revolution - one where calculus is taught to the majority, rather than a minority, of students.
Getting to Scale With Innovations That Deeply Restructure How Students Come to Know Mathematics
This paper is about the history and current status of SimCalc. I should have read it first, and I would have better understood what SimCalc is all about. The idea for SimCalc apparently originated in the early nineties with the idea that calculus should be democratized so that instead of only a small handful of students taking it, it could be available to all students, especially minorities, who usually never make it that far.
I am oversimplifying the situation, but from what I understand the way SimCalc approaches this task is by through use of a software program that links "motion phenomena to mathematical formalisms." (p.7) This paper goes on to enumerate six phases consisting of design, testing, implementation, and so forth of SimCalc on an increasingly larger scale. (What Roschelle et al. call "scaling up.") The current phase is now being implemented in the state of Texas to seventh and eighth graders. Roschelle et al. caution us to remember that changing curriculum takes years to implement and "some educational reforms take multiple decades to implement." (p.21)
Based on their previous limited research, it is clear that Roschelle et al. are confident in SimCalc's ability to make an improvement in the way middle schoolers learn math. Once more we see the important role that computers can play in the classroom to help ease the acquisition of knowledge. I would be interested in knowing the outcome of the Texas results. I was always told that calculus was too hard to be taught to anyone lower than high school. The fact that certain calculus principles can be taught to middle school students is interesting to me.
Technology Meets Math Education: Envisioning a Practical Future Forum on the Future of Technology in Education
This reading was to the field of mathematics, what the readings of week six were to the field of history. In it Rubin describes "five powerful uses of technology in math education." (p. 2) One use is "Dynamic Connections" (p. 3) in which technology can help students draw connections between mathematical principles. He mentions the example of Geometer's Sketchpad that graphically shows that a parabola with a coefficient of zero is basically a straight line.
Another use of technology in math education has to do with using "sophisticated tools" (p.6) such as graphing calculators to help make math more understandable and accessible to students.
A third use of technology in math education are "resource-rich mathematical communities" (p.8) that help to connect students and teachers via the web. He mentions a web site called "The Math Forum" that reminds me a lot of a community of practice for mathematically inclined people and also sort of resembles "Tapped In" with its ability to connect math teachers together online.
Another use of technology in math education is through "construction and design" tools. (p.10) He gives the example of LOGO here.
The final use of technology in math education that Rubin gives is "tools for exploring complexity." (p.12) Here he mentions SimCalc as an example.
Rubin goes on to state certain conditions that must be met for technology to have a significant effect on math education, such as more support for development, curriculum integration, professional development, and public education. He also lists his concerns about technology in math education that include equity concerns (i.e., girls and minorities being left behind), risks of inappropriate use (causing students to rely too much on their calculators without understanding the theory behind the math), trying to replace teachers (which no software can do) and succumbing to "web ecstasy." (p.17)
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Week 7 Readings
Note: Since I am pressed for time, this will just be a short blog for this week's readings. Rather than taking a look at each individual article, I will be looking at them as a whole.
After reading this week's readings, I took away a thought that I don't think any of the authors intended. That thought? Disaster! America is headed for a technological disaster.
Well, after reading such things as: "CS (computer science) as a major dropped 60% between 2000 and 2004" (Wang, p.1) and "only .5% of incoming female freshmen expressed interest in a CS undergraduate degree" (p.1) and "Too often the call for an educational focus on preparing students to operate in a knowledge-based society has only resulted in attempts to improve surface-level computer literacy skills like word processing or internet use" (Klopfer, p.34) and "Various forms of multimedia design, particularly that which uses Adobe Photoshop and Hyperstudio software, have been taken as the main artistic expression of digital media in primary and secondary educational settings, whereas professional artists are using advanced programming to manipulate and create digital expressions" (Peppler, p.1) and "Analysis of data is considered an inquiry skill in only 17 of 72 activities in a laboratory manual that accompanies a standard high school biology text" (Kolpfer, p.2) and on and on and on...
It just seems to me that if the United States is going to remain technologically innovative in future years to come, we are going to have to make some drastic changes in school curriculum regarding the use of computers. All of these articles offer good places in which to start, but what concerns me is that they all still seem to speak of test cases (or whatever you call them) where only a handful of students participate. I suppose that is how research is conductive, but what kept striking me was that we need to get past the research phase and into the implementation phase.
Why can't art classes offer more than just Photoshop and instead get down to the nitty-gritty aspects of digital programming? Why can't biology classes focus more on data analysis through computer aid rather than just collection or observation of data if in fact that is how "professional" biologists operate? Why aren't more computer science classes utilizing StarLogo TNG (or similar type of programming) to help students better visualize computer programming concepts? Why aren't there more places like the Digital Design Studio (the media arts studio found at a community technology center in South Central Los Angeles in one of the cities poorest areas)?
It seems to me we a raising a generation of internet savvy school kids who actually have little idea that there's more to computers than the internet. I would hazard to guess that more students are going into internet design now than are going into actual computer science. Great. So America will have some of the best designed websites in the world. But educationally and technologically, how are we going to be able to compete?
After reading this week's readings, I took away a thought that I don't think any of the authors intended. That thought? Disaster! America is headed for a technological disaster.
Well, after reading such things as: "CS (computer science) as a major dropped 60% between 2000 and 2004" (Wang, p.1) and "only .5% of incoming female freshmen expressed interest in a CS undergraduate degree" (p.1) and "Too often the call for an educational focus on preparing students to operate in a knowledge-based society has only resulted in attempts to improve surface-level computer literacy skills like word processing or internet use" (Klopfer, p.34) and "Various forms of multimedia design, particularly that which uses Adobe Photoshop and Hyperstudio software, have been taken as the main artistic expression of digital media in primary and secondary educational settings, whereas professional artists are using advanced programming to manipulate and create digital expressions" (Peppler, p.1) and "Analysis of data is considered an inquiry skill in only 17 of 72 activities in a laboratory manual that accompanies a standard high school biology text" (Kolpfer, p.2) and on and on and on...
It just seems to me that if the United States is going to remain technologically innovative in future years to come, we are going to have to make some drastic changes in school curriculum regarding the use of computers. All of these articles offer good places in which to start, but what concerns me is that they all still seem to speak of test cases (or whatever you call them) where only a handful of students participate. I suppose that is how research is conductive, but what kept striking me was that we need to get past the research phase and into the implementation phase.
Why can't art classes offer more than just Photoshop and instead get down to the nitty-gritty aspects of digital programming? Why can't biology classes focus more on data analysis through computer aid rather than just collection or observation of data if in fact that is how "professional" biologists operate? Why aren't more computer science classes utilizing StarLogo TNG (or similar type of programming) to help students better visualize computer programming concepts? Why aren't there more places like the Digital Design Studio (the media arts studio found at a community technology center in South Central Los Angeles in one of the cities poorest areas)?
It seems to me we a raising a generation of internet savvy school kids who actually have little idea that there's more to computers than the internet. I would hazard to guess that more students are going into internet design now than are going into actual computer science. Great. So America will have some of the best designed websites in the world. But educationally and technologically, how are we going to be able to compete?
Friday, October 5, 2007
Is It Week 6 Already?
Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments by Scardamalia et al. (1989)
This article states that CSILE stands for "Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments" and is "an educational knowledge media system." (p.51) It further claims that "CSILE supports intentional learning by providing a means for a group of students to build a collective database (knowledge-base) of their thoughts in the form of pictures and written notes..." (p.52) which are then made known to everyone. It also states that "CSILE is being designed for eventual use at all grade levels an for all school curricula." (p. 52) That was back in 1989, It's been nearly 20 years since then, so where the heck is CSILE the software program today?
Since I've never seen or used this CSILE software, what I found more interesting in this article were the design principles for computer-supported intentional learning environments rather than how these principles were then incorporated into CSILE. What I found even more interesting was how Liberty's Kids - a software program designed by The Learning Company incorporated several of these design principles into their "history game."
For instance, according to the article's authors, well-designed educational software provides "process-relevant" feedback. (p.57) With Liberty's Kids, it is possible to get feedback from the program about the news articles that you prepare as an apprentice reporter. If you put together a well-constructed and interesting article, you can click on an icon that literally says "Feedback" and writing will appear under the various points of your constructed article informing you how good they are. Still more feedback is provided indirectly through the number of subscriptions that the newspaper sells due to your front page article.
Another feature that well-designed educational software shares it that it "encourages multiple passes through information." (p.60) Apparently, one aspect of learning that distinguishes experts from novices is that "naive students show a strong tendency not to go back over information. This is shown in their reluctance to revise compositions..." (p. 60) Their work is characterized by "single-pass" strategies. However, Scardamalia et al. note that "because computers make it easy to retain and recall information, educational software has the potential to help students develop multiple-pass strategies. Whether the software involves games, microworlds, subject matter learning , or tool use, ways should be sought to make it worthwhile for students to call back information they have dealt with previously and to reconsider it or to use it in a different context." (p.60)
I was excited to read that passage because again, it brought to mind Liberty's Kids and helped me to see just what an educational boon this software was when it was developed back in 2003. In the first part of the program/game, the user must interview various people about certain events in the struggle for American independence and decided whether to save their comments for later use in the newspaper article. Then the user returns to Ben Franklin's print shop to write up the who, what, when, where, and why of the event, relying on their repertoire of saved notes. They must amass the various quotes from Loyalists/Tories, Revolutionaries, ordinary citizens, famous characters, etc. and pull together a coherent article from all of these varying points of view.
Another feature of well-designed educational software according to Scardamalia et al. is that it "encourages maximum use and examination of existing knowledge." (p. 63) The authors believe that a "serious shortcoming of most educational soft ware is that the software itself has access to limited body of knowledge... and the students must work withing the confines of that limited knowledge base" (p.63) while real world tasks "tend to be wide open in the kinds of knowledge that may be drawn on in handling the task." In a more narrow and indirect sense, Liberty's Kids also fits this bill. Instead of relying on just one character's opinion of an event that happened (for instance, the Boston Tea Party), the user must ask multiple persons for their views to gain a well-rounded perspective. Of course, the user is not obliged to do so, but then their article will have a definite bias to it, resulting in less subscriptions being sold.
Yet another feature of well-designed educational software is that it "provides opportunities for reflectivity and individual learning styles." (p. 63) Scardamalia et al. go on to state that "the program must provide students time, opportunity, and peace in which to think about what they are doing and why" (p.60) in order to "support reflective thinking." (p. 60) Once more, I was happy to note that Liberty's Kids does just this, with the editing that the user must do to his/her article before it is published. Thinking about which statements to choose to use promotes this "reflective thinking" that Scardamalia et al. seem to favor.
The final feature of a well-designed educational program that Liberty's Kids evidences is that it "facilitates transfer of knowledge across contexts." On the one hand, the program may seem to only be about learning American Revolutionary War history. However, as Scardamalia et al. state, "educational software has an opportunity, not enjoyed by textbooks, to cut across curricular lines." I would argue that if not being multi-curricular, Liberty's Kids is at least bi-curricular in that it also teaches what being a good journalist/reporter is all about. You have to interview multiple sources to get the full story and then chose and pick wisely what you decide to print to give people the best overall picture of what really happened. (Of course, one could also reasonably point out that this is what good historians must also do, but then I believe there are great similarities between being a good reporter and being a good historian.)
Cognitive Tools for Understanding History: What More Do We Need? by O'Neill and Weiler (2006)
Again, I was pleased to see the Liberty's Kids faired so well in this article, in that it fit several of the principles that O'Neill and Weiler believe desirable as far as learning history is concerned.
For instance, they lament the fact that "most history instruction today revolves around the mastery of canonical accounts of the past; but without a grasp of the "metahistorical ideas" (Lee, 2004) that help explain where historical accounts come form and why they often differ, young adults are likely to develop the dismissive view of history..." (p. 183, emphasis mine) However, Liberty's Kids does help in its own limited way, to explain such things. Since the user must go around interviewing various characters (again, some famous such as George Washington, and others not so famous such as the wife of a Minuteman), then said user can see for him or herself just how varied the accounts of an historical event may be.
I was tickled to see that O'Neill and Weiler believe that "better history teachers attempt to give their students realistic experiences of historical research through projects or exercises in which student conduct interviews with elders..." (p. 183) since, of course, this concept of interviewing is at the heart of Liberty's Kids.
One design point that the authors favor in software is that "through some clever design work" (p. 184) software "can provide knowledgeable feedback on the content of students' notes..." (p. 184) The notes that they speak of refer to notes that through "an interface" (p. 184) that "demands attention to features salient to historians, such as the authors' positions, motives, and bases for knowledge." (p.184) In its limited way, Liberty's Kids does do this. By focusing on asking the various characters the "who, what, when, where, and why" of the events that were witnessed, the user is engaged with a game interface that is trying to mold him or her in to a historian by having them ask all the "salient" details that a historian would want to know. Furthermore, these notes that the user can chose to take during the interview are then amassed into a front-page article, which Moses (a game character who runs the press) will then comment upon through use of the "feedback" icon.
However, one thing that O'Neill and Weiler mentioned that at first gave me a little concern was their statement of Stage 2 of Shemilt's 1987 model of how students progress through four stages of understanding with regard to historical evidence and methodology. In Stage 2, "students think of historians as people who are somehow able to sniff out false of biased stories about the past, 'read off' the truth, and piece together the one true account. (In truth, there is no such thing.)" (p. 185) The reason why this idea first concerned me is because I wondered if Liberty's Kids might help to foster such reasoning? The user or player of the game is a defacto student of history. They must sort through the various bias encountered in the words of others. Playing the part of a reporter, the game encourages the user to indeed "sniff out" the truth. I would not wish for the student to get stuck in this stage 2 of Shemilt's model forever as a result of playing this game.
However, upon further reflection, I realized that perhaps getting "stuck" in stage two might not be a true concern after all. The point of Liberty's Kids is to point out that there are multiple views and accounts of history. Each one is accurate in and of itself, but may not present the complete picture of what really happened. Instead of passively reading a history book where an author has already done the sniffing for them, the students themselves must put themselves in the role of a historian and decide for themselves which facts to include and which statements to omit.
Furthermore, when composing the newspaper article, the user is required to submit two "why" statements as to why the event occurred. I believe that this reinforces the notion that there is more than one version of history - no one side has the complete truth. Since the student plays the part of the historian, he or she learns that what the historian does is to decided for him or herself what the best opinions are to use. In other words, the historian is only human and is fallible when choosing events to write about. Thus, I am at least hopeful that Liberty's Kids does not stick players into Stage 2 forever.
Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom: Needs, Frameworks, and Proposals by Bass and Rosenzweig
Although this was a different sort of article than the two above, I still did find some interest comparisons to Liberty's Kids in it. In the first part of their article, the authors ask: "Why Use Technology in Social Studies Education?" (p.2) The answer is because teachers want their students to be "more engaged with learning. (p.2) Certainly that is what appropriate educational software does... it engages students. I believe that students would find playing Liberty's Kids to be engaging. It plays like a game, but a fun educational one where they also learn history and how to make sense of differing historical accounts at the same time.
In the second part of their article, the authors ask "What Works?" (p. 3) The first part of this answer is "inquiry activities" (p. 4) They quote from the 1994 National Standards for United States History, which declared that "perhaps no aspect of historical thinking is as exciting to students or as productive of their growth a historical thinkers as 'doing history' by directly encountering 'historical documents, eyewitness accounts... and photos." (p. 4-5) Certainly, although it is just a game, Liberty's Kids allows students the opportunity to "do" history. They are in effect living it through playing the game. Moreover, in the game they directly encounter eyewitness accounts through the various people that they meet. Although there are no photographs to behold, there is the cartoon drawing of the various camps and battle sites and a few famous buildings to behold such as Philadelphia's Independence Hall.
The inquiry activities that the authors are referring to in this part of their paper, necessitates the "craft of introducing students to the inquiry process." (p.6) Liberty's Kids does this literally by making the player into a reporter.
Beyond what I have discussed above, I didn't really find anymore comparisons that I could draw between this article and Liberty's Kids but I did find it interesting that the authors address a point that I had in my conceptual framework for evaluating learning technology. For instance, they state that fiscal cost is a "key issue that new technology poses." (p.9) I also made the point that new technology is often expensive. Part of how we evaluate its worth should include whether it's potential to teach is worth the price it costs.
I also found it interesting that the authors argued that "one-shot workshops" (p.11) won't work in teaching teachers how to incorporate technology in their classrooms. Instead they need on-going support. This reminded me a little of Kleiman's article about "Myths and Realities about Technology in K-12 Schools." He mentioned the ACOT project (Apple Classroom of Tomorrow) which identified five stages of instructional evolution for using technology. The gist of these five stages was that technology support must be on-going for teachers in order for them to incorporate it with full confidence into their classrooms. Bass and Rosenzweig are making the same point. They even go a step further by saying that learning technologies should factor into the curricula of college education courses and become a part of teacher's certification.
When I began reading these articles for this week, I had no idea that I would end up comparing them so much to Liberty's Kids - which is the learning technology I plan to review for my midterm paper. I hope that our professor doesn't mind (hint, hint) if many of the points and sentences I bring up here in this blog end up in my paper as well. After all, I did put a lot of thought and effort and time into both reading the articles and writing them up for the blog.
This article states that CSILE stands for "Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments" and is "an educational knowledge media system." (p.51) It further claims that "CSILE supports intentional learning by providing a means for a group of students to build a collective database (knowledge-base) of their thoughts in the form of pictures and written notes..." (p.52) which are then made known to everyone. It also states that "CSILE is being designed for eventual use at all grade levels an for all school curricula." (p. 52) That was back in 1989, It's been nearly 20 years since then, so where the heck is CSILE the software program today?
Since I've never seen or used this CSILE software, what I found more interesting in this article were the design principles for computer-supported intentional learning environments rather than how these principles were then incorporated into CSILE. What I found even more interesting was how Liberty's Kids - a software program designed by The Learning Company incorporated several of these design principles into their "history game."
For instance, according to the article's authors, well-designed educational software provides "process-relevant" feedback. (p.57) With Liberty's Kids, it is possible to get feedback from the program about the news articles that you prepare as an apprentice reporter. If you put together a well-constructed and interesting article, you can click on an icon that literally says "Feedback" and writing will appear under the various points of your constructed article informing you how good they are. Still more feedback is provided indirectly through the number of subscriptions that the newspaper sells due to your front page article.
Another feature that well-designed educational software shares it that it "encourages multiple passes through information." (p.60) Apparently, one aspect of learning that distinguishes experts from novices is that "naive students show a strong tendency not to go back over information. This is shown in their reluctance to revise compositions..." (p. 60) Their work is characterized by "single-pass" strategies. However, Scardamalia et al. note that "because computers make it easy to retain and recall information, educational software has the potential to help students develop multiple-pass strategies. Whether the software involves games, microworlds, subject matter learning , or tool use, ways should be sought to make it worthwhile for students to call back information they have dealt with previously and to reconsider it or to use it in a different context." (p.60)
I was excited to read that passage because again, it brought to mind Liberty's Kids and helped me to see just what an educational boon this software was when it was developed back in 2003. In the first part of the program/game, the user must interview various people about certain events in the struggle for American independence and decided whether to save their comments for later use in the newspaper article. Then the user returns to Ben Franklin's print shop to write up the who, what, when, where, and why of the event, relying on their repertoire of saved notes. They must amass the various quotes from Loyalists/Tories, Revolutionaries, ordinary citizens, famous characters, etc. and pull together a coherent article from all of these varying points of view.
Another feature of well-designed educational software according to Scardamalia et al. is that it "encourages maximum use and examination of existing knowledge." (p. 63) The authors believe that a "serious shortcoming of most educational soft ware is that the software itself has access to limited body of knowledge... and the students must work withing the confines of that limited knowledge base" (p.63) while real world tasks "tend to be wide open in the kinds of knowledge that may be drawn on in handling the task." In a more narrow and indirect sense, Liberty's Kids also fits this bill. Instead of relying on just one character's opinion of an event that happened (for instance, the Boston Tea Party), the user must ask multiple persons for their views to gain a well-rounded perspective. Of course, the user is not obliged to do so, but then their article will have a definite bias to it, resulting in less subscriptions being sold.
Yet another feature of well-designed educational software is that it "provides opportunities for reflectivity and individual learning styles." (p. 63) Scardamalia et al. go on to state that "the program must provide students time, opportunity, and peace in which to think about what they are doing and why" (p.60) in order to "support reflective thinking." (p. 60) Once more, I was happy to note that Liberty's Kids does just this, with the editing that the user must do to his/her article before it is published. Thinking about which statements to choose to use promotes this "reflective thinking" that Scardamalia et al. seem to favor.
The final feature of a well-designed educational program that Liberty's Kids evidences is that it "facilitates transfer of knowledge across contexts." On the one hand, the program may seem to only be about learning American Revolutionary War history. However, as Scardamalia et al. state, "educational software has an opportunity, not enjoyed by textbooks, to cut across curricular lines." I would argue that if not being multi-curricular, Liberty's Kids is at least bi-curricular in that it also teaches what being a good journalist/reporter is all about. You have to interview multiple sources to get the full story and then chose and pick wisely what you decide to print to give people the best overall picture of what really happened. (Of course, one could also reasonably point out that this is what good historians must also do, but then I believe there are great similarities between being a good reporter and being a good historian.)
Cognitive Tools for Understanding History: What More Do We Need? by O'Neill and Weiler (2006)
Again, I was pleased to see the Liberty's Kids faired so well in this article, in that it fit several of the principles that O'Neill and Weiler believe desirable as far as learning history is concerned.
For instance, they lament the fact that "most history instruction today revolves around the mastery of canonical accounts of the past; but without a grasp of the "metahistorical ideas" (Lee, 2004) that help explain where historical accounts come form and why they often differ, young adults are likely to develop the dismissive view of history..." (p. 183, emphasis mine) However, Liberty's Kids does help in its own limited way, to explain such things. Since the user must go around interviewing various characters (again, some famous such as George Washington, and others not so famous such as the wife of a Minuteman), then said user can see for him or herself just how varied the accounts of an historical event may be.
I was tickled to see that O'Neill and Weiler believe that "better history teachers attempt to give their students realistic experiences of historical research through projects or exercises in which student conduct interviews with elders..." (p. 183) since, of course, this concept of interviewing is at the heart of Liberty's Kids.
One design point that the authors favor in software is that "through some clever design work" (p. 184) software "can provide knowledgeable feedback on the content of students' notes..." (p. 184) The notes that they speak of refer to notes that through "an interface" (p. 184) that "demands attention to features salient to historians, such as the authors' positions, motives, and bases for knowledge." (p.184) In its limited way, Liberty's Kids does do this. By focusing on asking the various characters the "who, what, when, where, and why" of the events that were witnessed, the user is engaged with a game interface that is trying to mold him or her in to a historian by having them ask all the "salient" details that a historian would want to know. Furthermore, these notes that the user can chose to take during the interview are then amassed into a front-page article, which Moses (a game character who runs the press) will then comment upon through use of the "feedback" icon.
However, one thing that O'Neill and Weiler mentioned that at first gave me a little concern was their statement of Stage 2 of Shemilt's 1987 model of how students progress through four stages of understanding with regard to historical evidence and methodology. In Stage 2, "students think of historians as people who are somehow able to sniff out false of biased stories about the past, 'read off' the truth, and piece together the one true account. (In truth, there is no such thing.)" (p. 185) The reason why this idea first concerned me is because I wondered if Liberty's Kids might help to foster such reasoning? The user or player of the game is a defacto student of history. They must sort through the various bias encountered in the words of others. Playing the part of a reporter, the game encourages the user to indeed "sniff out" the truth. I would not wish for the student to get stuck in this stage 2 of Shemilt's model forever as a result of playing this game.
However, upon further reflection, I realized that perhaps getting "stuck" in stage two might not be a true concern after all. The point of Liberty's Kids is to point out that there are multiple views and accounts of history. Each one is accurate in and of itself, but may not present the complete picture of what really happened. Instead of passively reading a history book where an author has already done the sniffing for them, the students themselves must put themselves in the role of a historian and decide for themselves which facts to include and which statements to omit.
Furthermore, when composing the newspaper article, the user is required to submit two "why" statements as to why the event occurred. I believe that this reinforces the notion that there is more than one version of history - no one side has the complete truth. Since the student plays the part of the historian, he or she learns that what the historian does is to decided for him or herself what the best opinions are to use. In other words, the historian is only human and is fallible when choosing events to write about. Thus, I am at least hopeful that Liberty's Kids does not stick players into Stage 2 forever.
Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom: Needs, Frameworks, and Proposals by Bass and Rosenzweig
Although this was a different sort of article than the two above, I still did find some interest comparisons to Liberty's Kids in it. In the first part of their article, the authors ask: "Why Use Technology in Social Studies Education?" (p.2) The answer is because teachers want their students to be "more engaged with learning. (p.2) Certainly that is what appropriate educational software does... it engages students. I believe that students would find playing Liberty's Kids to be engaging. It plays like a game, but a fun educational one where they also learn history and how to make sense of differing historical accounts at the same time.
In the second part of their article, the authors ask "What Works?" (p. 3) The first part of this answer is "inquiry activities" (p. 4) They quote from the 1994 National Standards for United States History, which declared that "perhaps no aspect of historical thinking is as exciting to students or as productive of their growth a historical thinkers as 'doing history' by directly encountering 'historical documents, eyewitness accounts... and photos." (p. 4-5) Certainly, although it is just a game, Liberty's Kids allows students the opportunity to "do" history. They are in effect living it through playing the game. Moreover, in the game they directly encounter eyewitness accounts through the various people that they meet. Although there are no photographs to behold, there is the cartoon drawing of the various camps and battle sites and a few famous buildings to behold such as Philadelphia's Independence Hall.
The inquiry activities that the authors are referring to in this part of their paper, necessitates the "craft of introducing students to the inquiry process." (p.6) Liberty's Kids does this literally by making the player into a reporter.
Beyond what I have discussed above, I didn't really find anymore comparisons that I could draw between this article and Liberty's Kids but I did find it interesting that the authors address a point that I had in my conceptual framework for evaluating learning technology. For instance, they state that fiscal cost is a "key issue that new technology poses." (p.9) I also made the point that new technology is often expensive. Part of how we evaluate its worth should include whether it's potential to teach is worth the price it costs.
I also found it interesting that the authors argued that "one-shot workshops" (p.11) won't work in teaching teachers how to incorporate technology in their classrooms. Instead they need on-going support. This reminded me a little of Kleiman's article about "Myths and Realities about Technology in K-12 Schools." He mentioned the ACOT project (Apple Classroom of Tomorrow) which identified five stages of instructional evolution for using technology. The gist of these five stages was that technology support must be on-going for teachers in order for them to incorporate it with full confidence into their classrooms. Bass and Rosenzweig are making the same point. They even go a step further by saying that learning technologies should factor into the curricula of college education courses and become a part of teacher's certification.
When I began reading these articles for this week, I had no idea that I would end up comparing them so much to Liberty's Kids - which is the learning technology I plan to review for my midterm paper. I hope that our professor doesn't mind (hint, hint) if many of the points and sentences I bring up here in this blog end up in my paper as well. After all, I did put a lot of thought and effort and time into both reading the articles and writing them up for the blog.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Week 5 Readings
Re-education by Brown et al.
Judging by internal evidence, it would seem that this article is about a decade old. (After all, it said that the University of Phoenix (accredited in 1978) was now 20 years old.) Given it's age, I found that while I agreed with certain aspects of it, other aspects left me shaking my head.
First of all, I did agree with the pressures that traditional colleges and universities are facing. First, there is the decline of the "traditional" student 18 - 22 years old who finishes in four years, tuition paid courtesy of his or her parents. Instead, as the article points out, "people are taking up their degrees later and over long periods, assembling them out of one course here and a few credit hours there, snatched between jobs and bank loans as time, money, interest, and opportunity arise." (p. 208)
A second pressure exerted on colleges and universities is the pressure to think more like a business as they finds themselves facing stiffer competition from for-profit universities, such as the University of Phoenix. Even college research labs find themselves in competition with corporate research labs as they vie for the same grants and funding sources.
The third pressure being exerted on universities to change comes from new technologies that offer new ways to produce, distribute and consume academic materials.
However, I disagree with the way Brown scoffs at the way "brick-and-mortar colleges are attempting to build their place in cyberspace" (p. 211) He mentions only two major universities, Penn State, and California, that are developing online programs. However, had this article been written today, I doubt very much that Brown would be scoffing now. Almost every major university that I know of offers online courses - there are some universities where it is possible to earn Master's degrees online as well, including my own degree, that of library science.
Moreover, Brown states that there is "little prospect" (p.213) that Indiana University's library will ever be digitized. Well, perhaps that holds true for Indiana University but certainly not for the U of M! Nor for any of the other partnered schools that are working with the Google books project today. Again, this is where the true datedness of Brown's article shows through. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace - what is inconceivable ten years ago, is child's play today. He seems to have forgotten that fact.
Another area, where I believe Brown to be wrong is that he claims that the workplace does not hold academic credentials from for-profit, online colleges to the same standard that it holds "regular" degrees from "standard" colleges. Once again, I must point out that this is an older article. I would be interested to read more recent research in this area, because it seems to me that with the rising popularity of for-profit colleges and online courses their credentials would be treated more equally now by employers. I could be wrong, of course, but what can seem strange in one decade, may become common place in another - especially when it comes to the rapid strides made in internet technology.
However, I do agree with Brown that it is peer-to-peer learning that help distinguish regular universities from their online counterparts. In fact, one of the reasons that I wanted to attend the U of M's School of information was because it offered traditional classroom instruction as opposed to Wayne State that offers a quarter or so of its library science courses online. I am a person that needs the interaction of a typical classroom (interaction between professor and peers) in order to do my best.
Brown mentions two kinds of distance that universities must overcome: geographical and social. He points out that while online courses can overcome the first distance (as long as you have access to the internet you can take a course from anywhere), they are not so adept at overcoming the second. Because online courses tend to be cheaper it is mainly the economically disadvantaged that are taking them. Again, it would be interesting to see if this is still the case ten years later. I think that online courses have become so popular that there is less of a stigma attached to taking them and that even middle to upper class members of society may be taking advantage of them due to the convenience that they offer.
However, I do agree with Brown that one of the advantage that regular college and universities offer is that they play up their local community's strengths. He points out how UCLA, located by Hollywood, is strong in film studies. It is true that taking classes from a distant place may tend to cause some "centralization" (p. 228) in terms of studies. However, given the fact that there are so many universities offering online courses/distance learning courses these days, I think that maybe a person who is interested in local studies may merely just have to apply to a college that meets similar needs to his or her own.
As for Brown's solution, to have DGBs (degree granting bodies) (p. 234), I simply do not know what to make of this idea. I think that perhaps he may have spoken too soon. Clearly, ten years ago, he did not envision of slew of universities that offer online courses and degrees today, thus making it possible for people to attend "real" universities, who might otherwise not had the opportunity to do so. If anything, I believe that by branching online, universities have modernized themselves and are not in fear of becoming "gothic ruins." (p. 211)
Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger
I had never actually heard the phrase "community of practice" until this article, although I had heard of the fact that in the medieval apprentice guides, the newer members learned from more than just the master's coaching. Wenger notes that there are three crucial characteristics that community of practices share:
Wenger also spends a bit of time explaining where the concept of a community of practice comes from, i.e., the apprenticeship model. But he notes that the concept is applied in many organizations including government, education, associations, the social sector, international development, and the web. And this brings us to the last article...
Evolution of an Online Education Community of Practice: Tapped In by Mark Schlager et al.
This article is essential about "Tapped In" and online community of practice for teacher professional development. It was originally started as a research experiment because the people involved felt that there were not any successful models of online professional development and online communities. (p.130) (Note: this article is also about 10 years old and predates Second Life.)
The article explains how it set up Tapped In to become a virtual community of practice to help support not only teachers, but other people involved in the learning field, such as school media specialists and school staff.
Schlager first defends the worthy idea of establishing an online community of practice by stating how they are "hothouses" (p. 131) where:
He points out the interesting phenomenon of how members will participate for a while and then go through periods of inactivity. He then mentions how Tapped In founded a newsletter keeping its members informed of events as a way of still keeping inactive members connected with what was happening at Tapped In. That way, they could still participate if they found something of interest scheduled.
He notes with pride that meeting conducted through Tapped In now evidence a similar ratio of business talk occurring that would occur in a regular face-to-face meeting. Although it didn't start like this, it developed over time as people began to learn the online engagement behaviors expected of them.
Schlager points out that one of the reasons behind Tapped In's success is that all new members are routed to a reception area/Help Desk where experienced members take them under their wing and show them how the online community works. I could definitely see the value in this as it would help take away some of the nervousness that novice members might experience in joining this online community - particularly if they had never before participated in an online community of any sort.
Finally, the article ends with advice for building future communities of practice for educators. It favors "state education agencies" (p.155) as the role of organizer and host of online gathering places as well as planners of online activities and events. While this is a nice thought, I think it might be an expensive one for the state agency involved. It would have to hire web developers to develop the online community of practice as well as purchase a domain and do all the over various expensive thing involved in maintaining and upgrading websites. And, honestly, as long as there is Tapped In, I don't really see the need for other teacher professional development community of practice websites. However, that may because I am not a teacher.
Judging by internal evidence, it would seem that this article is about a decade old. (After all, it said that the University of Phoenix (accredited in 1978) was now 20 years old.) Given it's age, I found that while I agreed with certain aspects of it, other aspects left me shaking my head.
First of all, I did agree with the pressures that traditional colleges and universities are facing. First, there is the decline of the "traditional" student 18 - 22 years old who finishes in four years, tuition paid courtesy of his or her parents. Instead, as the article points out, "people are taking up their degrees later and over long periods, assembling them out of one course here and a few credit hours there, snatched between jobs and bank loans as time, money, interest, and opportunity arise." (p. 208)
A second pressure exerted on colleges and universities is the pressure to think more like a business as they finds themselves facing stiffer competition from for-profit universities, such as the University of Phoenix. Even college research labs find themselves in competition with corporate research labs as they vie for the same grants and funding sources.
The third pressure being exerted on universities to change comes from new technologies that offer new ways to produce, distribute and consume academic materials.
However, I disagree with the way Brown scoffs at the way "brick-and-mortar colleges are attempting to build their place in cyberspace" (p. 211) He mentions only two major universities, Penn State, and California, that are developing online programs. However, had this article been written today, I doubt very much that Brown would be scoffing now. Almost every major university that I know of offers online courses - there are some universities where it is possible to earn Master's degrees online as well, including my own degree, that of library science.
Moreover, Brown states that there is "little prospect" (p.213) that Indiana University's library will ever be digitized. Well, perhaps that holds true for Indiana University but certainly not for the U of M! Nor for any of the other partnered schools that are working with the Google books project today. Again, this is where the true datedness of Brown's article shows through. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace - what is inconceivable ten years ago, is child's play today. He seems to have forgotten that fact.
Another area, where I believe Brown to be wrong is that he claims that the workplace does not hold academic credentials from for-profit, online colleges to the same standard that it holds "regular" degrees from "standard" colleges. Once again, I must point out that this is an older article. I would be interested to read more recent research in this area, because it seems to me that with the rising popularity of for-profit colleges and online courses their credentials would be treated more equally now by employers. I could be wrong, of course, but what can seem strange in one decade, may become common place in another - especially when it comes to the rapid strides made in internet technology.
However, I do agree with Brown that it is peer-to-peer learning that help distinguish regular universities from their online counterparts. In fact, one of the reasons that I wanted to attend the U of M's School of information was because it offered traditional classroom instruction as opposed to Wayne State that offers a quarter or so of its library science courses online. I am a person that needs the interaction of a typical classroom (interaction between professor and peers) in order to do my best.
Brown mentions two kinds of distance that universities must overcome: geographical and social. He points out that while online courses can overcome the first distance (as long as you have access to the internet you can take a course from anywhere), they are not so adept at overcoming the second. Because online courses tend to be cheaper it is mainly the economically disadvantaged that are taking them. Again, it would be interesting to see if this is still the case ten years later. I think that online courses have become so popular that there is less of a stigma attached to taking them and that even middle to upper class members of society may be taking advantage of them due to the convenience that they offer.
However, I do agree with Brown that one of the advantage that regular college and universities offer is that they play up their local community's strengths. He points out how UCLA, located by Hollywood, is strong in film studies. It is true that taking classes from a distant place may tend to cause some "centralization" (p. 228) in terms of studies. However, given the fact that there are so many universities offering online courses/distance learning courses these days, I think that maybe a person who is interested in local studies may merely just have to apply to a college that meets similar needs to his or her own.
As for Brown's solution, to have DGBs (degree granting bodies) (p. 234), I simply do not know what to make of this idea. I think that perhaps he may have spoken too soon. Clearly, ten years ago, he did not envision of slew of universities that offer online courses and degrees today, thus making it possible for people to attend "real" universities, who might otherwise not had the opportunity to do so. If anything, I believe that by branching online, universities have modernized themselves and are not in fear of becoming "gothic ruins." (p. 211)
Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger
I had never actually heard the phrase "community of practice" until this article, although I had heard of the fact that in the medieval apprentice guides, the newer members learned from more than just the master's coaching. Wenger notes that there are three crucial characteristics that community of practices share:
- The domain - by this he means a "shared domain of interest" (p. 1) and that "membership implies a commitment to the domain." (p.1)
- The community - by this he means that members of the domain will engage in "joint activities" (p.1) to "help each other and share information." (p.1) In other words, they build relationships together for the mutual purposes learning together and of helping each other out.
- The practice - by this he means that a community of practice are actual "practitioners" (p.2) themselves. For instance, they do not merely like movies, but are actual movie reviewers or perhaps film makers.
Wenger also spends a bit of time explaining where the concept of a community of practice comes from, i.e., the apprenticeship model. But he notes that the concept is applied in many organizations including government, education, associations, the social sector, international development, and the web. And this brings us to the last article...
Evolution of an Online Education Community of Practice: Tapped In by Mark Schlager et al.
This article is essential about "Tapped In" and online community of practice for teacher professional development. It was originally started as a research experiment because the people involved felt that there were not any successful models of online professional development and online communities. (p.130) (Note: this article is also about 10 years old and predates Second Life.)
The article explains how it set up Tapped In to become a virtual community of practice to help support not only teachers, but other people involved in the learning field, such as school media specialists and school staff.
Schlager first defends the worthy idea of establishing an online community of practice by stating how they are "hothouses" (p. 131) where:
- new ideas germinate
- new methods and tools are developed
- new communities are rooted
He points out the interesting phenomenon of how members will participate for a while and then go through periods of inactivity. He then mentions how Tapped In founded a newsletter keeping its members informed of events as a way of still keeping inactive members connected with what was happening at Tapped In. That way, they could still participate if they found something of interest scheduled.
He notes with pride that meeting conducted through Tapped In now evidence a similar ratio of business talk occurring that would occur in a regular face-to-face meeting. Although it didn't start like this, it developed over time as people began to learn the online engagement behaviors expected of them.
Schlager points out that one of the reasons behind Tapped In's success is that all new members are routed to a reception area/Help Desk where experienced members take them under their wing and show them how the online community works. I could definitely see the value in this as it would help take away some of the nervousness that novice members might experience in joining this online community - particularly if they had never before participated in an online community of any sort.
Finally, the article ends with advice for building future communities of practice for educators. It favors "state education agencies" (p.155) as the role of organizer and host of online gathering places as well as planners of online activities and events. While this is a nice thought, I think it might be an expensive one for the state agency involved. It would have to hire web developers to develop the online community of practice as well as purchase a domain and do all the over various expensive thing involved in maintaining and upgrading websites. And, honestly, as long as there is Tapped In, I don't really see the need for other teacher professional development community of practice websites. However, that may because I am not a teacher.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Jasper Adventures
My initial feeling upon reading about the "Jasper" problem-solving mathematical videos was excitement. I have always considered myself to be mathematically-challenged. I find word problems to be difficult and the endless drilling of the basic problem sets to be too tedious for words.
I think I would have been a child who benefited from Jasper's anchored instructional approach - one that colorfully camouflages classroom instruction in a carefully crafted enviroment that allows active engagement in complex problem solving skills by groups of students with the teacher providing guidance rather than monopolizing the central teaching arena. Instead of mere rote instruction, Jasper's anchored approach exposes more complicated problems requiring subdvision into smaller parts as well as teaching the base units.
I can see many advantages of utilizing the Jasper Woodbury Adventures as a teaching device. To begin with, these mathematical adventures are based on audio-visual technology rather than paper and ink. While, I excelled at reading in grade school, I think that watching a math problem on video would have been much more fun than simply reading it in a textbook. (From person experience, for instance, I remember being shown the video "Donald Duck in Mathematical Land" when I was in third grade. For me, seeing was believing and for the first time certain geometric mathematical concepts made sense.) Moreover, presenting these math problems in an audio-visual format not only allows children to actually physically visualize them, but it also, as Chapter Four states, removes the "reading barrier" (p. 70) that might separate poor performers from the academically more advanced.
I further applaud how the best teaching approach of Jasper materials, the "Guided Generation Model," (Ch. 4 , p. 61 & Jasper Experiement, p. 76) encourages placing children in groups. This way they are not competing against each other as they solve problems, but rather colaborating amongst themselves so an attitude of encouragement is fostered. Chapter Four also made note of how the overall complexity of the Jasper problems meant that nonmathematically inclined students also had important facts to contribute as well. (p. 70)
I also liked how the Jasper creators learned from their so-called "SMART Challenges" (Ch. 4, p. 72) to implement their Jasper "analogs" and "extensions" since they realized students were still exhibiting some degree of "functional fixedness" (Ch. 4, p. 74) instead of being able to adequately transfer their learned problem-solving techniques and formulas. (In other words, they were somewhat context dependent upon the original Jasper episode in solving problems.)
However, the addition of the analogs and extensions seemed like an excellent idea to me. Through use of analog, the teacher could propose variations upon the original Jasper theme, thus helping to students to practice and drill and new concept in a way that is fun and interesting. Moreover, the use of extensions is an invaluable tool in helping teachers to show their students how the subject of mathematics crosses over into other genres, particularly "historica and current events." (Jasper Experiment, p. 71)
The entire time I was reading these two pieces on Jasper, I was struck by its seeming similiarity to an old computer game called "The Oregon Trail" by The Learning Company. It provides a way of teaching history through practical experience. The player is head of a wagon company. Complex decisions of how to budget money, how much food to take, etc. must be all be factored in. The Oregon Trail teaches about history while drawing upon other scholastic disciplines as well such as social studies, math, geography, etc. While The Oregon Trail is now considered old-time stuff, the popularity of sim games now abound, such as Sim City which allows the player to plan his or her own city. There are also the "Tycoon" games, which are much the same. The concept of such games remind me of Jasper.
However, I must puzzlement regarding the Jasper Woodbury adventures. If the videos proved so helpful to fifth graders and garnered such a positive response, while were only 12 episodes ever made? Moreover, when I checked the U-M library system to see if we owned them, I discovered to my dismay that we did not. To my astonishment, when I checked with WorldCat, I saw that only 19 libraries worldwide owned the Jasper series. I do not understand how something that seems so positive could have seemingly fizzled out?
I think I would have been a child who benefited from Jasper's anchored instructional approach - one that colorfully camouflages classroom instruction in a carefully crafted enviroment that allows active engagement in complex problem solving skills by groups of students with the teacher providing guidance rather than monopolizing the central teaching arena. Instead of mere rote instruction, Jasper's anchored approach exposes more complicated problems requiring subdvision into smaller parts as well as teaching the base units.
I can see many advantages of utilizing the Jasper Woodbury Adventures as a teaching device. To begin with, these mathematical adventures are based on audio-visual technology rather than paper and ink. While, I excelled at reading in grade school, I think that watching a math problem on video would have been much more fun than simply reading it in a textbook. (From person experience, for instance, I remember being shown the video "Donald Duck in Mathematical Land" when I was in third grade. For me, seeing was believing and for the first time certain geometric mathematical concepts made sense.) Moreover, presenting these math problems in an audio-visual format not only allows children to actually physically visualize them, but it also, as Chapter Four states, removes the "reading barrier" (p. 70) that might separate poor performers from the academically more advanced.
I further applaud how the best teaching approach of Jasper materials, the "Guided Generation Model," (Ch. 4 , p. 61 & Jasper Experiement, p. 76) encourages placing children in groups. This way they are not competing against each other as they solve problems, but rather colaborating amongst themselves so an attitude of encouragement is fostered. Chapter Four also made note of how the overall complexity of the Jasper problems meant that nonmathematically inclined students also had important facts to contribute as well. (p. 70)
I also liked how the Jasper creators learned from their so-called "SMART Challenges" (Ch. 4, p. 72) to implement their Jasper "analogs" and "extensions" since they realized students were still exhibiting some degree of "functional fixedness" (Ch. 4, p. 74) instead of being able to adequately transfer their learned problem-solving techniques and formulas. (In other words, they were somewhat context dependent upon the original Jasper episode in solving problems.)
However, the addition of the analogs and extensions seemed like an excellent idea to me. Through use of analog, the teacher could propose variations upon the original Jasper theme, thus helping to students to practice and drill and new concept in a way that is fun and interesting. Moreover, the use of extensions is an invaluable tool in helping teachers to show their students how the subject of mathematics crosses over into other genres, particularly "historica and current events." (Jasper Experiment, p. 71)
The entire time I was reading these two pieces on Jasper, I was struck by its seeming similiarity to an old computer game called "The Oregon Trail" by The Learning Company. It provides a way of teaching history through practical experience. The player is head of a wagon company. Complex decisions of how to budget money, how much food to take, etc. must be all be factored in. The Oregon Trail teaches about history while drawing upon other scholastic disciplines as well such as social studies, math, geography, etc. While The Oregon Trail is now considered old-time stuff, the popularity of sim games now abound, such as Sim City which allows the player to plan his or her own city. There are also the "Tycoon" games, which are much the same. The concept of such games remind me of Jasper.
However, I must puzzlement regarding the Jasper Woodbury adventures. If the videos proved so helpful to fifth graders and garnered such a positive response, while were only 12 episodes ever made? Moreover, when I checked the U-M library system to see if we owned them, I discovered to my dismay that we did not. To my astonishment, when I checked with WorldCat, I saw that only 19 libraries worldwide owned the Jasper series. I do not understand how something that seems so positive could have seemingly fizzled out?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
