Tag: technology

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Tinkering and Technology

Before this all slips my mind, I wanted to post some thoughts about the conversation I led at Educon 2.2 last weekend called Tinkering Towards Technology Fluency. I had a few slides prepared, and a general list of things I thought would be interesting to discuss, and some questions in case there was a lot of deadly silence. Well, that didn’t happen! What happened was that we had a really interesting conversation, which wandered a bit but no one seemed to mind. That’s the cool part about Educon, the conversations are the point. I learned as much from everyone there as I hope they learned from some of the things I shared.

What I’d like to do here is provide a short skim through the topics I brought to the session. I think many of them either support themes I’ve posted about before, or will in the future. I plan to return to them in the future and explore each one in depth.

This is such a rich area for two main reasons:

  1. Unstructured time is undervalued by School.
  2. Tinkering supports technology and technology supports tinkering.

Random thoughts in no particular order:

Humans yearn for tinkering and playful activity
The popularity of the Food Network, HGTV, and shows like Monster Garage  illustrate how people want to learn from watching others DO things they love. Work is interesting when you can see it happen, and people are interesting when they work. Make magazine is awesome.

Tinkering is social
Yes, there is the stereotype of the lone tinkerer in his basement. But more often, tinkering is a shared, social experience. Social learning with no structure or single, all-knowing teacher can happen! Leveraging the power of social learning seems like something we should be thinking about in this day and age.

Bricolage
French for tinkering, using found objects, playfulness in creation. (Wikipedia)

Tinkering/bricolage vs. the scientific method/analytical design
Seymour Papert, the father of educational technology, defined two styles of problem solving: analytical and bricolage. School only honors one style. What are we losing? (Who are we losing?)

“The bricoleur resembles the painter who stands back between brushstrokes, looks at the canvas, and only after this contemplation, decides what to do next.” Sherry Turkle

Tinkering and gender
The book by Sherry Turkle that I couldn’t remember in the session was “The Second Self”. I also forgot to mention this crucial connection to tinkering and gender issues in technology. Turkle says that tinkering is a “female” approach to technology, calling it “soft mastery” (as opposed to the “hard mastery” of linear, step by step problem solving, flowcharting, and analytical design). However, these “hard” styles are often taught as being superior, with “soft mastery” styles deemed messy or unprofessional. Again, who and what are we losing by ignoring (and denigrating) alternative learning and problem-solving styles?

Tinkering requires similar conditions to project-based learning and games in the classroom. Implementation brings up similar questions
Teachers who are looking at project-based learning or games are struggling with the same issues that arise with tinkering. Time, space, overwhelming curriculum requirements, tests, etc. These all need to be solved in similar ways, and teachers are doing this all around the world. Sharing is important.

More connections with games
James Paul Gee (What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy) says that we should examine the attributes of gaming such as identity and agency and how to bring those to the classroom. We are being too literal with “games in the classroom.” The attributes of tinkering are similar. We have to be willing to give students agency and allow them to develop their own identities as problem-solvers and learners.

Why is tinkering learning?
Tinkering is a uniquely human activity, combining social and creative forces that encompass play and learning.

The problem with the scientific method
A pet peeve of mine is this structured monstrosity called “the scientific method.” We teach it to children like it came down on stone tablets. It’s not how science really works. Science is about wonder and risk and imagination, not checklists.

Risk and design – what happened in engineering in the 80s
When I went to engineering school, they taught us to use the “waterfall” design methodology. Every stage was planned and went in order. Then in the 80s everything changed.

What happened? Computers. Digital design and modeling decreased the cost of making mistakes. You could try things out with little risk or cost. It’s called the spiral design method, or rapid prototyping, sort of like tinkering with an audience. It’s why Google is always in “beta”. Of course it doesn’t work for everything, you can’t release a “beta” skyscraper or tinker a space shuttle, but for digital products, what’s the harm?

The problem is that school hasn’t caught on to this design methodology. What do we need to do to get school design courses to catch up to the real world?

What can we learn from other unstructured (but successful) school activities?
This also connects back to a post I wrote called Technology Literacy and Sustained Tinkering Time which connected the ideas of Sustained Silent Reading to using technology in less structured ways. Schools have embraced Sustained Silent Reading in the face of scripted curriculum and standardized testing – what can advocates for constructivist education learn from this?

Technology literacy without tinkering time is hard to fathom
Maybe we should be talking about technology fluency anyway. Literacy is such a low bar.

Teaching risk free design is so 20th century.

More later – your feedback on what to tackle first is welcome!

Sylvia

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Say the change you want to see

For schools embarking on a change process, one key success factor is envisioning what that change looks like and sharing the vision widely.

In many of the schools we work with, the change involves a vision of students and teachers working together to use technology tools in new ways. They envision empowered students stepping up and taking part in the effort to improve education. They see teachers who feel more comfortable about technology. They see students and teachers as co-creators of the learning environment.

But often, the stated objectives don’t match the full vision. There are unspoken wishes, hopes and desires that go along with the hard statistics. The problem is that if you don’t explore these hidden wishes, you can’t plan for them, articulate them, or share the vision. Sometimes these are harder to measure or they sound “soft”. But sometimes these unspoken outcomes are the most powerful of all. Surprisingly, you may find that they are widely shared, but people feel that they aren’t important or scientific.

You shouldn’t be embarrassed to say them out loud. It’s not silly to hope that the work you do changes children’s lives and to make that clear.

If you put those goals in writing, you can plan for them, and more importantly, figure out how to measure them.

Finding hidden objectives
One exercise that we do with schools is to “say the change you want to see.” It’s a simple visioning exercise. First, imagine that everything you hope for comes true. Now write a story for your community newspaper about “what happened.”

The beauty of this exercise is:

  1. It has to be simple and clear. No academic citations, obtuse language, grant gobbledygook, or pages of distracting data. Using present tense and plain language creates impact. Make up quotes and anecdotes to make it come alive. Pretend you are writing for your Aunt Betty and you’ll end up capturing the heart of the project.
  2. It uncovers unspoken wishes. Often there are outcomes that are never really articulated, but people secretly hope for. You think that teachers will use technology more, but you also hope that students will be more engaged. You write in the grant that student achievement will rise, but you hope that students will love learning and feel empowered. You purchase technology and measure its use, but secretly hope that teachers will find that spark that made them want to be teachers in the first place.

Perhaps your fantasy newspaper story starts like this.

After a year of participating in the TEAMS project, student excitement about learning is at an all time high at Fallsburg Middle School. Mary K., a seventh grade student, says, “I love learning this way, I was getting bad grades but now I love coming to school.” Parents feel the same way and see the learning as being more “real world.” Before TEAMS, only 26% of FMS parents said they felt what their children were learning in school was relevant. After only one year, this rose dramatically to 87%.

Measuring hidden objectives
So the next part of this exercise is figuring out what in your story needs to be measured and planned for. The numbers don’t have to be the actual goals, that’s not the important part. The important part is to unpack those hidden agendas and make them tangible. If some of your goals are not currently being measured, MEASURE THEM. If you don’t measure them they won’t happen and a year from now, you’ll wonder why. Do what you must NOW so you CAN write that story a year from now.

If a goal is to have happier students or more satisfied teachers, how will you know? Somebody better ask them. How will you show it? Somebody better shoot some video and collect some quotes. Plan for that now! Is one of your goals community involvement? Better ask them too! Plan some surveys both before and after the big project. If you want to say there is an improvement, you have to measure before, after, and maybe in between.

And ask what you really want to know; don’t let naysayers drain the life out of it. Some people think dry and colorless means authoritative. Don’t let it bother you when somebody rolls their eyes when you say you want to ask students if they like school better. Ask for the change you want to see.

If you don’t plan this, you won’t be able to document the real hidden hopes and dreams that bolster all the hard work and long hours. It may sound more “scientific” to collect “hard data”, but collecting targeted qualitative data can be extremely valuable.

Say the change you want to see. Ask the change you want to see. Be the change you want to see.

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2010 MLK Day Technology Challenge

From Serve.gov | Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service.

We are calling on educators and web professionals to join our new effort – the 2010 MLK Day Technology Challenge. The idea is simple: to connect schools with technology needs to IT and web professionals, developers, graphic designers and new media professionals who are willing to volunteer their skills for good, take on these technology projects and give back to a school in need.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?” We ask that you answer his call in 2010 by participating in the MLK Technology Challenge.

Why not turn this around – how about students offering services to the community or their own school? Why rely on the help of kind-hearted outsiders when there is a tech savvy crew right on campus who just need some guidance to get busy!

The Day of Service website has some great suggestions for projects –

  • Enhance the school’s website by creating blogs or discussion groups for various student groups, such as student council, chess club, drama group, dance troupe, or varsity and intramural teams.
  • Create a Facebook Fan Page for your school or for your Parent-Teacher’s Association, Student Government Association or Alumni Association.
  • Create a NING social network for your school or a school organization.

Of course, all of these things could be done by students.

Even if you bring in outside expertise, include students. You can register your school’s technology need and ask for help by registering your school’s technology need as a “volunteer opportunity” with one of the partner websites listed here.

When you create your volunteer opportunity, be sure to:

  1. Use a descriptive title and make sure to include the “MLKTech” keyword – the keyword is necessary for search.
  2. Set the date as January 18, 2010

But remember, when you do get volunteer help, include students in the meetings. Let them apprentice with the volunteers so that once the volunteers go back to their real jobs, you still have students who know what to do. Building local capacity pays off in the long run!

Sylvia

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Tinkering Towards Educon

I’ll be heading to Philadelphia later this month for the Educon conference. This is a terrific small conference held at the Science Leadership Academy about education and change. Educon is famous for having “conversations” not “presentations.” This means that the wisdom of the crowd gets shared as we explore one topic in depth.

This year I’m leading a conversation on Tinkering Towards Technology Fluency

Conversation Description: Tinkering is a time-honored educational practice, focusing on a learner exploring a subject or problem without clear goals or time constraints, using objects or tools at hand, driven by passion and curiosity. Seymour Papert used the word, “bricolage” to describe a way to solve problems by trying things out, testing, playing, and trying again. This stands in direct contract to the way we teach students to use analytical methods (such as the scientific method) to solve problems. Current digital tools would seem to support this method of learning, with the rapid ability to build first drafts and easy to use editing tools. When mistakes and prototypes were expensive and time consuming, it certainly made sense to carefully plan your attack on a problem. However, this is no longer the case. In industry, the methodology of production planning has been revolutionized by rapid design tools. Accepted practices of design and planning have completely changed over the past 25 years, with linear “waterfall” planning completely replaced by new “spiral” design methodologies, especially in the design of digital products.

Beginning questions for the conversation are:  How can tinkering influence our understanding of technology literacy as a set of skills to be mastered? How might this influence classroom practice when teaching analytical problem solving in any subject? How can tinkering fit in today’s structured classroom environment? How does a teacher maintain a schedule and series of learning objectives that result in learning, not just fooling around? Is anything a student does tinkering? What role does judgement and content knowledge play in tinkering?

If you are considering attending Educon, I hope you join the conversation!

Related posts:

Sylvia

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Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010

It’s back!!!

Plans are shaping up for an amazing 3rd Annual Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute, July 12-15, 2009 in Manchester, NH USA (near Boston).

In addition to master educators and edtech pioneers, the Constructing Modern Knowledge 2010 faculty includes history educator James Loewen and bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me; popular provocateur and author, Alfie Kohn; MacArthur Genius and incomparable school reformer, Deborah Meier; and children’s author, illustrator and animator, Peter Reynolds. Cynthia Solomon, Brian Silverman, Sylvia Martinez (that’s me!), Gary Stager and John Stetson round out the amazing faculty.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is a minds-on institute for educators committed to creativity, collaboration and computing. Participants have the opportunity to engage in intensive computer-rich project development with peers and a world-class faculty. Inspirational guest speakers, pre-conference expedition and social events round out the fantastic event.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is about action, not listening to speakers. Attendees work and interact with educational experts committed to maximizing the potential of every learner. The rich learning environment is filled with books, computers, robotics materials, art supplies, toys and other objects to think with.

The real power of Constructing Modern Knowledge emerges from the collaborative project development of participants. Each day’s program consists of a discussion of powerful ideas, on-demand mini tutorials, immersive learning adventures designed to challenge one’s thinking, substantial time for project work and reflection.

CMK 2010 info

21st Century educators need to develop their own technological fluency and understand learning in order to meet the changing needs and expectations of their students. Constructing Modern Knowledge will help participants enhance their tech skills, expand their vision of how computers may enhance the learning environment and leave with practical classroom ideas.

Spend four cool summer days in New England making puppets roar, robots dance, animations delight, movies move, simulations stimulate, photos sing and leave with memories to last a lifetime!

Each participant receives a suite of open-ended creativity software from Tech4Learning, LCSI, Inspiration Software, FableVision and other members of The Constructivist Consortium free-of-charge for use at Constructing Modern Knowledge and beyond. The software alone is worth the registration fee!

There is also a July 11th preconference Science and History Tour of Boston available for a nominal fee. Explore the future at the MIT Museum and visit the past during a private guided tour of the Boston Freedom Trail.

The institute is less than an hour’s drive from Boston in picturesque Manchester, New Hampshire. Free transportation is available from the convenient and affordable Manchester Airport. Discount hotel accommodation has been arranged at the institute venue.

Constructing Modern Knowledge is sensitive to the budgets of schools and educators by keeping registration costs affordable and by offering school/district team discounts. The institute is appropriate for all K-12 educators, administrators and teacher educators – private or public. CEUs are available for an additional fee.

Save $75 on early bird registrations! Register online now!

Sylvia

Reflections from previous years:

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‘Teach Naked’ and complacency natives

‘Teach Naked’ Effort Strips Computers From Classrooms – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This is one of the stories where you have to actually read the whole thing. At first you think, “Terrific, another educator who hates technology and refuses to join the 21st century.”

College leaders usually brag about their tech-filled “smart” classrooms, but a dean at Southern Methodist University is proudly removing computers from lecture halls. José A. Bowen, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, has challenged his colleagues to “teach naked”—by which he means, sans machines.

But you would be wrong – read a bit more. He’s not really against technology, he’s against being boring, especially being boring with PowerPoint. He thinks when students come together, the best thing to do is have a conversation. Let the students read the material, or listen to a podcast ahead of time. Use class time to talk, ask questions, and interact with the teacher and other students.

Even though he is taking computers out of classrooms, he’s not anti-technology. He just thinks they should be used differently—upending the traditional lecture model in the process.

Aha! He’s talking about pedagogy, not tools. He’s against lecturing, with or without slideshow accompaniment. And guess who he has to convince about this — yes, those digital natives, the students. Because what they really are is complacency natives. They are used to waiting passively to be told what to learn, how to learn, and then repeating it back.

But he’s taking computers out of the classrooms! Oh no! Evil! But wait, keep reading. He’s removing the fixed computers hooked to projectors. And buying laptops instead. And unbolting the desks and replacing them with movable chairs and tables so the teachers and students can adapt their classroom to suit their learning needs. Oh, hmm… not so crazy.

It’s a great lesson in the sloppy vocabulary of the ed tech world. All “technology” is not created equal. It’s not a technology = good, removing it = bad. We have to be more precise about this. What’s the learning environment? What do you believe about learning? How is technology supporting those goals?

Teach naked? Ok, got to give the guy credit for coming up with something catchy. Getting attention for advocating doing away with lecture is OK in my book. A worthy goal for K-12 would be to produce students who aren’t complacency natives, who arrive at college ready for deep discussion, real learning, and meaningful interactions with other human beings.

Sylvia

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Programming – not just for nerds

Today, introductory courses in computer science are too often focused merely on teaching students to use software like word processing and spreadsheet programs, said Janice C. Cuny, a program director at the National Science Foundation. The Advanced Placement curriculum, she added, concentrates narrowly on programming. “We’re not showing and teaching kids the magic of computing,” Ms. Cuny said.

via New Programs Aim to Lure Young Into Digital Jobs – NYTimes.com.

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Students say teachers limit technology use

Last week posts from two popular edubloggers hammered home the same point – that technology is going to make an impact on education whether we are ready or not.

These horses are out of the barn – Doug Johnson, Blue Skunk Blog

There are some educational “truths” that we can’t change, even if we wanted to. These educational technology resources, annoyances, and conditions are here to stay despite some educators denial, resistance and fast grip on the status quo.

I Don’t Need Your Network (or Your Computer, or Your Tech Plan, or Your…) – Will Richardson, Weblogg-ed

When do we stop trying to fight the inevitable and start thinking about how to embrace it?

As usual, the students are way ahead of the curve. They don’t need a blog to tell them that their access to learning technology is being denied, meaning not just Internet access, but access to personal technology.

I blogged about this yesterday based on student focus group data, but here’s the qualitative data from over 280,000 K-12 students supporting the same thing. (Data from Speak Up 2008)

Student response to: Besides not having enough time in your school day, what are the major obstacles to using technology in your school? (Check all that apply) Grade 6-8 Grade 9-12
School filters or firewalls block websites I need to use

34%

51%
Teachers limit our technology use

34%

36%
I cannot access my personal email account or send email or IM to classmates

31%

29%
I cannot use my own computer or mobile devices

30%

32%
There are rules against using technology at my school

25%

26%
Internet access is not fast enough

18%

22%
None of the above

16%

14%
My assignments don’t require using technology

12%

11%
Software is not good enough

12%

15%
Computers or other tech equipment are not available

11%

11%
Teachers don’t know how to use the technology

8%

13%
I am unable to access the Internet

8%

7%
I don’t have the skills I need

6%

5%

When 34% of today’s 6-8th graders say their teachers limit them from using technology, what does this mean for the future? I think what children are learning is that teachers are out of touch with the real world, and worse, that school is where you literally power down and wait to be told what to do.

OK, granted — not every student has visions of exemplary learning when we ask them about technology. BUT, we simply can’t ignore this either. Many of these students ARE interested in learning.

It means we are telling them that they must achieve, but preventing it at the same time. And there is no one wiser to hypocrisy than a teenager. We run the risk of losing a generation of young adults who are taking a good hard look at the way the real world works and comparing it against the artificial limits placed on them in school. And when we tell them “it’s for your own good” we simply lose all credibility.

According to the student Speak Up 2008 data, only one-third of high school students who participated in the poll think their school is doing a good job preparing them for the jobs of the future. Think this is just kids whining? Nope – even fewer numbers of their parents think that. Yet, a majority of school principals (56 percent) say their schools are doing a good job. Who is kidding whom?

So this is straight from the horse’s mouth, not edublogger ponderings … what are we gonna do about it?

Sylvia

PS And do you know what YOUR students would say about this? Find out! Sign up for Speak Up 2009 (survey open until Dec 23, 2009.)

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Professional development that hurts

Yesterday I wrote about a report on What Works: Effective Technology Professional Development. Today, unfortunately, I have the other side of the story. Yes, it’s possible to do professional development that actually decreases the chance that teachers will integrate technology into the classroom.

This is from the Student Speak Up survey project, where students, parents, teachers, and administrators answer questions about technology in their academic and personal lives.

Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, who runs the Speak Up project sent me this input from a focus group of 40 high school students in California in March 2009 (and gave me permission to publish it.)

Students told me that they had better access to technology at school before we (meaning education agencies and groups) trained all the teachers how to use technology.  The students said that their teachers were very fearful of the dangers of Internet use in particular and concerned about their own liability.  The perception of the students is that their teachers were therefore making conscious, deliberate decisions to use technology and in particular providing Internet access less than what they had done previously.

This is not that teachers don’t have technology skills. This is a deliberate stance taken by teachers who LEARN about technology, but are so confused, scared, or disempowered that their practice retreats to use LESS technology.

Professional development that doesn’t empower teachers is no solution at all.

Sylvia

PS Registration is still open for the 2009 Student Speak Up until Dec 23 – share your voice!

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What Works: Effective Technology Professional Development

I’d like to share a book with you about technology professional development. Meaningful Learning Using Technology: What Educators Need to Know And Do by Elizabeth Alexander Ashburn (Editor), Robert E. Floden (Editor) (Amazon link)

Many educators are looking for research that shows “what works” in technology professional development. This book is an excellent starting point for discussions about new strategies and best practices. In one chapter, GenYES was one of four models selected for correlation to key dimensions to successful K-12 technology professional development. GenYES and the other models were selected as “… large-scale efforts that were shown to be effective in affecting teachers’ use of technology.”

Fostering Meaningful Teaching and Learning with Technology: Characteristics of Effective Professional Development
Written by Yong Zhao, Kenneth Frank, and Nicole Ellefson of Michigan State University Michigan State University (MSU), these researchers studied four “large-scale efforts that were shown to be effective in affecting teachers’ use of technology”:

1. The Project-Based Learning Multimedia Model (PBL+MM)
2. The Galileo Education Network Association (GENA)
3. Project Information Technology (PIT)
4. The Generation Y Model (previous name of the GenYES model)

Based on data collected from hundreds of teachers, the study determined that several key factors positively influenced teacher’ use of computers.

Study Findings – Key Factors of Successful Technology Professional Development

  1. Time to experiment and play. “Use of computers was positively correlated (.3) with the extent to which a teacher was able to experiment with district-supported software.”
  2. Focus on student learning. “Teachers’ use of computers was positively correlated (.4) with the extent to which the content of professional development was focused on student learning.”
  3. Building social connections and learning communities. “Computer use was positively correlated (.2) with the extent to which teachers accessed other teachers’ expertise.”
  4. Localizing professional development. “Computer use was positively correlated (.2 for each) with the extent to which professional development was provided locally, either in the classroom or school lab.”

The study outlines why and how these models support each of these factors. Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the entire chapter here, but there is a bit of it online at Amazon.com (the chapter starts at page 161). Buy the book!

Sylvia