Provocative sentence...reflect

Non-educators often make the mistake of equating access to information with access to learning. In reality, these are two separate goals. In fact, increasing access to information can actually undermine learning, because it sometimes requires reducing or eliminating the challenge or resistance that is essential to learning.

- From CAST Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, Ch. 4

Read me!

Pflaum, William. The Technology Fix. (2004) - published by ASCD. 80+% of computers off or unused; those that are being used are being used poorly (PowerPointlessness). Read about it on fno.org. Read me!

Potential study topic

Teachers are conservative and control-oriented. Do not adapt well to new technologies. Why? Well, technologies decrease control (might not work, make teacher look foolish in front of students; worst-case scenario is that technologies will empower students to ignore/show up/defy teacher). So why so control-oriented? Partially because effective teaching (not to mention socialization) does require at least some element of control, but I think there's something even more powerful than professional interest at stake. Perhaps teachers seek to re-create parent-child (all-powerful, all-knowing role vs. dependent, mother-may-I role) dynamic. [ So perhaps one interesting study on teachers might link parenting style experienced during childhood to classroom management style and to adoption of technology. Worth considering? ]

Thoughts from 701...

Two models for instruction: transfer (learners are vessels waiting to be filled -- CAI aims for this); inspiration (learners are tinder waiting for a spark)

Role of ETC -- responsible for creating useful applications of technology? I say no -- teachers have to create it. ETC just assists in their thinking/discovery/skills acquisition. If the teachers aren't doing it, it's "not invented here" and they hate it/resent it/sabotage it.

Adopting vs. adapting -- we've adopted new technologies (piecemeal), but haven't adapted the curriculum to best utilize these new technologies.

But would this be appropriate? These tools are still immature. The technologies are still evolving. You don't want to build the curriculum around Flash. Even building the curriculum around something as big as the Internet is extremely dubious -- there's not yet enough "there", there. But I guess it also depends on how much you value the current curriculum. As others pointed out, the current curriculum doesn't exactly serve kids' needs either.

What I want and what might be a stepping stone

What I want: cheap, durable, easy (intuitive) to use, flexible tools to teach with. I'm not so interested in specialty websites, content-area software, etc. Instead, I want something as ubiquitous as a pencil or a chalkboard. Anytime you need operations on data, you reach for...

Examples:
1. teaching: graphing calculators -- powerful tool all the way through math from algebra onwards. Little bit of a learning curve.
2. administration: internal mail servers -- not hard to learn (but most people only use at a more basic level than intended), effectively sends text
3. administration: internal web servers are close to being a reality. Would nicely augment/replace printing, given broad enough hardware base. Need to become simpler to operate/manage.

What I want:
1. database tool -- can slurp any combo of data (ASCII or binary), can search, organize, etc.
2. graphical tool -- can construct graphical models of ideas, include links to or imports from database

What to look at:
1. Project Inkwell is pushing for a universal educational platform. Sounds fishy on one level (proprietary? open source? -plus the website is members-only...) but could be the real deal.
2. hiddenagenda.com -- challenges college kids to create educational games for middle-schoolers. But why can't we see the games they've created?

Improving teaching

Too much information thrown at teachers, all of it flagged as top priority. So they filter out as much as possible and focus only on what they have to. So while classrooms have become wired and computers and peripherals have been plopped on campuses, few teachers have bothered (or been able to find the time) to really start to figure out how to teach with (or through) these new resources. And even when a teacher does try something new, the road is littered with obstacles -- hardware crashes, bad software, limited access to hardware and software, skill gaps among students (and on the part of the teacher!) and so on.

So how to break through the filter and trigger teachers' experimentation? Application? Innovation? -Or, dare we hope, sharing?

I'd say start small, and keep it flexible. Link it to a prof devel plan -- require one documented new teaching technique every year, and one documented follow-up on a previous teaching technique. Focus on the classroom application and the rest (e.g., administrative competency) will follow. Or so I hope.

First posting

Welcome to my little corner of the world. School starts tomorrow and I'm not ready. Then again, no one's about to beat me up about that, so I guess it's OK.