Thinking In Mind

Making the Case for Twitter

Neil Stephenson — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:10:29 +0000

A few weeks ago I was asked to lead a full-day workshop on inquiry as part of an annual retreat for Delta principals and vice-principals. The day before the event one of the event organizers Aaron Akune and I got talking about Twitter backchannels, something I’ve used as a participant, but not as a presenter. We thought we’d give it a go during the event.

Just as the day was getting started and I was introducing the idea of backchannels, one of the participants asked a very honest question wanting to know my thoughts about the possible ‘distraction factor’ that comes from using twitter during professional events like this one. I stumbled through an answer – but didn’t feel like I answered the question very well.

I’ve been thinking about it over the last couple weeks – and if I could go back an answer the question now I’d say two things:

1) Yes there is a distraction factor. Except I wouldn’t call it a distraction – I’d call it an implementation dip. Whenever new tools, ideas, policies, etc are introduced there’s a guaranteed dip in ‘performance’ until a level of comfort is achieved. Of course this applies to using twitter to participate in a back-channel discussion. The first few times I would expect it to be clunky and awkward – and yes – someone might be focusing more on the tool than the presentation. But that dip quickly disappears – and the technology becomes something that enhances rather than reduces the experience.

2) Twitter during presentations is participatory learning. When twitter works well it becomes a wonderful case study of the best of technology-supported learning:

We are producing in addition to consuming. Effective tweets create, summarize, synthesize and connect ideas.
We make our learning public. Tweeting takes our private notes and makes them public – for those at the event and those not.
We are participating in a community of learners. Using Twitter this way allows user to read and respond to others at an event. We are no longer learning isolation but part of a network sharing their thoughts and connections about the event.
We are engaging productively with content. Having tweeted myself at numerous education events I find myself more connected, more engaged and listening more closely to the message being shared.

Thoughts?

Backchannel image from bobowen

Is Web 2.0 Making Me Dumber?

Ways to hook kids with math

Neil Stephenson — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:22:41 +0000

Over the last few weeks I’ve been involved in facilitating a 5 part math-lesson study. This exciting event involves 22 local math teachers working through open-ended math problems first as learners themselves and then with their students. There’s been some great discussion so a far – and one of the coolest things is how the teachers are starting to videotape their teaching, interview students about their learning and openly share their teaching with other educators. The idea for this initiative comes from the work of the Galileo Educational Network.

Throughout this process we have continually circled over tips that help students enter into a math problem with greater gusto. A number of suggestions have emerged:

1. Don’t start with the Math. The teachers have discussed how many students shut down if you start with the math. Rather than introducing formulas, vocabulary terms, and numbers, start with problems, puzzles, and situations. Rather than using the problem to practice math – introduce a problem that requires math to solve it.

2. Try to avoid text-only problems. Some students struggle to start a math problem because of difficulties with langauge. Where possible, start with images, videos, manipulates or hands-on introductions to the math. Chunking out the sub-questions or giving them one at a time isn’t really a solution – find ways to get rid of the written language completely. Dan Meyer‘s name has come up many times as the master of this.

3. Tie the math to a context students understand. Students are able to enter into the math more easily if it’s a context that they understand. This could be a topic that they personally have background knowledge about – or it could be embedding math into another topics they’ve been exploring. That way they are not trying to understand the vocabulary of the context and work through the math at the same time. As an example, check out this how this great question embedded math into a science project students were already invested in.

4. Have students create predictions. One of the simplest ways to get students invested in a problem is to have them make predictions. Ideally the problem is one that allows predictions to be made. For example, one of the math teachers at my school recently started a study by having students estimate the perimeter of Alberta. Putting sticky notes on the board mean every kid is invested because their answer is out in the world.

5. Use problems where the situation provides feedback. The best math problems don’t require students to ask teachers if they are right, but uses the problem themselves to give feedback. For example, students trying to move from counting how many toothpicks make up a shape to developing a formula to do the same can always go back and count toothpick as a way to run tests on their formulas. The question should create test cases for the student-generated ideas.

Play as Professional Development

Neil Stephenson — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:43:10 +0000

“Unless teachers have opportunities to develop their own understanding of the richly webbed core concepts and modes of inquiry in the fields they teach, they are not likely to perceive their goals in such terms. Few schools make such opportunities a priority for their in-service teacher development activities.”

This quote comes from “Teaching for Understanding” by Martha Stone-Wiske and the gang at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. (Think: David Perkins, Howard Gardner, etc). I’ve been using this book a ton the last 6 months. I think its a great resource.

As my understanding of good inquiry/good teaching continues to grow, one of my ah-ha’s is that inquiry gains traction when framed as ‘disciplined-inquiry’ – that is moving beyond generic skills and competencies into a place where students are taking on the ways of thinking and behaving of different disciplines. I often turn to this High Tech High video – “I want my kids behaving like a scientist, behaving like an actress, behaving like a filmmaker. Not just studying it, but being like it.”

Of course this requires a significant change in the role of the teacher. Yes – it requires teacher to move to the side a little and open up spaces for students to live and breathe within a topic. Yes – it means teachers have to re-think assessment and what it might mean to demonstrate understanding in this way.

But I also think it means teachers have to re-think how they conceptualize the very topics they teach. I think if teachers continue to see learning as students ‘getting content’ then all the technology, assessment, innovation, collaboration, creativity, etc that we are striving for won’t do much. In the word of one of my mentors, Dr. Sharon Friesen, this is just tinkering around the edges.

Rather, for real transformation to occur requires a radical shift in how we view knowledge and understanding. Understanding not as trivia or formulas or mental stuff to get but as learning to thinking productively and flexibly with problems in a particular area of study.

Or (again from Teaching for Understanding):

“Curriculum designed to promote understanding does not simply impart information. Rather, the curriculum must involve students in continuing spirals of inquiry that draw them from one set of answers to deeper questions that reveal connections between the topic at hand and other fundamental ideas, questions and problems”

That’s where the first quote above caught my eye. If we want student to learn to think creatively and flexibly within ‘rich and complex webs of knowledge’ then what are we doing to allow teachers to play and be creative within these topics themselves? How can teachers create the complex conditions (it has to be more than just letting kids loose online) where inquiry can flourish if they experience those spaces themselves?

What if PD was and support for teachers to do math, do science and do history as a pre-cursor to planning those same tasks for students? To be able to play in those spaces themselves? To learn the ways of thinking and behaving?

An example:

In partnership with the Galileo Educational Network, the school I work at has been working at using a lesson study approach to math PD for the last three years. I believe there is great potential in this approach – but it requires a ton of heavy lifting by teachers. After slogging away for a couple years something really significant changed at the end of last school year. In small groups teachers worked through rich math problems themselves first – not worrying about how they would teach a particular concept – but rather playing attention to their own problem solving approaches and working through the forming of conjectures, testing hypotheses and looking for patterns – just as they want they kids to do.

Something changed when the teachers moved from talking about teaching math to teachers doing math themselves. Interest when up. Buy-in went up. And the momentum is building…

Whatyda think – how might PD be built around teacher collaboratively playing in topics themselves?

“Caught in the rush of the news”

Neil Stephenson — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:51:24 +0000

Just I finally finished all the revisions on my thesis. So nice to get that done.

It’s called “Caught in the rush of the news: the young, the old and the promise of educational technology”.

For those who might be interested, I post it here in it’s entirety for you.

Enjoy!

Learning as Play

Neil Stephenson — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:16:35 +0000

This post is an excerpt from my recent Master’s Thesis entitled: “Caught in the rush of the news: the young, the old and the promise of educational technology”

As a bit of context, I argue through my thesis that the psychological archetypes of the young (puer) and the old (senex) are a useful way to consider technology in education. Throughout the thesis I equate technology with the puer archetype and the traditional structures or discplines with the senex.

Play can be defined as the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. But when play happens with a medium for learning it creates a context in which information, idea and passions grow. (Brown and Thomas, 2011, chapter 1)

So far we have seen that within the puer (young) and senex (old) archetypes are inherent positive and negative characteristics, and that the key to drawing out the best in either is to recognize the importance of the world that they share. Pivotal at this point of the thesis is a discussion of the notion of play as a way of shedding light on how the puer and senex might move beyond their negative manifestations in relation to the shared world. As a way to begin our exploration on play, Gadamer becomes helpful, as the concept receives significant explanation in his work Truth and Method.

According to Gadamer, if we begin by thinking of ourselves involved in the playing of a particular game, it becomes apparent that the experience of play is something that exists in a different way than the subjective experiences of the individual players. Play has a unique ontology. In the act of play, the consciousness of the player is taken up in the game. In play, the player is caught up in something, “beyond their wanting and doing.” (Gadamer 1989, p. xxviii) This experience of the consciousness of a player being caught up is why the act of play is so enjoyable. Said another way, the ontological nature or being of play is something that exists separate to, and more accurately between the players involved.

While we are apt to view the act of play as merely puerile and playful, Gadamer reminds us that we must approach play with a particular level of seriousness, a seriousness that is required order to keep a game going. “Seriousness is not merely something that calls us away from play; rather, seriousness in playing is necessary to make the play wholly play” (Gadamer 1989, p.103). We need only watch young children play games of imagination to see the focus and cognitive commitment that is needed in order to maintain a certain level of play. Participating players must have an understanding of the rules and play within them for the enjoyment of a game to continue. In fact, it is more than just the enjoyment of the game, the very existence of the game, as a suspension of reality, requires that the players maintain adherence to the seriousness of the game. “Play fulfills its purpose only if the player loses himself in play.” (Gadamer 1989, p.103) The existence of play requires a consistent and maintained seriousness from all players involved.

Here John Seely Brown provides further insight into the importance of play, bringing with him a strong affinity toward emerging technologies. Brown, (2009) drawing on the work of Johan Huizinga, suggests that “play is not merely central to the human experience; it is constitutive of all that is meaningful in human culture.” Play is not to be seen as rooted in a particular culture or isolated component of a particular culture, rather we need to understand that culture is created by play. “Play is not something we do; it is who we are.” (Brown 2009) In Brown’s view, play is so fundamental to understanding human experience that he suggests we must view ourselves as Homo Ludens (human as player) in addition to Homo Sapiens (human as knower) and Homo Faber (human as maker). Understanding the notion of Homo Ludens is necessary to foster a complete understanding of both what it means to be human, as well as developing a full and complete notion of knowledge and learning. It is the act of play that opens up spaces of experimentation and imagination. Play is learning, a concept we know from watching children at play.

This notion of play becomes useful as we discuss its importance within a classroom setting. Through our exploration so far, we have come to recognize how the puer/senex duality requires something beyond them to draw out their positive aspects. We cannot hope to resolve the tension by merely creating situations for the young and old to interact, we must create proper situations of ‘play’ – conditions that create possibilities for the young and the old to reveal the best in each other. In Brown’s view, (2009) play exists in the gap between what ‘is’ or what already we know (senex) and what’s possible or what we hope to create that isn’t yet (puer). Here we have an important piece in understanding the nature of puer/senex complex in educational contexts; play exists in the space between something known and something not yet complete.

So then what conditions of play create possibilities for the puer and senex to reveal their positive aspects? To start with, we must look past the puer/senex complex and begin to discuss the importance of the topic around which the two can meet. The topic itself must create the possibilities for play, because, as we have seen, the puer/senex complex left on its own will not resolve the tension between them. What the peur/senex complex require, in order to be in right relation, is a ‘field of play’ or context that opens up with possibility or abundance. What both the puer and the senex require, in order to get past the inherent polarity of their relationship, is a topic that calls on them, requires something of them, beyond their own individual nature. “Understanding begins when something addresses us.” (Gadamer 1989, p. 299)

At the offset, we must recognize that not all topics or contexts are going to create a useful field of play between the puer and the senex. In fact, the opposite has more often been the case. The history of public education, particularly throughout the 20^th century, has built the institution of education around notions of lack and scarcity (Jardine et al., 2006, introduction), and around an understanding of knowledge that it is something finished and complete. The mechanistic, factory approach to education reduces topics to disconnected, isolated, reproducible chunks of information. If classroom conditions are built around a perspective that views knowledge as scarce and complete then the puer/senex relationship suffers from a lack of space, opportunity and possibility. There is nowhere to go, nothing to create or renew. The industrial model of education is all senex and no puer. The curriculum is all decided (the knowledge already ‘is’) with no opportunity or space for both teachers and students to become or create or imagine. If we view curriculum guides and program of studies in such a way that “nothing can happen,” then the space for play needed by the puer/senex complex disappears and the relationship is reduced to rebellion, hyperactivity and boredom by the puer, and control, management and anger by the senex. If the complex beauty of the world is reduced to worksheets, then the opportunity for play is gone, and we are left managing the emerging conflict between the puer/senex archetypes.

On the other hand, what might happen if we approached curriculum topics as abundant, or alive, unfinished conversations with space to ‘become.’ How might schooling look differently if we approached learning as the play between what is known and what is not yet? This could be framed as taking an inquiry approach to the disciplines we teach. The starting point for an inquiry-based stance is to see the material in our curricula as topics or topica (L. spaces) as opposed to disconnected, isolated, and trivialized bits facts and skills. In their best and truest form, the topics we teach are alive and actually exist in the world beyond our classrooms walls. Be it history, mathematics, biology, art history, psychology, the content of our programs of study actually exist out there in the world, beyond the walls of our classrooms. As educators we don’t need to invent or fabricate space or possibilities within the topics we teach – they exist already in their natural form. The disciplines we are entrusted to introduce to students are actually alive and breathing, dynamic and ever changing. And most importantly, the disciplines are not yet finished. They, like us and the students we teach, are still in the process of becoming. If we take this approach to the content of schooling, the work for teachers is to search for and then design learning around the spaces between what is known about a particular topic (senex) and what might be imagined or created (puer).

Inherent in the curriculum topics we teach is the potential to provide the necessary space and play for the puer/senex to bring out the best in each other. However, the ability to see the abundance or possibility within the curriculum topics requires something of the teacher; that we nurture and develop our ability to see and enter into the inherent possibilities. Popular math blogger Dan Meyer sums it up well: “I don’t trust myself to be an effective inquiry-based teacher if I’m not living an inquiry-based life.” (Meyer 2011) In order to create these conditions for our students, we need to adopt Gadamer’s disposition toward expertise; we must be experienced in order to provide the possibilities for new experiences and not allow our background knowledge and experience to turn our understanding into something we see as finished and complete. We must continually develop our own abilities to see and take care of the topics we teach because it is the way in which we approach these topics, and then take them up in our classrooms that will provide the necessary ‘field of play’ for the puer/senex complex to bear fruit. In short, we need to recognize the need for both the puer and senex within ourselves.

What has been an important discovery for me is the importance how central this notion of topic is to developing meaningful and effective inquiry-based learning experiences, something that is lacking from the emerging frameworks and theories that frequently appear under the banner of 21^st Century learning. As our profession begins a slow shift from the factory-model paradigm of content delivery, the dominant models are focused on developing skills and competencies with students. Discussions of how students should be developing critical, creative, collaborative, innovative skills abound. But what is lacking from these frameworks of 21^st Century Learning is the importance of what is being learned (Friesen and Jardine, 2009 p. 20) We have already seen how overly student-centered approaches to learning often lead to the puer spirit being given free range to create their own world. We have also seen how important it is to create learning environments that have the place for play between what is known or bounded, and what is possible. This has led me to develop a growing appreciation for the way that a rich topic provides the important boundaries or structures that are needed to create meaningful and engaging classroom work for students, while allowing space and possibility for new creation and imagination.

Advice for New Teachers

Neil Stephenson — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:04:05 +0000

Tomorrow I’m giving a short talk to 400 student teachers at the University of Calgary. When it came time to gather advice – I decided to outsource the heavy lifting to twitter. Here’s what came back:

Creating Authentic Learning

Neil Stephenson — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:05:07 +0000

This post is part of the “Implementing Inquiry Based Learning” series.

Authenticity:

Adapted from the Inquiry Rubric created by the Galileo Educational Network

Authenticity includes tasks, activity or work that is associated with a result or outcome that has clear meaning and value to the student. (Schlechty, 3)

The starting point of inquiry-based learning in an authentic learning task where students are engaged in work that is worthy of their time and attention, is personally relevant and deeply connected to the world in which they live. The development of authentic learning tasks for students means situating the learning in places ( think: topics, topos, topographies) where curriculum outcomes are brought to life with real world connections and stories. Harvard’s Teaching For Understanding (TfU) project uses the term generative topics as the starting point. Effective topics are generative in the sense that “they often have a bottomless quality, in that inquiry into the topic leads to deeper questions” and consist of four elements:

Central to a domain or discipline. This involves an approach to curriculum that engages students in developing understanding around the questions, controversies, and modes of inquiry central to a topic.
Accessible and interesting to students. The selection of a generative topic considers student experience, interests, learning modes or intelligences, cultural background, and resources.
Interest to the teacher. For teachers to introduce students to the elaborate interconnected webs of information central to a discipline requires the teachers to have an understanding of the subject matter and ways of inquiry within that topic. Teachers interest passion and curiosity about a topic will increase the teachers investment and provide a model of engagement for students.
Connectable. Powerful generative topics are connectable in two ways: (1) to students previous understanding about the subject and (2) to other ideas and concepts within and across disciplines.

As we approach inquiry-based teaching and learning, authenticity can appear in one of two ways:

1. Authentic to the real world. This means creating learning opportunities that are linked to relevant current events or real-world connections designed to increase student engagement and interest in the topic. In this way a particular classroom task is designed around work or question or problem or an exploration that actually exists in the world. As an example, grade 6 students engaged in a mathematical inquiry built around the question,” are there enough trees in Canada’s boreal forest to be considered the lungs of the earth?” This example used a real world context as the hook or entry point for student engagement into the mathematical study.

An example of a framework that aligns with real-world authenticity is Apple’s Challenge-Dased Learning. Challenge-based learning centers around students collaboratively engaging in a real world problem or issue leading to the design of a solution or action that they can then implement in their local community. Information on Challenge Based Learning can be found here.

Examples of real-world authenticity:

On his widely read math blog, Dan Meyer shares a number of ‘real-world’ mathematical problems rooted in the use of multimedia and pop culture to engage students in mathematical thinking.
As the task for this grade four humanities project, students planned and designed a sustainable community located in a particular geographic region with Alberta. Students researched the resources, geographical features, and environmental challenges faced by a particular region and designed small community based on basic principles of sustainable development,.
As part of a grade 9 study of government, grade 9 humanities students hosted a forum for candidates in a local municipal election. Students hosted the real world forum, taking in questions for candidates from other schools, as well as broadcasting the event publicly across the Internet.

2. Authentic to the discipline at hand. A second way to consider authenticity is to create learning tasks that work with conceptual frameworks, ways of thinking, or modes of inquiry central to the topic. As Larry Rosenstock, CEO from High Tech High Charter Schools explains, “I want kids behaving like an actress, scientist, documentary filmmaker, like a journalist. Not just studying it but being like it.” Seen this way, the purpose of authenticity is to create opportunities for students to take on ways of thinking and adopt standards of evidence that are central to the disciplines. For example, a rich inquiry-based approach to mathematics would allow students to identify patterns, develop mathematical hypotheses, test mathematical conjectures, and create proofs while working with problems or sets of data that are not necessarily tied to real world contexts.

Examples of discipline based authenticity:

The Galileo Educational Network website provides a significant number of ‘worthy and robust’ math problems and puzzles for both elementary and secondary students. These problems are designed to open up foundational concepts in mathematics and create possibilities for students problem solving and mathematical thinking. This video is an example of a student podcast solving one of the math problems.
During a grade 5 study of wetlands students took on the ways of data collection utilized by scientists in the field. After becoming experts in particular elements of water quality, students were allowed to develop hypotheses about various water samples taken from a nearby wetland and then use water probes to test and compare the five water samples collected.
In order to demonstrate their understanding of simple machines, grade 8 students used a virtual physics simulator create and test digital ‘Rube Goldberg’ machines. The software allowed students limitless freedom to exercise their creativity and imagination in integrating the different elements of the curriculum.

Guiding Questions for Authenticity:

Where does this topic live in the world?
What are some of the current questions that experts are wrestling with in this area?
What will students find relevant about this topic?
Why would someone care about this topic?
What are the ways that experts in this field do their work?
What counts as evidence or proof within this topic?
How might students access or create authentic sources of data on this topic?
Where will students have the opportunity to solve problems, create solutions, test ideas, recognize patterns, innovate, build or design?

Thinking about Technology and Authenticity:

What technologies are used by people in this discipline?
Are there particular tools, technologies, types of data, sources of information, etc that experts in this areas utilize?
What tools might allow students to collect data in ways similar to experts?

What is ‘inquiry-based learning’?

Neil Stephenson — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:40:22 +0000

I’m currently working on a ‘field guide to inquiry’. My goal is to create a document (that is somewhat concise and practical) that can assist teachers as they begin to adopt an inquiry-based teaching perspective into their classrooms. I just wrapped up the intro. I’d love thoughts and feedback…

“The meaning of knowing has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it.” (National Research Council, 2007)

Popular discourse as well as recent findings in the learning sciences tell a similar story. The model of education typical of 20th century classrooms was effective for that era of human history, but the ‘knowledge society’ we live in requires new thinking and approaches to teaching and learning. This new thinking means that “former conceptions of knowledge, minds and learning no longer serve a world where what we know is less important that what we are able to do with knowledge in different contexts.” (Friesen, 2009)

Inquiry-based learning is an approach to teaching and learning that makes intellectual engagement and deep understanding possible through a hands-on, minds-on approach towards the curriculum. Inquiry-based learning also honours the complex, interconnected nature of knowledge construction. As an entry point, Inquiry-based approach generally involves students:

tackling real-world questions, issues and controversies
pursuing curiosities and interests within a meaningful topic
deepening questioning, research and communication skills
solving problems or creating solutions
collaborating within and beyond the classroom
developing deep understanding of content knowledge
sharing their work and ideas publicly to improve their learning
becoming confident and independent learners

Inquiry-learning is a umbrella term that covers a number of other approaches to teaching and learning. Subsets of inquiry-based learning include:

problem-based learning: learning that starts with an ill-structured problem or case-study
project-based learning: students create a project or presentation as a demonstration of their understanding
design-based learning: learning through the working design of a solution to a complex problem
constructionism: learning through the physical construction of a tangible object in the real world

As contrasted with more traditional forms of teaching and learning, inquiry-based practices emphasize the process of learning in addition to the intended acquisition of knowledge and skills. Inquiry-based learning draws from a constructivist learning theory, the notion that understanding is built through the active development of conceptual frameworks by the learner. This approach is supported and enhanced by a broad research base which has identified three key implications for effective instructional practices:

1. Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about the world. This means teaching practices must draw out and work with students preexisting understandings and make student ‘thinking’ visible and central to the learning.

2. Competence in an area of study requires factual knowledge organized in the context of conceptual frameworks to facilitate retrieval and application. Classroom activities should be designed to develop understanding through in-depth study of curriculum topics.

3. Meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) helps students take control of their learning.
Opportunities for students to define learning goals and monitor their own understanding needs to be embedded into classroom tasks.

If we are to make use of these important findings, it becomes clear that an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning must be a structured and thoughtfully designed endeavour. While ‘minimal-guided’ inquiry has been shown to be somewhat effective as a teaching technique, (Hattie) learning that is worthy of student’s time and attention, relevant, connected to the world and organized around the ‘big ideas’ of a subject can lead to understanding and intellectual interest and engagement with students. For inquiry-based learning to be an effective approach to teaching and learning requires significant intellectual investment on the part of teachers to design learning tasks that are connected to the disciplines, to their students’ lives, and to the world, while focused on clear and achievable learning targets.

Playing the “Whole Game”

Another way to consider inquiry based learning is the notion of “playing the whole game,” an idea by David Perkins, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Perkins begins with the belief that teachers have historical approached the complexity of teaching in one of two ways:

Students learn isolated elements of skills and knowledge, starting with the simple building blocks of a particular topic and then building to more complex ideas. While this approach appeals to common sense (think of the efficiency of a automobile assembly line), the problem with this approach is the removal of any context to the learning, making understanding of the content less likely. Perkins calls this approach elementitis, when learning is structured exclusively around disconnected elements and fragmented pieces of information.

Students learn about a particular topic. This approach is frequently utilized in history and science where students are taught about other people’s ideas but rarely if ever given the opportunity to produce and test and reflect upon their own ideas. Learning is reduced to consuming knowledge or information, without developing the critical thinking or creative, knowledge-building skills necessary to transfer knowledge to novel situations.

The solution that Perkins offers to the typical classroom experience is what he calls learning by wholes, structuring learning around opportunities to experience or engage in the topic as it would exist outside of school. Perkins uses the metaphor of a baseball game, where the experience of most students in most classrooms involves students either learn isolated skills (i.e., only ever throwing a ball) or learning about the game (i.e., studying baseball statistics or the history of baseball) without ever getting out onto the field and participating in an actual game. In a classroom setting, this means providing opportunities for students to experience the ‘whole game’ of mathematical thinking or scientific problem solving or historical analysis of primary source artifacts.

It is important to note that focusing on the elements of a topic, or learning about a topic are not necessary bad approaches to teaching and learning. Rather, they are important tools for teachers to use in a classroom environment. However, the issue arises when learning is focused solely on elementitis or aboutitis, the usual practice in most classrooms. With an inquiry-based, or whole-game approach, authenticity and relevant learning tasks provide the necessary context and engagement into which other teaching practices such as learning the elements or background about a topic can be embedded in a more productive way.

The Starting Point for Inquiry

Neil Stephenson — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 23:05:36 +0000

…. what might happen if we approached curriculum topics as abundant, or alive, unfinished conversations with space to ‘become?’

How might schooling look differently if we approached learning as the play between what is known and what is not yet?

This could be framed as taking an inquiry approach to the disciplines we teach. The starting point for an inquiry-based stance is to see the material in our curricula as topics or topica (L. spaces) as opposed to disconnected, isolated, and trivialized bits facts and skills. In the their best and truest form, the topics we teach are alive and actually exist in the world beyond our classrooms walls. Be it history, mathematics, biology, art history, psychology, the content of our programs of study actually exist out there in the world.

As educators we don’t need to invent or fabricate space or possibilities within the topics we teach – they exist already. The disciplines we are entrusted to introduce to students are actually alive and breathing, dynamic and ever changing. And most importantly, the disciplines are not yet finished. They, like us and the students we teach, are still in the process of becoming.

If we take this approach to the content of schooling, the work for teachers is to search for and then design learning around the spaces between what is known about a particular topic and what might be imagined or created.

(a few lines from my masters thesis…. hopefully done soon!)

Rigourous Use of Educational Technology

Neil Stephenson — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 16:56:38 +0000

Guest post by Lindsey Wright

Rigorous use of educational technology has become something of a buzz expression over the past decade. As more and more people begin considering attending an online school as a viable option for education, school districts across the country have been encouraging teachers to integrate technology into their classrooms and develop lesson plans that promote student interaction on a digital level. Yet despite the massive push to develop rigorous educational technology practices, very few people seem to understand what this form of education looks like or how to implement it. To that end, it is essential that teachers develop a strong understanding of what rigor in educational technology is and how they can implement rigorous practices in their classrooms.

A Working Definition of Rigor

As mentioned in this blog’s recent post “A Compelling Image of Rigor,” the current use of this buzzword without any contextualization has led to a belief that rigor and equates to “more:” more homework, more content, more testing, and ultimately more stress. The post cites an interview with the CEO of High Tech High, Larry Rosenstock, in which Rosenstock says rigor is “…being in the company of a passionate adult who is rigorously pursuing inquiry in the area of their subject matter and is inviting students along as peers in that discourse.” He goes on to elucidate what signals that a teacher is good, claiming that a good teacher has students who “produce work that is worth doing” and “learning that is worth learning.” This is a qualitative model of rigor based wholly on educational experience rather than numbers, and on depth rather than breadth of content.

Educational Technology and Rigor

To take Rosenstock’s definition of rigor and apply it to technology would mean utilizing technology as a way for students to delve more deeply into a subject, rather than sitting students in front of computers simply to transmit the same content to them as if from the central source of the teacher. In an interview given to The Knowledge Loom, Dr. Christopher Dede, Professor in Learning Technologies at Harvard University, concurs with this assessment, but takes his view of the role of rigor in the use of classroom technology to a different level.

As Dede points out, technology is a constantly evolving thing. Therefore, teaching students how to interface with current technology is not nearly as important as giving them the skills they will need to effectively interface with each new development in technology. Additionally, he notes that students should be engaged with the technology and using it to broaden their research and learning goals, rather than using technology simply as a means to a circumscribed end.

Similarly, technology education goals and standard education goals should align. As Dede says, knowing how to filter information doesn’t just mean the student can successfully use a library or read a book, but implies that the student can filter information using a search engine as well. However, if the student can’t exercise the skill in multiple media, the student hasn’t actually learned the skill. Therefore, it is essential that teachers recognize that rigorous use of technology in the classroom serves as a complement to standard practices in the classroom, and vice versa. When used appropriately, technology lets students take charge of their education and explore aspects of it more deeply while also helping them to develop the skills they need to compete in a global economy.

Dede goes further in his discussion of rigor, clarifying what research should reveal about educational rigor and technology. He claims that using educational technology in the classroom is not just replacing the blackboard with PowerPoint presentations. It requires taking the basic standards to be met in the classroom and using technology to facilitate innovative instruction and develop depth of content that might otherwise be impossible.

Finally, Dede validates what Rosenstock says in discussing qualitative rather than quantitative data. Although quantitative data is what generally appears in journal articles and is often used as a measure of success, it is not actually what practitioners in the classroom would like to cite. They would instead rely on qualitative data that have been validated by personal experience and by the experience of peers. Thus this qualitative data is equally, if not more valuable than the quantitative, and accordingly should be embraced as a component in educational research into rigor — particularly the rigorous use of technology in the classroom.

Despite the emphasis in today’s educational environment on rigor and the drive to bring technology into the classroom to enhance the educational process, many teachers are being left in the dark as to what exactly rigorous use of technology in the classroom entails. Instead of providing guidance, school districts spout statistics and emphasize test results, all of which are computer-programmed. However, the true value of technology for education lies in its ability to help students as they learn, not fallaciously quantify how well they’ve learned. If used an in an appropriate manner, rigorous use of educational technology will yield positive results, primarily because students and teachers will have worked together to use technology as an investigative tool that enhances classroom education.