Category: Kids and Learning

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One Hand Tied Behind Our Backs

I was exchanging a few emails with a colleague the other day, and he proposed an interesting question…

“…imagine that when you go to your school tomorrow, somehow all curriculum (not admin) computers, peripherals and multimedia devices had disappeared – vaporised! Could quality teaching and learning still occur in your classroom? If not, specifically why not? I have heard it said a lot (that we need some serious changes in education) and it never fails to be a crowd pleaser and draw an enthusiastic response. But do we really? Is a good teacher in 2006 really that different a species to a good teacher from 20 years ago? Or 30, or 40 or 50 years ago?”

Interesting question. I recall Seymour Papert proposing a similar question in one of his books, where he suggested that if you had a time machine whereby you could go back to the late 1800s, pick up a teacher, a doctor and an engineer and bring them back to the 21st century, how well could they function? Papert suggested that the doctor and the engineer would simply be unable to do their job when faced with all the technological advancement that has taken place over the past 100 years, but the teacher – if he or she chose to – could simply do what they have always done. of course, the key phrase there is “if they chose to”, but if the teacher were given a textbook and a piece of chalk it’s quite feasible that they could indeed still teach.

Could quality teaching and learning still occur in such classroom?… It depends how you measure quality I guess, but I’d have to say that the answer for me personally would be no. Or at least it would be so difficult that I doubt I would continue to persevere under such conditions.

I was recently put into exactly such a situation here in Canada when I was asked to teach an Introduction to Business class, and the resources I was given were an empty classroom with rows of desks, a chalkboard and a set of class textbooks. That was pretty much it. No Internet, no TV, no video, no DVD, no radio… no nothing. The expectation (and the accepted method for teaching this type of course) is to provide the students with plenty of notes and exercises from the textbook, then work through each chapter in order, have a quiz at the end of each chapter, followed by a major summative assessment task towards the end of the course. Could quality teaching and learning occur in this situation? Maybe, but I found it really hard going. As you can probably imagine, it was very difficult trying to keep kids motivated under such conditions, and no amount of singing and dancing on my part was likely to change that.

On a few occasions I managed to drag in a TV and video player from somewhere else and showed some relevant videos to try and expose the kids to concepts that existed outside the classroom, but that was just a very superficial change to the teaching method, (and probably contravenes the rules of the hypothetical situation anyway, since I just introduced technology into the classroom). So, was quality teaching and learning taking place in this classroom under these conditions? I’d say not. the kids were bored, I was frustrated, and we were all getting rather sick of the whole thing. I tried to also bring in some other game-like, in-class activities to learn the course content (because, let’s face it, teaching like this is really just all about the content), but the kids just saw it as rather naff and cutesy and lost interest very quickly. Maybe I’m just a lousy teacher…

I think that the question of “Could quality teaching and learning take place in a classroom devoid of ICT-style technologies?” makes a presumption that our kids live in a world where ICT’s do not play a central role in their lives. Unfortunately, I believe they DO play a central role, and if we remove them from our arsenal of teaching resources then we severely limit our ability to connect with our students.

The answer to the question, “If not, why not?” is hard to answer but relating it back to my Intro to Business class, I suspect it has something to do with the conflict between our learning space being such a closed environment, while the nature of business is all about being part of “the real world”. I bought in newspapers, taught the kids how to follow the stock market, and tried to keep in touch with the big world of business, but there are limits of how effectively this worked, especially over the longer term. The kids did not know much about the course content, and therefore the only sources of “information” that they came into contact with was me and the textbook. Personally, I doubt either of those things is enough. I can try to tell a good story, try and enliven the information a bit, bring in news articles for discussion, etc but seriously, how long do you think it is until the novelty wears off that act? And the textbook? It was not too bad as textbooks go, but you imagine how excited you’d be to face it every day for 75 minutes.

The real problem as I see it is that in all of these other scenarios, the teacher is still at the centre of the learning process. It’s still all about “teaching” and not enough about “learning”. In my experience, ICTs have been enormously successful at engaging students, giving them knowledge tools, and shifting the focus of the “teaching and learning” process back onto learning and the students. Conversely, the removal of ICTs from the process tends to see students becoming more easily bored, more difficult to engage, and more likely to focus on content over process.

I imagine (or at least I hope!) that any teacher reading this will quickly say that such a teacher-focused classroom environment is not sustainable in the long term if we are to fully engage our students in the learning process. I’m sure that you and many other teachers out there could suggest a raft of strategies and ideas to make these lessons more interesting… But I’ll bet that nearly every one of those suggestions involves bringing in some form of outside resource… Now, my colleague proposed that the rules of this little game are that all computers, peripherals and multimedia devices are not allowed in the classroom. Let’s clarify those rules by saying that we also can’t include any DVDs, videos, guest speakers, posters, etc, etc. Let’s not just single out ICT tools, because they are just a contemporary version of these other tools. Without interesting, relevant, external resources can your classroom provide an environment of quality teaching and learning? I think it would be a bloody tough job.

Interestingly, in this particular business class we eventually got to a point – about halfway through the semester – were I decided to just ditch the “standard approach” and try something different. Instead of working through the rest of the textbook, I divided the class into groups and asked them to turn the remaining 12 chapters into a series of podcasts. The change in the engagement level was enormous and I believe the quality of the learning and thinking that took place was far superior to what had taken place beforehand. Same kids. Same content. Different approach. Using relevant technologies, I would contend that the end results were much, much better, with happier kids as a bonus.

None of this is meant to be a criticism of the teachers at this particular school, most of whom are caring professionals who try very hard to use a variety of teaching methods and resources to engage the kids. But my point is that “good teaching” happens DESPITE the often-prevailing nature of our current school system and not because of it. If the system changed a bit to become less content-driven, less focused on marks and high-stakes testing, less focused on the rails and more willing to acknowledge the side trips as David Warlick might say, then I think everyone – teachers and students – would all be better off.

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Don’t Judge a Wiki by its Cover

I was a bit horrified at a message I received through my school email account today. It was an internal memo basically saying that we were not to use Wikipedia with the students because it was far too unreliable.

This pessimistic view of Wikipedia was in stark contrast to an excellent podcast I listened to only the day before, titled Introducing Web 2.0 by Tim Wilson. Tim is an educator who is really passionate about the potential of Web 2.0, and has a much more positive outlook on Wikipedia as a learning resource.

I for one don’t agree with most of the criticism leveled at Wikipedia, and would like to think that as a staff we could have had some sort of professional discourse about this issue before we throw the baby out with the bathwater and just say don’t use it. Just like we expect our students to critically assess the resources we place in front of them, I think we also need to critically assess our use of resources like Wikipedia rather than just declare it “bad” and not use it. The issue is not wether Wikipedia might have a few inaccuracies – the issue is how do we teach our students to be astute users of ANY resource, not just Wikipedia.

I think the many benefits of Wikipedia need to be taken into consideration before we make any rash decisions like telling students not to use it.

First of all, I’m going to assume that people understand what a wiki actually is, and that they understand how the articles in a wiki are created. For those that don’t, here is a quick explanation, but basically a wiki is a webpage that is read/write enabled, meaning that users can, if they have the appropriate permissions, edit the page’s content. This enables wiki pages to be a dynamic, constantly-evolving, highly-scalable resource that is kept very current and this is Wikipedia’s biggest strength over static printed resources like traditional encyclopedias.

Wikipedia started life in 2001 as an offshoot of the Nupedia Project, and has grown to become the largest single constantly-updated encyclopedic source on the planet, containing well over 5 million articles on all manner of topics, with over 1.4 million of those in English. Many of these articles are written on extremely niche topics, and in terms of its overall depth, detail and ability to stay up-to-date, Wikipedia has few equal.

The articles in wikipedia are generally started and maintained by people with a vested interest in those particular subject areas. Whenever there are errors or even page-vandalism, these mistakes are generally fixed quickly by the “keepers” of those pages. Teachers I speak to have a huge fixation about the fact that pages can be vandalised, but seem to completely overlook the fact that pages also can be fixed. And that there are way more people who keep them fixed than people who vandalise them.

The problem is that there have been a few recent high profile, and I believe overblown, reports of inaccuracies in Wikipedia. The nature of a wiki – in that they are able to be edited by anyone – is such that inaccuracies can and sometimes do occur. There is no dispute about that. However, those few cases of reported inaccuracies need to be placed in their proper perspective of over 5 million current articles, most of which are highly relevant and pretty darn accurate.

Despite the *potential* for biased, vandalised or just plain wrong information, the overall accuracy levels of Wikipedia remain extremely high for the vast majority of articles it contains, and the fact that it is constantly updated means it can offer content that cannot be found elsewhere. Tim provided an interesting example in his podcast, that the Wikipedia entry on Hurricane Katrina was being written as the hurricane was still happening, that information was being added and updated constantly in real time, and the entry has continued to grow since then. The Encyclopedia Brittanica still doesn’t have an entry for Katrina at all. Surely that sort of immediacy has to be worth something?

It may be true that many (if not most) students (and many adults for that matter) are unable to detect incorrect or misleading information, but this is as equally true of text found in newspapers, magazines, books, TV and other sources as it is of Wikipedia. Even primary sources need to be considered critically. Let’s fact it, history is always written by the winners… Adolf Hitler might be remembered very differently had Germany had won the war. Students should be made aware of the possibility of errors or bias in Wikipedia, just as they need to be aware of errors and bias in all sources. Sure, Wikipedia should certainly not be the only option they have for finding information, but to say it should not be allowed as one of the options is downright foolish. We should be teaching our students to critically evaluate all information they are exposed to and perhaps rather than being a resource we discourage, Wikipedia offers educators the best possible environment in which to teach students about this idea of critical analysis of information. At least kids can approach Wikipedia with an expectation that there may be errors and keep their guard up.

“But my kids don’t use it well, they just plagiarise it without thinking critically” I was told several times today. So, ok, if they don’t use Wikipedia well, teach them to use it properly. I thought that’s what we teachers did. If we claim that some students use information from Wikipedia without thinking or questioning, then does it matter whether the facts were correct in the first place or not? I suspect those same students would use “legitimate” information sources just as indiscriminately, with the only difference being that teachers would mark their finished work on the basis that it was “correct”, and assume (incorrectly) that these students learnt something… the actual amount of real learning that may have taken place may be just as limited regardless of whether the “facts” they submitted were correct or not. In fact, a student submitting work that is factually correct that they still learnt nothing from is, in my opinion, almost a worse prospect that having students submit work where the facts are wrong. At least I can spot those kids!

I’ve personally seen many textbooks where the information is suspect, out-of-date, or just plain wrong. (I taught a senior computing course two years ago where all three of the approved textbooks consistently contradicted each other about basic facts and terminology – all three books were supposedly based in the course syllabus) My personal experiences with the news media suggest that most of what we read in newspapers contains many errors. Any time an author puts pen to paper, he or she exhibits some bias or interpretation of the facts. Wikipedia is probably no better or worse than any of these other sources, and in many cases has information which is probably far more nuanced than most other sources. Remember the people who maintain the articles have a vested interest in making sure they remain as accurate as possible. It’s all about the Wisdom of Crowds.

I mean, make up your own mind. Try this exercise… Pick five subjects in which you consider yourself somewhat of an expert. Look up these subjects in Wikipedia and see how accurate they are, compared to your own knowledge. You’ll soon get a feel for how accurate (or inaccurate) it is (or isn’t).

I’m almost certain that you’ll find the level of information in Wikipedia to be better than you might expect. And the beautiful thing is that if it’s not as good as it could be, you can fix it.

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Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives

I’ve just been watching David Warlick’s excellent keynote address for the K12 Online Conference. (which I’m sure most of you teachers will be taking part in, right?) He raises some excellent points and coined a few new phrases… I particularly liked the idea of being “derailed”, and the notion that the side trips can often be more powerful an experience than the actual main trip, or what he calls “the rails”.

Having him explain this from the platform of his local railway station was a nice touch. 🙂 If you haven’t seen it, go watch it and then contribute to the excellent wiki space that David has set up for us.

But he also mentioned the term Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, a term first coined by Marc Prensky I believe. The concept here is that the kids coming through our schools now are Digital Natives – they were born into a world where they don’t know what it’s like not to “be digital”, as Negroponte would say.

Us older folk who were born pre-Google, pre-MSN, pre-blogs, even pre-computers, are the Digital Immigrants… people living in a strange and sometimes unnatural digital world. The argument goes that if we as teachers want to relate to the things our students see as important, then we had better start integrating into this digital society, and fast. Prensky talks about us immigrants never quite losing our “digital accent” though, and that we will never truly be as fluent as the Digital Natives.

dad.jpgMy father immigrated to Australia from Poland during the war. Once he arrived here in Australia, he worked damn hard to become an Australian – he went to night school to improve his English, made efforts to spend time with Australian friends, married an Australian girl, and so on… In my eyes, my father was very successful in making the transition into Australian culture, and in learning the language (and he was an absolute stickler for correct grammar and spelling!), adopting the conventions of the local culture, following the local sports and so on… and most people who knew him while I was growing up had no idea he was not born in Australia. My grandparents on the other hand, never really made that transition. I loved my Babcia and Dziadek, but they spoke very little English, only really mixed with other Poles, and that made it very hard for me – as a native Australian kid – to get to really relate to them.

And that’s the issue we face in our school right now. If we Digital Immigrant teachers are to meet the needs of our Digital Native kids, we need to do what my father did… to abandon the old ways and to learn the new ways, to make a concsious effort to learn this new language and these new customs and to learn them well, to really, honestly internalise them. My dad didn’t take his transition into Australian life lightly… he worked hard to make sure that everyone around him knew that he was serious about becoming an Australian, or at least as Australian as he could be.

The days of being able to teach using the “old culture” are long gone. Those days are over. Some of us have not woken up to that fact yet, and it will hit us hard in the next few years. We simply have to accept that the nature of the kids we teach has irrevocably changed and that if we are to remain relevant and able to perform the job we go into the classroom to do, then we must change our thinking. It’s no longer acceptable to think that this is all too much work, or too hard, or not that important. This change is no longer optional.

We may never completely lose our digital accent with our students, but my father is proof that an immigrant to a new land can become fluent and integrated enough to become “one of them”. It takes a lot of work and desire and commitment, but it can be done.

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