9 Technology to Support Learning

Technology is sometimes used as another word for magic. The reality is that technology is just another word for tool. Research that tries to determine whether technology is useful to learning is as misguided as research into whether tools are useful to carpentry. The question is not whether tools are useful, but which tools to use under which circumstances and to what end.

Invariably, when someone uses the word "technology," they are referring to some sort of electronic system, or occasionally some sort of chemical process used in manufacturing. To paraphrase McLuhan, it wasn't a fish that discovered water; we have become so immersed in most human technology that we no longer see it as such. A chalk and chalkboard are technology, as were the wax tablets and styluses used by the ancient Romans. Our clothing, or even a simple stick used by a chimp to disrupt an anthill qualifies as technology. The question of whether tools in general are useful is absurd; but somehow using the word "technology" in place of "tools" causes the question to arise.

Just as a carpenter wouldn't try to use a screwdriver where a hammer should be used, an educator shouldn't assume that any tool is useful in any situation. As McLuhan suggested every tool augments some human function we already perform. The essential step in reviewing what tool to use, is to consider which function we want to augment, and choose accordingly. The expectation the technology is some form of wizardry that will accomplish our ends for us with no intervention on our part is the main misconception that needs to be overcome for the field of instructional technology to be successful.

8 Teacher Learning

Teachers are in a difficult position where their knowledge is concerned. Many students view them as adversaries, and the slightest gap in the knowledge of the teacher represents an opportunity for attack. Standing up to the criticisms of peers, students, and the community requires a strong sense of self. At the same time, teachers need to be humble enough to accept new learning if they are to progress.

Traditionally, teachers were viewed as living encyclopedias expected to contain all knowledge relevant to their field. In the past, this was possible, and such polymaths actually existed, but today, we live in a different informational environment. It is no longer possible for a single individual to know everything there is to know about a given field. According to Caltech physicist, David Goodstein (1994), it's still true that 90% of the scientists who have ever lived are alive today, and in fact that statement would have been equally true at any point for the last 300 years (although the trend is probably at its peak, now). Today we have more people at the cutting edge of knowledge than ever before, and at the same time, nearly all of human knowledge is instantly available at our fingertips. Consequently, it is time for the role of teacher to change.

In my opinion, the ideal teacher today is not a breathing copy of Wikipedia, but rather a learning coach. I would prefer to be mentored by someone who didn't have all the answers, but could help me to find them for myself. A teacher should be a master learner, not a master knower, and should be an expert in sifting the accurate and relevant information from the ocean of noise we have available to us electronically. Pedagogy needs to make room for metalearning.

References
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

7 Effective Teaching Examples

All of the exemplary teachers mentioned in this chapter shared the common method of discovering and considering the preexisting beliefs of their learners, as opposed to the traditional method of attempting to pour knowledge into the minds of the students with the hope that it will wash out any misconceptions lurking between the folds of the students cortexes.

The most frequent question I asked as a student was "why do we have to learn this?" I wasn't the most well behaved student, so the question often included a bit of profanity, and the answer often included a trip to the Principal's office. The answer afforded to better behaved students was little better; some variant of "because I said so" would have to suffice. The example in the chapter of the teacher who began her course by asking students what they wanted to know and who adapted her curriculum to respond to them is probably impractical for the majority of teachers, but it would have been the ideal answer to my question. I certainly would have been less of a fixture in Mr. King's office.

Human beings are naturally curious about their world and each other. The mysteries of nature have impressed us to the extent that most cultures have deified them for thousands of years. To take the curiousity that is natural to us, and the questions held us in awe since the advent of our species and hammer at their corpses until they are a burden is the product of a corruption of the most sinister kind. Without providing the relevance that is offered by these exceptional teachers we doom learners to view the educational system as minimum security prisons for thier minds. What's needed is to make what is now exceptional into the norm.

6 Design of Learning Environments

The chapter on the design of learning environments made excellent use of the analogy that learning was a bridge that takes you from where you are to some destination on the other side. Student's preconcieved ideas about the world need to be taken into consideration as a starting point for learning. Transfer, both positive and negative, inevitably flows from prior knowledge outside the influence of the educator; consequently the educator must take care to determine what the starting point of the bridge.

I once saw a video, I don't remember where, in which an elementary school girl was convinced that light was generated in the eye and bounced off the objects that the person sees. The teacher was unable to convince her otherwise. The interviewer in the video asked her how she "knew" that light came from the eye, rather than from the environment, and she explained that she had seen her cat's eyes shining out of a completely dark room. Once her underlying assumption was understood, it was much easier for the interviewer to convince her that the cat's eye was highly reflective, and that light was produced by the sun and man made light sources.

While the book tends to focus on taking cultural assumptions into consideration for the purpose of determining underlying assumptions, I believe the same results can be obtained by treating people as individuals. It may be true that, as described in the book, Inuit children are taught not to speak out in class, but it can alsoo be true that a middle class student raised in America was subjected to some form of abuse and is therefore reluctant to speak. Treating these students as individuals would serve the same bridge-buildng purpose as considering their culture, without the added risk of stereotyping.

5 Mind and Brain

I largely agree with the conclusion of this chapter that the findings of neuroscience are of limited use to education at the current level of understanding. It's likely that we can safely surmise that learning has occurred when we see increased dendrites in a certain area of the brain, but a lack of a concentration of newly formed dendrites does not necessarily indicate a concomitant lack of learning.

By analogy, in an alphabetic written language such as English (as opposed to a logographic language such as Chinese), knowledge of the individual letters is not sufficient to determine the words, grammar, and meaning of written text. With only knowledge of the alphabet, it would be ridiculous to attempt to determine whether learning occurred by looking at a student's notebook. The simple act of writing shows that something happened, but was it learning or was it a love poem to a nearby student? If it was learning, was it correct? In contrast, an absence of notes does not indicate a lack of learning. Personally I find it nearly impossible to take notes and pay attention to what's happening in class. I generally only take notes when I am confused. Similarly, a lack of a high concentration of new dendrites could indicate that any learning that occurred was distributed across many areas of the brain, and connected enough to prior knowledge that little rewiring was necessary.

Neurology may one day be of more specific use to education, but at present, it appears to be dealing with a more fundamental layer of brain function and is no more useful to pedogogy than subatomic physics is to medicine. However, for the purposes of public relations, we should seize upon any opportunity to make a connection between neuroscience and pedogogy that presents itself.

4 How Children Learn

I am often surprised and annoyed by the absence of mention of the work of Maria Montessori in educational material. Studies are referenced that were conducted in the 1980s and 1990s that do little more than parrot some small aspect of what Montessori was saying in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I wish I understood the reason for this glaring omission, particularly in light of the growing popularity of her methods.

The ideas that children are smarter than we expect, or that there are "sensitive periods" to certain types of learning were noted by Montessori nearly a century ago. Children in Montessori classrooms are encouraged to learn from their older peers, and to teach those younger. The various senses are considered in the design of all the learning materials, and the development of a variety of problem solving strategies is encouraged.

My three year old son attends a Montessori school. I am encouraged by the fact that Montessori's methods are validated by modern research, but I don't understand the reason for the complete omission of her name from the literature. The largest problem facing the implementation of educational research today is a general lack of respect of pedagogy as a scientific discipline. This exists to the extent that even the highest educational positions in government are granted to nurses over those of us actually trained in education, and no one outside the educational community sees a problem with this. I don't think we can afford to disregard one of the earliest contributors to educational theory, particularly in light of the respect afforded her by the public at large.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_method accessed 11/23/2oo9

3 Learning and Transfer

I found this chapter to be both interesting and a little frustrating. Transfer, or analogous thinking, might be the most important skill available to the human mind, and yet there is no formal training on it in schools. The best teachers will try to take prior knowledge into consideration when teaching, but for the most part, classes are still taught in silos as though there is no application of mathematics that is relevant to the study of history, or there is no use for the communication skills learned in English class in the study of science.

As an undergrad, I frequently worked as a math tutor to make extra money. When teaching fractions, I always asked, "Do you like pizza?" I would then proceed to make analogies to pizza in my explanations. For decimals, I used money, and to combine the two, quarters were a convenient analogy. Using these analogies was always helpful for students. I never had a struggling student whose score wasn't improved by the use of prior knowledge in this way.

Since research shows that transfer is so crucial to basic learning as well as to making basic learning more meaningful, why don't we have transfer in mind as a basic skill? It dovetails so nicely with everything else that research has found effective. Assignments could include instructions to explain what was learned to another student using an analogy to something that student already knows. A task to write a word problem using something the student encounters in every day such as sports or a favorite video game incorporates both transfer and communication skills. To my mind, transfer is the keystone of education. We need to put more emphasis on it, rather than having it as an afterthought.

Experts and Novices

One of the examples used in chapter 2 of How People Learn compared the way expert chess plaers approach the game differently than novice players (Bransford, J., 2000, p.22). As a skilled novice chess player who has played (and lost) to expert players, I found this example particularly apt and useful. One of the experts I met years ago told me that the difference between a beginner (he used the term "fish") and a master player is "what he sees." I believe a more accurate way to phrase it would be "what he looks at and knows not to bother looking at."

Bransford discusses the way expert and novice chess players will assess the same amount of information, but with the crucial difference that the expert rules out many lines of thought early on, while the novice looks at all options without being able to quickly determine which has value. The novice spends a lot of mental energy assessing pathways that the expert can see at a glance as dead ends. The expert recognizes patterns in the subject matter, in this case chess, as a result of practice, familiarity, and reflection on the material in such a way that allows them to identify general principles.

The example of the two teachers teaching Hamlet is an excellent demonstration of how awareness of the differences between novices and experts can be applied to the classroom (p. 34). The first teacher approached the class assuming the students were as expert as he; I was bored to the point of suffering just reading the description of how he presented the material. The second teacher approached the class on the basis that they were probably not experts in Shakespeare, but they were experts in the realm of their own emotions. By giving them a personal context around which to organize the material, he helped them begin the process of finding general principles in the material. I'm hesitant to assume that the latter teacher was more effective on the basis of this reading alone, but I would be very surprised if he were not.


Bransford, J. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

McLuhan's Wake

As a lifelong technophile, I found myself initially resistant to what I perceived the be the Luddite nature of McLuhan's Wake. The day after we watched the video in class, I happened upon another, unrelated, video on comic books, which I've embedded below. Somewhere around the middle, the presenter is discussing the way comic books intersected with the new technology of computers. The first thing that was done was to simply plop the comic onto the screen as though it were a piece of paper in what the presenter called a "classic McLuhanesque mistake".

At this point, I had a sudden realization that I had interpreted McLuhan incorrectly. He was, in fact, stating the same thing I have always felt about the misuse of technology, namely that technology isn't innately good or bad, but that it's use defines its outcome. In trying to force the computer to be a piece of paper, to continue the above example, the technology became an impediment to the art form. Later on, comic artists adapted the comic to the increased possibilities presented by this new medium, what the presenter in the below video termed the "infinite canvas".

This same problem has plagued nearly every implementation of technology I have ever encountered. The users of the technology insist (or maybe can't resist) on seeing any new tool through the lens of the the worldview created by the old tool. Any attempt to do this will result in the tool being a burden to the old processes, rather than a way of augmenting and creating a new one. I've always had this idea, and now I realize I may have gotten it from McLuhan without even realizing it.