The Maple Leaf Forever!!
Well, since I'm in the city for a two day in-service, I have the luxury of spending some time at "home." So after I got home, and when eating even more, I asked my mom if she knew that song from the Olympics that Michael Bublé sang. She proceeded to tell me it is an old song and then sang it, the Wolfe version. Uh huh. She then told me that my dad knows it too. Ya, mhmm. My mom and dad both said it was in the Manitoba Song Book and that they used to sing it in school (both my parents were teachers who began their careers in one room country schools... yes, back a few years). The point is, they know it. When I told my mom we talked about it in class tonight and said it was considered a second national anthem, she said "that's right." Yep. Where have I been? Argh! I guess I just read too many Richie Rich comics when I was a kid. You know, we actually had Gold & Silver #1 plus a bunch of others that were low numbers. Don't have them anymore though. I guess it's no wonder that I identified with the commodification of education... have always had $$ on the mind!
Ok. My post is up. Check back in a few days.
Hi, I'm back, evening of Mar 8. Lots can be discussed from this week, enough for about a 10 page essay. But, won't go there; will try to keep it modest, but won't promise full connectivity (more edubabble).
I'll start with Anderson's chapter. I found what he wrote to be full of connections to what I read in Kirschner, and more. Beginning with the term affordance, Anderson gives us some ideas about how the Web can be used to make distance/on-line education almost as good as face-to-face instruction. His play on constructivism is interesting; he says it's about hyperlinking related ideas together. Here I think of the Delicious website: everyone's memory conveniently archived in one spot. I actually read Anderson after Winner and I had to laugh when I read the top of p43, "Communication technologies are used to enhance interaction between all participants in the educational transaction." The emphasis is mine, but the word spin is what is laughable in light of Winner's paper. Winner, as we know, really slammed the commodification/corporatization of education, shall I say, transactional education. Anderson wrote with such nice intentions, but Winner was at war. Actually, I think Winner and Openheimer would get along well.
So, back to hyperlink constructivism: it’s engaging and gets kids asking questions, what I like. Just today I had my middle years students using the Canadian Encyclopedia and doing some searching and reading about the Olympics in Canada. I also had them open a second window tuned to an online dictionary so they could look up words they didn’t know in the Olympics text. It was more like hyper-application-jumping, but it was interactive and effective. This little bit of evidence supports Anderson’s on-line constructivism ideas. There are all kinds of interaction happening when we go online: student-student, student-content, student-teacher, teacher-content. However, it’s not a truly web-based environment because we have the face-to-face component. Also, I’m always there to guide. I give a lot of just-in-time assistance, something Kirschner’s article cited as beneficial.
Anderson again echoes what was said in Kirschner when he quotes Prensky asking “How do students learn what?” Anderson quotes Prensky as saying, four times, that we all learn through imitation and practice. Imitation: examples and explanations; practice: applying what is demonstrated in examples and explanations. On-line teaching-objects for this kind of learning can easily be created and are part of the proposed Semantic Web, which to me really is a rich set of learning-objects designed to afford learning maximization in the on-line environment. Getting back to Kirschner briefly, it is interesting that Anderson points out that the web affords learners the ability to interact with content in multiple formats, but ... that many students choose to have their learning sequenced, directed and evaluated with the assistance of a teacher. Guided instruction, anyone?
I’ll say one more thing about what is written by Anderson. He points to the world-wide collaboration potential that may result by using translation agents. Just imagine being able to discuss ideas with someone in France who is working in French while you work in English. Google translators?
Does the Berners-Lee Semantic Web and the possibilities it represents describe an assault on education the way Winner does? I don’t think so, for as I’ve already said, students want the input of teachers in their learning. There is so much in Winner’s work that reads like Heidegger’s danger, the darkness of education becoming a standing-reserve to the higher power of profit. But, Winner also says that students believe that what is important in their education are clear explanations, fair tests, caring professors and reasonable workloads. Computer integration was at the bottom of the list. That, however, was 1996, not 2010. What might be the outcome of the same survey today?
There is no doubt that the standards Schoffner outlines are related to Winner’s technoglobalism. Actually, those standards in Schoffner read more like job descriptions than educational standards. Some of them are, quite frankly, ugly. You will do this, you must do that. Buzz off! I know those kind of documents need to be deconstructed and then reassembled in a context, and usually I think we can interpret such standards in one page rather that twenty. But it’s not so much the number of standards, it's the demanding techno-language in which they are couched. It’s that corporatism at work, again. If there is one standard that Winner may espouse it’s this, “[develop] a set of well-tuned habits of inquiry and critical thinking that a person [can continue] cultivating throughout a lifetime.”
I could babble more here, but I’ve said enough. There’s more we’ve read and heard that can be connected to these recent articles, ideas from Plato, Heidegger, and Hlynka. The idea of figure/ground Denis discusses in his article Recognition of the Japanese Zero really says a lot about how priorities can be set and what can be made present and spun to ordinary people as important by the powers that be. Consider Heidegger’s presencing again. What is revealed to people as figure or ground is like that exemplar picture of the young and old woman. Which face do you see first? As educators, we need to keep in the figure (foreground) of our teaching those enduring learnings that can ultimately push into the ground (background) the desperate wants of capitalist reformers. Whether we do it on-line or face-to-face is moot.
Showing posts with label constructivism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label constructivism. Show all posts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Class 8: February 25, 2010
Intersecting Ideas
I guess it would be safe to say that I like Tradition (this post is up, on the night, even when we had been offered a blog week off).
In this post, I'll address the articles presented tonight and some of the discussion that precipitated out. Here's a link to my PowerPoint and scanned Kirschner et al. article (so that you can see my markings and notes on the paper). You'd notice that there is some marked in the paper that wasn't addressed. I presented the schema pertinent to overall learning: "Is there a best teaching/learning practice that is consistent with what psychology has demonstrated to be the way we learn and work best?" How does technology figure into that question? Is technology itself learned best in a constructivist environment? I'm a supporter of guided discovery and use it in my classroom.
More to follow...
March 2
Here’s the more to follow. I’ve taken my time to get this up. By-the-way, those who missed the BYTE Conference last Friday (Feb 26th) missed a pretty good show. Denis may have been pleased with the address given by the keynote speaker; he basically echoed a lot of what Denis has been professing since I began the ed tech program in 2007. As for the rest of it.... lots of tools.
Back to my intersecting ideas bit. I won't say anything about precipitating discussion as I had originally said I would, just comment on the papers.
The three papers, I thought, were quite related. Kirschner questioned methodology, teaching and learning and what works. What’s the best way? That’s individualistic, but in our paradigm of cattle-car education (l’enseignement en masse), we have to have a method that works best for the majority. It’s way too expensive to individualize everything, isn’t it? Perhaps. But, maybe we can individualize everything if we throw enough technology into the system. Computers to the rescue? Oppenheimer suggests not. He even quotes Steve Jobs as saying that technology won’t fix the American educational system. In Oppenheimer, it is also said that at least one big architectural firm still values “knowledge of the hands.” Further, it says that students really don’t need much computer training to be able to do a job or function as a university student – two weeks to two months. So what are we doing, really? The sizzle is a sizzlin, but is there any steak? The Clinton administration, so Oppenheimer suggests, embraced technology in education as if it were a Messianic medicine for an ailing American educational system. Now back to Steve Jobs. Is there an end to this? Well, let me bring Schoffner into the mix. She and her colleagues discussed standards to now be recognized to develop technological literacy, for which she supplies definition upon definition. The definition for technology literacy is interesting in that is frames technology as a tool: what it is, how it works, and how it can be used to serve us to achieve goals. And, ultimately, these goals are professional goals. Standards are set at the top, by professional societies, and trickle down to the kids.
Ok. So what's the point? There's so much said in those articles and I've discussed the top of the iceberg. The the articles suggested that there is a best way to teach and learn, but that does not necessarily mean computers/technologies are the be-all-end-all, and that there must be standards because of the demands of professional life. In a nutshell, is this not all about what is needed to survive? Isn’t that what these three papers have in common? And isn’t that the goal of basic education? Survival of course can mean individual or group, and in the case of the group, it might mean a country generating a better GDP/GNP.
I'll stop now; it is suposed to be a week off. Also, I want to read Jap Zero. I’ll leave asking this question: What’s the best way to arrange all the multi-coloured polyhedral bricks so that people can be happy? In other words, what's the best way to live? I think we need to teach people that all of us need to ask that question. What works for each of us? If constructivism works, then use/do it. If tech works, use it. If standards work, use them.
I guess it would be safe to say that I like Tradition (this post is up, on the night, even when we had been offered a blog week off).
In this post, I'll address the articles presented tonight and some of the discussion that precipitated out. Here's a link to my PowerPoint and scanned Kirschner et al. article (so that you can see my markings and notes on the paper). You'd notice that there is some marked in the paper that wasn't addressed. I presented the schema pertinent to overall learning: "Is there a best teaching/learning practice that is consistent with what psychology has demonstrated to be the way we learn and work best?" How does technology figure into that question? Is technology itself learned best in a constructivist environment? I'm a supporter of guided discovery and use it in my classroom.
More to follow...
March 2
Here’s the more to follow. I’ve taken my time to get this up. By-the-way, those who missed the BYTE Conference last Friday (Feb 26th) missed a pretty good show. Denis may have been pleased with the address given by the keynote speaker; he basically echoed a lot of what Denis has been professing since I began the ed tech program in 2007. As for the rest of it.... lots of tools.
Back to my intersecting ideas bit. I won't say anything about precipitating discussion as I had originally said I would, just comment on the papers.
The three papers, I thought, were quite related. Kirschner questioned methodology, teaching and learning and what works. What’s the best way? That’s individualistic, but in our paradigm of cattle-car education (l’enseignement en masse), we have to have a method that works best for the majority. It’s way too expensive to individualize everything, isn’t it? Perhaps. But, maybe we can individualize everything if we throw enough technology into the system. Computers to the rescue? Oppenheimer suggests not. He even quotes Steve Jobs as saying that technology won’t fix the American educational system. In Oppenheimer, it is also said that at least one big architectural firm still values “knowledge of the hands.” Further, it says that students really don’t need much computer training to be able to do a job or function as a university student – two weeks to two months. So what are we doing, really? The sizzle is a sizzlin, but is there any steak? The Clinton administration, so Oppenheimer suggests, embraced technology in education as if it were a Messianic medicine for an ailing American educational system. Now back to Steve Jobs. Is there an end to this? Well, let me bring Schoffner into the mix. She and her colleagues discussed standards to now be recognized to develop technological literacy, for which she supplies definition upon definition. The definition for technology literacy is interesting in that is frames technology as a tool: what it is, how it works, and how it can be used to serve us to achieve goals. And, ultimately, these goals are professional goals. Standards are set at the top, by professional societies, and trickle down to the kids.
Ok. So what's the point? There's so much said in those articles and I've discussed the top of the iceberg. The the articles suggested that there is a best way to teach and learn, but that does not necessarily mean computers/technologies are the be-all-end-all, and that there must be standards because of the demands of professional life. In a nutshell, is this not all about what is needed to survive? Isn’t that what these three papers have in common? And isn’t that the goal of basic education? Survival of course can mean individual or group, and in the case of the group, it might mean a country generating a better GDP/GNP.
I'll stop now; it is suposed to be a week off. Also, I want to read Jap Zero. I’ll leave asking this question: What’s the best way to arrange all the multi-coloured polyhedral bricks so that people can be happy? In other words, what's the best way to live? I think we need to teach people that all of us need to ask that question. What works for each of us? If constructivism works, then use/do it. If tech works, use it. If standards work, use them.
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