Since I am on a technology trip, I watched the technology TED talks. T'he first talk was about open source materials, specifically textbooks from 2006. This has been one of the big promises of technology that I don't think has moved very quickly--however, the announcement by Apple that school textbooks will be made available on iPads 2 days ago is a good sign that this is changing. What I have experienced is that the idea of open content doesn't seem to mesh well with textbook companies missions of making money, and everyone is trying to develop eBooks in a proprietary way, so that you have to either subscribe to their software or buy their eReader. While Apple's announcement is really just more of the same, the widespread use of iPads may drive this even further. Also, the new announcement by Apple, while it is a business strategy ultimately, is also about the ability of developers to actually produce their own textbooks for class use and have them available on iTunes. The cool thing about this is that all of this information was brought to me by a student. I made an announcement in chapel that I was going on a technology visit to several schools and invited any interested students to come talk to me about what they would like to see, and the sophomore class president shows up in my office to discuss the future of education and technology from his viewpoint. FANTASTIC. Which leads me to the second talk that I watched, which was adding a game layer across the world. I was extraordinarily skeptical going into this talk. However, several points are worth noting. According to the presenter, the last decade was the decade of social networking. That framework is set in the world's culture for all time, world without end.... ok. The next framework is the gaming framework, which is about driving behavior. One interesting comment, is that school is already a game with rewards (A's) and penalties, it's just a really poorly designed game. Instead of striving to be the valedictorian, let's make that a 20th level Palladin warrior blah blah blah. In other words, better extrinsic motivators for kids. I worry about that but it does make me wonder about some different kinds of motivators, like progress bars in an online survey or game. Ultimately, we want a learning culture that is based on the intrinsic motivation to succeed, but I can see some utility to the argument.
Is technology a game changer in education? of course. But we are really in the infancy of this life cycle. Simply as a flashy add on without a change in practice, it won't make a big difference. What technology has done is make information extremely cheap and pushed the emphasis to the evaluation and synthesis and application of information. Technology is/will force us to move to those skills at the bottom of the Bloom's Taxonomy. With the historical emphasis on drilling facts and basic skills that is easily testable, I wonder about big initiatives like NCLB and how we evaluate the "21st century skills"
And now I have to listen to the voices of the next generation and what they already know they need. We cannot simply give them what we got when we were students. wow
Paul, I didn't watch the video, (I will), but I am not tech savvy and I have been one to resist it in the classroom every step of the way. I do think it has a valuable place in the classroom. I teach first grade and I feel they need so much personal interactions. I have a Promethean board with activotes and seven computers in a pod that we use daily and there are things I can visually give my students that I could not do without it. I am curious to what you think about technology so early in the lower grades. Thanks, Liz
ReplyDeleteHi Liz,
ReplyDeleteHere's what I know about specific technology in the lower grades. __________ I remember seeing some early grades software programs running 10 years ago, and I thought that they looked mostly like games that had educational goal: like, shoot the right answer to the problem 5 + 5 etc etc. I'm sure that technology/software has progressed beyond that for the littlest ones, but I think you raise a really valid point--the personal interaction is KEY. Technology can't take the place of that. One of the TED talks I watched last week was Sugata Mitra who placed computers at kid height in the walls of cities in India. Kids took ownership of their own learning, but it only had long term effects on their testing when they were learning in social groups--in other words, the social aspect of learning and maybe the social "pressure" to learn that actually drove the kids' learning.
Ultimately, I think that technology will have some potentially really big effects on teachers' abilities to work with students at different ability levels, especially in those early years. Differentiation, group and project based work (is that done at that level??).
Hello Paul,
ReplyDeleteI am very interested in this area of technology and education intersecting. I am making my way toward this particular TED talk, but not there just yet. However, couldn't help but note your conversation on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. This conversation runs strongly through my graduate course work in education. There is an interesting read on this called What's Bad About Being Too Good? The author explores the notion of extrinsic motivators and their impact on behaviors. It also parallels some reading I did recently from the business world. Owners, managers, and supervisors have noted that they are experiencing a shift in this new generation of employees. They seem to have higher levels of need for continuous affirmation/recognition to maintain performance levels. Clearly both parties were frustrated . . . It has been fun to parallel my husband's corporate experiences in these areas and we often talk about issues that we share in our worlds. Extrinsic motivators are prevalent in the corporate world these days. Safety awards, shirts emblazoned with success of the business unit, gift cards peers award one another, and bonuses based on the business units success. I asked Steve if he and those he works with thought this enhanced their performance and his response was interesting. His sense from these conversations was that the highest performers were not motivated by these types of awards (with perhaps the exception of the bonus). They were highly intrinsically motivated and while recognition was appreciated, it wasn't key to why they did what they did. Bonuses were viewed differently because they represented a direct correlation to a sharing of the profits, although there were some interesting thoughts about why manager's %'s were higher than those they viewed as more direct in impacting profits! This conversation finds its way back to ESA. As we seek candidates for employment, one of our key attributes has been that they be intrinsically motivated. After 8 years of being an "administrator", one of my lessons has been that the individual involved has to want the change being recommended. No administrator, team leader, or counselor can work hard enough, fast enough, or extend themselves far enough to create change if the individual does not perceive the need and actively engage.
Technology and young children . . . what a great area . . . I'll be back when I have seen more of the TED talks!
Anne