I have always argued that educators have to be careful with the concept of “learning by doing.” The fact that a task requires motor activity (hands on) does not require that it also involve mental activity. This is not my original idea – Ausubel (an underappreciated scholar in my opinion) described certain tasks as rote discovery implying exactly the same thing. My favorite classroom example making this point is to compare the instructions for baking a cake (from a box) and the instructions for performing a high school chemistry experiment.
The typical high school lab is an isolated add-on that lacks clear goals, does not engage students in discussion and fails to illustrate how scientific methods lead to knowledge, says a report by the National Research Council.
(AP News Report) The full report will be available later this fall.
And now, further comment on a favorite topic – the cost of textbooks. ZDNET reports that Princeton and several other colleges will offer students eBooks for certain courses. The eBooks are designed to be read on only a single computer and access is limited to 5 months. This seems pretty restrictive for only a 33% reduction in cost. The problem with this proposal as I see it is that students can purchase the full version and probably sell it back for 50%. In my experience, a once used book also sells for 75% of full cost. The price differential in either case is not very motivating. My target price for the $80 book would be in the $25-30 range.
An article in MarketWatch examines the question of when a child should have a laptop. The article is intended to inform parents, but some arguments should also be considered by educators. In fact, one of the issues the author suggests parents take into account is whether or not the school will allow the use of a computer.
FCC changes (Media Law Blog) threaten your local ISP provider. The FCC has reclassified DSL as an information and not a telecommunications service. This change allows a DSL to deny ISPs access. Providers would seem to have the opportunity to function as the unique provider. The law is scheduled to be activated in a year and one would expect legal action to test this ruling.
Time to begin getting folks in a back to school mood. If you watch “Millionaire”, you are familiar with the “ask the audience” life line (previous post). Contestants seem to use this opportunity first and it is probably most helpful. Your fall classes may offer a similar technology (I know this is the case at my institution). Students will be asked to purchase a simple input device that allow large numbers of students to respond to simple question posed during a lecture. The version I am familiar with presents questions and reveals responses using a software that connects to PowerPoint. Textbook companies are bundling the “clickers” with a book (hard to buy a used book under this condition) and fund the classroom hardware/software as a perk for the adoption.
C|NET offers an article on clickers in classrooms.
Jimmy Wales, temporarily posting to Lawrence Lessig’s blog, is authoring a series of posts on “things that will be free.” He began with encyclopedias using his own work on wikipedia as an example. His second post (the link above) concerns curriculum – he means curriculum materials such as books.
I continue to think about this topic and keep coming up with abstract arguments that attempt to express my disagreement. I cannot disagree with the notion that “knowledge must be free.” Is this really what they mean. My knowledge is my knowledge and my knowledge only. It is something I have created for myself. If I try to explain it to you by talking or writing AT you, it is now my information. You may or may not use this information to create your own knowledge. The question should really be whether information should be free. I guess this will end up being an empirical question. Some, such as Wales, contend that some scholars will share information for free and it will then be impossible for others to receive a return on the information they want to share with the expectation that they be compensated.
Free is also a misrepresentation of what is proposed. Free television is really not free. The material is paid for by sponsors who expose us to ads and recoup their costs from the money we pay for the goods we are convinced to purchase. Google is not free – it is based on a model that recoups costs through ads. MIT pays the faculty members who generate the courseware on their site. The site functions as an ad for this institution and is a way to bolster institutional prestige which can be bartered for tuition and grant dollars. I make the assumption that academics will participate in projects that require them to share information to the extent they feel their contributions will be accepted as scholarship. I receive no compensation from readers for the scholarly articles I publish in journals. However, I am expected to be “productive” by my institution and scholarly publications are a sign of this productivity. Should academic institutions “respect” contributions to widipedia I would guess more “scholars” would spend their time attempting to generate such contributions.
Think I am wrong – I guarantee you that at this moment publishers are considering using ads as a way to reduce the cost of textbooks to consumers (Toronto Star). This is kind of an intermediate point on the perceived continuum of free — paid. The cost is reduced, but the content now includes ads. My point – little information is actually free, we simply misperceive how we pay for it.
I hope you do not regard me as cynical. I simply assume most human behavior is motivated. Now, I must go and contemplate why I took the time to write this comment.
In his Aug. 3 New York Times editorial (you will need to register to read), Thomas Friedman again confronts readers with the position that the U.S. is not as advanced in the use of technology as many may assume. Advanced technology is one of the pillars Friedman argues is necessary for competing in a “flat world” and part of the contribution comes through potential advances in educational practice.
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