Day: July 7, 2004

Small things amaze me. I am sitting in my popup camper in a county campground a few miles outside of Madison, WI. Our daughter is an undergraduate at the UofW and we are visiting.

This is not a fancy campground and there are few special ammenities – no phone jack, no cable, and pretty much no lights. There is a shower with hot water. What amazes me is that I am on the Internet. We take a laptop with us on nearly all outings and I may write or we may watch a DVD in nearly any setting. When I turned my machine on tonight, I had a wireless connection (and it was unprotected). I actually do not know how this is possible. The only scenario I can imagine is that one of these fancy RVs around us has both a satellite connection and is using wireless within the vehicle. Must be nice. I am sitting in my camper and simply borrowing a little bandwidth.

Thanks for sharing!

A significant component of our books have emphasized student multimedia projects. Whether intended for the Internet (web pages) or sharing from a classroom computer (e.g., HyperStudio, PowerPoint, eZedia), the fundamental idea is that multimedia products serve as an effective capstone to an extended learning experience. Creating a product, in effect teaching, encourages a depth of understanding less likely to be achieved when no concrete representation is required. Offering a product to others is also like to serve as a source of motivation.

Oppenheimer’s criticism of K-12 technology strategies included several concerns assoiciated with multimedia projects (e.g., lack of contribution by some students, dead time while students wait for assistance from the teacher, struggles with software and hardware). A theme in several of these issues might be described as inefficiency. The time required in completing the project was argued not to justify the learning that was accomplished.

The question of efficiency is complex and addressing the nuances of this topic is beyond the intended scope of this post. Part of the issue may involve the skills advocates and critics have in mind. Skills of collaboration and higher level thinking may be best developed by dealing with complex and messy tasks. Other learning goals may not require such experiences and may be achieved less efficiently in such settings.

Is there a way to broaden the perspective of “constructing to learn?” Some of our early attempts to justify multimedia authoring were based on work done under the heading “writing to learn.” A recent review (Bangert-Drowns, et al., 2004, Review of Educational Research, 74(1)) has encouraged me to consider this area of research again. Tasks associated with “writing to learn” need not be lengthy. For example, college instructors teaching very large groups of students may be encouraged to take the last five minutes of class and have students write about a topic from the lecture. One of the findings of the meta-analysis was that longer writing assignments were not necessarily the most productive.

Perhaps we should consider working to create software applications and classroom ideas consistent with a form of multimedia writing to learn. It might be argued that in some ways writing to learn is a limited form of self expression and that some learning experiences are not most effectively captured in text. Sounds (e.g., music, bird calls) and images (e.g., molecular structures, anatomical structures) are part of what students encounter and attempting to manipulate such represents as text seems artificial.

Other conclusions from the review – middle school writing to learn has been less productive, writing about the process of learning has been productive. Great reference list for those interested in this topic.