Learning Aloud

I don’t focus on the research literature on this site, but I want to make an exception. I encourage those of you interested in educational research make the effort to read the article by Rohrer & Pahler in the June/July issue of Educational Researcher (2010, 39(5), 406-412).

The article argues that researchers have made a number of concrete suggestions that would improve student learning and that these suggestions are often ignored. The three examples offered include – learning through testing (increasing retrieving), spacing of practice, and interleaving. These examples were selected because the basis for the suggestion are quite solid AND because the suggestions are about studying differently rather than studying more.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the review was a speculative addition at the end of the presentation which asked the question “Why are inferior strategies so popular?” It is this focus I think should receive wider consideration because it may extend to many current topics in education. The authors pose the question in an interesting fashion. Since some of these suggestions could have developed as common practice simply as a function of student trial and error, why do students typically spend their time in inferior strategies? Remember these proposals are about a different way of doing things and not about the expectation that students spend more time. The authors suggest that these strategies tend to produce a higher error rate during study which may be more discouraging for students. It appears students prefer passive strategies because there is less challenge to their illusion of understanding. I wonder. Perhaps students do understand that a technique is less effective, but still persist because it is what they know and it is easier.

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I read a recent post from The Blue Skunk Blog that is evidently a repost. I actually think I remember the original post and belief I responded to that post as well.

Johnson states – I would find standards in the following areas extremely helpful as I try to evaluate our district’s technology infrastructure and plan for improvement :

• 1. Connectivity (LAN, WAN, and Internet I & II capacities)
• 2. Security (firewalls, filters, policies)
• 3. Tech support (technicians per computer, tech support response time, reliability rates, policies about technology replacement,)
• 4. Administrative applications (student information systems, transportation, personnel systems, payroll systems, data mining systems, home-school communication systems, online testing)
• 5. Information resources (e-mail, mailing lists, blogging software, online learning software, commercial databases, library automation systems)
• etc.

As I understand this portion of Doug Johnson’s post on standards, he would like to know just what resources schools should have available in order to provide effective educational experiences for students.

I develop resources to prepare future teachers and part of what I attempt to do is to offer descriptions of the situations they may face in the schools they will eventually enter. My interest is in the variability in such situations. Perhaps this is also what Doug Johnson is looking for – what are the standards that educators should be able to expect and what are the typical means and standard deviations for some of these indicators. In other words – how does my school compare, what should be expect to be able to provide?

I think locating good data on technology in schools – what is there and how it is used – has become increasing difficult. I know that good data on what technology exists is there, but these data are collected by businesses that intend to sell the information to vendors. I can’t afford access and evidently neither can the libraries I use. I used to use the National surveys conducted by Henry Becker and the Technology Counts annual publications to locate such data. Technology Counts abandoned the state to state comparisons. Perhaps some states were embarrassed and resisted offering up information. The vast differences among the states was pretty clear evidence that students had very different experiences.

I am thinking researchers found it difficult to secure funds to actually conduct quality surveys and this has cut off on-going, independently collected descriptions of what is typical in this area. The best resource I can find is offered by the National Center for Education Statistics (Teachers’ Use of Educational Technology in U.S. Public Schools: 2009 ). Still, even on the descriptive level, I do not think the data are complete enough. Wouldn’t you like answers to some of the descriptors Johnson identifies?

Which end of the pool? This is a question that occurred to me because of Carr’s book “The Shallows“. This book seems another example of a new genre which seems to imply that most of us have a tendency to turn potentially useful opportunities into experiences focused on immediate gratification and in the long term diminish our cognitive potential. Other examples – The dumbest generation; Infotopia; iBrain. If these books do not interest you, try Carr’s original article in the Atlantic. Carr and the others are proposing that our use of the Internet has changed the way we prefer to take in information perhaps at the biological level. Even though the potential might be there for deep contemplation, the experiences we select tend toward brief encounters. We have lost the ability for prolonged focus as might be the case when reading a traditional book.

I have been trying to write today and in preparing I have been reviewing data on how adolescents use the Internet. For years I have followed what some have called the participatory culture. The generative potential of media creation seemed to have great educational potential. However, recent data appears to indicate that the style of participation is drifting toward the shallows. For example, the most recent PEW data on social media and young adults indicates that the proportion of young adults who blog has been halved between 2006 and 2009. Use of Twitter started slow, but has begun to increase in this same age group.

If we are models for the use of technology are many of us being sucked into the same pattern? Perhaps it is too easy to get into Twitter and stop blogging. Perhaps many folks just pass resources around with few actually reading the resources. Hard to fake it when you attempt to author in long form. Pretty easy to assume you have accomplished something when the system limits you to 140 characters. Here – you read it. I don’t have time.

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