Learning Aloud

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.

We spend some time in the summer with relatives in a rented place in Alexandria, MN. These “relatives” have given me trouble over the years because I opened our “Integrating the Internet for Meaningful Learning” book with a story that included them and I described them “only” as relatives. The story described the role of the Internet in helping the community of Grand Forks deal with flood of 1997. This flood required the unplanned evacuation of nearly the entire population of Grand Forks and East Grand Forks and the Internet became a way for the community and acquaintances to reconnect in the aftermath. We drove to our relatives (Scott and Denise Ellingson) in Hinkley, MN and spent several weeks there before returning to Grand Forks.

So – the unnamed relatives are now named. The younger generations are shown in the following pictures.

Big Ole Days in Alexandria, MN

Our Family’s Entry in the lake Boat Parade

Mark celebrating the 4th

NASA offers educational materials related to the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. The materials are intended to capitalize on interest in the current mission to teach math and science concepts.

I watched Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” last night. I found it disturbing, but I would highly recommend that others see it. I recognize that there have been complaints contesting the factual accuracy and slant of the film. Why should this be surprising and, if true, why would the complaint be unique to Michael Moore? By way of comparison, I checked my audible.com current best seller list – “My Life”, “Charlie Wilson’s War”, “Plan of Attack”, “Dude, Where’s My Country”, “Against All Enemies”, “Hegemony of Survival”, “Sleeping With the Devil”, “Deliver Us From Evil” were within the top 16 NonFiction Best Sellers. Any bets that these books have somewhat different stories to tell?

My take on the core message of “Fahrenheit 9/11”? There is a hidden agenda and hidden players behind current events. The players include an assortment of political leaders from several countries and the agenda involves huge financial opportunities for these players and the companies or groups they represent. In addition, the human cost of unwittingly implementing this agenda falls to military personnel nearly exclusively from lower income groups.

What does any of this have to do with education or technology? Perhaps a great deal. As technology provides greater access to an increasing amount of information, information literacy seems an essential skill. This concern is often presented as – you can’t believe everything you access through an unedited medium such as the Internet. However, we are also learning that you can’t believe everything politicians, the news media, etc. tell us. One of the first skills in evaluating web resources – who authored this page and what does he/she have to gain by you accepting the information the page presents. Perhaps careful consideration of public information sources should always have been in order, but immediate access to very different perspectives now makes this reality very apparent (see list of best sellers provided above). Awareness of contrasting positions is a good thing.

Quicktime segments from video

We offer a database of the online resources we encounter in our activities. There are approximately 550 links in our collection. Approximately twice a year I go through the entire collection to search for dead links. I have taken to keeping track of he number of links that do not function and I am unable to locate with a Google search. This time the number was 12. Obviously, the number of links is partly a function of the type of resources I collect. However, this seems a small % and one way to quantify the stability of web resources.

James Gee is becoming one of my favorite writers (see previous posts about Gee’s analysis of computer games). I recently read his chapter “Millennials and bobos, Blue’s Clues and Sesame Street: A story for our times” in Adolescents and literacies in a digital world (Edited by Alvermann, 2004).

I would describe this chapter as an effort to describe the changes in values that are occuring across generations and how such change may be moderated by differences in wealth. I would describe myself as a bobo and my kids millennials. Millennials are children born after 1982 and are more likely to be the younger children in a family than the older children. As parents, bobos probably are upper middle class and desire a lifestyle that is meaningful, but also involves the pursuit of wealth and status.

Gee describes bobos as helping their children develop a portfolio because both parents and children view themselves as ongoing projects. The idea of shape shifting portfolio people implies that significant life changes are likely and well prepared people rely upon a collection of skills and experiences they can use to promote themselves when faced with change. They repurpose past experiences and skills to adapt and gain an advantage when faced with changing circumstances. Parents invest in their children to develop this portfolio – prestige colleges if possible, travel, development of special talents (music, athletics).

There is an element of concern in this analysis and this concern relates to the failure of schools to address an increasing gap between the “haves” and “have nots.” Parents with money appear committed to provide their children a range of experiences necessary to succeed in a rapidly changing world. Society in general does not appear to be committed to providing all children this range of experiences and schools are placed in the position of providing “the basics.” The lack of commitment of schools to experiences involving creativity, deep thinking, long term projects may eventually limit the opportunity of underpriviledged children unable to acquire such experiences in other settings.