Learning Aloud

I wonder if experiencing flash backs is a natural part of the aging process. I have noticed recently that some everyday events will cause my mind to drift back to earlier experiences. Our youngest daughter left for college this fall. As a high school student, she was a gifted two sport athlete. Over the years, Cindy and I spent hundreds of hours driving to her games. People warned us that we would miss this life style when she left. I can’t say that they were right. Cindy and I are very busy people and new experiences seemed to surface immediately to replace the old. I don’t think about high school athletics much any more.

There is one exception. Every time I am on the road now, I remember. There is something about driving on the vacant interstate highways of North Dakota that must free your mind. The images come drifting back … the 3 point jump shots at the buzzer, the trip to the hospital to check out a possible concussion, the game for the trip to the state tournament …

I had the same kind of flash back today while walking through the halls of J. Nelson Kelly elementary school. I was present to observe Darci Santangelo’s class for our PT3 grant. Cindy began her work in Grand Forks as a reading specialist in this school. I used to do research in Darci’s room. This was back in the days when I was programming and evaluating reading games for the Apple 2e.

Kelly elementary has a nice computer lab, but Darci also has several computers in her room. It is vintage equipment — looks like Mac LC2s to me. The students walked in before the school day began, turned the machines on, and started working on one activity or another. It is really nice to see that students demonstrate the kind of interest in learning with technology that those folks who write the books claim they do. 😉

I recently completed updating the references for our book and I found that several web references were no longer available. This is hardly a unique experience when working with web resources. Several of the missing references were resources maintained by the government. Today Cindy showed me a document that was being circulated by AERA (American Educational Research Association) requesting North Dakota members of AERA contact our state senators and congressman to protest the deletion of government hosted educational web resources that may not “reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administation.” A general “action alert” from AERA is available online. I looked up the government references I had difficulty with to see if they were still on government sites. They were. I guess it would not bother me that sites linked from whitehouse.gov in one administration not be linked from the whitehouse site in another administration. I would be bothered if such documents were no longer available from government servers.

When preparing future teachers, when does a specific content area deserve it’s own course?

I think about this some because Cindy and I write “Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning” – a book intended to help future or practicing teachers use technology in classrooms. We make some assumptions about how the book will be used. Because of the broad approach of the book, the length, and the cost, we assume that using technology in teaching will be the focus or at least a major focus of a course. More and more I am running into programs that feel they can integrate topics on using technology into existing courses and do not need a stand alone course. I am bothered by this and I attempt to sort out what might be a bias related to self interest from what I feel about teacher preparation.

I am for a stand-alone course AND experiences integrated into other courses and apprenticeship experiences. I do not feel teachers are typically adequately prepared based on distributed embedded experiences, but I may have different ideas about what adequately prepared means. I also think my gut feeling about this does not come from my experience with preparing teachers to use technology, but rather from my experiences teaching educational psychology. Many institutions have also dropped required courses in educational psychology. I am mostly concerned about something that might be described as depth of understanding. Depth comes from both the amount of information covered (think of this as options) and the time allowed for reflection. Without options and reflection, future teachers are left with “classroom recipes.” What happens when the classroom situation is not what you anticipated or when the world changes (e.g., a different computer, new software, colleagues who assume things should be done differently)?

We have a core “methods” course in my department (Psychology) called research methods. In this course, students learn the research process and learn to write in the formal way that researchers write. This course does not stand alone, but extends other academic experiences. The formal writing style we attempt to develop builds on more general writing skills students are expected to acquire in composition courses taught in the English department. Psychologists have their own writing style, but we see what we teach as an extension of fundamental skills. We don’t assume responsibility for providing the breadth of experiences students require to be effective writers. The research tasks we provide as “authentic experiences” require the analysis of data by statistical procedures. We review some of the basics of the statistical tests that are appropriate to the specific experiments students happen to experience in a given semester, but we assume that statistical skills have already been developed in a statistics class which in turn requires a backgound in mathematics based on courses taught in the mathematics department. There is not time to thoroughly develop general statistical concepts, to provide research experiences that would require the application of all statistical procedures students should be familiar with, or to teach basic algebra. We do provide students opportunities to apply some of the knowledge and skills that has been developed in other courses.

I am comfortable requiring students to take English Comp, College Algebra and Statistics before they take Research Methods. Is there some different type of relationship between the topics of Educational Psychology or a basic “technology for teachers” course and the skills future teachers develop in methods courses?

These are important issues and probably have a lot to do with priorities. I would certain welcome the opportunity to consider other perspectives.

This blog is not intended to spend a great deal of time on the educational potential of blogs. Hopefully, that potential will become apparent as you explore this and other blogs. However, just to speed up the process, I will link to a few helpful articles on how to set up and operate a blog and what you might do once you know the basics of operation. A recent Syllabus article (October, 2002) provides a nice overview, ideas for classroom use, and links.

Technology provides opportunities for self expression that I feel are unique or at least are unique in the way they are seized upon by many people. There is something about the opportunity to express yourself that prompts unusual effort without extrinsic compensation and promotes reflection on personal experience. Researchers suggest this is one of the values of multimedia projects in classrooms. It is also what motivates individuals to work late into the night adding to their blogs.

Cindy and my son Todd is a video producer and editor. He and his friends also create just for fun. Their work reflects the activities of a different generation than mine, but I do admire the creativity. They call their web site – Kid in the Corner. Take a look. Todd’s videos are based on his travels in Asia.

I just returned from a trip to Morris, Minnesota. University of Minnesota-Morris and the University of North Dakota are both in the second year of PT3 (Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers To Use Technology) grants. PT3 institutions are categorized by focus. Both UND and Minnesota-Morris are classified as prioritizing project-based learning. PT3 has an interesting requirement called a collaborative exchange which asks that grant recipients visit each other. Every institution has a different way of going about things so you also get some new ideas when faculty members get together. Thanks to my hosts – Craig Kissock and Bill Riggs.

Minnesota-Morris PT3 program has a nice web site and you may find the annotated “site of the week” to be useful.

I understand that computer owners are passionate about their brand of computer. For some reason, I associate this loyalty with type of passion demonstrated by the pickup truck owners who have a decal of a little boy urinating on the symbol of a rival truck (this is probably a regional experience). I certainly have my own preference (without the decals).

Brand loyalty aside, if I hear the statement “We need xxx computers in our school because this is what students will need to be prepared for the real world” one more time I am going to scream. I have two objections to this claim. First, because I am an educator, I would prefer to think of K-12 and college institutions as part of the real world. Second, I wonder just what about present experiences with technology (not learning with technology) will or should transfer to the real world these students will eventually experience.

I look to my own experience now and then in taking this position. So you Mac or Windows users, answer the following two questions.
1) How would you list the files present on a 5 1/4 disk (if you know what one of these looks like) inserted in the drive of a PC running DOS or an Apple 2e?
2) How would you move a file from one 5 1/4 disk to another?

I think I still remember how do perform both operations, but I bet very few “computer users” can?

My point? The specifics of what I used to do many times a day has nothing to do with what I do in OS X or Windows XP. The general experiences I had with technology shaped my present profession. I learned the specifics of scripting in HyperCard (which I still miss), but I apply the basic skills to javascript. Mostly, what I learned was that technology could be empowering for me and for my students.

For the record, Cindy and I own quite a few computers. We find MACs most useful for the work we do, but our home network links machines running both XP and several Mac operating systems.

So — make your personal decisions based on which software (operating system and application) suit your needs. Just don’t try to convince me that the software you happen to run today will determine your students’ capabilities a few years down the road.