PCF: Technology In the Classroom

From Studyplace

Technology in the Classroom

A Presentation to the Peace Corps Fellows by Matt Curinga

June 5, 2007

Teachers College Columbia University

I want to talk to you about why I’m excited about technology in schools and in the classroom. Critics warn that technology spending diverts funds from critical and proven areas of high performance schools, such as hiring more highly skilled teachers, repairing and improving the neglected physical grounds of schools, and reducing class size. For many critics, computers are just the latest champions in a long line of technologies that have failed to revolutionize schools and learning. They cite a solid body of research ^[1] that bolsters their skepticism, casting doubts on the efficacy of much educational software.

Personally, I wince when I think about how I’ve often seen computers used in schools. I worked for an educational software company, as the dedicated consultant to a district in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I provided professional development and technical support to about twelve elementary and middle schools in the old District 32.

When computers weren’t sitting in boxes, never installed, or sitting idle because of entirely inadequate technical support, the district’s main goal was to improve standardized test scores. With a ‘guarantee’ from the software company, they mandated that students work on the educational software for a minimum number of hours a week on their Computer Assisted Instruction package. The kids either rotated out of the normal class activities to computers in the back of the room, or went en masse to the lab, to sit with headphones on at their workstations. This was a far cry from the transformative pedagogy I hope to see, but stills seems to be a major use of technology in our classes.

Even with the disappointing research studies and these even more disappointing personal experiences, I am still excited about the possibilities of new technology in the classroom. Mostly, because I think that we need to inject new life into a staid school system that has either systematically or accidentally denied educational opportunities to large numbers of children. I believe that we already have technologies that can be agents of change. Looking outside of schools, we find examples of technologies that demonstrate the potential to deliver profound changes.

Consider the software industry. Free and Open Source Software projects such as the GNU/Linux operating system, the Firefox web browser, and Apache web server have successfully challenged the largest commercial software makers. ^[2] Some companies, such as IBM, have changed their business model so that they actively develop free software, others, namely Microsoft, invest heavily in defending against this movement because they recognize it as a real threat to their hegemony. This shift is not a mere incremental improvement in the usual business, but a real change offering significant value to everyday people. ^[3]

The spirit of free software has now moved beyond the technical community, in the form of open content. NBC competes with YouTube, The New York Times with a slew of bloggers, and, well, nobody can compete with Wikipedia at this point because it has tapped a pool of contributors that cannot be rivaled by either the traditional private or public sectors. I think at this point it’s uncertain whether these new, participatory, forms of media will become just new markets for big media, or if they will remain grassroots venues for community expression and interaction. What is certain, though, is that there is at least a real opportunity for change.

New technology has opened up new avenues for human creativity, community and social interaction, expression, and organization. As thoughtful educators, we must reflect on what these new opportunities mean for us and our students, and act to make use of them in our classrooms. Referring to the Web 2.0 ^[4] phenomena of blogs, wikis, social networking, YouTube, and other technologies that rely heavily on participation and user-authored content, MIT new media professor and researcher Henry Jenkins wrote:

Participatory culture is emerging as the culture absorbs and responds to the explosion of new media technologies that make it possible for average consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in powerful new ways. A focus on expanding access to new technologies carries us only so far if we do not also foster the skills and cultural knowledge necessary to deploy those tools toward our own ends. ^[5]

Jenkins makes the very valid point that ‘’access’’ alone can no longer be our sole goal, but rather that equity of skills and knowledge are necessary in order for all of us to reap the benefits of new media.

To the skeptics who urge us not to waste scarce education dollars on untested and unproven technology, I argue that as total educators we cannot afford to ignore the potential and necessity of using software in our classrooms. We should reject this false dichotomy. As a nation, we can clearly afford to have both highly skilled teachers and adequate technology resources in our schools. As teachers we are also advocates for our students; we should not idly miss this opportunity to advocate on their behalf.

So, now that I’ve addressed a bit of the questions of ‘why technology’, we come to the question of ‘what technology’. Preparing for this workshop, honestly, I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the topic. In three hours, it seems a Herculean task to attempt to cover the range of possibilities for using technology in the classroom. I had several false starts on how to approach the topic. At first I wanted to cover all of the known uses for technology in the classroom (at least known to me) and discuss the relative merits of each. I then decided that I should organize the technology by type, and present premiere examples of each type, creating a taxonomy of technology and a small encyclopedia of software titles, websites, etc. Once I realized how ridiculous and unhelpful that wold be, I decided to treat you all as my friends and peers instead: What would I tell a friend of mine who was getting ready to start teaching in a New York city school in the Fall? What would I do myself? If it’s not something that I’m willing to do myself, why would I encourage you to do it? Following this idiosyncratic approach here are some of the things I would do if I were in your shoes.

First, I would get my class organized. I would create a class roster and grade book -- I might use a spreadsheet, or maybe I would find a reliable online solution. Second, I would create a folder for each of my students on my flash drive. In that folder I would keep any of their assignments, any notes that I write to them, and any other thoughts that I had about them. In some ways, this is a low-tech solution. If you wanted to, you could use an online hard drive system such as XDrive, or even keep all of your notes online through Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

I want to be able to communicate with my students and their parents. I want parents to feel that they have ownership, a voice, in what happens in our classroom. The first step I would take towards this is to set up a class blog. My blog would be an open journal for my students and families to follow along with the class. I would keep it up to date with curricular goals, assignments, and just general thoughts and information about the class. I would make sure that it worked well when using a cell phone web browser, too, in order to reach as many people as possible. Readers of the blog would be encouraged to write comments and I would try to respond to comments quickly. Further, I would write entries in English and Spanish, and I would put links to machine translation for other languages in the community, using the Google Language Tools.

In addition to my blog, I would create a new email account just for the class. I would encourage students and family to email me here. I would also set up a web-based calendar, probably using Google. The calendar would have all important dates surrounding the course, especially what homework is due when, what tests are coming up, school events, etc.

Next, I’d turn my attention to teaching. The first two areas that I’d look to integrate tech in my class would be doing Internet research and using technology for publishing. The [WebQuests] model -- a type of Internet scavenger hunt has proven successful in scaffolding students to use the Web. To me, as for Jenkins and many others, one of the recent trends of participatory technology is very exciting. Never before has there been so many opportunities for authentic publication and the chance for students to make meaningful contributions with their work. Just to name a few things that I would look into:

• using mobile phones to take photos of their lives and uploading them to Flickr
• shooting and editing videos, and publishing them on YouTube
• creating their own custom maps, using Google Maps
• writing and publishing weblogs
• finding wikis (a Wikipedia page or other wiki) that they can modify and add to the joining knowledge
• working with other students through collaborative projects, such as those pioneered by IEarn
• and, a student favorite, critiquing and building social networking pages on MySpace and others

As I’ve worked closely with our Program Head, Professor Kinzer, I’ve learned a lot about using technology to ground students in rich, real world experience. His research contributes to the use of technology in situated learning, anchored instruction, and case-based learning. I’m going to show you an example of how we are using technology in my department to teach literacy skills to in-service and pre-service teachers. If I were teaching K-12, I would like to borrow some of these ideas because I’ve seen how effective it can be. Although I can’t do justice to the theories, the general practice of situated learning stipulates the creation of rich, real world experiences, moving beyond canned scripts and text-book summaries. The Web is a rich source for original sources: historical documents, audio recordings, videos, etc. Many of the world’s major museums and cultural institutions have high quality collections that can be used to create situated learning environments. When teaching, I would collect what I considered the best (using my blog, most likely) and turn the students loose to explore them. These anchor-documents build a foundational experience that can be used to teach from and explore ideas in depth.

Imagining myself in the classroom again, using technology as best I can to support my students, has been a useful experiment for me, and hopefully interesting to all of you. It’s helped me to clarify my thinking about computers in schools. The new possibilities for collaboration really stand out in my mind; collaboration between the school and the home community, students and the wider world, and teachers and their peers. When I taught from 93-95 I used to lug my home computer into my class, along with my scanner and printer. One of my students’ favorite activities was to write (stories or essays) and to illustrate them with either scanned photos they brought from home or their own original illustrations. We would print their creations into booklets that they could bring home. While I thought I was on the cutting edge at the time, the possibilities for self-expression and interaction today are far superior. Thinking about it with you today makes me hopeful for our schools and the kids we work with.

References

1. ↑ see the recent Department of Education study, "Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products: Findings from the First Student Cohort Effectiveness of Reading and Mathematics Software Products: Findings from the First Student Cohort", as an example.
2. ↑ see Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar for some insight into how open source projects function.
3. ↑ Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven and London, Yale University Press.
4. ↑ see O'Reilly, Tim (2005). "What Is Web 2.0" for an introduction to Web 2.0. Although O’Reilly’s outlook is business oriented (and rosy), he outlines many of the key concepts.
5. ↑ Jenkins, H. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century [pdf].