To walk from a conversation about the need for a common core curriculum to one about turning schools into digital gaming parlors modeled after Grand Theft Auto – well, it’s what we in the business call a head jerk. But the good thing about the recently concluded marathon conference at the Hechinger Institute (sponsored by the MacAruthur Foundation, which has a major digital learning initiative) was that you didn’t have to walk anywhere.
In less than 24 hours – sleeping was off-campus – a small group of education journalists sat mostly well-behaved in room 177 of Grace Dodge Hall at Teachers College, Columbia University, and listened to a couple dozen experts – plus or minus, depending on plane and train schedules – challenge them to keep up with fast-paced rounds of panels (I counted eight, but who was counting) about “Digital Media, Children’s Learning and Schools.” I wondered at one point whether lunch would be delivered virtually. My head is still spinning. (Dave Murray, veteran education writer for the Grand Rapids Press, kept his cool and had three stories about the conference posted before he even left it. See here. Laura Fleming, another participant, reported on the conference here.)
It was a wonderfully eclectic gathering of new media watchers and educators, befitting the infinitely anarchic nature of the digital revolution. There was Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist of technology use from the University of California, Irvine, talking about breaking down “authoritarian forms of knowledge.” Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of the National Writing Project, was trying to save the twenty-year-old national literacy program from the earmarks chopping block. Anthony Orsini, a middle school principal from Ridgewood, NJ, talked about the media frenzy surrounding his memo to parents advising them to keep their kids away from social-networking sites. Joe Kahne from Mills College, has found evidence that social media are contributing to more civic engagement on the part of students. And we ate dinner listening to James Paul Gee, author of An Introduction to Discourse Analysis as well as What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. The linguist turned gamer (who bears a passing resemblance to Sci Fi author Isaac Asimov) believes that the full integration of gaming technology into our educational program will end the need for tests – replaced by levels of proficiency as measured while playing the physics or history “game.” As Kahne was explaining to me, even the SAT test, now given on computers, instantaneously adjusts the level of difficulty of a question based on whether the previous question was answered correctly or incorrectly.
Despite the obvious new age mood of the sessions, some of the discussion had a déjà vu quality to it, brought home by education historian David Cohen, the University of Michigan professor with long gray hair and backpack, who bemoaned the lack of a national curriculum and praised the efforts of the common core crowd. “This is the longest running debate in American education,” said Cohen, who worried the Tea Partiers would sidetrack the common core movement. Without a common curriculum, he said, “our teachers are learning how to teach nothing in particular to no one in particular.” That seemed to take some of the air out of the room, but the point was reinforced the next day by Meg Campbell, founder of Codman Academy Charter Public School in Boston, who was firmly in the computers-as-tools camp. “Sure we use them in our school,” she explained, “but when I asked an IT friend of mine whether we should have a separate computer room, he replied, `Did schools ever have pencil rooms?’”
Indeed. While there seemed to be a consensus that the Internet, the computer, iPad, Kindle, Smartphone, cell phone had definitely arrived and would, like it or not, change schools and learning, there was also a great deal of sentiment by the presenters that we were only at the beginning of the road. As Susan Neuman from the University of Michigan, reported, “We thought that once the digital divide was closed, we would be home free. But almost 100% of our schools are wired and now we have a widening knowledge gap.”
While impressed with caliber of the minds on display at the conference, I couldn’t help wonder whether we aren’t periously close to letting our digital obsessions distract us from obligations to teach knowledge. While many educators remain digitally clueless, many are in the grip of the “relevance” and “engagement” and “self-expression” candies that our electronic gadgets proffer. And unless we get a hold of the thing, as David Cohen and Meg Campbell suggested, we may be setting up another generation of poor kids, especially blacks and hispanics, for another huge fall.
–Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
Hmm… Peter, your last paragraph really caught my attention.
Are we becoming too disengaged with the true purpose of technology in education? I would certainly agree that most discussion at these conferences and events take place in a technology filled room, with permanent internet connection.
Perhaps we aren’t realizing the true issues beyond the technology because of this? If we set aside a space where no tech was allowed, would our thoughts and conversations become less or more engaging?
Would the “gurus” become less influential over the new digital educators because of this disconnect.
I would like to see a room full of smart people who haven’t been influenced by the latest blog post on the benefits of social media in education. (These posts are always way too general)
Only then do we get the true, unbiased answers we are seeking.
Great post.
I’m a classroom teacher, and I disagree with the quoted assertion that the lack of national standards lead to, “teachers who are learning how to teach nothing in particular to no one in particular.” Perhaps there was more context at the conference, but this seems to be a sweeping assertion that appears to be made in an attempt to shock an audience. Aren’t there state standards that tend to point teachers in a certain direction? This doesn’t even take into account secondary teachers who studied the subjects they are teaching. Wouldn’t those folks have some idea of what to teach when they are teaching?
When it comes to the digital divide, I struggle with the lack of computer access at school and at home. We do have computer labs outside of the rooms because we are not a 1:1 school. Further, not all of my students have a computer at home, let along high speed access. So how do I teach as if they do? It is unfair to those students who do not have the access, for they will be left behind. I wouldn’t assign a homework assignment if all kids didn’t have access to writing utensils.
At school, our labs are so scheduled with mandatory tests that in the spring, it is nearly impossible to get lab time. This eliminates the solution of using the computers as tools (to do actual work, not just the fluff). This is a great frustration.
Can you clarify what you mean by, “While many educators remain digitally clueless, many are in the grip of the “relevance” and “engagement” and “self-expression” candies that our electronic gadgets proffer. “? I know that there is a lot of candy fluff that looks good, but doesn’t really teach. However, I don’t see where “relevance” and “engagement” are bad things. These are important in classroom teaching. Relevance helps the students to retain the material, and all people should be engaged in their work.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks- EdThoughts
Kind of sounds like a big bunch of kids flush with birthday money who’ve been dropped plumb in the middle of a seriously large toy store. What fun!
I hate to be old-fashioned, wet-blankety and (perhaps) boring, but did any of the panelists cite any serious research showing that … gasp! … digital … anything … was a) effective, and b) efficient in terms of … egad! … teaching children things they are supposed to be learning, much less in comparison with live teachers in regular classrooms?
Do we need something like a Dwight Eisenhower saying “Beware the education-IT industrial complex” and its apparently well-funded and well-honed spin?
Several times during the conference I wrote in the margin of my notebook things like: “self-expression v. learning” or “facts v. self-reference.” Much of what the presenters were concerned with was related to children’s behavior — e.g. are kids motivated and engaged? Yes — rather than what they were actually learning. They don’t call it “social media” for nothing. My worry is that the attraction of the bells-and-whistles part of the new media — hey, it’s party time! — will distract us from the hard task of learning, which is about loading up on facts, the basis of critical thinking, rather than putting kids in an echo chamber talking to each other. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t serious teaching going on via computers — see K12 Inc. or Florida’s Virtual Learning efforts — but it should suggest that we haven’t resolved the issue of whether schools are arenas (and platforms) for self-expression or for learning — and what the balance between the two should be.
Are self expression and learning antithetical? I think you’re right to worry about the echo chamber, but if the teacher is helping the students and correcting errors, self expression is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as that self expression is grounded in fact and critical thinking. That’s what academics do all of the time. They take the data, facts, and observations and then provide their interpretation and thoughts. Do you think this can happen at levels below college?
I would like to think we could teach data, facts, and observations to pre-college youngsters — and then press the kids to think critically about it. But with the current system still fearful of facts (“mere facts,” as Robert Pondiscio of Core Knowledge would say), the imperfections of other parts of the system — e.g. teacher quality, instructional practices, parent engagement, demographics — are exaggerated, to the students’ detriment. Clearly, with younger children, “relevance” and “motivation” and “engagement” are not minor concerns. Nor should self-expression be extinguished.
It is fashionable to say, “this is not either/or.” But there are only so many hours in the day and we have to make decisions about the allocation of scarce time and resources. It is very much either/or when you decide to have your class talk about how they feel about a certain kid’s behavior or have them memorize the multiplication table. It is either/or when you have your class spend an hour writing about what they did the night before rather than learning how to diagram a sentence. There is a difference between using a computer to read about the origins of the periodic table and using it to write pen pal notes to a class in Uruguay.
A teacher’s day — and a student’s — is made up of dozens, if not hundreds, of these discreet either/or decisions. Together, they add up to some significant impacts on learning. This is why some kids will be two grade levels behind by fourth grade — and others can catch up a grade level in one year….. Computers, like pencils, are just as apt to make you dumb as smart….
There are a ton of either/or decisions.
Since teaching formal grammar seems to have no effect on actual writing skill, let’s have them opt to write about something they are motivated to write about and conference with them about their writing, and improve their actual writing.
You still seem to posit a teach facts first then think critically about them later. Maybe you mean later in the day, but most people saying this wind up meaning much later (often years later), and if kids don’t do anything meaningful with those facts while learning them, they forget them at an astounding clip, and they have to be re-taught.
If critical thinking about important content-rich issues is the goal, learning facts in context seems to have the far better track record, and that means it’s not either or in one sense (facts, skills, applications, and motivation occur more simultaneously), but it is either-or in terms of instructional paradigms, since large blocks of direct instruction undermine initiative, creativity, critical thinking, and applications.
Facts matter and they stick better when they are learned in the service of something real and meaningful, and although that kind of teaching is not familiar for many teachers, it needs to be the target we work towards.
Tech has some real power for engaging us more authentically with real issues and problems in the real world, since we simply can’t take the kids out every week or so for a field trip. This is no guarantee it will be used wisely.
I agree with Karl’s post, but have just a little to add.
@Peter- Putting aside the technology bit for now (I do agree that computers are a tool and not a silver bullet to achievement. It does depend on how they are used).
Your post says that, “Clearly, with younger children, “relevance” and “motivation” and “engagement” are not minor concerns. Nor should self-expression be extinguished.” I would argue that relevance, motivation, and engagement are essential for all ages. At what age does one work just as hard (or find as much enjoyment in their work) as they would if they were not bored, not engaged, or didn’t find relevance in their work? I’m not saying that without those three factors one does not or cannot produce a quality product, just that those three factors certainly make it easier to do so.
Having taught 5th graders and 12th graders, I can say that for older students the necessity of relevance, motivation, and engagement are just as critical if we are going to get them to achieve to their highest levels. According to Noguera (2006) the number one reason students drop out is boredom. The Gates Foundation (2006) released a study where 50% of the dropouts they surveyed said that they dropped out because their classes were boring and not relevant to their lives or career aspirations. It would seem that if one solution to the high school dropout crisis is having students be engaged with their learning, then we certainly shouldn’t limit inventive teaching, or interesting teaching, or any type of teaching that leads to relevance, motivation, and engagement to the younger grades.
Adults are more motivated when they find relevance and are engaged in the topic at hand. This is why if you’re a fortunate adult, you are able to focus and do the things that interest you. Perhaps one starts their career focused on one thing, but later shifts their focus to the next thing that interests them.