This article was published earlier this year but remains timely.
Mostly the blog reports on an article by veteran journalist Peg Tyre on the potential value of technology in the classroom.
Tyre knows that the technology boom is accelerating but she offers a few cautions.
Take iPads.
“iPads in the classroom, too, are hardly turning out to be a panacea. Teachers in some schools use iPads to great effect. Most, not. And they are not likely to lead to cost savings. In a widely quoted blog post, Lee Wilson, tech watcher and President & CEO of PCI Education, calculated that once you consider the training, network costs, and software costs, iPads cost school districts 552 percent more than those old-school textbooks.”
Where technology has proved especially popular is in charter schools enrolling low-income students.
Tyre writes:
“The experiments are far-reaching. Currently, there are roughly 275,000 K-12 students from 31 states who are taking classes online. School administrators all over the nation are handing out iPads and asking teachers and students to come up with new ways to learn with them. Some schools are experimenting with flipped classrooms, in which kids read or watch videos of a lecture for homework and work through problems or questions with an instructor during class time.
“Other schools, including a rapidly expanding chain of charter schools that serve low-income children, are employing what they call a “blended learning” model. It works like this: The classroom is broken down into small groups. Some kids work with a qualified, credentialed teacher, while others are shepherded to a computer room, where, under the watchful eye of a paid-by-the-hour supervisor, zoom ahead or redo a lesson using interactive, adaptive software.
“At another chain of charter high schools, kids sit in what resembles a call center, receive videotaped lectures and interactive lessons on a monitor, and get pulled into smaller, teacher-led groups to get a particular lesson refreshed or reinforced.”
The goal, of course, is higher test scores.
In the best suburba, urban, and private schools, technology is used by expert teachers for enrichment of instruction, not to cut costs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s important to know that Los Angeles is pushing the iPads to facilitate the state Common Core field tests this spring. Staff insisted that decisions had to be made before vacation in order to receive the iPads in time. So, forget the discussion about the iPads as a learning tool or for enrichment. In LAUSD, it’s main use is for testing. To be sure, if the state wasn’t demanding that the field tests be taken on a computer, there would be no reason to rush their deployment. On the other hand, knowing that districts do not all have the needed computer capacity, the state is allowing a three month testing window. That should allow for plenty of time to accommodate all students by rotating them in and out of computer labs.
. . . “to facilitate the state Common Core field tests. . .” Amazingly effin sad and disgusting.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stands to benefit the mo$t from this push to use iPad$ in the classroom. This, also, will eventually exclude parents from being able to stay on top of what their children are learning. This should be self-evident to all who aren’t dazzled by the hype that is being presented by Common Core proponents.
I don’t see how the Gates Foundation is going to benefit when it’s their main competitor making a 1BN sale. Now, maybe if instead of iPads they had bought Microsoft’s Surface tablet…
Wouldn’t it be more profitable for the gates foundation to push Microsoft products?
TE: You mean like the Ford Foundation should stop pushing GM products? 😉
Companies may compete over their products in the marketplace, but can and do cooperate on matters of mutual interest to the industry. Trade associations are proof of that.
In that sense, Gates is clearly acting in his interest.
Michael:
You may be correct. But isn’t it also possible that he, like many others, see that the old ways of doing things are soon going to be replaced by new ways of transmitting information and acquiring skills? I live near a town, nicknamed Carriage Town, that was famous for horse carriages and was a center of the auto body business in the early 20th Century. It is gone now, along with beaver hats. Change is inevitable and traditional education practices and jobs in education will surely change as well.
Bernie,
Saying that “change is inevitable” begs the question of how that change comes about, and who benefits from it.
For example, eliminating tenure, seniority and defined benefit pensions for teachers are political decisions that have nothing whatsoever to do with changing technology.
The “inevitable” changes you refer to are not the product of impersonal physical forces, but are largely political decisions made by human beings, often in their narrow interests, and should be debated as such.
As for who benefits from so-called education reform, I’d say it’s pretty clear that students, and certainly teachers, are not members of that set.
Michael:
Yes, of course, change produces winners and losers and sometimes only losers.
You do raise an interesting point though when you say “As for who benefits from so-called education reform, I’d say it’s pretty clear that students, and certainly teachers, are not members of that set.” My view is that primary criteria should be whether and the extent to which students benefit – recognizing that in complex systems variables and players are interconnected..
Gates funded inBloom. The inBloom strategic plan was this:
Every child would work on a computer, and his or her responses and test scores would go into a single national database (inBloom). Online curricula would have to be connected to that single national database if it was to be adaptive. The CCSS–a single set of national standards–were necessary if this business plan was to work, and so Gates paid, through his foundation, to have those created, and he paid a great deal of money to various organizations, such as the AFT and the NEA, to promote those standards.
inBoom would make money by a) charging to hook kids up to the database, b) charging publishers to connect their products to the database, and c) offering its own curricula through the database. To this last end, the Gates Foundation put out on RFP for new computer-adaptive curriculum products keyed to the standards.
So, even if the computers used are ones employing a different operating system, they would still, under this scenario, be hooked up to the national database, and publishers would have to pay Gates’s company for the privilege. And, of course, the standard software suite used on both the Apple and PC platforms is Microsoft Office.
The inBloom portal would be a natural monopoly. There could be only one of them. Gates and Co. believe that the future of education lines with online computer-adaptive programs, and all would have to use AND PAY FOR THE USE OF their monopolistic national portal/gateway/repository of student data.
And that would be so whatever the hardware platform, for inBloom is not device dependent. The inBloom stragetic plan, if it worked as planned, would be worth many billions of dollars over time.
There’s just one problem with that plan: People don’t like totalitarian national databases. There’s another one that would become evident if this inBloom thing actually took hold–people don’t like monopolistic gateways either.
cx:
inBoom would make money by a) charging districts a per-kid fee for all kids whose results went into the database, b) charging publishers to connect their products to the database, and c) offering its own curricula connected to the database. To this last end, the Gates Foundation put out on RFP for new computer-adaptive curriculum products keyed to the standards.
Interesting post.
It’s important to note that a huge amount of technology related research has shown that technology does not increase learning outcomes.
What does increase learning is thoughtful, planned integration of technology into a pedagogically appropriate lesson plan.
One of the data points we have to meet in our district evaluation system (brand new this year) is that we use technology. One of our math teachers got a low score in that point because she used calculators in the class and calculators are “not technology.”
I’m guessing that she was supposed to use calculators on computers?
As part of Advanced Ed Accreditation, (I think that this is the new SACS), which the schools in my Archdiocese are up for as a system next school year, we have to prove heavy use of technology and all students must have equal access to technology related devices as well.
From my perspective the goal of virtual classes is giving students access to courses. Flipping the classroom also seems to help my students. I can make custom screencasts that are available 24/7 about the concepts and models I discuss in the class.
Now that actually makes sense. I can see how useful it would have been for my LD-kids, even in elem school– the ability to turn back, while doing hw or studying for a test, to the key points of the class lesson.
I do something similar for my young students, using quizlet to mount pix & phrases from a lesson, but I find I don’t consistently have the time. How do you manage this along with everything else?
I think it is helpful to think about building a library over time. I use software that does not allow editing, so I keep the videos short. That allows me to mix and match across classes. Students do not seem to mind that they are rough. They appreciate the authenticity.
If I am responding to an email, I just speak and draw the answer on my iPad and email the link. It is faster than responding to the email using text, but at the undergraduate level economics involves many diagrams that email is ill suited to handle.
TE,
Would you share the software you use, please.
Thank you
There are many options for Ipad. I use Educreations, but Explain Everything, Doodlecast Pro, Show Me, Replay Note, Board Cam Pro, and ScreenChomp all have good reviews.
For screen casts of my computer monitor (I most often use these when I am showing students how to get and manipulate data from the web) I use a free program called Screencast-O-Matic. There are many alternatives there as well.
Thank you, TE.
I am interested in working on some screen casts/pod casts for my students (review/home bound/etc).
Always prefer actual recommendation of someone who uses it.
Have you tried any others?
pro..con
I think all the apps are pretty much the same. Some save the video to their own web site, some allow you to upload to you tube.
The biggest drawback of Educreations is that it does not allow editing. I find it forces me to keep the videos short, which is an advantage, but I often have to start over again when I screw something up.
Camtasia is a superb, fairly low-cost video editor that does screen captures (of your virtual blackboard), allows you to record and edit voice-overs, allows embedding of video of the speaker.
“The goal, of course, is higher test scores.”
If that is the goal then there is something PROFOUNDLY WRONG with public education.
Really worse than profoundly wrong. If that is a goal then maybe the critics are right when they say that public education is “failing” the students.
I’m not quite sure how mankind managed to survive and educate prior generations without all of this computer technology. Our forefathers/mothers were surely deprived in their education.
Any chance that someone said that about the invention of movable type?
More likely than not!!
But then was the hype involved with the type as is involved with current technological gadgets???
In the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates delivering a number of arguments against the new-fangled technology known as writing. Socrates says, for example, that writing “will produce forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it . . . being able to rely on what is written, calling things to mind no longer from within themselves by their own unaided powers, but under the stimulus of external marks that are alien to themselves.” Socrates describes writing as being a poor copy of living speech (dialogue, discussion, debate), as a painting is a poor copy of a real scene. Socrates goes on to say that writing cannot “defend itself,” as a speaker can, and cannot teach (for he sees teaching as an interactive dialogue). Socrates also worries that writing will fall into any old hands, unlike speech, which is directed to a particular, intended audience.
The Internet is the fulfillment of an age-old dream of the univeral library–the dream of the Ptolemy who created the Library of Alexandria, Diderot’s dream when he conceived of his encyclopedia. Today, any student with an Internet connection can get ready access to the knowledge and wisdom of the world. I have a folder on my hard drive that has in it EVERY SCRAP OF OLD ENGLISH (ANGLO-SAXON) that has survived–the entire corpus of extant OE literature, including inscriptions on monuments. In the past, it would have been almost impossible for a single individual to own such a collection, but now, a student with a tablet can carry with her such enormous libraries and get ready access, via the Internet, to hundreds of thousands of volumes beyond what she has locally stored. Someone studying religion, for example, can go to sacred-texts.org and find THOUSANDS of volumes covering the sacred texts of religions from around the world and throughout history (Want to read the Chandogya Upanishad? The Pistis Sophia? The Tain Bo Cuailnge? The Morman Doctrine and Covenants? The Lesser Key of Solomon? They are there. Almost all the sacred texts of the world, in one place, readily available, to anyone, for free). And trees didn’t have to die to make that available, so there’s an important environmental argument for reading online.
And, of course, via a tablet one can access video lectures by the greatest of teachers. Want to learn some physics? Well, what about learning it directly from one of the greatest physicists and teachers of the twentieth century, Richard Feynmann? You can go online and do that. If you are a kid in a remote village but have a laptop and a wireless connection, you can take any of THOUSANDS of full courses available, online, today, FOR FREE and read any of many HUNDREDS of complete textbooks, again, FOR FREE. So, the research potential, the potential for study that the individual directs–intrinsically motivated study–is enormous.
Have a question about something that is known? Well, if you have a tablet in hand or an iPhone in your pocket,you can find our answer, in seconds.
And, of course, there are other wonderful aspects of online education (as if all that weren’t enough)–the ability to build in formative checks on the student’s learning and point-of-use remediation, for example, or the ability to show something (an AC or DC motor, for example) working and explain what is being shown. Need to translate that line? To look up that word? Easy.
There are also, of course, many dangers. Here are two really big ones: There are lots of folks who want to make the PULL MEDIUM of the Internet–access to the knowledge of the world–into a PUSH MEDIUM for delivering their crappy curricula at inflated prices. AND, a LOT of what passes for online curricula, today, is REALLY DUMBED DOWN–it’s mostly “chart junk,” as Edward Tufte calls it, with low information transfer (e.g., Flash cartoon video instruction mostly falls into this category). And a lot of the online curricula is little more than worksheets on a screen. Furthermore, many online curriculum developers are dramatically distorting the subjects they are teaching by creating rigid formats for how many screens constitute a lesson and for the formats of those screens instead of making use of the ease with which, online, one can expand the space available to fit what is being taught. And a lot of the very worst of this online curricula is surrounded by a lot of hype, a lot of smoke and mirrors–these days, often dealing with individualization of the learning that isn’t really and with supposedly valuable “data” presented in impressive-looking reports but that has no real validity.
So, buyer beware. There is a lot of really, really low-quality, terrible online curricula out there being pushed by big companies. And there are people trying to create gateways and portals so that all that can be accessed through those machines is the junk you buy from them.
Robert,
“And trees didn’t have to die to make that available, so there’s an important environmental argument for reading online.”
For the reasons you state I have no problem using the online resources as that, a resource, with all the caveats that one needs in any good, decent research. And it can supplement the teaching and learning process, but not to be the teaching and learning process but a training one. But to put forth an environmental/green justification as you do is lacking unless you believe that trees have the same inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (whatever that may be for a tree) as humans.
As I patiently explain to students when they complain about “killing trees”, my understanding is that all of our pulp wood comes from trees grown specifically for being made into pulp, just as corn, beans, tomatoes, green beans, etc. . . are grown for the purpose of harvesting. It’s just that the harvest time is twenty-thirty years from planting for the trees. Now one may have a beef with the monoculture that is tree farming for its lack of plant and animal diversity no doubt.
Duane, I never made the claim that “trees have the same inherent right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (whatever that may be for a tree) as humans,” so I am surprised that you would make the argument that I had. You are, perhaps, referring to my use of the word “killing” and responding to the moral connotations of that word. Plants are living creatures, so ending the life of a plant is killing it, as in “I killed the geranium by forgetting to water it.” Nothing that I said suggests that I do not understand the distinction between, say, eating a carrot and eating something like a lamb, which has the same neurological mechanisms for pain and pleasure that you and I do, something lacking in the carrot. But it is perfectly acceptable to use the verb “to kill” to refer to plants, as in “Josie went to Home Depot and bought some weed killer.”
In his book Something Like War, Derrick Jensen says that ninety-five percent of the old-growth forest is gone. The Wikipedia article on old-growth forests cites the following stats: 97% in Europe, 93% in South Asia Pacific, 92% in Africa, 81% in Northern Asia, 72% in North America, and 65% in Latin America.
According to the 2010 annual report of the UN Council on Biodiversity, since 1970, 31 percent of all wild vertebrates have died out (a third!), mostly through loss of habitat. My issue with the killing of trees is a practical one. A woodland (as opposed to a tree farm for paper production) is a complex ecological phenomenon that supports a lot of living creatures–a lot of biological diversity.
So, a technology that replaces using lots and lots of wood pulp means less clear-cutting to build tree farms
Robert:
I live on what was in the 17th, 18th and 19th century clear cut farm land. It is now covered with 100 plus year old second growth oak, maple, pine, ash and birch trees. We have deer, foxes, fisher cats, raccoons, coyotes.
I am all for sensible management of our natural resources. I prefer Bjorn Lomborg’s optimism to Derrick Jensen’s doom and gloom. I prefer statistics that are informative rather than polemical.
Yes, I have lots of problems with Jensen’s approaches to many issues. I was simply making the point that a kid with a tablet can “own” a hundred thousand books, and no wood pulp was used in the creation of those. Obviously, that is a considerable savings of resources.
http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Arne-Duncan-promotes-digital-education-3861387.php
“Swapping textbooks for e-readers might seem unthinkable for school districts that are receiving fewer state dollars year after year. But Duncan cited the case of Moorseville, N.C., which started providing MacBooks instead of new textbooks to about 4,400 students in the district and saw test scores rise while continuing to rank at the low end of per-pupil spending in the state.
What Duncan didn’t mention is that Moorseville had to lay off 65 school district employees, including 37 teachers, to fund the program, according to the New York Times. He said that educators should have nothing to fear about technology.
“Technology will never replace teachers,” he said. “I think the optimal thing we’re aiming for is great teachers getting access to great technology.”
Except in the North Carolina district he uses as an example, where they laid off 37 teachers in order to fund a huge laptop purchase, which he either didn’t know or neglected to mention.
I mean, obviously they’re pushing this as a cheap way to educate (certain) kids. Duncan himself does that in this example he uses – “while continuing to rank at the low end of per pupil spending in the state”
If we can find a cheap way to educate students, we can educate so many more.
TE,
If I may correct your statement: “If we can find a cheap way to TRAIN students, we can TRAIN so many more.”
A true education requires teaching and learning, the interaction between/among human beings whereas training can easily be done by machines. Training is a one way street, education-the teaching and learning process-is a “bumper car ride”.
Actually I meant educate. I have little doubt that there are some students in your school that the local school board finds too expensive to educate. I know there are students in my district where that is true.
“If we can find a cheap way to educate students, we can educate so many more.”
Ah, the argument evolves! This is like when “we” went from wanting “great!” publicly-funded schools to wanting “choice!” no matter the quality.
If you’re looking for a cheap way to educate (certain classes) of students, then say so. Say “we hope to cut costs on education by relying on online classes in your working class and middle class district, so we plan to fire teachers and buy gadgets”.
That isn’t what Duncan said. He said “we aren’t replacing teachers with screens” then he used an example of a district that did just that.
Which is it?
The invention of the printing press was the first really important revolution in education. It made books inexpensive enough to be used in a massive scale and allowed for mass education. In fact being able to use books became so important that learning to read has become the foundation of modern education.
Expense always limits what can be taught. In my thinly settled state, the median high school has 250 students and offers the most basic curriculum. If we could make it less expensive to offer, say, Latin, the average high school in my state might actually be able to offer it.
TE:
You are getting close to a number of raw nerves.
It is interesting to note that technology companies like Microsoft and CIsco have been at the forefront of distance learning through their various Certification programs. Elite Business Schools are also exploring opportunities in this area to extend their market and leverage their better instructors and most popular courses. A huge amount of work is going on to figure out how to increase the effectiveness of on-line interactions and prevent instructors from being over-whelmed or the quality of feedback going to zero. One of the last projects I worked on involved designing a process to allow the equivalent of TAs to optimize their online interactions with students by introducing peer-to-peer feedback and learning rather than depend solely on student-instructor feedback/interactions.
My guess is, since you appear to be on the sharp end of the stick with regards to virtual classroom, the actual time spent with each student is going up pretty dramatically.
I am sure that many futurists are predicting the end of classrooms and schools as we know them Indeed, one might argue that this blog has all the characteristics of a graduate seminar on education practices and policies.
Bernie, that sounds like an excellent project. College students have always reached out to other students for help when they didn’t understand something. Simone de Beauvoir tutored Jean-Paul Sartre on Hegel and Leibniz in preparation for the taking agrégation.
My general point, above, is that technologies can be used for good or ill. Trains can be commuter trains that move large numbers of people to work or play with a lower footprint and cost than cars, or they can be instruments for moving kids from the Lodz ghetto to the Chelmno death camp. Google docs puts a full suite of office programs (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, database) in the hands of any kid, anywhere. The World Wide Web provides ready access to the knowledge of the world. And both are available at the minimal cost of a handheld tablet with a wireless connection. One can buy such devices for under $200. With such a device, and Project Gutenberg, a student has access to hundreds of thousands of books. And those hundreds of thousands of books come at no additional cost.
Compare this to the kid in a rural village who has to walk ten miles to get to the nearest school, with its paltry library of a few dozen volumes.
My point is that the WWW and tablets provide unprecedented educational opportunity IF THEY ARE USED TO DO WHAT THEY ARE GOOD AT DOING–e.g., for giving kids access to vast amounts of information for research purposes. I find it quite easy to read a novel on a tablet. When it’s a text that I have to keep flipping back and forth in–a math or linguistics book, for example–I find that the old-fashioned paper text has distinct advantages. However, I recently did a multi-year study for a publishing client of online K-8 curricula. Most of what I looked at was really dreadful–of very, very low quality when compared to texts. Common problems included
very low information transfer and
dramatic distortion of content to fit predetermined design spaces–to fit content to a given screen and
a tendency to substitute complex response types with response types that were easily scored on computer.
Educational publishers are looking to capitalize on the market potential of the new technology. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, buyers should be very cautious because a lot of what is being hyped is junk. Look at the PARCC website. The creators of the PARCC exams go on and on about their revolutionary new testing technologies–but basically those are simply online versions of fill in the blank, matching, sequencing, labeling, and multiple choice–nothing new whatsoever. Many of the new online programs are simply collections of animations created in Flash. These tend to be flashy graphically but with very little content (All hat and no cattle, as the saying goes in Texas).
Robert:
We are in violent agreement. Book publishing is another example. What % of books are worth the paper or electrons they consume? However, the ones that are great, make up for the schlock.
Talking of books, I have read Homeless Bird. Not my cup of chai at all. It is well written and almost poetic but I would never have asked young folks to read such a sad and depressing book – despite its pleasant ending. It reminds me a bit of Ragged Dick and other Horatio Alger stories.
Kids like a little darkness in their literary diets, and they are enthralled when the one suffering is someone to whom they can relate. Thus the astonishing success of the Lemony Snicket books. Kids or adults–the “nuts in the Hershey bar” theory of literature applies. If there isn’t something rough in there, the thing is just too cloyingly sweet.
Robert:
I am not suggesting something cloyingly sweet. Nor something without some misery, but this is worse than Dickens and until Raji shows up, essentially unrelenting. Anyway, I am going to ask for a second opinion: My wife uses YA books in one of her ESL classes and she said she was going to look at it for suitability. Her students really liked Bridge to Terabithia – so the tragic death of Hari should not be an issue.
“worth the electrons they consume.” Now THAT’S funny!!!
I’ve been fortunate to work for eight years on Maine’s Special Services team providing professional development under IDEA, eight years in Maine’s Learning Technology Team (Maine Learning Technology Initiative) supporting ESEA Title IID, and three years in the Adult Ed Team – hang on to your hat – Workforce Investment Act (WIA), Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA). All the work has been about teaching and learning – using tools like chalk, mimeograph, XEROX, ATM, and broadband. Our former team leader, Bette Manchester, had one mantra, “It’s not about technology.” Etch-a-Sketch, dray-erase markers, iPads – it is not about the tools, it is about the tool users. All this chatter about equipment takes away from the focus of working to equip young people and not so young people to reach their goals and achieve their dreams.
If I may direct your attention to this recent Scientific American article “The Reading Brain in the Digital Age, Why Paper Still Beats Screens”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-reading-brain-in-the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens
When I was running publishing departments, I had my copy editors work on hard copy because there were lots of studies showing that, for whatever reasons, people attend more closely to hard copy than they do to text on a screen, and they catch a lot more of the errors. The difference was dramatic. Substantive editing is MUCH faster and is MUCH easier if done online. Copy editing, which is all about accuracy, is MUCH more accurate if done on hard copy. One should technologies for what they are good for and recognize their limitations.
I have often heard it said that online lessons are no substitute for a teacher. Of course. Emphatically so. But the same thing can be said of a book. It’s no substitute for a teacher. We would not, on the basis of that reasoning, conclude with Socrates that perhaps we should do away with books. Interestingly, Plato say use for putting Socrates’s arguments against writing in writing.
I once had a professor say to our class, “I am completely superfluous. Since Gutenberg, people like me have been unnecessary, but fortunately for me, administrators haven’t caught onto that yet.” Well, he was wrong, of course, dead wrong, but one wouldn’t conclude, on that basis, that we should follow Socrates’s advice and do away with books and we certainly shouldn’t do away with a technology, in our classrooms, that provides now, for the first time in human history, the realization of that ancient dream of universal access to the universe of knowledge.
sorry about the typos. rushing here
Robert:
That is an interesting comparison of substantive and copy editing. I would imagine that newspaper folks have their own view of the impact of technology on the creation and editing of articles.
Again, an astute observation, Bernie. Newspapers were the first to go to online copyediting because of the extreme deadline pressures. What one loses in accuracy one picks up in time savings. There are studies of copyediting accuracy in both media, and they bear out my own observations in the publishing workplace. These days, a LOT of publishers are doing every stage of the process online, with predictable results. I have seen a lot of “final” copy produced using online copyediting and proofreading that looked as though it had never been past a copyeditor.
Reblogged this on Nathan Merz's PLN and commented:
This discussion is on the use of iPads and other technologies in the classroom. Shouldn’t technology be a supplement to enrich learning and curriculum instead of a tool intended to raising test scores and finding ways to not hire qualified teachers?
Augustine reports in his Confessions (CD 397-398) about the weird behavior of Ambrose, who would read without speaking the words aloud! He reports that some believed that Ambrose had taught himself this strange trick in order to shut others out. The isolation involved in silent reading was evidently widely considered to be a damnable consequence of this approach to the new-fangled, technology of writing. One hears a lot of similar arguments against use of educational technology. Of course, there was SOME justification for the concern. Writing CAN be used for private communication, and sometimes nefariously (shred those documents, quickly). And online instruction can be used to REPLACE interaction with teachers with interaction with dull, onscreen worksheets. It’s amusing to hear all the hype about the “interactivity” of online instruction. When one hears this stuff from the typical publisher on online instruction, it’s usually purest NewSpeak–calling something interactive when its most salient feature is dramatically diminished interactivity. One can play an “interactive” game online. But how much more “interactivie” is playing with another kid? One can do an “interactive” lesson online that allows for moving the correct choice to the answer blank. But how much more “interactive” is a teacher asking a student a question, listening to the answer, and responding to that–whatever the answer was–appropriately?
So, again, buyer beware. Online educational materials that capitalize on the strengths of the medium are very, very valuable, but ones that promote limitations of the technology as FEATURES–those are another matter altogether. In most cases, “interactive online lesson” is an oxymoron. There is a charter school system here in Florida where kids show up to a large room with monitors around the periphery and spend every day doing online worksheets. The “teacher” in the room is basically there to make sure that the computers and software are working and that kids understand how to use them. And that’s generally like replacing teachers with worksheets. The worksheets just happen to be on a screen instead of on paper.
Nice to hear your perspective, Robert, and aside from fully immersive online role playing and first person shooter games that aren’t teaching academic content, I agree with you that online learning is not as interactive as “some” face to face learning. But I really would ask that we get off the argument of whether online learning “works” and just ask what kinds of learning work? Face to face learning can be horrible, and online learning can be horrible. Some online learning works for some students, and, yes, it can be better than a face to face solution that has little interactivity (there are many of those still in existence). The key is to use solid instructional design to author lessons that integrate technology, where appropriate, and interactivity always!
Well said, RasorbackGuru. I must say, however, that having reviewed a couple hundred K-12 online programs, I have found, perhaps, three that I would even consider purchasing for a school. And, the more instructional value an online program has, the less the big textbook companies tend to like it. There is a lot of really bad online curricula for remediation currently available. I am a big fan of the kind of thing that Khan is doing because this gives access to complete courses to kids in developing countries who wouldn’t otherwise have such access, and Vi Hart, who now works for Khan, is one of the most inspiring teachers ever. And the Khan stuff is free.
So, “flipping,” in upper-level classes, is a great idea because it capitalizes on the strengths of the two media. An online lecture can be paused and rewound. It can be watched anywhere, at any time. The discussion works better in person, where the nuances of verbal and nonverbal communication are in play.
But even there, there are exceptions. Online, one can bring particular expertise or experience into a virtual room at very low cost. So, discussion can take some interesting forms–this blog being one of them, as Bernie has cogently observed, above.
The lecture and the lecture/demonstration are much in disrepute these days in education schools, where the conventional wisdom is that one should avoid, at all costs, the teacher taking the role of “the sage on the stage.” However, blanket proscriptions are ill-advised. There is a wonderful role to be played by teacher-focused instruction, as part of a balanced program–a role that goes all the way back to that of the storytellers who enthralled our ancient ancestors gathered around their campfires. I recently asked the daughter of a friend about how she was liking college. The girl said to me, “It’s wonderful. People aren’t afraid to get up in front of the class and tell you something you didn’t know. For the first time, I feel like most of my class time is not being wasted.” If you doubt the value of lectures, try listening to the lecture on YouTube entitled “The Most Important Video You’ll Ever See.” I don’t know about you, but I’ll take listening to this guy talk over sitting around in a group discussion with a bunch of woefully uninformed people ANY DAY. Or listen to one of the amazing talks on TED. There is definitely a role for the video lecture and for the video demonstration, but teacher evaluators tend, these days, to treat ANY teacher-focussed activity in the classroom as anathema. That’s a dumb overreaction. There are many ways to be a superb teacher. That’s one of the problems with these blanket evaluation systems.
I had a fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Schimezi, who gave little talks ALL THE TIME. In these he shared his wonder, his amazement, his curiosity, his passion for learning. He was the fifth-grade Carl Sagan. And listening to him, we all felt very grownup and as though we were being let in on secrets to how the universe works. We wanted to be just like him when we grew up. We wanted to be learners.
If you doubt the value of the videotaped lecture series, check out the free Open Yale online courses entitled Introduction to the Old Testament (Christine Hayes), Game Theory (Ben Polak), and Introduction to Theory of Literature (Paul Frye). ALL WONDERFUL. And all free.