Interspersed with stories of student engagement and empowerment as a result of programs like No Child Left Behind, are the horror stories: rooms of laptops collecting dust, technophobic educators inhibiting student exploration, or outright rejection of outside ideals imposed without consideration for local approaches. These anecdotes illustrate the need of a coordinated approach of enhanced teacher training, revised pedagogy, and the fostering of generative classroom cultures in conjunction with the introduction of new technologies into learning spaces.
Starting in the Winter of 2002, I experienced this truth first-hand. Someone in the Computer Science department at UCSD had secured a grant to pilot the study of hand-held Computer Response Systems in and outside college classrooms. As a result, each student in entry-level CS classes that quarter, including me, were bestowed an HP Journada, the latest in PDA technology, replete with an embedded version of Windows, a color display, and a wireless card (all fairly cool, at the time). The idea, as it was explained to us, was for students to use their Journada's to respond to in-class, teacher-initiated polls designed to gauge aggregate understanding. We could also utilize them outside of classes as we saw fit (later, we learned that they had were in the process of developing a campus-wide geo-tagging system to augment the student experience).
As students, we were initially excited by the acquisition of a free, new technology, and we all devoted hours to setting up our network cards and configuring applications for personal use. Later, we experienced the downside of attempted classroom integration sans a coordinated approach. For the first two quarters of the program, my instructors attempted valiantly to incorporate the Journada into their existing teaching frameworks. Unfortunately, the use of polls did little more than disrupt the flow of lectures that had been perfected over years of practice. It seemed that any time devoted to a cursory review of poll results had to be reclaimed via rushed coverage of subsequent topics. After an intervening Summer, the use of Journadas in CS courses had been abandoned by teachers with content-oriented objectives. Not long after, the Journadas joined the dustbin of rapidly aged technologies made irrelevant by new advances.
This personal narrative has not been presented to attack networked learning technologies in general, or even Computer Response Systems in particular. Rather, to reinforce the call made by Fies & Marshall, Zucker & Light, and Stroup et al. to develop coordinated, systematic changes to classroom instruction to leverage the power of these new technologies. We have all witnessed the explosion of expressive content that can be generated using networking platforms like facebook and twitter. In many ways, this success has resulted from the effective employment of the generative features of agency described by Stroup et al: authorability and opportunities for content expansion (the Journada experience demonstrates that anonymity is not a sufficient condition).
If Computer Response Systems are to succeed in the classroom, then we need only look to the world of successful social networking for inspiration. The frightening truth for traditional-hegemonic educators (and I can count myself as having been one) is that students learn best when they are able to autonomously engage in real-time, public displays of jointly constructed representations using expressive artifacts of personal import. Of course, technology is important to this process, but insufficient to bring it to fruition in isolation. Education would be better served by initially developing cultures of student authorship and expressiveness, after which technology can be appropriately integrated.
References
Fies, C., & Marshall, J. (2006). Classroom response systems: a review of the literature. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 15(1), 101-109.
Stroup, W.M., Ares, N.M., & Hurford, A.C. (2005). A dialectic analysis of generativity: issues of network-supported design in mathematics and science. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 7(3), 181-206.
Zucker, A., & Light, D. (2009). Laptop programs for students. Science, vol 323, 82-85.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wisdom in Places
Underlying the movement of geo-learning via place-based information systems is the human desire to construct organizing themes in order to make sense of vast amounts of data. The modern technological approach is but the latest in an age-old quest, one made manifest in late paleolithic cave paintings, heaven-organizing constellations, and even highway-side billboards. Inherent to each of these is a desire to not only establish a connection with the surrounding environment, but also to express perceived meaning in asynchronous dialogue with present and future others. Although the relatively persistent nature of geo-based settings services this need well, physical locations may serve as more than mere bulletin boards displaying static content. As J. C. Spohrer notes, advances in technology have made possible opportunities to create augmented realities – experiences combining physical entities and virtual (and potentially interactive) overlays. An early example is the MIT Media Lab mini-tour of the mid-1990's, in which cameras were used to track participant movements in order to present appropriate and timely information.
The potential for integrated mobile media to engage learners with virtual, interactive points of interest in the natural world presents tremendous opportunities for engaging students in inquiry-based, situated learning. Students would, in effect, be handed the keys to unlocking the great database of their natural surroundings, on both the superficial as well as historical, cultural, and social levels. Rather than query this database with keywords and conditional statements, learners may employ naturalistic, deictic elicitations, identifying items by apparent qualities and characteristics. Beyond consumption, learners may also interact with their augmented reality, and contribute content of their own. What results is an ever-expanding, contextual mapping of geo-based, virtual media markers, connected through human interaction.
Surprisingly, this depiction of networked-based meaning making in augmented reality reflects the approach to geo-based learning in the Apache culture. As described by Keith Basso, the Apache ritually learn from, and ultimately contribute to mythic, place-based narratives designed to engender wise thinking. Accordingly, the Apache describe wisdom as “sitting in places,” forever linked to the locations in which the stories are set. A wise man is one who has traveled to these sacred sites, internalized their lessons, and ultimately serves as a guide to subsequent seekers.
One distinction between the Apache version of geo-learning and the modern is the rapid rate of data accumulation in the latter. The rate at which clutter, legitimate or otherwise, multiplies in the virtual world poses serious issues for the potential effectiveness of augmented realities. Then again, the wild vines of the natural world never fail to ultimately consume vestiges of human production, burying them in the sands of time. The future of geo-based learning will likely hinge on how well the virtual world follows suit.
The potential for integrated mobile media to engage learners with virtual, interactive points of interest in the natural world presents tremendous opportunities for engaging students in inquiry-based, situated learning. Students would, in effect, be handed the keys to unlocking the great database of their natural surroundings, on both the superficial as well as historical, cultural, and social levels. Rather than query this database with keywords and conditional statements, learners may employ naturalistic, deictic elicitations, identifying items by apparent qualities and characteristics. Beyond consumption, learners may also interact with their augmented reality, and contribute content of their own. What results is an ever-expanding, contextual mapping of geo-based, virtual media markers, connected through human interaction.
Surprisingly, this depiction of networked-based meaning making in augmented reality reflects the approach to geo-based learning in the Apache culture. As described by Keith Basso, the Apache ritually learn from, and ultimately contribute to mythic, place-based narratives designed to engender wise thinking. Accordingly, the Apache describe wisdom as “sitting in places,” forever linked to the locations in which the stories are set. A wise man is one who has traveled to these sacred sites, internalized their lessons, and ultimately serves as a guide to subsequent seekers.
One distinction between the Apache version of geo-learning and the modern is the rapid rate of data accumulation in the latter. The rate at which clutter, legitimate or otherwise, multiplies in the virtual world poses serious issues for the potential effectiveness of augmented realities. Then again, the wild vines of the natural world never fail to ultimately consume vestiges of human production, burying them in the sands of time. The future of geo-based learning will likely hinge on how well the virtual world follows suit.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The potential for search to augment authentic inquiry for children
In 1919, John Dewey described a mechanical pedagogy, one which encourages students to separate body and mind, recognition from meaning. In essence, Dewey was describing an education bereft of authentic inquiry, which I define (in agreement with Dewey) as the interminable process of exploring questions relevant to one's own existence to the end of uncovering ever greater, albeit incomplete, understanding. Nearly a century later, the mechanical pedagogy still looms large, even in an information-rich age where yottabytes of information are available to any student with access to an internet browser and a search box. Despite the power of the search, which may one day replace the lever of Archimedes as the tool by which one might move the world, the observation of Dewey holds fast: “we are very easily trained to be content with a minimum in meaning, and fail to note how restricted is our perception of the relations which confer significance” (Dewey, p. 6). Too often we are content to settle for the first query result that provides a reasonable explanation to our question, rather than probing deeper to refine and extend our original inferences. Behind the false assurances of the query result page, our doubt is reduced, and, likewise, our ability to think, as Dewey defines it.
In their investigations of how children search the internet with keyword interfaces, Druin et al reveal several of the aspects of contemporary pedagogy, and design features of prominent search engines themselves, that reinforce mechanical operations at the expense of thinking (Druin et al, 2010). Authentic inquiry for children is immediately inhibited by an interface that doesn't mesh with their typical strategy of spoken, natural language questions, which primary grade teachers and parents have become adept at deciphering. The fact that search engines struggle to match ostensibly cryptic, exploratory questions with database-driven, indexical search terms, or phonetic misrepresentations of words, such as “scedwal” for “schedule,” with their alternative spellings for common, adult typographic errors, imposes a system on children with which they are unfamiliar. The danger of this mismatch is an inhibition of inquiry. When faced with unsuccessful search results, Druin et al found that children immediately assumed that the information they sought was not available on the web. Strikingly, this was not the case in earlier studies, where children were given search tasks within finite datasets. On the contrary, subjects in these studies rigorously pursued their tasks when they encountered dead ends (Druin et al, 2010). The authors suggest a modern-day loss of confidence in technology, but what is more likely is a paucity of the spirit of authentic inquiry in our school-aged students. What students have learned, is pseudo-inquiry, the process of searching for a known answer in a limited data set, which is replicated time and again in formal education environments. When searching for an unknown answer in a vast data set, children seem to abruptly end their search, both when they find a reasonable (but not necessarily best) answer, and when they find none.
Of course, this does not mean that search engines need be the enemies of inquiry for children. Aside from solving the interface barriers for children (which are within the realm of near-possibility) and developing project-based pedagogy in which students work to design search engines and underlying databases to better understand the mechanics of search, only the social practice of search remains to be addressed. Moraveji speaks to this need in his proposals for the social transfer of web search expertise, which take the form of joint attention to successful search terms and URLs in co-located search activities, as well as providing access to crowd-sourced, expert search trails in distributed environments (Moraveji, 2010). Although these approaches are likely critical to a search-based pedagogy, they do not provide sufficient protection from the mechanism warned of by Dewey. There is a social component that is missing from these proposals, which is hinted at by Druin et al's discovery that children's overall perception of the Google search engine was positive. It is likely that this perception is socially learned, and was indeed for one child, who informed the researchers that his grandfather told him it was a cool site where lots of information could be found (Druin et al, 2010).
The social component of search is what provides us with the “what,” “when,” and “why” of searching, as opposed to the "how" that is emphasized in the current literature. It stands to reason that the impetus to search can only be inculcated by participating, legitimately, in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). I experienced this personally in my formative years as a software engineer. Although I was an expert searcher in terms of “how” to search for desired data, I learned by working in close proximity to more experienced near-peers that I had a relatively weak understanding of “what,” “when,” and “why” to search in relation to my occupation. For example, learning “when” to search for existing tools – the “what” - rather than devoting development time to reinventing the wheel because the company valued cost-saving efficiency over personal innovation – the “why” - was an early, and cage-rattling lesson. Nevertheless, through this experience, my understanding of the role of search in my field of practice was heightened, as was my tendency toward inquiry-based research at work. This social mediation of the paradigms of search must also be accounted for in search-based pedagogy in order to avoid the trap of encouraging mechanistic thinking.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education, Chapter 11: Experience and thinking. New York: Macmillan (pp. 152-179 in the original).
Druin, A., Foss, E., Hatley, L., Golub, E. Guha, M.L., Fails, J., & Hutchinson, H. (2010, to appear). How children search the internet with keyword interfaces. CHI-2010.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pess.
Moraveji, N. (2010, April). User interface designs to support the social transfer of web search expertise. ACM – SIGIR – Doctoral Consortium, Geneva, Switzerland.
In their investigations of how children search the internet with keyword interfaces, Druin et al reveal several of the aspects of contemporary pedagogy, and design features of prominent search engines themselves, that reinforce mechanical operations at the expense of thinking (Druin et al, 2010). Authentic inquiry for children is immediately inhibited by an interface that doesn't mesh with their typical strategy of spoken, natural language questions, which primary grade teachers and parents have become adept at deciphering. The fact that search engines struggle to match ostensibly cryptic, exploratory questions with database-driven, indexical search terms, or phonetic misrepresentations of words, such as “scedwal” for “schedule,” with their alternative spellings for common, adult typographic errors, imposes a system on children with which they are unfamiliar. The danger of this mismatch is an inhibition of inquiry. When faced with unsuccessful search results, Druin et al found that children immediately assumed that the information they sought was not available on the web. Strikingly, this was not the case in earlier studies, where children were given search tasks within finite datasets. On the contrary, subjects in these studies rigorously pursued their tasks when they encountered dead ends (Druin et al, 2010). The authors suggest a modern-day loss of confidence in technology, but what is more likely is a paucity of the spirit of authentic inquiry in our school-aged students. What students have learned, is pseudo-inquiry, the process of searching for a known answer in a limited data set, which is replicated time and again in formal education environments. When searching for an unknown answer in a vast data set, children seem to abruptly end their search, both when they find a reasonable (but not necessarily best) answer, and when they find none.
Of course, this does not mean that search engines need be the enemies of inquiry for children. Aside from solving the interface barriers for children (which are within the realm of near-possibility) and developing project-based pedagogy in which students work to design search engines and underlying databases to better understand the mechanics of search, only the social practice of search remains to be addressed. Moraveji speaks to this need in his proposals for the social transfer of web search expertise, which take the form of joint attention to successful search terms and URLs in co-located search activities, as well as providing access to crowd-sourced, expert search trails in distributed environments (Moraveji, 2010). Although these approaches are likely critical to a search-based pedagogy, they do not provide sufficient protection from the mechanism warned of by Dewey. There is a social component that is missing from these proposals, which is hinted at by Druin et al's discovery that children's overall perception of the Google search engine was positive. It is likely that this perception is socially learned, and was indeed for one child, who informed the researchers that his grandfather told him it was a cool site where lots of information could be found (Druin et al, 2010).
The social component of search is what provides us with the “what,” “when,” and “why” of searching, as opposed to the "how" that is emphasized in the current literature. It stands to reason that the impetus to search can only be inculcated by participating, legitimately, in a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991). I experienced this personally in my formative years as a software engineer. Although I was an expert searcher in terms of “how” to search for desired data, I learned by working in close proximity to more experienced near-peers that I had a relatively weak understanding of “what,” “when,” and “why” to search in relation to my occupation. For example, learning “when” to search for existing tools – the “what” - rather than devoting development time to reinventing the wheel because the company valued cost-saving efficiency over personal innovation – the “why” - was an early, and cage-rattling lesson. Nevertheless, through this experience, my understanding of the role of search in my field of practice was heightened, as was my tendency toward inquiry-based research at work. This social mediation of the paradigms of search must also be accounted for in search-based pedagogy in order to avoid the trap of encouraging mechanistic thinking.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education, Chapter 11: Experience and thinking. New York: Macmillan (pp. 152-179 in the original).
Druin, A., Foss, E., Hatley, L., Golub, E. Guha, M.L., Fails, J., & Hutchinson, H. (2010, to appear). How children search the internet with keyword interfaces. CHI-2010.
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pess.
Moraveji, N. (2010, April). User interface designs to support the social transfer of web search expertise. ACM – SIGIR – Doctoral Consortium, Geneva, Switzerland.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)