Organizing Myself via online new-fangleD gadgetz

As part of our last class of the semester, we were assigned to present to our fellow classmates on how to use one of three online organization/teaching tools. While I wish I could write a long excited post about how useful these websites will be, how I'm thoroughly inspired and can't wait to learn more about how to bring myself into the future via web-based magic, I just don't find myself feeling this way.

The idea of going paperless, the idea of having new websites inspire creative streaks in me that I never knew I had, the idea of creating for my classes presentations so visually pleasing they look as if they were professionally done by graphic artists...these ideas are all so appealing. And yet I feel as though I am just simply deaf to the beckoning of new technologies and the world wide web.

Maybe I'm just still not comfortable and skilled enough to enjoy using web-based applications to create lessons. Maybe with time I'll get the hang of it and enjoy it more. But I can't help but feeling as if all these technologies are simply details to a teacher's practice that will neither make a mediocre teacher great nor will the lack of their use make a great teacher mediocre.

I believe that with interesting material to present and an understanding of how to engage my students, my teaching can be effective and inspiring. I still feel that the best methods of learning are simply conversation and discussion (i.e. interpersonal sharing of ideas). In my experience, fancy presentations never engaged me in a boring lesson; only dynamic teaching did. And a dynamic teacher with minimal visuals certainly did not bore me.

So, I'm happy to learn about up and coming technologies and the pervading philosophies regarding the presence of these technologies in the classroom. I like to live in the present; I like to know about the new-fangled-gadgets that surround me. I'm just not personally interested for my own use.

Video Games in the Classroom

When I was a kid, I had two older brothers who loved playing video games. As the littlest kid and the only sister, I had no choice but to sit down next to them and watch. I remember my brothers playing a range of different types of games over the years: I have a memory from perhaps age 5 when my brothers played some shoot-the-ducks game on the original Nintendo with a console controller shaped like a large hunting gun. Later, I remember my brothers being excited about Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros on N64, Mario Party, and finally Dance Dance Revolution on PS2. Once I myself became an adolescent, I remember going to my friend's house to play the Sims.

As recently as last month, one of my housemates in my college group-house brought from home his collection of perhaps 30 PS2 games that he had built up over the years. He hadn't played them in years. Inevitably and immediately, though, a group of 5 guys in my house gathered around and entertained themselves for hours with those darn games.

My brothers spent countless hours of their childhood on these games - clearly they're not the only ones. If education could be conducted through a system that stimulates as much internal motivation as video games do, we'd end up with a highly (and happily) educated population.

Currently, there are countless games on the internet meant as "educational." I played the BBC Interactive History game on Iron Age Life. I found this thoroughly underwhelming: this game was nothing like the games that consumed my brothers. You could hardly call this a game. As the "player," you clicked around on artifacts that you thought people from the Iron Age used to create a fire. If you guessed correctly, text would pop up that would explain to you how this particular item was used. Once you correctly guessed all 7 items, the game would demonstrate how they all fit together to create a fire, and you could later take a multiple choice quiz on this same information to test your resulting "knowledge."

I don't call this a game and I don't call this educational. To correctly be considered a game, I say an activity needs to genuinely challenge the player to creatively problem-solve. There was no creative problem solving here - only educated guessing. And to correctly be considered educational, I say an activity needs to guide you through a new method of thinking; this "game" did not.

So, when video games are sufficiently complex as to create an entire mini world in which multiple courses of action are available to achieve a multi-step goal, they can certainly be educational, and as a result they certainly belong in the classroom. When "games" are simply a series of mini webpages that present information passively to the student, however, they do not belong in the classroom.

When games aide students in actively constructing knowledge, I fully support their use. When they do not, they belong in the garbage heap with all the other passive methods of "gaining" knowledge.

Thoughts on Standardized Testing

As part of class this past week, we spent some time clicking around an online practice test of the Smarter Balance Assessment. I found it nothing exceptional: with the exception of its online format, it struck me as just the same as any of the standardized reading comprehension assessments I took back in high school.

What I find more interesting to consider is how many thinking processes this sort of test doesn't assess. It doesn't test creativity. It doesn't test ability to work with others to share ideas and collaborate. It doesn't test emotional intelligence (i.e. awareness and understanding of both one's own emotions and the emotions of others). It doesn't test fortitude. It doesn't test sense of self and accompanying resistance against conformity. And it doesn't test orientation toward working for the greater good.

I'd say all these qualities taken together play a larger part in determining one's ability to effectively and positively contribute toward our nation and our world than simple reading comprehension. And yet the quality of our entire education system is evaluated based on students' reading comprehension and basic math abilities.

Honestly I can't envision a time in the near future when the public's focus will be drawn away from standardized testing as a method of evaluating effectiveness of education. If anything, we are currently witnessing a cultural shift toward standardized testing. This is mind-boggling: standardized testing is boring, single-dimensional, and confining.

I guess it's up to individual teachers to introduce into their own classes all the dimensions of learning which standardized testing ignores.

Dewey and Using the Internet for Self-Directed & Exploratory Education

I find it inspiring to consider John Dewey’s philosophies of what education should be, and I find it exciting and overwhelming to consider how we can use new technologies to bring his philosophies to reality. Essentially, John Dewey argued that education is necessarily a social process that occurs inevitably and unavoidably starting at birth, and, as a result, schools and pedagogies should be structured to mimic this natural process. Mimicry of this process means that students must be directing their own learning; learning really only occurs when students actively pursue something that piques their interest. Thus, any sort of passive learning, such as lecturing, studying, or unengaged reading is dismissed as ultimately ineffective.

Before the days of the Internet, allowing students to explore the world around them was limited by what is contained within the classroom. Now, the Internet allows numerous and expansive aspects of the world to be accessed from within the classroom, and this allows the possibility of Dewey’s ideal educational system to be realized.

However, envisioning how this system would be realized is overwhelming and certainly requires creativity. When allowed free access to a computer (or smart phone or tablet), adolescents typically do not use it to explore varied topics. Based on my experiences with Scarlett students, adolescents are interested in using technology to play games, watch YouTube videos (many times featuring slapstick humor), listen to music, and access social media. In other words, they use it as either an escape from daily life (i.e. entertainment) or as a way to connect with their peers. I’d argue these activities do not provide them with a sufficient education.

So, clearly teachers must provide guidance in order for adolescents to use technology to create for themselves a meaningful education. But I too generally use my computer for social media, music, word processing, and research. I find that my own use of my computer is quite limited; I often find myself bored even when I have my computer (and therefore the whole world via the internet) right in my backpack. So clearly I need an education on how to use the Internet creatively if I am to convey this to my students.

And it seems to me the best types of lessons involve externally guided personal projects. And on that note I’m excited to start this blog.