Excited about learning...

The most exciting aspect of learning in the Multimedia in Instructional Design Course for me is the way these tools open up new frontiers for us and in many ways join us all together via the internet in ways never before possible. They also put resources at our fingertips that were never available like that before. Good design is still good design, and bad design is still bad design, but when it comes to engaging students a good teacher will find exciting new ways to enrich lessons and empower students. I am also greatly encouraged with websites like teachersfirst.com that provide safe clearinghouses for good tools, websites, examples, tutorials, and the like for teachers. The immensity of the internet can overwhelm and sometimes it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. At the very least it is very time consuming for an individual teacher to sift through all these things. So, I guess I am excited by the tools and capabilities, but also encouraged in realizing that there are resources like teachersfirst.com that a teacher can readily turn to for ideas and help.

Current Events: Cash Rewards for Passing Scores??

What's in the News? (from 05 March 2008, C. Speck)

Article: Is It Good for Kids? Tomorrow's Leaders, Today's Challenge
ASCD News:"Is it Good for Kids?" column by Gene R. Carter, Executive Director, ASCD:
"Is It Good For Kids?"

Summary: Mr. Carter highlights a cash incentive program instituted by Baltimore City Public School System officials to pay high school students up to $110 for raising their scores on Maryland's graduation exams. The author quickly gets at the underlying issue of capability and motivation in students and does question whether a cash incentive is an appropriate or effective measure or just another stopgap program with little or no longterm payoff. The question of spending limited funds in this manner versus the pursuit of real educational reform is raised. Key reasons for dropouts are identified as student lack of interest, boredom, and disengagement in the curriculum; this is coupled with lack of motivation to work hard with an indication that a large number of students feel they could have graduated had more been demanded of them. Compounding students' disengagement and lack of interest in traditional programs and curricula is the increasing demands of the modern workplace for fluency in the very skills that many of these same students are not developing under traditional methods. Simply put, the workplace is demanding computer skills, and the same "target" students for the "cash incentive" and other such programs, students who are dropping out or just not graduating, are not developing these skills because they are not exposed to them in their school curriculum. Entrepreneurship and other ASCD supported programs are also highlighted as perhaps better incentive programs than cash rewards, along with real educational reform.

Response: Without overtly stating it, perhaps not even realizing it, Mr. Carter brushes up against some issues very close to the crux of our Multimedia in Instructional Design course in using multimedia and particularly modern computer-based multimedia tools and resources in real educational reform. As Dr. Kozlosky stated, it is not all about the Multimedia Resources themselves, it is about effectively using them in instructional design to better engage students. It is highly likely that the very students the schools are losing, to a large degree, are the ones without computer or internet access at home and for whom the school could be an oasis of opportunity for such tools that would open up the larger world to them. I cannot help but feel that if these students gain access and proper instruction, Baltimore would not need to pay them cash rewards to do better on their graduation exams, but instead could reinvest those same cash resources into improving the technology infrastructure and perhaps build a "critical mass" for learning that could bootstrap these students out of the non-motivated, disengaged state they are in.

My View: Somebody needs to give Baltimore officials a wake-up call if they are giving cash incentives to students for achieving passing scores on graduation exams. At best they are likely to create a temporary blip in their achievement scores, but it is well known that incentives such as these have short lived results. At worst, they might even succeed in creating a "black market" for test scamming. But the real issue revolves around true learning not test scores or grades and Mr. Carter correctly points out that school officials have to get at the motivational and student engagement issues--cash is not the way to do this. Another alarming aspect of this is that students are not being engaged to develop the very skills that are likely to motivate them both in education and help them succeed in the workplace. This is unfortunately one of the dangers of a technological society, we will if we are not careful develop a caste society with the technological "haves" and the non-technological "have nots." We should also not be surprised to see a correlation between these groups and significant crime statistics. Economic studies have shown for a long time that chronic unemployment correlates in a large way to crime. What are they thinking in Baltimore? My larger concern is that Baltimore may be representative of a large percentage of school officials who are more concerned about performance on high stakes testing than on longterm educational reform.

Questions:
(1) While high-stakes testing is clearly important to measure how schools are performing and improving or regressing, how can we get the emphasis off of temporary blips in the score results, that actually game the system, and get leaders to focus on real improvement?

(2) How do we prevent the gap between the technological "haves" and the "have nots" from continuing to widen when we have large groups of young people who are unplugged, disengaged, unmotivated, and ignorant about what they are missing, so much so that officials feel they have to resort to cash payment to get them to "score" on tests?

(3) In this situation, is there any learning going on for these students? Does anybody actually care about that?

Rewind with MultiMedia

In grade school, which for me was long before personal computers existed, we occasionally had to do role playing speeches and I was once assigned to give a famous speech of John Kennedy's..."Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." I remember thinking I did a really good job and had memorized the speech perfectly. What I did not realize is that I delivered the speech in a perfect monotone and rocked from side to side like a metronome from beginning to end. I couldn't understand all the chuckling because I knew I had it down. Afterwards my friend told be what had happened and I was embarrassed because I had no idea and could have done much better. We did not have video recording equipment readily available and VCRs did not even exist back then (outside of television studios). Today's multimedia tools would have allowed recorded rehearsals, critique and refinement of such a speech in an excellent learning experience and a constructive environment and the assessment of the work could be done in stages from initial research, to preliminary work, to final polished delivery. We could even use PodCast from home to prepare the speech and when we are ready to post it, all students could access each others' work via a WikiSpace.

Do I feel that Eric Langhorst's article After the Bell, Beyond the Walls encompasses the Essential Conditions for Technology Integration?

Well, I think it does. Certainly one of the most telling points, at least. on the success of Langhorst's "StudyCast" program was in the feedback from students that they listened to test reviews while walking the dog or doing chores around the house. Another was in the feedback from parents on how they too listened to the "StudyCasts" and in doing so felt more empowered to help and a supportive part of their child's education. These are evidence of Shared Vision, Access, Student-Oriented Teaching, Assessment, and Community Support.

But, I suspect that these are as much a result of Langhorst's efforts as they are evidence of a supportive environment. In other words, I think Langhorst deserves enormous credit for pioneering such a program--he saw a need and willed it into being. And, yes, he had the basic support he needed to make it stick. The theme I want to exercise here, is that other individuals in the same exact situation as Langhorst, may not have had the will, determination, energy, and wherewithal to get the program off the ground. In fact, it may well be that Langhorst would or could have failed in other situations. But I bet he would have kept trying. I think it comes down to the sheer will power of an individual or a small collaborative group of individuals, in the final analysis, to make a program like this grow and flourish---that coupled with the right set of basic conditions and then at some point the program gets a critical mass and takes off.

The fact that the program appears to have been a sort of grassroots seed program that received good, but not extensive, support in starting out, but that mostly bootstrapped itself is also encouraging in that it proves, as in so many reform efforts, that concerted efforts of a dedicated individual with really basic support AND A GOOD IDEA can, in fact, turn a success story. Essentially, this good idea caught on, received the support of students and parents, and thus parlayed itself by reaching outside of the classroom to other schools, colleges, authors, and other interested parties.

I guess what I am concluding it that I think they left one item off of the list of Essential Conditions for Effective Technology Integration that really needs to be there...you need a dedicated individual, or a core group of collaborative individuals, that will painstakingly, relentlessly, energetically, creatively, and willingly apply themselves to bring such a thing into existence even when there are times that they may have felt like giving up or falling back to safe patterns and status quo.

In considering whether this example encompasses the Essential Conditions for Technology Integration, I would say yes, but follow that quickly by stating that these conditions weren't just laid out on the table for Langhorst...it seems that he reached out and made sure he had those conditions and did a great deal to foster them himself. Whenever we talk about the system providing us conditions for something to take place, all very important, we need also to remember that at the heart of change it usually comes down to individual efforts. As Margaret Mead said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

As an interesting corollary to this theme, I was wondering to what extent teachers can reach out for the same resources they want to use to help their students, but help themselves with issues and concerns they may have in establishing the "essential conditions" for their initiatives with technology integration (and otherwise). I found the New Teacher Hotline podcast...there, Dr. Glen Moulton, a supervisor of instruction and lifelong teacher trainer, and Michael Kelley, the author of Rookie Teaching for Dummies, provide a means for teachers to submit your questions to be addressed via their bimonthly podcasts for teachers: New Teacher Hotline Podcast

Web 2.0 Reflection

Web 2.0 Tools are opening up the Web as the place to create. It becomes the work space with tools at our fingertips. The applications themselves are there. Many of these are recasts of off line resources in a web environment, but that in itself creates leverage.

Accessibility, I think, is the prime advantage in that work can be accessed from virtually anywhere, enabling enormous collaboration, perspective, and robust evaluation.

It will always be a challenge to separate the wheat (good stuff) from the chaff (not-so-good stuff) and I guess all of that forces and encourages social networking and collaboration to decide what is the best of the best in terms of tools and resources. In the long run, that is what will survive.

Websites like TeachersFirst are excellent buffers to mediate the good and the bad and provide a clearinghouse for tools ready for the classroom. I think we need that intermediary.

Actually, from my perspective, it seems to me that Web 2.0 Tools are one giant step closer towards intuitive applications on the Web, thus more likely to unite Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. I do not think these tools are driving a divide. There are still many competing forms that I think over time will result in the dominant, most used, best-of-the-best ones become the defacto standard---this is a lot like how computer "hardware" technology itself was a number of years ago before the PC and MAC became household words. Anyway, by way of illustration, I added my Gliffy concept map on the "Digital Divide"...

EDUC 522 EVAL INST: Project Notes for Team Rvw.

Project Question Prompt: What is the Fundamental Structure of the Teaching/Learning/Education Process?

Mary, Renay, and John,
In a constructive analysis and synthesis of all of our readings, projects, and class discussions so far, and after considerable reflection on it, here is a DRAFT response for your review. I will update this with a notional graphic that I hand sketched and plan to scan after I post this initial text. The graphic is purely intended to complement the response and not necessarily my view on how to present this. Please kick this all around and post your comments and notions for how to modify this and turn it into some form of a presentation of our team response as we work to converge for Monday's 2 PM Meeting at Haggerty Library. Keep in mind that I have an very analytical, engineering perspective and would welcome creative views into this and how to turn it into an interesting package for presentation in class. I will follow the format of Dewey's Pedagogic Creed.

I believe that the fundamental structure of the Teaching/Learning?Education Process consist of a social ring of students, that mimics all of a society, surrounding an inner ring of essential questions and performance tasks that joins the student society around an inner ring of understanding that is composed of big ideas and subject matter structure for all of life's subjects.

I believe that the teacher, all teachers, should position themselves at the very center of this subject matter ring and never position themselves between the students and their understanding. The teacher at the center should rather be like a lighthouse or beacon to draw the students from all surrounding perspectives toward understanding.

I believe that the social ring of students surrounding life's subjects should be a freely open forum where ideas, concerns, views, and understandings are shared from each vantage point and maturity level among all student as this gives a fuller 360 degree, top, and bottom, and all angles view of truth. Only when we synthesize all perspective to we gain the fullest understanding we may achieve. And all views count.

I believe that this concentric set of rings that compose the structure of the Teaching/Learning/Education Process is not static nor two dimensional, but rises upward and outward with time like a great cyclone in time with ever expanding rings of larger and more comprehensive understanding as we mature and grow in this spiral of understanding.

I believe that we are never truly done. We are and should be lifelong learners. We continually circle and rise up the spiral viewing again and again any and all subjects with a deeper and more expansive view..

I believe that the teacher--any teacher at any time--for we are all teachers at some point, can and should remain at the center of this spiral, mutually sharing views and taking on the role of facilitator, mentor, role model, and guide. The teacher can be the axis, the prime mover at the vortex, but never should come between students and their constructive performance tasks quest for understanding.

I beleive the classroom should be the gateway to the world and in itself provide the safe, structured environment to nurture the upward and outward growth of the spiral cyclone of learning.

See Graphic:

Multimedia Project Cognition and the Spiral Curriculum

"Multimedia Projects in Education - Designing, Producing, and Assessing" (third Edition) by Ivers and Barron is turning out to be a pretty good introduction to the foundational educational and cognitive benefits of multimedia projects. Really, multimedia as a concept is not all that new, it is just that today's computer and internet tools have greatly facilitated multimedia in the classroom and have put these tools within ready access of the students. Combine that with the simple fact that the today's students have grown up with these tools, at least the fortunate ones, so the tools come almost as second nature and we have a confluence of great opportunity. One thing that must be considered is that not all students will be at the same readiness level when brought together for a group project, but if done correctly all can flourish.

This particular blog entry is a personal reflection of the themes of Chapters 1 and 2 of this book in the context of the Spiral Curriculum. How do we implement, assess, and nurture multiple intelligences well in individual students through group project work when we know not every child will be ready for every aspect of project work at the same time?

Chapter 1 "The Impact of Multimedia on Student Learning" centers on the theory of multiple intelligences that include but are not limited to Linguistics, Logical-Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist and how we can draw on and develop these intelligences in our students with such projects. It is enlightening to see this from the perspective of a student who has had good success with very traditional lecture methods (as well as hands on laboratory work) in an engineering/science steeped background and to realize that there ARE other intelligences that can be drawn on and developed in very complementary ways to traditional lecture methods that will actually benefit all students and may actually save some. Some students who perhaps struggled and floundered in these traditional environments may flourish when the other intelligences are drawn upon. So, if individual students are able to bring their particular talents to a project, maybe all benefit. Clearly there is a careful balance to be maintained and the teacher must be carefully engaged to see that the project benefits all of the students and not just a dominant few.

Incidentally, if you find multiple intelligences interesting, there is a great text reference called "Teaching to the Brain's Natural Learning Systems" by Barbara K. Given that explores this topic in depth. There is also a related website from George Mason University's Krasnow Research Center (I think where Given works). From this site you can explore several good links on this topic and related research: http://krasnow.gmu.edu/aalrc/index.htm

Constructivism, another key point from the opening chapter is all about taking charge of your own learning, and being an active learner. Down with Bench-Bound Passivity! So while project based learning is not new--good multimedia projects can blend the best of modern computer learning technology with age-old truth, that we learn the best when we are active learners, take ownership of our education, engage with the world around us and others in the educational adventure, and be an actual constructor of knowledge instead of a passive receiver. Multimedia can facilitate this when well applied. Again, we must be wary that our bench-bound passive students don't get left on the sidelines.

Chapter 2 is all about the "well-applied" part and presents one good model called the Decide, Design, Develop, and Evaluate or DDD-E Model. Coming from an engineering project management background with 22+ years of project experience, I have to say that once again, there is nothing new here. DDD-E is a simplified version of standard project management schema in use in industry "forever". What is enlightening and exciting is to see how multimedia tools have enabled us to bring basic project work in a fun and educationally stimulating manner to students with broad access to resources largely unattainable before the advent of this technology. That is the real success story---or potentially so. But as pointed out in the text, there are good implementations and not-so-good implementations. Poorly launched, poorly guided projects can be fundamentally destructive to education and can be a de-motivating social experience too if a young workgroup is not nurtured and properly guided in their work. This is where the DDD-E model comes in---it facilitates inclusiveness and good group projects. So, it is definitely worth exploring for use with student workgroups on any project, including multimedia ones.

So, if we successfully engage all of our young students in good multimedia-based research and project development in the elementary years and if we "spiral back around" on this throughout every grade level, we are quite naturally developing a foundation in constructivism, active learning, the thrill of discovery, and all of the social group interaction skills that ultimately support more advanced work such as true frontier research, development and, as just one example, engineering project management, that normally are learned much later in life.

So, how do we implement, assess, and nurture multiple intelligences well in individual students through group project work when we know not every child will be ready for every aspect of project work at the same time?

I guess the key point is that when we implement a group project among young students, especially in the elementary grade levels, we need to assign work appropriately where they can all contribute, they all can learn from each other, and on the next project, maybe a new skill can be developed and acquired, and maybe after the third or forth project...they can do all phases. This requires a very well "plugged in" teacher who knows where each student is at emotionally and educationally. And, fact is, no matter what we do, some students (many) will gravitate towards the parts of a project with which they are most comfortable and leave the other parts of a project to others. That is quite natural in life. The demands are high, but so are the rewards. How to assess student development and readiness in project-based learning should be an interesting topic to explore.

For some perspectives on what to expect in dealing with different readiness levels for learning in a spiral curriculum checkout: http://specialneedseducation.suite101.com/article.cfm/lp4.

I think there are definite connections between these thoughts on implementing a Spiral Curriculum and what we should expect in implementing challenging group multimedia projects, especially among young learners.

Learning Styles Inventory & Multimedia Learning

According to the Learning Styles Inventory I am a fairly intuitive learner with a moderate bias for visual learning, slightly reflective versus active and with a strong bias towards global versus sequential learning. This fits fairly well with my prior understanding of my self and the way I learn....technically called metacognition, I believe. The most striking example of this combination of learning traits is probably the tendency to be apparently totally confused with a new subject until suddenly it all comes into focus, the pieces fit and it all makes sense. At that point, it usually is a little befuddling as to what the confusion was all along. But this is a repeated theme over many years of new adventures in learning. Early on you question yourself and have self-doubt, but later, with experience you learn to trust yourself and to be persistent, to keep asking the probing questions on the pieces that don't fit because sooner or later you know you will get it and get it well. It is comforting to see expert validations of senses of yourself that developed over the years. I think it is important for teachers to be patient with students who sometimes appear to be "late bloomers" on a new subject because I can assure you that some of them will astound you with their depth of insight and understanding once they do get it. These same people, I believe, tend to be some of the best intuitive thinkers who eventually get a firm grasp on the real structure, the essence of a subject, will master it, and make new discoveries. I recommend you check out Jerome Bruner's Process of Education as a classic in modern educational thinking. It talks a lot about intuitive thinking and the mastery of structure....and being patient with the late bloomer who may seem to be muddling along, but is really just persistently building a structural foundation in understanding that will endure: http://www.math.rochester.edu/people/faculty/rarm/bruner.html , http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm

Concerning what type of multimedia learning is most challenging for me, I would say it is any type where there is a random smattering of tools and techniques shown to me without getting the big picture of why we are doing this and how it fits with the overall vision of what we are trying to accomplish.....I guess that is a lot of what the "twitch-speed" thinking of the, so-called, Digital Natives tends to gravitate towards...but it really helps me to have the bigger view. Still, I can say this has always been true and it is not a function of the internet or multimedia based learning. Frankly, WedQuest sounds fascinating and I am looking forward to learning more about that and how it can be effectively used by teachers in the modern classroom. The key for me is integration of things like WebQuest with traditional methods to make a better whole. I think the way The Last Lecture was presented at Carnegie-Melon was a classic example of how to integrate direct teacher engagement with the student audience and to vastly complement that with multimedia tools that don't get in between the teacher and student, but expand upon their interface to help them view together the wide world around us in a joint educational adventure. Another great use of multimedia is in linking different classrooms around the country and around the world in real time or otherwise. What a way to build understanding and "walk in another's shoes"...to share ideas and perspectives. This is education via multimedia at its best.

Reflection of CSpeck on Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Mark Prensky (Parts I & II)

In "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants", Mark Prensky turns the tables on the debate over school reform by shifting the focus from what has changed in the educational system to what has changed in the studentPRENSKY DIGITAL NATIVES. In fact, he points back to what has not changed, and what probably should change in our educational system and our teaching methods to better align with the needs of the new generations of "Digital Natives." By characterizing the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century as a "singularity," he elevates this event in our awareness as a kind of cataclysmic cultural event that has created a digital divide, so-to-speak, between generations.

While I do not believe that this entirely accounts for the decline in the educational system, Prensky is definitely onto a paradigm shift that must occur among educators if we are to make the system work optimally for today's students. There are many other factors at play including the relative sparsity in the implementation of basic and proven approaches to lesson planning such as Backwards Design and the foundation of lesson planning on essential questions and key understanding that has shown profoundly more successful results in countries such as Japan, Germany, and India (see Understanding by Design, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe
) with the same kind of Digital Native generation. Our need to get away from rote, passive note-taking, lecture-based teaching and much of the "coverage" based curriculum is actually independent of the "digital age", but we can and should leverage the Digital Natives' aptitude and facility with the technology to better engage the student and optimize the learning experience.

So while I agree whole-heartedly with Prensky's points, there are some missed and we should not assume that a leap into the digital world itself will lead to better education. There are other factors and one point brought out by Prensky that the Boomer generation perhaps can help with is in the area of reflection and critical thinking.

As a Baby Boomer and parent of two "Digital Natives" myself, I think I can echo and emphasize the concern my generation has with the apparent deemphasis on reflection and critical thinking skills in the Digital Natives. There is a tendency to think in different ways when we are bombarded by the products of a "sound bite" or "video bite" environment, and while I greatly appreciate, admire, and rely on my two Digital Native children's fluency in the so-called digital world and their abilities to multi-task and "parallel process," I find that many times I can balance, stabilize, and focus their "twitch-speed" reflexive thinking to better ends by my "old-fashioned" ways. We need to take the best from both worlds and not lose the thread of all that preceded and, in fact, led to the advent of the digital age. As Isaac Newton said, "If I see further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants" Never forget that.

I think their is another fundamental concern we should also consider and that is the apparent correlation between the explosion of Attention Deficit type disorders in the Digital Native Generation. That is very real and disturbing and a point that Prensky misses (I think). I found a couple pertinent online references for this that you can check out at http://www.kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/behavior/adhd.html> and at
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1635698

So, maybe if we work together we can help each other and make it all better---that is one "think" that will never change.