Education and Technology

Adriene Hill of Market Place (the Public Radio International program) just started what will become a year-long series on technology and education.  Started today with a short history of tech's supposed promise for making education so much better.

A most interesting line from today's installment--
The idea was simple.  Broadcasting would transform education by making it possible for students to learn from great teachers wherever they were—so long as there was a radio in the classroom.

We've been down this road before.  As early as the 1920s, The Society for Visual Education formed to encourage wider spread use of the film strip in education. “Today (1981), the filmstrip is playing an important role in classroom instruction in all types of educational situations. Filmstrips are being used in all sizes of schools, from the small rural school to the large school in urban centers” [LaMond Beatty, The Instructional Media Library, (Englewood Cliffs: Educational Technology Publications, 1981), 4].

Change the word “internet” or “computer” for “filmstrip” in this paragraph from Beatty's book, and you could easily find it in numerous articles and books today. 

Or take another angle.  Suppose you support President Obama's 2013 initiative to establish high speed internet connection in 99% of schools in the next 5 years.  Hill's story goes on to point out that the mere presence of radios in rooms, and the commitment by public broadcasters to make educational programs didn't amount to much...the programs weren't very good.  But the commercial broadcasters made shows kids wanted to hear (and later see).  Same ol' issues about commercial content providers there....

Or think about technology infrastructure (the 99% in 5 years deal).  The brilliant Neil Postman had this to say (about technology in general):  Even when the problem of the access to technology is solved so that anyone who wishes can have access to technology, there still remains a problem.

For a more thorough explication of what those problems are in education, see chapter 7 of The Normal Accident Theory of Education.

Gearing up for the day

  

It's 7:50, and one colleague is blowing his whistle that sounds eerily like our evacuation alarm and another is retorting with conch blasts--a la Lord of the Flies.  Another day in 8th grade paradise.

Book Talk Redux

Julie Anderson--old friend, engaged citizen, public servant--hosted a wonderful evening in support of The Normal Accident Theory of Education.  Thanks, Julie.

Picking Nits...

The fine volume on How to be a Gentleman notes that, unless he's an English teacher, a gentleman does not correct others' grammar.  Well, I am an English teacher.  I was a bit surprised to find this in one of the millions of white papers, working papers, position papers, review papers, etc., about Common Core, sponsored by several highfalutin education organizations.  (Go here for the paper).

Strong school culture results faculty and staff who are:

 More adaptable to change; 

 Higher motivation; 

 More commitment; 

 More cooperation and collaboration; 

 Better able to resolve conflicts; 

 Greater capacity for innovation; and 

 Effective in achieving goals. 

There is something called parallel structure, which this list does not maintain.  Read the sentence--from Strong school culture--through to the end of each bullet point, one at a time.)

...faculty and staff who are higher motivation?

More of the bullets don't work than do.

Oh, and never mind the "results faculty."  I assume they left out a word there.

Let's give them a pass on the grammar.  What does this even say, after all?  What is strong school culture? How would we know it when we see it?  

I don't mind mistakes...I make plenty of them, and they're good learning devices.  I am distressed, however, that the people so adamantly telling us they've got all this figured about with Common Core would make such mistakes.

Book Talk

   
Thank you to all who came out to hear the first talk on The Normal Accident Theory of Education.  This was at Pioneer Middle School, where I teach 8th grade.  Thanks, too, to my Superintendent, Kathi Weight, for hosting the event.

What if Classical Education is Best Practice?

So, my district's high school and middle school staffs were getting a training on the Common Core the other day.  One feature, I guess you'd say, of the new standards is that they are "combed back" (that's the language everyone uses) from college to Kindergarten.  This way we can be sure that we're taking all the necessary steps for college readiness, starting right away.

Our trainer says to us, "The Common Core standards are combed down from college level, instead of built upwards as in No Child Left Behind.  Common Core starts with what it takes to be college ready, then they pull that down all the way to Kindergarten....That's best practice."

My head throbbed, ricocheting as it was between rage and depression.  "That's best practice."  Who in the world said so?  Based on what?  Not on any "research" or evidence or data, as everything else in the education world must be.  It is, of course, based on philosophical assumptions.  And the consultants who plump for it, of course, pronounce it best practice, because, well, they're expert in it, and that's why the district hired them.

The philosophical assumption part is the most important.  No test results or any other kind of "data" are available with which to evaluate the effectiveness of either the program (standards) or the testing process.  Further, with an emphasis on a set of standards and a demanding test (I've seen it...it is indeed much more difficult than Washington's current MSP), but without specific curriculum for and by which the standards writers can be held accountable, schools and teachers are on the line to produce success on a set of standards that are based on an intellectual premise, and one that is far from obviously best practice, because it's not clear there is such a thing.

Common Core's assumptions and the program based on those assumptions fly in the face of a pedagogic philosophy called classical education.  Turns out, the arrangement of fact memorizing, argumentative reasoning, and logical explaining that make up the classical trivium may be better suited to the trajectory of a child's brain development.  (See Brain Rules and NurtureShock, to name two.)

Classical education--like every other pedagogy and institutional arrangement--has its strengths and weaknesses.  My point is not that classical education is the answer, but it has as much to say for it as Common Core's combed down skills does.

So let's stop thinking we trump everything and everybody else when we play the "best practice" card....It's more a joker than an ace.

Are All Tests Created Equally?

Listen to a German vocational education teacher telling his American counterparts about project based learning and assessment.  35 seconds in he says, "No multiple choice questions."

I guess he's never met the folks at the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of the groups constructing the test that will accompany the Common Core State Standards.  That assessment will use a significant amount multiple choice questions.

It's time we ask whether there are limitations to what multiple choice questions can really do.  (Spoiler Alert:  There are.)