Teaching with Technology

Hiya,

I've been reading the Hooper and Rieber article "Teaching with Technology" and thinking about how technology is used in teaching.

I like the philosophical learning continuum of behavioral to cognitive with instructive and constructive learning at either ends. Deeper cognitive processing is important (aka. Bloom's taxonomy) in learning and utilizing technology effectively will help to elicit this deeper cognitive gain.

As a middle school science teacher, I have lived principle #1: Learning is an ACTIVE process alright! I used to say "science is a verb", to instill in many of my students that to really understand something you must not only be able to explain it to your grandmother, but you must be able to effectively show her what you mean through a demonstration or model. To do this, you must be an active learner...not a couch potato or a limp absorbent type material (like a sponge...) I like that they point out that technologies do not in and of themselves increase activity or processing...and that the overall benefit goes back to student ability to incorporate idea technologies (not product technologies) into the learning process. The synthesis of thinking and interacting with technologies produces the most learning, I think...(did Descartes say this?) The product technologies often have titles that say they will "make learning fun", but do they really IMPROVE cognitive outcomes? (Learning is not always "fun"...as one of my favorite critics of technology use, Dr. Cliff Stoll, often points out...read his book "Silicon Snake Oil" and see what I mean...)

Principle #2 is to include multiple perspectives to increase the durability of instruction...hmmmm...cooperative learning must be MANAGED carefully to be utilized for greater learning outcomes...I like that it eventually gets to this...I can give MANY testimonies as to how hypermedia type group projects MUST have good management to produce better learning than other methods. The boundaries must be clear along with the level of depth for the connectivity of the ideas through technological use. I have concerns that too many perspectives overwhelm students and do not provide anything but a cacophony of noise that they must sift through to get to the important "stuff". This article was written in 1995, and since then the explosion of internet/cell phone use has produced a much wider technological world, but it also has made it more difficult to sometimes find what you really need. The capitalization of the internet and investment in advertising technologies has served to hamper some of the more cognitively beneficial connections through net technologies. Management is thus key here for hightest effectivity.

Principle #3: Building on student knowledge...sounds like day 1 in instruction class...the word "educate" means to be brought out, and incorporating what students already know is basic to moving them forward in cognitive learning outcomes. Technology can be very useful to change misconceptions of students by using real-time experimental responses to real environmental conditions (like digital probes). The use of familiar contexts even with technology is also a "given" for any instruction.

Adaptive virtual environments...interesting, but too much of this may "spoil" our children into believing that they can just "engineer" their own world if they don't like the real one...this strikes me as being both empowering (if they take it as a mandate to apply these ideas in the REAL world) or very frigntening (if they prefer the virtual world so much that they retreat from reality). In science, we often use models to understand things, but we always remember that WE created the models and manipulated them to see what is happening in the REAL world...(we create the "Golem" and see what it does...respect it and treat it well or it may overwhelm you! )

Well, my brain thermometer has popped up to say that I am done for today. I'm blogged out.

Tim