Barbarians with Laptops: An Unreasonable Fear?
Tuesday, 29 December 2009 Clay Burell 
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I expect to be soundly whipped for this post, but in this age of “failure being free,” I don’t mind. I hope to learn from teachers who can offer specific examples, or research, that give evidence that digital learning is superior to traditional. (Or who can contest my framing of the issue, and improve on it.)
I’m having a conversation with Nathan Lowell and Monika Hardy — it’s too long to post in its entirety, but it starts here — on the “Using Technology Without Understanding It” post.
It started with Nathan saying,
Does the challenge become one of changing the politics so that learning is more important than coverage? If you can take away the opportunity cost of floundering and instead *use* that floundering as the lesson, then this is no longer an obstacle but an advantage.
Monika seconds that claim, and adds:
The focus needs to be on the connections web access allows – to knowledge via people. People aren’t buying in because we’re missing the point. Learning how to learn.
And I just replied to Monika with this — which I hope some of you, again, will chime in on to show me the error of my ways:
I’ll start with saying I’m still uncomfortable with the opportunity cost notion. As a history teacher — which to me means “preparation for informed citizenship” teacher — I’m not sure I want to sacrifice time that could be used learning and drawing conclusions from human history on the altar of failed web 2.0 experimentation.
I see the value of both, though. I’m thinking a separate course — a sort of “Intro to Web 2.0″ — might be more useful than teachers across the curriculum failing and flailing about with the tools when their primary job is teaching content.
And I’m still traditional in thinking content is more important. Without it, we risk churning out what I’ve recently been calling, in my internal monologues, “barbarians with laptops.”1
Teachers and philosophers across the centuries have taught successfully without the new tools (to whatever degree we can certainly debate, and could also debate whether the percentage of students who don’t learn well under traditional methods would learn any better via digital means).
And the new tools also enable “connections to knowledge via people” that can be unreliable, which opens a new can of worms.
I think it helps to fine-tune the discussion a bit: “content” breaks down into your “core” disciplines — maths, sciences, social studies, language arts — plus your electives in arts, technology, languages, and so forth. Am I wrong to think some disciplines deserve more emphasis on coverage than others? Maths, for example, and science? Isn’t time lost on digital experimentation in these classes a costly thing, since it may cost students a deeper focus on, say, evolution, or advanced calculus, or whatever?
And if the answer is “yes” — notice the “if” and be nice, readers — then doesn’t it follow that web experimentation in some classrooms should be treated with extreme caution?
Open Thread: School Me
Whatever your subject matter, I’d love to see specific examples of digital tools and practices that, either through research-based evidence or your own direct observation, you think enhance the learning of content or the development of skills in the classroom.
- I think this whole post is influenced by my recent viewing of the film, Idiocracy. If you haven’t seen it, it presents a future world in which everybody is hi-tech, but their favorite TV show is called “Ow! My Balls!”, and their language and lifestyle have degenerated to a pastiche of FOX Tea-Baggers and Live Wrestling aficionados. It’s hilarious, if you haven’t seen it. [↩]
- Podcast: With Dean Shareski on _Natural_ Global Collaboration and Networked Learning
- On Using Technology Without Understanding It
- Digital Arts Menu for Multiple Intelligences Wiki: Please Contribute Your Favorites!
- Teaching Grammar on the Titanic: On Fear and Irrelevance in Education
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Tags: Idiocracy, teaching Print This Post
No. 1 — December 29th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Your description of Idiocracy, which I have not seen, reminds me of the book Feed; an excellent read: http://is.gd/5FwjF
.-= Harold Jarche´s last blog ..2009: year of the tweet =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Just read the link and the similarities are striking. Hope the library has it.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Money quote from the Publisher’s Weekly review of Feed, Harold:
“Barbarians with laptops” to a tee.
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Harold Jarche Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
One of my favourite items in the book is that kids go to SCHOOL(TM).
.-= Harold Jarche´s last blog ..2009: year of the tweet =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Oh, so it’s a post-Arne Duncan/Obama public school system. Got it.
Who’s the proprietor? Gates? Broad?
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Nancy Cook Reply:
January 7th, 2010 at 9:27 am
I don’t think it is a question of “is technology better”? or even “does technology work”? Technology is another tool which can be used for presenting content, processing content, and locating content. It can be used as a tool to promote thought-provoking discussions which can lead to deeper understandings. It can be used to engage students with meaningful content. Books can also be used for these purposes as well as journals, pencils and paper, posterboard, movies, etc.
Technology, like any tool or teaching strategy can also be misused and interfere with learning. I think this is what you are talking about. I have taken college courses where the instructors used PowerPoints and filled all the pages with text and then read them to us. THAT was inefficient, ineffective, and boring!!!
Instead of asking if technology makes a difference, we should be asking “Under what conditions can X be used to help my students learn the content and understand the concepts in order to apply them to their lives?” (X might be a specific internet site, a specific software, or a particular hardware product) i.e. It is one thing to read about the facts about the revolutionary war and yet another to create a movie about whether Benedict Arnold was a hero or villain and why–or to simply have a class discussion about a Youtube video clip of a song about him (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTHgxBvhaFo)
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No. 2 — December 29th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hmm, digital and/versus traditional? I’m sure you’ll get a bunch of ‘success stories’ batting on each side but I think the binary divide above is a false one to start with.
How far do ‘traditional methods’ go? If we go far enough, we’d probably arrive at the model of mentorship, which could well be extended and supported in this digitally compressed world.
What is digital? A worksheet online?
My goal as a teacher is to help extend my students understanding of the world beyond their immediate personal experience, then act upon that understanding as individuals responsible to the society and the world, not simply narrow self.
‘Digital’ or ‘traditional’? In Aussie-speak: Could not give a rats arse.
Cheers Clay.
.-= Tomaz Lasic´s last blog ..The REAL 140 characters =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Tomaz,
I thought “rat’s arse” was British.
I’m as suspicious of the frame, as I said in the post, as you are. But I’m still suspicious of the opportunity cost issue too.
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No. 3 — December 29th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
What do you mean by content? I need some clarification on that point at least for myself. For me, the content is just the history and we are meant to use the content in order to teach and practice critical thinking skills.
I think that as history teachers our goal in the classroom is changing because the “content” is much more readily available through the Web. However, that doesn’t mean our job no longer a focus on teaching content. I know that my most of my students wouldn’t care at all if I didn’t dress the history up with a nice bow and present it to them. And there are many times when Web 2.0 tools begin or facilitate this conversation. Examples: a webquest I created for students to explore the differences between the Hercules myth and the Disney film so that we could discuss how today we change ideas from the ancient world for our own tastes, use of a wiki to create a medieval society in the classroom, mock Twitter and Facebook accounts to explore Renaissance thinkers.
Again, I believe that as a social studies teacher – which to quote you means, “preparation for informed citizenship” teacher – we are needed to teach the skills to practice critical thought (which is applied toward becoming an informed citizen) that we must be doing something with Web 2.0 tools because they are an essential component to informed citizenship in the modern day.
I’m not saying we should force ourselves to always have the kids in front of a computer but there are many times when not doing so means a great opportunity is being wasted. I don’t get to explore this potential as much as I would like because I teach mostly pre-modern history but the most significant primary sources today are online. Thus students need to interact with them. The greatest tools for communication and collaboration are online. Thus students need to interact with them. To not do so means that students are not practicing the skills necessary for informed citizenship in the modern day.
Look at it this way: where would you and I be as informed citizens right now if we weren’t skilled in the use of Web 2.0 tools?
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Thanks, Jeremy. Let’s take it further:
I’m with you on using historical content to promote critical thinking about what the past shows us about the present and future. (And I beg you to link to those projects you mentioned above, so we can steal any good ideas
)
Primary sources are online, yes. For the sake of argument, how does that make them better than print versions of the same? (I see the green angle, though I’m beginning to wonder about the environmental costs of electricity, heat, and resources used for digital alternatives.) What do you have students do with them that makes it better than paper?
How are you using Web 2.0 to improve the practice of critical thought? Honest question expecting a quality answer.
I’ll stop there. Thanks for chiming in (and share those links! The mock historical characters thing sounds interesting).
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Jeremy Brock Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
The online sources are better, to me, because the print resources are not available. The Hercules webquest wasn’t anything fancy so I won’t waste anyone’s time posting a PDF. All it really entailed was direction to my Delicious account for links to mythology encyclopedias and articles as well as direction in terms of comparing the Disney myth to the “original” version. I don’t have any resources like that in my classroom! My textbook dedicates no more than 150 words to the topic of Greek mythology and certainly doesn’t discuss any of the “fun” aspects of mythology like Uranus getting his testicles cut off or the question of whether or not Hercules stealing an Amazonian girdle is symbolic for a sexual encounter.
Granted, those are secondary or tertiary sources. I’m not sure that I have students do anything different with print resources than they might with the same online. But, again, I do not have those resources in print form and my school can’t afford to get me a subscription to the New York Times or purchase new books.
And that line of questioning completely ignores sources that are wholly online. What about the Huffington Post? What about Twitter? However, there are difficulties here as well given that Twitter will certainly never be unblocked at my school.
I fear that I’m not using Web 2.0 tools to improve the practice of critical thought as much as I would like in my classroom. Right now I am using them to facilitate more than to inspire creation, which is something I hope to change in the coming months as I finish this semester and begin a new one. I see potential for things like Ning to create a forum that allows all students to participate in ways that I might not always be properly addressing in my own class discussions or that would allow students to practice the skill of commenting that I am attempting to demonstrate now with mixed results.
As for links to the other two projects:
The medieval society utilizes a private wiki that I’ve currently cleaned out in anticipation of my next class to do the project. Essentially, students assume various roles and document research into their character on the wiki. On the final day we have a medieval feast and each student must accurately portray their character and present a coat of arms they have created to the king (moi in full royal attire).
The mock Facebook/Twitter is a work in progress that I hope to try for the first time in a week or so. Here are the references I’ve been looking at in preparation Historical Tweets (http://historicaltweets.com/) and Famoust Last Status Updates (http://bit.ly/2IuAxb).
.-= Jeremy Brock´s last blog ..On failed attempts at commenting. =-.
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Jeremy Brock Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 12:16 am
I have recognized a fault in my own argument about print resources not being available. If we ignore the question of environmental costs then why not just print off articles, blogs entries, et cetera for consumption?
Here is why I believe being on the computer is still more valuable: the print is restricted to what is printed but the use of the actual computer opens the window to further exploration immediately. Hasn’t something meaningful been accomplished even if only one student decides to further explore the topic right there and then through the provided resource or any other?
.-= Jeremy Brock´s last blog ..On failed attempts at commenting. =-.
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No. 4 — December 29th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
It’s a long process… My very traditional school has been 1:1 for 7 years. We have a ways to go in more innovative ways of teaching and learning, but I would say we are making good strides. We have agreed that technology is not separate from curriculum. Being able to communicate and collaborate in multiple ways are the biggest areas where I have seen change. Teachers feel that they are able to cover more content and students feel strongly that they do much more learning outside of school because it is on their time. They have come up with some interesting ways to study. While this is not hard data, three students from our school spoke about how having laptops has impacted their learning. http://edtechtalk.com/node/4624
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No. 5 — December 30th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Let’s move off your ‘content’ straw man for a minute and talk just about writing. Would you rather write with just paper and pencils or do you kinda like using a word processor and all of the downstream advantages that come with electronic writing (like we’re doing with this discussion.) Actually, I don’t think our posts are at all parenthetical to the discussion. I doubt that this discussion would be happening at all if it weren’t for Web 2.0 – I wouldn’t be trekking off to the post office to send Clay a letter with my ankle in a cast as it is right now.
As a teacher of 3rd and 4th graders, 8, 9 & 10 year olds, who are learning how to write, I much prefer using electronic tools. I really don’t want to ask another 8 year old boy to rewrite something he struggled so mightily to put on paper with a pencil when he knows that it can be done so much more easily with a computer. Kids actually like rewriting things with a word processor – it gives them control of the words; it makes them more like the adults who so casually toss around words, paper, and all kinds of other communications media. And then if you give a kid a video camera and some video editing tools, well, now we’re talking content – content that the kid created. The kids don’t care if you think they’re barbarians; they’re the ones who are taking over the world.
.-= Dan McGuire´s last blog ..How to Make a Living =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 5:08 am
Hi Dan,
Either I failed to communicate my concern when I wrote about the opportunity costs of teachers flailing about trying to integrate tech, often unsuccessfully or at best with no better success than they would have had with non-tech methods, due to the waste of time that could have been spent learning in a more efficient and focused way — or, you failed to read the post with enough focus. I don’t know.
In any case:
1) Explain to me how “content” is a straw man. It’s a scary thought.
2) Word processors weren’t exactly the type of tech I was thinking about. I was thinking more along the lines of more complicated things like using Nings and Twitter and blogs and wikis (all of which I’ve been using in the classroom for the past four years) — and again, in thoughtless ways that are “tech for tech’s sake,” or else in simply ineffective ways.
3) I made your point about the read/write richness of these tools a few posts ago, at length, here. The question is, for teaching — as opposed as for us adults who choose these things and use them for our own independent purposes — in what cases, and to what extent, do they impede learning instead of advance it? Especially, to repeat myself, in, say, math or science classes? (Or, for that matter, in my own history classes?)
4) Besides “the kids like it” (they like toga parties as “history,” too, and I say no and make them read, write, and talk more about the Roman Empire instead with that hour than they would have wearing togas and eating owl’s livers), why or how do word processors or any other tool enhance your teaching of writing?
5) How is making a movie “content”? How is making a movie in a content-area classroom, in which knowledge is to be mastered and critical thinking to be applied to it, by virtue of being a moving picture the best use of time? I’ve made my fair share of movies, and for me one minute takes about an hour of work. Is five hours for a five-minute movie the best use of that time? Could film class, in which students can create films they want to create instead of films for homework (not necessarily mutually exclusive, I know), give them that skill while you work on extending their writing skills further with the time saved?
6) If the kids do grow up to be barbarians, because we’ve lost touch with our mission of elevating their ability to reason, think, articulate, and work even when it’s not fun, then I care. I don’t want them taking over the world. Shouldn’t you care too? Shouldn’t we all?
This might be a high school teacher’s head and a primary school teacher’s head divergence thing, I don’t know.
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Dan McGuire Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 7:56 am
I only have time to take on one of your counterpoints. Maybe ‘straw man’ was a poor metaphor for how I saw you holding ‘content.’ I think what you’re wrestling with is the fact that ‘content’ as we thought of it in the past, like the content that Fr. Godfrey as presented to me and to my father 30 years previously in his exquisite, masterful Shakespeare class at St. John’s U, is essentially irrelevant. And, Yes, there is a loss in that, certainly. I am most definitely not saying that Shakespeare is irrelevant, however. The content my grandfather acquired on his homestaked ranch in South Dakota is also mostly irrelevant, too. Educating barbarians has never been easy, and I think it’s getting even more complicated. It’s how we define ourselves – that’s what you and I are doing.
.-= Dan McGuire´s last blog ..How to Make a Living =-.
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No. 6 — December 30th, 2009 at 3:46 am
Clay (and others)
Thanks for thoughtful and provoking post. I currently work at a 1:1 school in Canada, and have been wrestling with similar issues for a while. You can read my two bits on it here: (http://thinkinginmind.blogspot.com/2009/12/yesterday-my-wife-and-i-did-something.html) and here: (http://thinkinginmind.blogspot.com/2009/11/using-technology-if-you-want-to.html)
I will share one resource with you – admittedly the best of use technology that I’ve come up with in my own classroom practice. As a history teacher, I had students remixing historical images to represent their understanding of historical events, themes and conflicts. While you could argue that something similar could be done on paper, it would have been incredibly difficult. Either way, it requires access to banks of historical images through museums, libraries and archives. Along with the remixed panels, the students created ‘podcast self-assessments’ where they did the work of a curator, first creating, and then unpacking the historical content embedded in each student creation. You can read all about it here: http://thinkinginmind.blogspot.com/2009/04/cigar-box-project.html
While it’s never been thoroughly researched, It’s the best I’ve got!
.-= Neil Stephenson´s last blog ..Skyping With Wes Fryer =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 5:31 am
Neil,
What a holiday gift your links were. I just tweeted, “Just discovered Neil Stephenson’s blog. He’s awesome. Skeptical, articulate. http://bit.ly/8xEjOU ”
I would also point readers to Questioning Student-Centered Learning.
Only glanced at the Cigar Box link, and see it requires longer attention than I have right now. You can bet I’ll look at it soon.
And you’ve got a new subscriber. I love your mind and your writing.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 6:51 am
Neil, Just read your Questioning Student-Centered Learning post more closely, and your point about “the authority of the discipline” deepens what I’m trying to get at with the nature of the discipline strongly determining the degree of experimentation and, more simply, time devotion to tools.
Really enjoying your stuff.
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No. 7 — December 30th, 2009 at 3:55 am
I hope I’m not being too obvious, but it seems the question is how do we keep human values (debatable issue right there) from sliding right off the the slippery slope in face of corporate domination, which I think is the evil behind technology. Teaching without technology is no longer feasible when our students are so connected, and I have to say that teaching has been more exciting for me with the advent of computers. Differentiated learning and e-portfolios allow me to hand over the reins of learning to my students which traditional teaching has failed to do.
I do think that posing this question is valuable in that we should always ask if a traditional approach is not more effective in a given situation.
My frustration is that whether we teach traditionally or with technology, we are still not teaching important critical thinking skills and social responsibility and awareness that could help our students from becoming corporate drones.
.-= Hellen´s last blog ..Hello blogosphere! =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Hi Hellen,
I don’t know if you’ve read it, but the student editorial I featured and analyzed is really at the heart of this discussion (along with a fear of a future idiocracy tweeting and blogging about the latest episode of “Ow! My Balls!”).
One interesting thing about that editorial was the students’ plea that teachers not use tech in many cases. So is teaching without technology really “not feasible” with our connected students after all, when they’re the ones saying they often don’t like it?
As for the rest of your comment, I’m with you all the way — especially on the priority we should be giving to critical thinking.
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No. 8 — December 30th, 2009 at 6:32 am
This is great. I so want to be smarter… and what better way than to sustain conversations… which was my point really .. so if you don’t mind – I’m going to add the same comment here I left on your other post…….
I totally agree – this: sacrificing time that could be used learning and drawing conclusions from human history on the altar of failed web 2.0 experimentation – has been to our demise.
I’m thinking more along the lines of Erica McWilliams term, being “usefully ignorant.” Learning what to do when we don’t know what to do.
Not – gosh I blundered the tech again – what can we learn from that?…
But, dang, the questions you’re asking are beyond my knowledge,… let’s google it, or tweet about it, ..etc… to find out. And then obviously research the people, things, etc, we find for accuracy.
I think we have to break away..and do the Clay Christensen disrupting class thing. Kids teaching themselves in a sense, because their journey is their journey. They have created (or their teachers have created) their own network of experts to guide them to knowledge/information. I think the bottom line is relationships… and networking adds a ton to that. We now can differentiate a “group” for each kid.
Currently, in my brain, learning how to use new tools isn’t what ed needs. If the need for a tool is there, anyone can learn how to use it. So a separate class for it… hmmm.. I don’t know. What we’re missing is why we need the tools.
Some reasons I think are good:
I don’t want to process static content anymore… I want to follow my passion… I don’t want my end project to end up in the recycle bin… I want an authentic audience… I want what I do to matter…..
Voicethread is an example of a great tool…. because it lives on.. It can be tweaked anytime. But I’ve seen it used as static content… totally lost it’s function.
Thank you Clay for sharpening me with these questions. I need that. I crave that. I want to do this right.. this school thing.
By the way.. just watched Cliff Stoll. Man…. Did you look into why he’s against laptops in school?.. I still need to go there…
Guessing I now need to look into Neil as well.
.-= monika hardy´s last blog ..insights from keith hamon’s blog =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Hi Monika,
I’m totally with you on the beauty of saying “I don’t know — Google it and tell us (but also tell us why you trust that source)” bit when I’m stumped on a content question. I love saying “I don’t know” and “Google is your friend.”
As for the “network of experts” idea, though, I want to push back.
I teach Chinese history. I doubt many, if any, of the 2100 people in my Twitter network have more authority in it than I do, and even if they did, would be available reliably to “co-teach” a student. If I could line up scholars and such to be available to my students that would be cool, but I don’t see it being easy. They have their lives, jobs, and priorities too.
(I’ve experimented with “networked learning” in the past, unleashing my students into my Twitter network to seek further tutelage, but it was, again, however well-intended and interesting, as often of questionable value in terms of opportunity cost. Search this blog for “networked learning”.)
You really should read Neil Stephenson’s posts, linked above in this thread, about so much you discuss in your comment re: student-centered learning.
I’m totally with you on audience feedback — if you like to write, are good at it (or at least confident in it), and want that feedback. If you’re not, maybe it’s aversive to your learning, something to be dreaded, something that raises the affective filter, to riff off Vygotsky.
I’d love to hear what you find out about Stoll’s reasons. He (unsurprisingly, given his mental jumpiness in that talk) doesn’t explain.
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No. 9 — December 30th, 2009 at 7:15 am
oh.. some examples…
here’s where we’re housing a lot of our research and projects: http://voicethread.com/share/705958/
student made tutorials – kids teaching kids – has become huge for my math kids learning straight up content…
slide 91 has an example of kid made math tutorial
slide 73 has kids teaching themselves, via the web, the unit circle
and making me-videos in order to connect to their experts in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I06EXjSnblY or slide 90
this ning site is where much of the learning and collaborating is going on: http://talk-ed.ning.com/
If this is what you mean by examples Clay, and you want more… let me know.
If it’s not what you meant – give me more direction please, I’m slow…
Clay – we even added you to the voicethread already – slide 6 – and to our blog on the ning – your schooliness….
.-= monika hardy´s last blog ..insights from keith hamon’s blog =-.
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No. 10 — December 30th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Just a few thoughts from the upper elementary/middle school perspective. Please pardon the fact that not all of them directly address your question.
Laptops make it much easier for students to collaborate on assignments and projects outside of school without needing a parent to take them somewhere. (Google Docs, wikis, shared bookmarks, blogs, commenting, etc.) That’s not to say that we should be filling students’ time outside of class, but the conversations that begin at school don’t necessarily have to end when they leave at the end of the day. And the types of assignments that go home have the potential to be more valuable. For example, students can finish what was not completed in class, but what can’t be done without a communication tool (giving feedback to classmates, editing each others work, etc), or watching a video individually instead of losing class time staring at a screen communally. (Wasn’t it you that wrote about that a while back?)
Laptops also help with collaboration in a classroom situation. By sharing a document or digitally chatting rather than speaking out loud, students don’t distract/interrupt those around them.
Laptops give students access to greater quantities of source materials wherever they have a connection to the internet. Multiple students can reference the same material without waiting for a turn to check out a book from the library or borrow it from the teacher. (Laptops also make it easier to carry numerous resources home without breaking the back.)
I’m getting to the specific examples with links…
Laptops make it easier for students to maintain blogs that can be the take-away portfolio that they use to whenever they want to see how they have developed their writing skills over time (or compare themselves to classmates), and when moving on to the next stage in their education/life. That’s why we use an off-the-shelf blogging tool (Tumblr) at my school. The blogs belong to them, not the school. Hopefully, portfolios will eventually become more important in the college admissions process, but a digital portfolio can’t possibly hurt.
With a laptop and a connection to the internet, students can engage with a writer whose work they are reading. (Two notes: My students spotted that post of his (he found us first) before I did and commented without encouragement. This is just the start of what I hope will be a longer-term relationship.)
Just an observation: Fewer parents end up taking over the projects that their children are working on due to the fact that they are not fluent in the technology involved. This should not be a reason for laptops — we should work with parents and help them understand how to engage appropriately in their child’s leaning.
Also regarding parents: some become inspired by what is going on in the classroom and begin to stretch themselves. (That post came directly from interaction between parent, student, and teacher. It also happens to involve the writer linked to above.) In situations like this, students become engaged in conversations with their parents sparked by their technological expertise (and knowledge of online etiquette), but eventually involving other aspects of their (both student and parent) work (content, writing skills, interpersonal skills, media literacy skills, ability to deliver and receive constructive criticism). This has the potential to build a school community of life-long learners. I have several more examples of parents engagement with students based on what they have read or seen on class or student blogs, but the one above is the only one with linkable evidence.
Finally, keeping a class blog (the other one here) a teacher can share (and students can access on their laptops) related (and sometimes unrelated) content that supplements what is going on in class. And more importantly, it adds a level of transparency to the practice of teaching.
PS (and off-topic): I have been using and loving E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World for the past two school years after learning about it here on your blog. Thanks for that.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Roberto, you inspire me as usual for:
1) caring not to let these tools turn schoolwork into a 24/7 activity, when nonschool life teaches so much
2) having a pedagogical justification for chat and collaborative documents, and for the use of online sources to overcome scarcity and prevent backaches
3) giving ownership of blogs to students via Tumblr (why Tumbler, though, out of curiosity?).
–I’ll note here that high schools don’t have the same easy road to such elegant minimalism. I wish they did. If high school staff could agree to have students post whatever reflective work to just one blog — one owned by the student, not the school server (half the links on this blog to student work are dead because they were on school servers) — then online portfolios for high school would be a great thing. I may float this idea at my school.
4) the authentic wow of the author-student connections. How cool is that.
5) (back-tracking) the optional use of digital tools for your timeline assignment. Nice to see that it wasn’t forced, but was exposed for those who might be interested.
6) the class blog’s extension posts. Do your students typically follow and view the stuff you add? If yes, because of any incentive you give? I notice I put a lot of optional stuff on my Ning, but see it used very little (maybe that’s okay, since I shouldn’t expect everybody to love history, and should be happy that a select few go further).
As for Gombrich, glad something I shared helped you as much as the things — especially the Doris Lessing quote you share to me on del.icio.us that gave the intro to the Gilgamesh series such a bang. Reader feedback on Stumbleupon and other places often quotes that passage, suggesting it helped hook them into reading the rest of that long series. All thanks to you.
I’ll end this epic comment by saying, again, that the student editorial post is what’s prompting this bit of stock-taking. I need to be reminded of why these tools are worth students’ time. You helped considerably, so thanks again for troubling to answer with such care.
Clay
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robertogreco Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 8:03 am
Clay, the inspiration is mutual. This stock-taking is incredibly important. If we don’t have clear reasons for 1:1 programs (or any other technology integration) before they are implemented and reasons for keeping them once they’ve begun, then we’re wasting valuable time and money. And while it’s a great quote, you’re giving it too much credit for that epic (har har) series of Gilgamesh posts. Talk about inspiring.
Everyone, thanks for an inspiring thread that’s helped me take stock and articulate so much of what I’ve been doing over the past year and a half.
Now to the questions Clay asked…
It’s probably not the difference between high school and middle school, but rather our small size that makes it possible for us to allow students to use only one blog. (As you’ll probably pick up from this comment, I love working in a very small school.) To do the same in a larger environment, tagging post with a class specific tag might work to allow teachers to pull in a feed of the student work that pertains to their class. Unfortunately you’d lose some of that whole-student picture that I get by seeing the math/science, Spanish, etc. post from my humanities students. And I’m guessing that you’d need to do some significant training to pull off that tag and filter to RSS scenario.
Anyway, to answer your question, we use Tumblr for many reasons. Here are a few of them:
a. Simplicity: The interface is easy to use and requires little to no training to get students started. That helps avoid making technology the focus. Plus, there’s a great bookmarklet (kind of like the one available for Delicious) that makes it painless to share links, photos, quotes, and videos.
b. Content hosting: Tumblr has built-in photo and audio hosting saving the need to create other accounts for those purposes. Oh, and it allows for simple polls when you need the input of your followers.
c. Community and flow: Tumblr has a “dashboard” where you can see a stream of posts from all of the other Tumblr blogs that you are following. It’s like an RSS reader or Twitter feed, so students are exposed to those types of technologies. It also gives the user the chance to favorite posts — a nice way to show support/interest when you don’t have the time for more than an empty “Great job!” comment.
d. Ability to ease into comments: Tumblr does not have comments built into the system. You need to use the Disqus system (which is appearing in more and more places and allows you to track your remarks across the blogo-comento-sphere). So, with our sixth graders we begin the year without comments. Once they have become more accustomed to blogging and we’ve had the chance to discuss what quality commenting looks like, then we have the students install comments. Note: The class blogs don’t have comments. This is more of a self-defense mechanism for me — worried that I won’t have the time to tend that shop* considering my class load, administrative responsibilities, and life outside of school.
e. Previous experience (maybe selfishness?): Since before joining the school, I’ve been using Tumblr, primarily as a scrapbook, but occasionally with longer posts. (Shameless plug here… Interested in “(Unschooling and Messiness” or personal informatics or “Branding and Authenticity and Schools“? I’d love to get some feedback from you.) So, with that in mind, I guess I stuck to what I know best and appreciate.
If we didn’t use Tumblr we might use Posterous or Soup.io for their ease of use and clean look.
By the way, other than Tumblr and Gmail (which implies Google Docs, Maps, Chat, Reader, and the likes), Vimeo, and Wikispaces (not using that so much), our students are not required to use any other online technologies. Each of our faculty use their own combination of Delicious (Is there any doubt that’s my favorite?), Flickr, Shelfari, Picasa, etc. (There’s an old list here.) We drop hints (like the timeline software you mention), make suggestions depending on individual student projects (comics, animation, etc.), and even occasionally hold a quick workshop showing specific tools, but we ultimately allow students to build the toolkit that suits them best, just like we do, and that comes from their observations of others (including faculty, parents, and other netizens).
I often correct people who, when speaking about our middle school program, lead with the fact that we have a 1:1 laptop program. That’s not what we’re all about. We are a progressive program that focuses on student-led, project-based learning. Technology just helps us achieve our goal and each time we use technology we should be asking ourselves how it improves the learning process. If we’re doing it correctly, the technology becomes, as Chris Lehmann would say, “ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible.”
As for students following “extension posts” (that’s a great way to phrase it), the mileage varies. I don’t think I’ve ever tried incentives, but occasionally I’ll bait them by showing the first minute of a ten minute video or pointing them out during our Open Studio****. During the end of trimester teacher*** evaluation chat I had with my seventh graders before break, several of them mentioned that those extension posts are one of their favorite elements of my interactions with them.
With apologies to DFW, here are my “footnotes”, some of which have footnotes of their own:
*Another self-defense mechanism: not jumping into the Twitterverse except to dabble with a few students (using a separate handle). My @robertogreco account is just a place-holder. If I ever do explore that option (and it’s becoming very tempting lately), your feed (and Katie’s** and Neil Stephenson’s) will be included in my first flurry of follows.
**Hi Katie! Thanks for the kind words about my Delicious feed — glad it has been of value to you. And wow! Thanks for all of those resources in your comment. Just a short response to them for now, three paragraphs down if you’re looking.
***I have a hard time with the word teacher, but use it because it takes too long to avoid confusion with whatever other term is more appropriate. (Lately I’ve been using colleague with my students.) That leads to an idea that I go back and forth on: being the expert in the content is not necessary (at least at the middle school level) when teaching history/social studies (what I’m up to these days). I don’t have a degree in history. And each year I end up learning just as much, if not more, than my students about the content. That’s partly because I’m teaching new content each year*****, much of which I haven’t studied since I was in middle school or high school myself.
Maybe we can think of this as the “master learner” approach. Rather than be an expert in the topic, the adult in the classroom is really a model of a successful learner (of one variety) who is learning along with the students. Lot’s of “I don’t know” and “Let’s see what we can find out, then compare with each other” and “how might you go about that?” You know, something like Dan Meyer’s “Be less helpful.” It’s easy to not give an answer if you too need to find it.
This is also my response to Katie’s mention of Clifford Stoll. He’s correct. There is too much information. But it’s unavoidable and students are being bombarded with information outside of school. We can help by modeling filtering systems and healthy skepticism/critical thinking skills, and in the process we get time with our students as we seek the information we need: answers to the questions we ask, solutions to the challenges we face, and designs for the problems we’re solving. And we find this information “just in time” as Roger Schank mentions in the video Katie shared. Also, technology adds to the student-teacher relationship. One example (of many more that I can give): the student who consulted with me at home one evening asking for me to advise him about a comment he was composing for the blog of Robin Sloan (mentioned in my previous comment). That was an extra twenty minutes of face time (video chat) with me (and me with him!). We couldn’t have done it without the laptops.
****We don’t have a study hall. Instead we have something that we’ve named Open Studio. It’s our version of Google’s 20% system. (Quote from Wikipedia: “Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them.”) So in Open Studio (45 minutes per day, not quite 20%) students are allowed to pursue a PLP (Personal Learning Project) rather than sit in quiet rows taking a bite out of a heavy homework load. (We don’t have those either.) Students do occasionally take advantage of the time to collaborate on group projects from class that are hard to take home, knock off some homework assignments because they’ll have a busy evening, or catch up on in-class work they’ve missed due to absence. And some do homework so they can work on their PLP at home with materials and resources not available at school.
Again, we’re a small school. We don’t have a dark room, a language lab, an animation studio, drafting tables, a large library, etc. That’s another reason laptops are so valuable — they can serve as reasonable proxy for those things too.
There’s more to Open Studio, but that should give you the basic idea.
*****We’re cycling through content each year as we build out a middle school program. It helps to dampen the blow of multiple prep periods. It also makes it easier to share resources, class visitors, field trips, etc. So, last year the sixth grade studied Ancient Civilization, this year both the sixth and seventh grades are covering Middle Ages/Renaissance/Word Religions, and next year seventh and eighth grades will study US History/Civics. The topics are the same, but each grade uses some different resources and approaches based on their reading/writing/technology skills.
I’d never thought much about looping before, but I have really enjoyed building on the relationship I developed with last year’s sixth grade students as they’ve moved up to seventh this year.
Whew! I’m crossing my fingers that this won’t break your comment system.
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No. 11 — December 30th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I guess I was stating the obvious.I do feel more creative in my teaching with technology, but I don’t see it as a replacement for debate, anecdotal comments on papers (that few students read, by the way)or discussion. Yet, my response blog gets much more indepth comments and really thoughtful comments between students than I would ever get in class. I’m in a public school where ever diminishing class time narrows the opportunity to have great discussions etc. Forty-seven minutes that are eaten up by testing, forced writing prompts, and administrivia galore.
Here is an example of how I see tech as an advantage. At my school we are forced to give monthly writing prompts tied to our state test. I know that creative writing and other writing opportunities increase my students’ writing ability. However, I can only grade and comment on so much. And yes I do use peer evaluation and other methods to decrease my grading. Then I discovered an online writing program that will grade students papers with immediate feedback and practice for weak areas. I love it because I saw it as an opportunity for my students to write so much more with feedback, albeit electronic and somewhat canned. This program does not replace my instruction or my guidance, but it gives my students’ writing another source of evaluation.
I do see where you are going with Idiocracy and the editorial, but it is up to us to mold tech to improve how we deliver instruction and perhaps give us the time to have the valuable face to face class experiences.
We have always had to question the method of delivery, why would tech be any different. I know that I sometimes get a skewed view since I follow so many tech oriented folks on my reader and sometimes I feel like I’m falling behind in the race to 21st century learning. Heck it was your video where students created wiki textbooks that inspired me.
Finally, there is a case for the have and have nots. Many of my students are not as “connected” as some of our more affluent kids. They may live on their cells, but they don’t have a clue about blogs and wikis or the power of the web. I feel strongly that they need to learn to communicate with the tools that will dominate their future.
In the end, isn’t it the same discussion as when discourse was replaced by the written word? The storyteller by the book? The communal nature of storytelling replaced by the solitary act of reading – surely the fall of society!
.-= Hellen´s last blog ..Hello blogosphere! =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 30th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Hellen, again your points are well-taken (and not obvious, though I’m pooped and running out of gas after replying to Roberto above).
I liked your emphasis on using tech to free time instead of consume more of it. That’s a motive I can get behind.
I also sympathize with your context. I’ve never taught in the States, but six months of being paid to write about NCLB and Duncan’s NCLB II (let’s not kid ourselves) gave me a painful crash-course in how tough it must be to teach in public schools. Your tech solutions are thoughtful ones.
And your remark about the teacher’s eternal task of “question[ing] the method of delivery” gets to the bottom of it, really. I think I asked the questions above because I may have lost my moorings somewhat. Many comments here are helping me find them again.
Finally, not to quibble, but this revolution seems to me different from past ones. Storytellers were replaced by texts, yes, but those texts were generally produced under highly selective quality-control filters due to the labor involved in making a book.
The web is replacing books without, one could argue, any filter at all. (Okay, maybe algorithmic authority via Google page-ranking, or social media authority via linklove, filters content in terms of visibility, but still. Tiger Woods’ sex life — “Ow! My Balls!” indeed — is more important than the Iran protests or the escalation of black ops in Yemen or the almost totally ignored Gaza protests this week.)
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. It’s valuable.
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No. 12 — December 30th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Great discussion, everyone. I can’t help but pass on a few further thoughts and links.
– “The web is replacing books without, one could argue, any filter at all. ”
As Clay Shirky put it last year: It’s Not Information Overload, It’s Filter Failure ( http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/1277460 )
Cliff Stoll highlighted information overload in his 1999 book, “High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don’t Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian” ( http://bit.ly/8xgxcB ) (and the Nat’l Library of Singapore has 2 copies, so you can read it if you want to, Clay).
Here he is in an interview in 2000 ( http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat018.shtml ):
——-
Stoll: The one thing that computers do extraordinarily well is bring information to kids. Computers give kids access to vast amounts of information.
EW: Don’t computers have a place in the classroom, then, if merely as a source of information?
Stoll: Is a lack of information a problem in schools? I’ve never once had a teacher say to me “I don’t have enough information.” Teachers say they don’t have enough time. The problem in classrooms is not a lack of information. It’s too much information.
—–
Stoll makes another point in the same interview — one that relates to Hellen’s comment: “it is up to us to mold tech to improve how we deliver instruction and perhaps give us the time to have the valuable face to face class experiences”.
—–
Stoll: … The problem is that the use of computers subtracts from the student-to-teacher contact hours. It directs attention away from the student-teacher relationship and directs it toward the student-computer relationship. It teaches students to focus on getting information rather than on exploring and creating. Which is more interactive — a student and a teacher or a student and a computer? …
—–
Re the importance of the physical experience of being in a classroom with a teacher, I can’t help but recommend a commencement address by Margaret Edson, teacher and playwright. There’s a link in this blog post I did a while back:
http://libedge.blogspot.com/2008/07/actual-not-virtual-or-love-ideally.html (skip the first 3 min of her talk and get to the heart of it).
Cycling back to the importance of content and Neil Stephenson’s post on Student-Led Learning and to what extent teachers should be practitioners of their disciplines, let me throw in the ideas of another computer scientist and curmudgeon — though one in favor of computers in the classroom and online learning in general — Roger Schank ( http://www.rogerschank.com/ ). (By the way, I highly recommend his 1990 book, “Tell Me A Story: Narrative and Intelligence”.)
Schank gave a talk recently in Barcelona where he goes through everything wrong with existing schools and how he envisions the ideal school ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx0-2GCfOdo ).
Schank: “Every curriculum should tell a story… and the story should be one that tells what the life of the future practitioner is like (and it should involve lots of practice).”
I.e., he believes teachers need to organize experiences (think: liberating constraints) for students based on practicing disciplines, e.g., if you’re going to study history, you need to participate in experiences that simulate the role historians play in life — rather than being taught history by a teacher.
It’s the old master/apprentice approach, though Schank is happy to have technology facilitate that in whatever way it can.
Umberto Eco takes a similar stance on the need for teachers to guide students in their disciplines, especially in relation to the information overload. (
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,659577-2,00.html )
—
Eco: … These [Google] lists can be dangerous — not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that teachers should instruct students on the difference between good and bad? If so, how should they do that?
Eco: Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: “Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information.” If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others’ mistakes.
——-
I’ll end with a paraphrase of Michael Wesch’s philosophy of teaching outlined in a video last year ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4yApagnr0s).
To create students who make meaningful connections we need to 1) find a grand narrative and provide context and relevance (i.e., semantic meaning); 2) create a learning environment that values and leverages learners themselves (i.e., personal meaning); and 3) do both in a way that realizes and leverages the existing media environment.
That’s how I would answer your original query. Technology is about leverage in the service of meaningful connections. So if it doesn’t enhance the learning in the classroom and it’s not authentic participation in the existing media environment (read: busywork), you shouldn’t feel obliged to use it.
Okay, I probably violated the unwritten reasonable-length-of-reply rule several paragraphs ago — my sincere apologies! (I’ll go off and re-work this as a proper blog post now).
But one last note: information filters are very important – and some people function better than others as filters — like robertogreco (above). Clay may have over 4,000 delicious links (cburell), I may have over 5,000 (thelibrarianedge), but http://delicious.com/rgreco has over 17,000 — and they all have descriptions. Thanks, Roberto, for giving me so many good things to read over the past few years.
.-= Katie Day´s last blog ..21st C Learning@HK: a team approach =-.
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Clay Burell Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 2:18 am
Katie,
Real quick, as it’s past time for bed: I’ve spent the last hours with the resources you linked, and the time before that nodding at the many ways you wove the threads of this long thread to something like, at least for now, closure. (And you violated no policy on this blog, anyway. I like “slow commenting” as much as “slow blogging.”)
Thanks a million to you and everybody for a very rewarding 24 hours or so. I feel like college credit should be given to all.
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Katie Day Reply:
January 5th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
Okay, two new posts of mine that include what I offered here, but in a more readable format and with extended links — and responses to later posts of yours, Clay, as well. For what it’s worth: http://bit.ly/mconnect and http://bit.ly/sstupid …
.-= Katie Day´s last blog ..It’s Storytelling, Stupid! =-.
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No. 13 — January 1st, 2010 at 4:03 am
[...] a Comment I started this as a response to Clay Burell’s (Blog, Twitter) post, “Barbarians with Laptops: An Unreasonable Fear?” and half way through decided to move it to my blog due to its length. The spark for this [...]
No. 14 — January 3rd, 2010 at 4:44 am
[...] Barbarians with Laptops: An Unreasonable Fear? [...]
No. 15 — January 7th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
I agree that tech on it’s own will have nothing but fad Impact if not applied with good pedagogy. One of my favourite sayings is that if you are a crap teacher technology will not help. One of the best uses of tech I have seen is where the teacher sets up the scenario where tech is used to discover and share content ( with guidance) as part of out of class time and the majority of class time is devoted to the higher order thinking processing of what has been discovered – making meaning. Used correctly the tech can prevent the sage on the stage pedagogy. This approach is not easy for traditional teachers. Good advice is to get comfortable with a particular tech that you can use well and build from there. With tech there will always be something new tomorrow or better. Let the learners show you these. The three most important things teachers can instill in students are the abity to search, the ability to detect crap ( postman) and knowing how to categorize/classify/sort their learning (knowing where you saved your file). Teachers are more important than ever however I never want a childs learning to be limited to the sum of the content knowledge of their teacher.
Another advantage of tech is the increasing capacity for it to be used for learners to create content. Digital stories.
Enough for now. I hope I have contributed something to this discussion I certainly enjoyed other contributors perspectives.
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Clay Burell Reply:
January 7th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Thanks Brett, you have. All of this is good for staying anchored instead of flitting off for the Next Shiny Thing.
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