Individualized Learning Environments

This unit we examined two types of individualized learning environments: Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) and the Audio-Tutorial Approach (A-T).

What are key similarities or striking differences between the theories/models in a given unit? Do the theories/models in a unit share any common foundations or principles?

Both of these models want to focus on allowing the student to move through material at their own pace, mostly independent of the traditional classroom or lecture/discussion setting. Both models seem to try to maintain some connection between the students and the faculty, such that students are always provided with the assistance they need and to create some sort of faculty presence within the learning experience.

One thing that struck me was that the PSI model is a mastery-based model, which requires students to be able to demonstrate their knowledge before moving on to the next objective. The A-T model does not require mastery before students move on, but in its traditional form does require more contact with faculty for review and quiz sessions, in which students may be asked to present or recall any of the course material studied. I tend to be in favor of mastery-type models, because it helps to remove the fear of failure, which allows students to be more at ease in the learning environment. That being said, this is not always an option, given the time and resource constraints of most educational environments.

What are your initial reactions to these learning theories/models? What are barriers to their use? What benefits might be expected for those who overcome the barriers?

My initial reaction to both models in their traditional forms was that they would be very time intensive and require a lot of time scheduled during which the teacher observes students doing their work, in case they need help. Given the technological advancements since the birth of these models, I think there are better ways of handling those issues. The one barrier that I do not foresee being eliminated is the time it takes to develop these kinds of programs. Gathering materials, creating coherent curricula and then creating all of the necessary digital materials for these programs will just take time. I think the benefit to spending that time is that teachers (hopefully in groups) will create databases of resources that can be used in and out of the classroom. I thought of many ways of incorporating these ideas into classroom style teaching, as it occurs in most primary and secondary school settings. Using the A-T style approach, teachers can provide the lecture style material outside of class, while using in class time for review, guided practice and group/collaborative learning. My favorite parts of the PSI model are the focus on mastery (as opposed to merely testing) and the clear statement/testing of objectives. Letting students know what is expected of them and then having a guiding process through to demonstrated mastery is important in any classroom.

Would you attempt to use any of these theories/models with the students you are currently teaching or hope to teach in the future? Why or why not? Could elements of the theories/models be modified so that they would work with your current/future students?

I wouldn't (couldn't?) attempt to use any of these formats in their original forms in a public high school classroom - it's just not set up that way. There are many facets of each of these models that I feel would fit nicely into that learning environment. I would be in favor of delivering material A-T style to students outside of the classroom. This would combine short podcasts, videos, text and short assignments that students would complete out of class, so that they could come prepared to engage the material in the classroom. I would also try to incorporate the PSI-favored explicit objectives, mastery and tutored (as opposed to lectured) style of in-class interaction. Rather than lecturing material to students, they could engage the material in guided and independent practice, either independently or in groups, with teacher assistance for a more student-centered approach.

Since we're taking learning theories/models that were not necessarily created with the Web in mind and turning them into Web modules, what Web-based tools or resources could be leveraged to carry out these learning theories/models online? 

For the PSI model, I think that LiveBinders would be a great resource for this type of program. It could be a great way to organize different units and objectives for completion. Also, any website creation programs like Weebly or GoogleSites would be useful in creating a platform and organizational tool for material where students can easily access it.

For the A-T model, the first tool I thought of was VoiceThread. I can't think of a better way of putting audio-visual material together in a way that is so accessible for students. Podcast hosting sites would also be super-helpful with this model, so Podbean or Blubrry are options. Also Audacity is a great open source audio recording tool. 

Gamifying the Classroom

Recently I was reading an article entitled 'Digital Badges' would Represent Students' Skill Acquisition, which discusses the use of online/digital badges as a way for students to earn recognition for their acquired skills and achievements in and out of the classroom. These badges could be awarded for skill acquisition in the classroom, but part of it would also be for the skills acquired during their extra curricular activities. One of the focuses of these badges is to acknowledge skill sets that aren't traditionally represented in the normal grading and achievement recognition schemes that exist, such as leadership, or very specific skill sets, such as learning HTML or Java script.

One of the main objections to these badges is that it creates a situation which "gamifies" the classroom - turning education into a game. The problem skeptics cite is that by providing extrinsic motivation for things which students are already intrinsically motivated to do, we are decreasing their intrinsic motivation to do so. Apparently, the use of point systems is just a way of gamifying education and teachers should be helping students find intellectual value in their educational pursuits that has nothing to do with rewards.

One problem that I have with this objection is that point systems have been used as behavioral control in classrooms for a very long time. It is a well established, well studied, well taught part of education. While it is acknowledged that point systems do not work in all circumstances, to suddenly say that it is turning education into a game when it bleeds over from classroom control into content seems completely ridiculous. By that logic, getting students to behave appropriately in the classroom is only a game, too.

Personally, I am still ambivalent about the topic of gamifying the classroom. I can understand the downsides of rewarding things that we, as teachers, think students should be motivated to do intrinsically. On the other hand, if there is a way of engaging students in their learning process that works and motivates students to learn through their own exploration, while also benefiting from the reward system that sparked that interest, then I would be hard put to find objections.

One fantastic example of a gamified classroom that I believe works can be found in The Mac Lab. Mike Skocko is a teacher that took the online gaming platform structure (gaining XP [experience], questing [mastery], being part of a guild [classroom community], and having a code of honor [classroom rules upheld as much by the students as by himself]) and applied it to his classroom, which involves time spent in an actual school as well as having blogs and personal sites for presentation of work. Though he is an art teacher, I think this kind of classroom style could potentially be beneficial, particular as many schools move toward 1:1 computing situations. Part of what keeps students interested in video and online games is the dynamic space in which they get to explore, learn, hone their skills and challenge (or get challenged) by other players. The traditional classroom has been criticized for lacking this dynamic aspect, so the thought of bringing an interactive style to the classroom that would help students want to engage and take some control of and ownership for their learning sounds appealing.

What do you think? Would bringing a gaming aspect to the classroom help or hinder education?

Students on Steroids

No, this is not a controversial sports post, but about what Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, calls the technological "steroids" that are creating a "flatter" world. Friedman writes:

        "I call certain new technologies the steroids, because they are amplifying 
         and turbocharging all the other flatteners." (Friedman, 187)

By flatteners, he means the technologies that are making it easier for everyone to be more connected and have a more equal chance to participate globally. The "steroids" he mentions are the technologies that speed up connectivity, allow for transfer of more data more quickly to anywhere in the world. He points out that "year after year we have been able to digitize, shape, crunch, and transmit more words, music, data and entertainment than ever before" (Friedman, 188). So the question is: what does this mean for students and teachers?

The students of today are natives of this technological wave, they are the people who will most easily navigate and adapt with the technology that is already shaping their lives in so many ways. This inundation with technology in our everyday lives has spread to education already with the prospect of many schools moving towards ubiquitous (or 1 to 1) computing. While bringing technology to the classroom has been an ongoing process for a while, this kind of transition will force a change in the way that teaching and learning are viewed. Rather than having some teachers believe that project-based and student-centered learning are the key to continued success, teachers will be forced to see that traditional, lecture-style teaching methods will no longer be appropriate in ubiquitous computing settings.

While many students are familiar with the "steriods" Friedman refers to and would love to use them in the school setting, they may not particularly understand what changing to a student-centered learning style will entail. This is not just a change for teachers, but a major change for students. They can no longer rely on sitting and half listening to a lecture and asking a few questions in class to cover their grades. Student-centered learning requires students to take initiative in their own educations. While this involves more choice (usually seen as an advantage to the students), they will also have to help drive themselves and be more ambitious if they want to succeed in school.

So are these steroids, which will allow students to engage their peers and information in new and exciting ways, going to help them by relieving some of the academic pressure of studying and finding information? Or is it going to make their jobs as students much more difficult with every higher standards of presentation and engagement?

The answer may be "both".

Blog vs Wiki: The Educational Showdown

As a teacher, I've got to ask myself: which do I think would be more effective in the classroom: a blog or a wiki? These two ways of presenting and interacting with information on the web are very different and each have advantages and disadvantages.

Authorship

Both are media that allow multiple authors to write and present material on a web page such that others can add to that written material. Blogs often have comment boxes enabled, so that readers can comment and address the topic which the author has chosen. In a wiki, the original author swiftly becomes the co-author of all pages as readers turn co-author and edit the original page and writing done by the original author. Blogs are more conducive to single authorship and discussion of a topic, whereas wikis are better set up for collaborative work. Wikis allow authors to create new pages for new topics, which might better organize certain kinds of material, rather than the temporally updated and listed material of a blog.

Time as a Factor

With blog, teachers would be able to clearly see when students authored and submitted their work. The general set up of a blog post includes the time and/or date of the post in the header with the title of the post. Wikis are set up to be topic-based rather than chronological in their layout, so authors of the page can edit and change material anywhere on any page at any time on any topic. It is much harder to tell what was done when by whom, unless you have a system that tracks changes. A project with a particular due date for some kind of completed or substantial amount of material would be harder to monitor temporally.

Monitoring of behavior

In a classroom/educational setting, the subject of safety and behavior monitoring have to be taken into account. The natural set up of blog seems to make this easier, as a single administrator can have the power to edit or delete inappropriate posts by authors. It would also be much easier to tell which author posted inappropriate material. Wikis are naturally set up to evolve and change as the group of authors decide, with less attention paid to authorship. This would make it more difficult to monitor the behavior of individuals, again, without the close monitoring of tracked changes. Also, the nature of a wiki is to expand topically. Authors can create new pages and expand the size of a wiki site very rapidly, which is good for material organization, but also makes it easier to hide inappropriate material as a wiki rapidly grows.

Verdict

I think that choosing a blog or wiki will really come down to assessing what kind of project is being done and what kind of material is being approached. If the material involves a broad topic with many sub-topics that need to be discussed and addressed by all students, particularly in the creation of some kind of study-guide or reference website, then a wiki is probably the best choice. If the students need to turn in distinctly individual materials on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly), then a blog is probably a better medium. When taking the behavior of a particular class into account, if a teacher needs to monitor and restrict information sharing and authorship more closely, a blogging format and set up with naturally serve better. If a teacher is leading a mature group of students in a project that is understood as a peer editing and collaborative project, then a wiki is an exciting resource to be able to use.

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This post is part of the 21st Century Learning post series.

Projects

So the first of September has come and gone. I missed posting. Oops.

Since I last posted here I have had several creative pursuits which have taken up my time. The first was a cowl shirt. I first saw one in REI, but it was $60! Crazy, I told myself. It looks sorta like this, but with a more subtle pattern. I could not get it off my mind after I saw it in the store, so I decided to make one. I bought a black t-shirt and used the body of it to make the long neck, which I attached to a black long-sleeved shirt I already owned. I will have to see about getting some photos up. There are things I would do different if I were to do it again, but isn't that always the way of projects? I'll have to see about getting some photos up.

The other project I worked on was for my Emerging Technology course. I created interactive PDFs! It was a pretty fun project in the making. I used Adobe InDesign to create PDFs that have audio and video clips built into them. While this isn't going to be your normal PDF for printing off, it is a really great tool for digital communication. Adobe InDesign allows the user to create PDFs that use several technological mediums (audio recordings, video recordings, podcasts, images) to create multi-level learning tools that appeal to learners of all kinds. Through the creation of interactive PDFs, teachers can adapt and supplement curriculum to the needs of the individual learners in their classrooms. Now, auditory and visual learners have the ability to interact with curricular material through experiences which help them form lasting memories of classroom lessons.

The content which interactive PDFs can communicate to students is infinite. Audio clips are useful for language learning, ESL, literature, literacy, social studies and music. Video clips may be equally important in all of these courses as well as science and mathematics. Through use of the available material from sources such as podcasts, iTunesU, YouTube and Khan Academy, teachers can augment their lectures and keep student interest. Another advantage of using interactive PDFs is that not only can they be used during lectures, but teachers can make the resource available to students and parents through email or classroom
websites for continued access and use of the resources that support in-class materials.

21st Century Skill Sets and Beyond

“Information and communication skills, thinking and problem-solving skills, interpersonal and self-directional skills” This list has become the mantra of teachers reciting the skills they should be helping students acquire. Unfortunately, what students need to learn is much more than a list of skills. Beyond these skill sets, students will need to understand their own learning process. Many of the above skill sets are a part of that learning process, but each individual learns in a unique way. By mastering the learning process and, therefore, knowing how to research, study and retain knowledge, students will be equipped to face the challenges that will emerge in the 21^st century. This means that rather than learning particular or specialized skill sets, which individuals will then take to work and execute, students will need to be able to learn the emerging skill sets that are required of a dynamic work environment. In order to help students achieve this in the classroom, teachers will need to focus equally on making the awareness and development of a learning style a part of the curriculum. This is partially a metacognitive approach to learning and teaching, but it must move beyond that into the development of good learning habits and how to adapt one’s learning style to the material. This process seems to also necessarily involve ownership of the learning process. It seems that to help students become good and life-long learners, we must help them to understand what we know as teachers.

To be skilled workers in the 21^st century means that not only do individuals have to have niche knowledge and skill sets, but the ability to learn new skill sets and adapt to emerging innovations and technologies. It is this ability to learn that is required now and will continue to important in the future. Teaching, in and of itself, is a perfect example of the kind of career that requires specific knowledges and skill sets, but also requires the worker to adapt at every stage of the process and learn how to flourish in each new situation. New students, new technologies, new curriculums, new requirements and the ever changing state of the material that we must teach all require teachers (and I would like to argue that have always required good teachers) to be adaptive, to understand their own learning processes and to be able to help others learn to be aware and adaptive individuals.

Much of the focus, when it comes to new and emerging information and skills, lays in technology. The technologies that students must be competent in, in my opinion, are the ones that are going to make them good learners and performers. One could easily do research at the library with piles of books and, sometimes, one still must do just that. With the internet being a fairly open resource for the sharing of information, however, much of the information necessary to students now resides in servers accessible from almost anywhere. Though all of the information on the internet is not completely reliable, more and more there are becoming sites dedicated to reliable information recording. When these reliable resources (reliable websites vs. piles of library books), the internet takes the advantage for one simple reason: expediency. Not only will students have to be able to find, learn and retain knowledge, but they will have to do it concurrently to fixing the problems that they are working on. In the 21^st century, the speed at which events occur makes the internet a necessary resource and the skills sets to use the internet appropriate equally necessary. As I write this, I know that I am referring to “the Interwebs” and the skills sets necessary to use them as though they were one cohesive skill set. I know this to be absurd. This, however, is the world that our students face IN SCHOOL, let alone what they will face in their future workplaces.

Building a Lego Bridge... without the Legos

So I wanted to post some pictures from my first assignment in my Emerging Tech class.

Lego – Building a Bridge Debriefing

When tasked with building a Lego bridge, the first problem I encountered was my lack of access to Legos. In search for an acceptable alternative, I found a local church had children’s building blocks that I could use for this assignment. I altered the pricing based on the size of the blocks I had in the following manner:

-          Small square blocks = $150

-          Large square blocks = $250

-          Rectangular prism blocks = $350

-          Large flat blocks = $450

The entire process of planning and building the bridge the first time took me approximately 10 minutes. The end result was a 6 in. tall, 14 in. long bridge, which held a heavy textbook. I used 2 flat blocks ($900), 4 small blocks ($600), 8 large blocks ($2000) and 2 rectangular blocks ($700). My total expenses added up to $4200 for the project. I did not use any resources (except my brain) in the planning of the bridge. Mostly, I focused on using at least one of each block type and making the measurements conform to the requirements provided.

Phase 1 Bridge

For my second bridge, I spent about 10 minutes looking at some of the sites suggested, but I didn’t find the Lego sites very helpful, as they referred to a different building material. I used the Ohio Department of Transportation site (http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/Communications/BridgingtheGap/Pages/ BridgeTermDefinitions.aspx) to learn a little more about the terms and structures of bridges in general. I then searched sites about building bridges with blocks. I found a website in which some very young bridge builders had built a block bridge strong enough to hold their combined weight (http://earlylearningcentral.ca/?p=511). Looking at their photos, I noticed that in some cases they used multiple blocks as abutments to hold up the deck of the bridge, while other times they used single blocks. This made me rethink my design in a way that made it more cost effective. My second bridge consisted of 2 flat blocks ($900), 4 small blocks ($600), 4 large blocks ($1000) and 4 rectangular blocks ($1400). While the change in the building was not significant, the cost saved was (a total of $3000 for the second project, saved me $1200).

Phase 2 Bridge - with room for a boat or any vehicle that wants to pass under it

Planning Diagram for Phase 2

(sorry this last one is sideways - I can't for the life of me figure out why it won't turn)

I found the second phase much easier, because rather than trying to merely fulfill the requirements, I looked at what other collaborators have done, combined their ideas with my own and applied them to the materials I had. I found searching on the internet to learn the technical terms much easier than trying to find a book in a library (none of which I had access to). I think for the time-constrained learning opportunities that we have in classrooms today, the second phase, in which technology is available for research, to be more appropriate.

While I understand the purpose of this assignment, I felt I had the skills I needed to complete the activity – with or without the technology backing me up. On the other hand, it would have taken me longer than 20 minutes in the second phase if I had not had the technological resources available to me. I think the skills that students will need to learn in order to participate in activities like this are flexibility in brainstorming, critical thinking, knowing how to use the resources available to them and understanding how the creative process works. These skills are exceedingly relevant to the workforce and to problem-solving in life more generally and are 21st century skills.