Using Technology Wisely
This will be a long post because I just read this great (and short) book that came today! Hot off the press, this book is chock full of good stuff. As I was reading it, I kept thinking...geez, this is exactly what technology integration in schools is all about. So I’m going to pull some quotable pieces, and then offer some commentary.
In the book, Harold Wenglinsky asks some good questions. Which environment is better for learning - constructivist or didactic? Which is better suited to technology? What is the value-added of the technology above and beyond good teaching? Why are computers a necessary option for teachers to have? Which is the better question: Where is the technology? ..or Where isn’t it?
...learning consists of three pieces, the teacher, the student, and the medium; and it is not possible to separate one out from the others. Think of computers as akin to language. Teachers and students use language to communicate with one another. That language imposes some constraints on what the two groups can say, but it also provides a whole host of opportunities. Computers, field trips, and chemistry labs are similar in that they provide what are referred to as “teachable moments” where, through doing something, a student finally makes sense out of something the teacher was trying to convey. Just as an effective teacher needs to have five different phrases for defining a given concept, the teacher needs to have multiple media for illustrating it; and in fact, computers in and of themselves provide multiple media for learning.
A great answer to a tough question. It’s not about the technology; it’s about technology as a tool, yet another means (and a multifaceted one) that teachers and learners can use to bring the abstract into the realm of the concrete.
The effectiveness of educational technology is enmeshed in the kind of pedagogy employed. Constructivist uses of technology help students learn better than they would otherwise, whereas didactic uses of technology make the technology useless or even damaging.
Effective integration of technology is not always obvious. In fact, the drill/practice form of technology or the project that focuses on using the technology as the outcome is probably not what we want. It’s about the learning and how the technology is used.
The key lesson for me was that technology cannot stand alone. In successful technology-rich schools, technology is part of the culture and is inseparable from creative teaching, engaged students, and active leadership.
And if its use is what is important, than the professional development focus needs to be on using the technology in conjunction with constructivist practices, not on the nuts and bolts of using the technology. Professional development too frequently never moves beyond the skill stage (and often those skills are taught in isolation).
They can provide professional development in computer use to teachers so that they are comfortable with technology. But they also need to provide professional development to teachers in subject matter and pedagogy so that teachers can think of sophisticated ways to use computers and envision how computers will fit into the menu of pedagogical techniques teachers employ every day.
A cautionary flag flies up when I read this. The use of technology is more than just a technique. Using it effectively is a skill, one that is developed over time, through experimentation in the real classroom environment, and in dialogue with colleagues about what works and what doesn’t. I doubt he meant that technology was just something in that ‘bag of trick,’ but it does read that way.
In Chapter 1, he analyzes three movements for improving schools: standards, technology and teaching. He notes that the common thread through all of these, and one that has contributed toward these initiatives being less than effective, is that they have all been neutral on their endorsement of a constructivist or didactic focus. He contends that in most situations, constructivism is the way to go. And I would agree, and technology must abandon its pedagogical neutrality.
Only if standards, teaching, and technology are oriented in a constructivist fashion will students learn what they need to fully participate in the new economy—the economy of the era of high technology.
Why should our schools embrace constructivism over didacticism?
Schools are supposed to prepare students to participate in the workforce, and that workforce is not neutral about pedagogy. The workforce of the 21st century values independent decision making, complex problem solving, teamwork, and ongoing performance appraisal—all components of a constructivist, not a didactic pedagogy. The real barrier that didactic environments create is that they make schools as different from the real world as possible when they should be as much like it as is developmentally appropriate.
So why don’t we just embrace what is good?
...the school reform movements in the United States, to succeed, must give up their pedagogical neutrality. They must recognize that constructivist teachers are effective teachers, constructivist technology is effective technology, and constructivist standards should be the yardstick for student performance. Yet, to maintain elite political consensus, policymakers and business leaders have steered clear of this view, not taking sides in the pedagogical wars.
Even within our own schools, we adopt initiatives that remain neutral, endorsing neither didactic nor constructivist modes of delivery. In our district, we are big on Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching, Charlotte Danielson’s model for teacher evaluation.
“...acknowledges her personal preference is for a constructivist approach to teaching. Her standards for evaluating effective teaching, however, are pedagogically neutral.”
Inadequacies in teacher quality are the primary obstacle to the effectiveness of educational technology; for teachers to use computers effectively they have to be taught both about using computers and about using the pedagogy most productive for computer use, namely constructivism.
By Chapter 4, we get to the heart of the book:
I am ultimately interested in knowing whether students perform better with teachers who use computers in a constructivist fashion. What I seek to demonstrate is that constructivism is always superior to didacticism, and that technology is a medium that is well-equiped to facilitate constructivist pedagogy.
Using qualitative data (and some complex data analysis) from several editions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (which he contends is suited to both constructivist and didactic teaching, unlike most standardized tests), Wenglinsky draws what would appear to be powerful conclusions:
*The data indicate that, of the nontechnological instructional practices of teachers, it is primarily the constructivist ones that are associated with high student performance.
*In mathematics and science, computer use is positively associated with student performance when computers are used in a constructivist fashion, and is either unassociated or negatively associated with student performance when computers are used in a didactic fashion.
*In reading, inferences are somewhat more difficult to make but suggest that when students use computers for word processing for meta-analytic purposes, students perform better, and when they are used for spellchecking or reading stories, students perform worst.
Given that present federal policy supports didacticism over constructivism, it is possible that there will be some support for professional development in using computers, but not in constructivist teaching methods.
The data indicate that the real digital divide is between the constructivist uses to which white, affluent, and suburban students are exposed and the didactic uses to which minority, poor, and urban students are exposed.
Next entry: NECC: Teaching Thinking with Technology
Previous entry: NECC