Octopus (2006-06-24)

The eclectic nature of the construction of a piece of work.

Ok, a recent piece of work that I did was a three week (12 x 1.5hours) Mechanics course with Class 9.

Descriptive reflection:
The intent of course was to give students and overview about vehicles with a large hands on component. Several car engines were dismantled in the classroom by students. Students changed a flat tire and some also changed the engine oil and filter in their parents car. The 'hidden agenda' was to improve students practical technical drawing and communication abiliby. The students were to become familiar with 'exploded diagrams' and 'cross sections' by talking about car components/systems, unbolting things physically on the engine and drawing and labeling them. Click here for the student information handout that I wrote (word format created in Open Office). I used a couple of the fabulous 'Secret Life of Machines' videos (by Tim Hunkin) to reinforce the content.

The 'formal' assessment task I set for the studens involved designing a 'future vehicle', for which they could use internet resources to inform their design.

So it was intended from the start to be eclectic - a good dose of hands on, some visual media, some chalk and talk, some drawing, and research on the net. I was concerned that the girls might be less engaged through our car cultural biases, but could only think to ensure the girls had their own engine to dismantle without time pressure from the boys. It was compulsory for all students to change a car tire - and this proved to be particularly empowering for the girls. The practical work was done in groups - I wanted them talking and working out stuff together.

The course went OK. There was a limitation because the school did not have enough tool sets for more than two groups to work on engines at once. There was a certain amount of general background information that I wanted the students to understand but did not have time to do other than draw it on the board and get them to copy it into their lesson books. I have had a nagging suspicion for some time that most of the 'chalk and talk' stuff is transferred directly from the visual cortex to the muscles controlling the pen without lodging in any meaningful way in the learner's memory. When completing a small written test at the end of the course most students knew more about half of the information that was in the test that they had written down. How much they would remember in a year's time I do not dare to speculate.

Self Reflection

Crowd control is THE biggest issue with year 9. Engaging content is not only a nice idea and good for students, it is a survival tool. If the students are not engaged it is ten times the mental and emotional stress to survive the lesson.

The lesson was a step in the right direction - students were to some degree following their own path to knowing - but I am still bugged that it could have been better.

Critical Reflection

Piaget, Vygotsky, Gardner, Bruner

I think Bruner would have aproved of the level of 'enaction' and 'iconification' going on in this course. My intent with the group engine dismanteling component was to include a degree of 'self discovery' for the students. The requirement to manipulate engine components physically and to draw and describe components that the students worked with was intended to make the task satisfying for the students. The subject was weak on the logical/symbolic side - although mechanics always ultimately involves problem solving of some sort. Limitations on tools, space, teaching resources and time meant that it was unlikely that most of the students entered into a decent problem solving mode during the course.

The ZPD was not consciously assessed when I developed the course - though I will certainly consider it for future courses. The class contained a range of pre existing knowledge of mechanics, though the majority of students had little direct experience with car internals or with describing machines graphically. The 'knowlegible peers' forming the upper potential of the zone were myself, my co-teacher Brigid, The workshop staff, the student's parents and the Internet. The scaffolding provided was the varied/fun/interesting/challenging tasks (engine, wheel change, future vehicle task) in a controlled/supported environment, combined with some background 'chalk and talk' about what the students should expect to find in an engine.

The multiple inteligences were partly addressed. Linguistic tasks were there by default but not strongly emphasised (kind of an educational 'positive discrimination'). Spatial/kinesthetic tasks were there, Inter and Intrapersonal challenges were generated by the group work. Ethical and environmental issues were discussed at a linguistic level. Missing were musical, movement/dance, and mathematical challenges.

Were the tasks appropriate to the students cognitive development? Class 9 students are 14 turning 15, and should, according to Piaget, be well into their Formal Operational development. The content of the course did touch briefly on abstract concepts such as energy and inertia. It also covered social questions about vehicles place in society and their evolution - which is largely abstract and conceptual. However, by including a hands on 'Concrete' component hopefully a balance was struck between the needs of any concrete-operational students with the developing formal operational students. Certainly the risks of presenting material that is not cognitively appropriate is small for students at this age. The main concern would be if there was not enough conceptual/abstract content to engage and challenge students.

Roadmap to improved Mechanics:
So Next time around - be bolder and try to be truly constructivist. Include tasks to cater for l to more of the intelligences - poetry, fiction, painting, environmental, existential. Attempt to bring more resources to the course both to increase access (DLE) and to provide a larger ZPD and more scaffolding. ICT could provide some affordable and available resources for this.

What could I/students do with ICT in mechanics? Create animations of engine systems. Create/edit instructional video on changing a tyre, explore music influenced by cars, or digitise car sound to make car music. Do maintenance schedules for vehicles using spreadsheets. Calculate energy efficiency of vehicles and plot using graphing software. Using a datalogger record temperatures and co2/co levels and plot using spreadsheet. Analyse car ownership and usage statistics from the ABS.

It is all possible, and would I am quitely confident that it would be more fun, and more would actually learned.

And Chips

Mmmm - a quick mindmap of some ICT options for a mechanics course. Some of the nodes should link back to other nodes - eg the Datalogging node has obvious links to spreadsheets, and video, animation, CAD and music all have some links to each other.

Gills

Very useful for breathingSample spreadsheet showing measures of vehicle fuel efficiency that a student could undertake as part of a Mechanics activity.

Flying Fish (2006-06-22)

Up Up and away

Information & Communication Technology (ICT)

The flounder is out. Some of my thoughts on ICT:

My impression is that there is a general belief that the power in our society is held by the technologists - and hence we should be outfitting our young people to get ahead by making them capable technologists.

A simpler impression is 'technology is good'. Which we can take to mean that it will enable the users to do more, create more, discover more and generally have more fun.

Computers and particularly networked computers do guenuinely have amazing potential - music, composition, video, machining, design, architecture, performance, robotics, virtual reality, art, scientific inquiry, dataloging, modelling, collaborative tools, project management tools, creativity tools, refactoring tools, instant messaging, virtual communities - the list goes on and on. They are literally THE universal tool which with the smallest effort on the users part can completely change it's function. As one of the few tool using species on the planet we are getting close to taking the tool to it's logical conclusion.

But the promise of computers has been slow coming*. It is my observation that only in the last 5 years have reasonably stable and useable sound and video editing systems/software become available to the masses. Only in the last 2 years has affordable 'high' speed internet been available and affordable to the masses. Only this year can a digital camera with decent resolution be bought for under $200. The operating systems themselves (Windows, MacOS, Linux) have only become acceptably reliable in the last 4 years (particularly the Microsloth products which were terribly prone to the 'blue screen of death'). Prior to this current period doing decent quality multimedia required a small fortune and the patience of the sphinx. I think the failure of ICT to deliver so far can be mostly attributed to this wait for affordable, reliable and useable software and hardware. Let's see where it can go now!

* 'Slow' is relative thing - the PC was only first widely affordable in 1982 - 24 years ago. By comparison it took many many thousands of years to move from writing to the printing press.

On the other hand I suspect it is a mistake to over emphasise ICT - it is in the end only a series of tools and services. The ultimate meaning is in the naratives that can be conveyed in the new mediums. It would be terrible to have all the functionality of ICT available to students without any substantial forms being known or created. This is painfully obvious with the current crisis in Hollywood - visually amazing movies with outrageosly good special effects but insultingly bad stories and characters. Hollywood revenues have been consistantly going down in the last few years as a result. It's not enough to have the best toys (read facilities / tools / equipment / training) if one has nothing to say.


Another question is when and how much to use ICT. I really liked the sound of the work of Papert with his LOGO based turtle robot enhancing mathematical learning in class 1. But is there an advantage of starting with ICT this young when there are many other rich tasks that could achieve the same outcomes as the turtle? A guiding Steiner principle is 'to avoid using anything until one understands how it works'. This along with other prescriptive parts of the Steiner pedagogy usually means that ICT is not considered an appropriate tool until students reach high school. Does this mean that these students are disadvantaged compared to their state school peers? I suspect not - the learning curves are not that steep - particularly where there is a good constructivist ethos to facilitate the process when the time is right...

'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
(Arthur C Clarke)

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced"
(Anonymous)

Sources:
http://www.papert.org/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~cumulus/index.html

Walking on fins (2006-06-21)

Where is truth? Where is beauty? Where is justice, compassion and mercy? All flesh is grass, here today and gone tomorow.

Distributed Learning (2006-06-20)

Distributed Learning, Distributed Education and Distributed Learning Environment appear to me to be about decentralising education and making more resources available in different medias so students can choose what suits them and access it at any time and at their own pace.

Web based resources - blogs, wikis, IM, newsgroups etc are ripe for use to provide potentially rich educational resources.

The DLE thing appears to me to be a collision between Vygotsky's ZPD and Gardner's multiple inteligences made possible by the net: By using colaborative tools students, tutors, mentors, experts and teachers are brought together enhancing the size of the 'zone' and the options for scaffolding. By using multimedia, content is made accessable to more of the intelligences. By using blogs and im learners interact and the social side of knowledge construction could be enhanced, along with the ownership of the process by the learners.

Concerns/potential criticisms:
Hopefully DLE is about widening the choices and styles available to students and not about saving dollars by not having to build physical educational facilities or employ more tutors. Clearly technology has made a lot of industries cheaper to run - online banking, call centres, just in time delivery, automatic warehousing - these all use distributed resources to save infrastructure and employment costs. The application of automation to the provision of student resources could be seen to be able to provide more value with less resources - a possibility that might dilute the ultimate quality of learning outcomes if it is taken to its extreme.


Sources:
http://techcollab.csumb.edu/techsheet2.1/distributed.html
http://erd.disted.camosun.bc.ca/de/

Constructivism (2006-06-19)

A beautiful mind map from someone at Bergen University in Norway which nicely sums up educational constructivism

Historical context of constructivism:

• Immanuel Kant 1724-1804
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who strongly influenced modern educational theory through his book Emile: Or, On Education
• John Dewey
• Jean Piaget
• Lev Vygotsky
  
• Jerome Bruner

Constructivism has grown out of or extended cognitive psychology and social psychology and is anti behaviorist psychology.

Its core idea is that knowledge and thinking are generated internally by each individual to give meaning to the world. One implication is that knowledge is not absolute truth that imposes itself onto the mind from outside, but rather that each individual has synthesised their own knowledge. Knowledge is therefore relative and falable (not always true). Post Modernism's rejection of absolute truth and its emphasis on meaning being dependent on the audience seems to me to be a variation on constructivism.

The implication for education is that the presentation of 'information' will be minimally effective unless the student finds it meaningful, works with it because they are interested, talks about it with their peers and is engaged by it.

Constructivism, arising out of coginitive and social psychology has two different flavours - the Piagetian/Bruner individual focussed, stage based flavour and the Vygotskian group based, social construction of reality flavour.

With its historical association with an assortment of (small l) liberals and Socialists, along with its anti Behaviourist bent, constructivism is more at home on the left side of politics than the right. It is about empowering individuals and groups to be creative and self determining. It is NOT about making carbon copy model citizens who obey authority without thought. It's bottom-up style has a grass roots feel that encourages individuality as oposed to the authoritarian top-down approach it contrasts itself with. It is not only descriptive about development, it also prescribes rich experiences, playfulness and an active mind as being healthy and a very good thing.

Some concerns:
A true constructivist pedagogy is scary in that it involves 'letting go' and trusting that the students will actually go somewhere 'useful' - even if it is not where the teacher would have intended. The size of the commitment to ensure the right scaffolding is in place seems large. The cost of having enough peers and mentors to make a decent ZPD also could be large. How does one measure or report on the progress of students? Does one need to? How does this clash with the expectations of parents?

My experience in the classroom and workshop is that even quite rich tasks which are exciting and engaging the majority of students still often leave a significant minority cold - They sit on the sidelines and fade into the background. The underlying reasons vary widely, but the question for me is finding the balance between accepting and allowing that some students may choose to do nothing and making some sort of attempt to coerce them to participate (which is slipping back into the top down mode?).


Sources:
http://www.uib.no/People/sinia/CSCL/web_struktur-836.htm
Wikipedia Constructivism
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/construct.html
List of constructivist sites here

Not The Task (2006-06-14)

This is not the task
a pdf
a doc
a spreadsheet

A sample mind map:

Initial research and links (2006-06-07)

Jean Piaget 1896-1980 Piaget suggests that our ability to think and the way we know stuff changes in very dramatic ways as we move from babyhood through to adulthood. The implication is that our education should be tailored to suit what our specific state of development requires. For example it is pointless to teach abstract concepts to a person who is only able to understand the world in a direct physical (concrete) way. Each stage of development enables the person to understand reality better, and movement from one stage to the next is percipitated by conflict between reality and the limitations of knowing at that stage. Full knowledge of reality is only possible at maturity with the development of the ability to think abstractly. Piaget's four stages of cognitive development are: 'sensorimotor' - infancy 0 to 2- feelings, movements 'pre operational' - todlerhood 2 to 7 - motor skills development 'concrete operational' - childhood 7 to 11 - logical thought about concrete world 'formal operational' - adolescence to adult 11 and up - abstract thought By emphasising the person developing their thought frameworks the theory is associated with 'constructivism' ie knowledge does not appear magically inside people's heads, but is constructed by process of experimentation and observation. So the role of the learner is emphasised and the role of the teacher is reduced. Piaget is criticised for being too individualist - for not considering the social context of learning. Vygotsky and others address this - see below. Piagets initial predictions about age ranges for each stage have been shown to vary widely for different populations and for different tasks, although there has been general agreement about the order of movement through the stages. The ultimate goal for Piagetians is to enhance the development and learning of the student by setting them developmentally appropriate tasks throughout their education so that they would better be able to move to creative and non-conformist maturity as an abstract thinker. Sources: Overview - Wikipedia Criticism at Flinders Uni

Lev Vygotsky 1896 - 1934 Vygotsky believes that cognition is hugely dependant on social interaction. In other words we cannot learn without people around us. Conversly the people and culture around us can set the boundaries of what we can learn. "Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals." (Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society p57). On ones own the options to learn are limited. In a situation where there are other people who are learning and other people who have knowledge then the scope for learning is increased greatly. This is Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) Significant adults that are part of the ZPD provide helpful supports ('scaffolds') for the learner. These take the form of compelling tasks, resources, templates and guides, and help with cognitive and social skills. As the learner becomes confident the 'scaffolding' is gradually removed and the learner is said to have closed the gap betweent their previous ability and their potential ability. Vygotsky also strongly emphasised the need for play as a vital part of cognitive development. Play is a means of putting social rules into practice - it provides a way for the imagination to move the player to the next level of development, allowing them to effectively set up their own ZPD. The implication for schools? Encourage play, provide a range of teachers / adults to increase the opportunites of students entering and concluding ZPDs by recieving sufficient scaffolding. Encourage teachers to include more tasks where students interact with each other and the teacher(s) to maximise the exposure to the social development of cognition. The ever refreshing Wikipedia http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Howard Gardner 1943 - Howard is justly famous for putting into words what most of us now accept as obvious - that traditional measures of intelligence or IQ reflect only a small part of a persons potential ability. The theory of multiple intelligences (MI) is that there are at least seven fairly distinct groupings of skills and tallents that can be called intelligences. The two most well known are related to the traditional 'g' or IQ - These are mathmatical/logical and linguistic/verbal intelligences. People with strengths in these areas tend to get high IQ scores, but this is a poor standard for human excellence. Stereotypically a genius is known for solving difficult logical problems, but is often unable to maintain a social network, has no ability to create artworks, is awkward and cannot hold a tune. To recognise that there is more to life than logic and words Gardner adds these other intelligences: Visual-spatial (artistic, understanding form and space), Body-Kinesthetic (dance/movement), Musical-Rhythmic (sound,beat,rhythm, tone), Interpersonal (relationships/emotion) and Intrapersonal (self reflection,spirituality), and recently, Naturalist (nature/organic systems aware). According to Gardner it is possible to have strengths in more than one area. The implication for education is that in any given student body there will be representatives of all the different types, each of which should have the opportunity to develop their speciality(s). Recognising and fostering the broader range of tallents should lead to greater numbers of students who feel there is a place for them and are encouraged to reach their full potential. In the world outside education many of these intelligences are highly prized. Good communicators are sought after for CEOs and leaders, great sports people and athletes are the pride of nations, musicians and artists are represented in the shrines of national culture and emotional well being is the holy grail of the masses. By balancing the curriculum with more tasks and activities for all the intelligences the drought experienced by many students could be broken. The problem is that this would mean changing the way students performance is measured and it would mean a lot more work for teachers when developing lessons. The upside should be happier, more fulfilled and energised students, which would make the crowd control aspect of teaching much less onerous. To me this is a reminder of the ideal of a 'well rounded' person - the 'Renaisance man' (or woman). The education of such a person would include access to dance, music, drama, self awareness, literature, logic, mathematics, building, and art. Here is an informal distribution of the inteligences based on data collected online by Mitest: Sources: Howard's personal web site is here Howard's FAQ Funderstanding company

Jerome Bruner 1915 - Knowledge and memory is constructed because it is significant or meaningful, not for its own sake Human development requires interaction of hands on experience ('enactive skills'), visual recognition and the means to compare things ('iconic skills') and the ability to think abstractly ('symbolic skills') . These 'modes' are similar to Piagets stages, but they are all available throughout development in varying degrees. Early childhood is dominated by the 'enactive' - learning how to move, middle childhood by the 'iconic' - and adolescence by the 'symbolic'. Development involves 'mastering' the dominant mode so that students are more able to switch between modes. Bruner believes that the best learning is when people discover things for themselves. The role of the teacher is to enable students to discover by engaging them in dialogue and directing them only when necessary. Learning tasks set by teachers should include activities from each of the three modes. So a good task should have an element of making or doing (enactive), it should involve describing or viewing related things (iconic), and it could have some discussion and analysis (symbolic). The amount and ratio of the three modes should be appropriate for the age of the students and their related 'dominant Sources: Student Assignment

The Task V3 & V1

Kathryn Cleary clarified the task further to this:

ED 4134

The Blogs you have been working on in ED4134 and will complete on the 24th of June with Allan need to contain the following items, in addition to your responses to the "exam" questions you have been given:

• A copy and paste from a word document that you have created, e.g. a critical reflection on 3 of the constructivists, formatted…..
• A mind map (using Inspiration or similar software); once again this will need to be copied and pasted from a word document. It may be used as part of an answer to one of the questions on the exam paper.
• Graphics, for example, charts, diagrams, pictures of constructivist theorists, Steiner...
• An excel graph or chart or spreadsheet e.g. if you were to include the grade book you designed in ED1113 you may like to talk about how excel can be applied as a cognitive tool, or whether you view traditional grade books as stark contrasts to the views of Gardner who recognises 9 intelligences, or the theories of Steiner.
  

Blogger does not support uploading files such as PowerPoint and Photo Story and the option we were originally looking at to include these media in your Blogs is not viable. The outcome of this is that you don’t need to have PowerPoint or Photo Story in your Blog.

In essence, your Blog needs to communicate what you have / are learning, not just information you are gathering. Through the Blog you are constructing your knowledge as a teacher and reflecting on how ICLT's (information communication learning technologies can help you do this).

Enjoy blogging!

But the original task was this:

To prepare a Blog that is yours that has on it your learnings today about the use of ICT in learning

The Blog could have three components:

1. A discussion, reflection on the relevance of the Constructivist approach to education. Mention as a minimum

* Piaget
* Vygotsky
* Brunner
* Gardner

2. The nature of a Distributed Learning Environment and the possibility of deeper, higher order learning

* Action research
* Distributed Learning Environment

3. The eclectic nature of the construction of a piece of work. The gathering of existing ideas and the application of reflection

* Descriptive
* Self
* Critical

to the information to inform it with your own deeper learnings, images and reflections and so create something new

A.J. Coman 27-5-06