Technology aiding Constructivism

The 2010 Horizon Report: K-12 Edition touches on something that looks set to profoundly affect education: collaboration.

This annual series of reports focuses on emerging technology use in primary and secondary education. As the report’s authors gaze into their crystal ball, they see Collaborative Environments entering schools in the coming year and Game-based learning appearing in the next two-three years.

On Collaborative Environments, the report states:“Whatever tools are chosen, collaborative environments give students tremendous opportunities to interact with peers and mentors, experience other worldviews, and model the kinds of work patterns that take place in an increasing number of professions.”

And for Game-based learning it says: “The greatest potential of games for learning lies in their ability to foster collaboration and engage students deeply in the process of learning.”

From my observations, I have seen how excitedly students react to game playing against one another. Mathletics is a case in point. They are engaged, they are involved. The best bit -- this is just the beginning.

And on an infrastructure level, the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network will provide an excellent platform in ensuring this seamlessly takes place. Speed and capacity will be the key. From what I see in my school and what is generally the case in Australia, slow Internet connections are impeding the take-up of next-generation technologies and applications. It’s important that when this network is built our schools are ready to capitalise on these emerging technologies.

For me, if Constructivism is based on a much greater emphasis of peer learning, this augers well for the future as this approach to learning will only be further aided by over-the-horizon technology.

Understanding your students

I first watched To Be And to Have (Être et avoir), a documentary of a one-room school in the French countryside, six years ago -- well before I had any aspirations to teach primary children. But at the time, what struck me about this teacher (Georges Lopez) was the sense of pride he had in his work. And also his immense understanding of each child's circumstance outside the classroom, together with incredible amounts of compassion and patience inside it.

I am not sure whether you can teach teachers to develop these personal qualities as exhibited by Mr Lopez but I believe they carry some weight in being an effective teacher. A teacher that cares compared to one who does not, about his children's welfare and learning will most likely yield better results (academic and disciplinary) from their students.

But I guess what this documentary pointed out was how different every child's home life was. And how that impacts on students when they come to learn. An astute teacher should know about these as it helps them better teach said child. This documentary was circling through my mind when I was reading the chapter Discipline Problems and their Causes in Clifford Edwards and Vivienne Watts' book Classroom Discipline & Management: An Australasian Perspective.

In To Be And To Have, Geroges Lopez intimately knew the children and their families. One child would work long hours on his parent's dairy farm. This could also lead to discipline problems and mere concentration issues because the child was up at the crack of dawn feeding the cows. Understanding your children and their circumstance in the home can arm teachers with better strategies to teach students when they turn up to school.

In my Year 5 class, one of my students has an unwillingness to learn and is a constant source of distraction to students because of his lack of concentration. The most likely reason is that he tragically lost his father several years ago.

Roslin Brennan Kemmis and Erica Smith’s article about Classroom Behaviour and Management for TAFE teachers provides a nice summary of this issue and the points raised by Edwards & Watts. According to them: "The decisions about discipline, a code of behaviour that you expect your students to follow and the ways in which you deal with unacceptable behaviours is very much a personal decision."

I look forward to this teaching and disciplinary challenge that I face in a few weeks’ time. I just hope the decisions I make are the right and most effective ones.

A trailer for the movie Être et avoir. Mr Lopez's temperament as an understanding and warm-hearted teacher really comes through. And so too his effectiveness as a teacher.

Focus on content, not technology

My past as a technology journalist equips with me a sound understanding of the importance of technology and why it is very useful in today’s society. Our lives have changed irrevocably because of it. But technology for the sake of technology concerns me.

For Science, my Stage 3 class had to research an animal and provide a PowerPoint presentation on its unique features, appearance, habitat and other qualities to class. The problem, I found, was two-fold: 1) Poor researching skills on the Internet. Many just copied info verbatim from any site offering info on their chosen animal rather than using discretion. 2) Many spent more time jazzing up their PowerPoint – or problem solving PowerPoint errors, than on the actual content.

The idea of the teacher was great. Students research a topic. Dump it into a PowerPoint file replete with relevant facts and images, and then provide the class with an engaging presentation using the IWB. The execution, however, needs refining.

Our Effective Teaching lecture in Week 3 provided some interesting notes. Two that stood out for me was ‘Teaching with technology NOT teaching about technology’, thus focussing more on the content; and if you teach a subject based around an Internet search, you need good pedagogical knowledge and good content knowledge.

Our week’s reading also provided an interesting point from the authors Finger, G. Russel, G. Jamieson-Proctor, R & Russell, N in their book Transforming learning with ICT: Making IT happen. One page 12 of their book they write: “lCT provides very powerful productivity tools. As Jonassen points out, word processing allows us to become efficient, effective and productive writers through 'the ease of editing'”

And it was the ease of over editing that concerned me. Too many kids fussing over the appearance of their text and not the content. Secondly, there probably could have been more open ended questions from the teacher so they were forced to focus on multiple sources in their research. There is no reason why students don’t learn good web searching techniques at this age.

In any event, it was not all that bad. The positive was the students really enjoyed the technical aspect of their presentations. I noticed a lot helping others in solving PowerPoint problems or adding features to their presentations. The downside was many hours were spent (wasted?) on the slides and the actual quality of the content was lacking. Perhaps higher cognitive questions and better instructions on how to search for content on the Internet would have yielded more informative presentations.

Image: Stage 3 student using IWB to present his Science project to classmates

Appraising praise

I am finding the issue of praise very difficult to deal with. Frankly, I have no idea when to praise the kids or not. This has mainly come about from the research undertaken by Dinkmeyer, McKay and Dinkmeyer who suggest praise can be discouraging, arguing it sends the subtle message “You’re worthwhile only when you do things well.” (Robert Tauber provides a good table of 'Praise versus encouragement' on page 160 of his book Classroom management: sound theory and effective practice).

Praise, however warm, places a value judgement on the student as a person, they argue. In response, they believe we should be heaping encouragement on students as it focuses on the strengths of their work, allowing them to feel confident about their own abilities.

Fair enough. But how does that pan out in the real world? How does one articulate encouraging words compared to praiseworthy comments? I need examples!

I bring this up because on Wednesday I came across what I would call a praiseworthy moment. My students had a library lesson so I was sitting in the author's chair in the front of the class having a general discussion with my supervising teacher when the teacher next door, excited, brought in several of her students who had just composed a rap to some paragraphs they had written in the day’s English lesson. She was keen for us to hear their rap and beat boxing to the words they had composed (see image). And it was great. For many reasons: Students proud of their achievements. Students willing to share something openly (normally they are hiding behind their chairs at the thought of presenting to teachers). And students being artistic. What was I to do in this instance? Merely encourage? "Um boys you could do with a slower rhyme... more bass...." Well, I praised them for their quick thinking and originality. Why wouldn’t I? It is hard enough to get Stage 3 boys to like English at the best of times. But despite that, I somehow felt I had done something wrong if Messers Dinkmeyer et al were sitting in the room, watching.

I shall explore this further during my practicum. But it is certainly something that hangs over my head. And something I hope to get better guidance on from fellow teachers and academic staff.

Slow and steady wins the race

Asking questions is crucial in effective teaching.

In the past two weeks of the class presentations for the second part of the Part A Effective Teaching assignment, I have noticed us aspiring teachers immediately take the response from the first person (in this case our peers who we are presenting to) to stick their hand up. Most of the time said peers just shout out the answer – bypassing the courtesy of raising their hands.

However, it is such a different situation in my Year 5 class. My teacher has 20 years of experience and when he engages the class in questions his approach is much, much more relaxed. The first thing I notice is he doesn’t immediately take the first hand that shoots up. He waits. Then he picks out a student. It is something which Barry & King make reference to in the chapter ‘Developing instructional skills’ in their book Beginning Teaching and Beyond. For them, the pause is an important strategy and it is remarkable how well it works in controlling the class in my school. When they know the teacher is not going to rush, they quietly, though eagerly, sit in their chairs hoping he selects them. And when their response is wrong, the teacher nicely builds on, or as Barry & King term it, ‘develop’ the answer with things like ‘oh you’re warm’ or ‘yes, that could be true but it is not exactly what I am after’ and then moving on to the next student/s to come to the answer he is after. Before long we have an answer.

When it comes to questioning, so far I am getting the impression that slow and steady wins the race.

Getting stuck with lower level questions

Barry and King's chapter on Questioning and Responding from their book Beginning Teaching and Beyond, found in Week Six's reading was interesting. Their points made perfect sense to me. I was all ready to apply their techniques in the classroom today. There was a snag. I think this applies to teaching in general -- you cant ask engaging or higher level questions when you do not know your topic. Be prepared!

In today's prac my teacher was absent and had left a very brief lesson plan for the relief teachers. I too was thrown into the mix in the second period, asked to look after the students' English class when the relief teacher didn't turn up (eventually she did). The boys were up to the last chapters of their novel and we did a shared reading of two of them. Before we started reading, I asked them to tell me about the story so I had an idea what it was about. It acted as a refresher for both me and the students. I then asked a student to start the reading and kept calling on new readers after two or three pars were read. After each chapter I asked them to recite the story we had just heard as a way to test they were listening. Thankfully hands shot up with many eager to offer their answers. The boys were paying attention, comprehending. Based on what I had read in the two chapters I quizzed them on what we had read.

But I felt my questions were at the fact (lower) level. There was something ungratifying in asking them but I had no choice given the unfamiliarity of the topic. It certainly got me out of a pickle, but when I return to teach English for the 3 week block in June I hope to have at least read the novel so, armed with a prepared plan and total knowledge of a subject area, I can develop more cognitive based questions -- not just for the kids but for my own sake. Then it will be far more interesting and rewarding. Well, that's my thinking. I'll see whether proves to be the case in due course.

D for disruption

I am really getting to see first hand what disruptions are like. Simply put, they are a destroyer of lesson continuity. I was forewarned by my teacher last week that they are a constant at the school I am observing at. In other words these disruptions are sanctioned by the school -- they are foreseen. And yesterday he told me that it would be a particularly disruptive day (there was a special music lesson for the musos, a test for the kids with special English needs etc).

Because the students are at various levels of ability, the students that start the day in the home room are not the same ones that remain throughout the day. For Maths and English the students are separated based on ability. That involves students moving between rooms so the teacher must wait for everyone to be present before teaching.

Then there are only four PCs in each room, so students from other rooms knock on the door of our room asking the teacher permission to enter to use the PCs to do some English or Maths test online, or simply to type out an assignment or prepare a PowerPoint presso. Then there is Special Ed. Yesterday, the Special Ed kids were doing some small assessment, which happened to be during the period assigned for RE. So during his RE class the teacher would get a knock on the door from a messenger asking for students in ‘Group 1’ to go and see Miss X upstairs. So 10 students get up and leave the room. They come back 15 minutes later and 10 more leave. So what the kids are working on is put on hold or if any of those kids happen to be working in groups at the time, which they were, the group dynamic – especially if the group was a pair, which it was, – is affected (and Whitton et al in Learning For Teaching: Teaching For Learning demonstrate why group work is so important).

Ultimately, what is being disruptive is also meant to assist the students. It is a tough situation. But you have to ask yourself, just who wins?