Well, our session with the SFU librarian was very helpful in learning how to use ERIC, the library search engine, and I did find a few sources to back up my Field Study idea, “Will making my classes student centered lead to increased student motivation”. However, to be frank, I was just as successful in using those same techniques, ie; advanced search options, ‘find sources with these words/ without these words’, etc. with a Google search, but at least I had another search engine to access.

As for the sources I found, I was able to find plenty of research enthusiastically proclaiming that student directed learning was by far the ideal way to go. No problem there. The absolute best way to learn is to choose a subject of you own passion, research it in your own way, and create a project on it at your own pace and schedule. This works really well in an open-ended university course (did anyone say, ‘TLITE’?), but it is not nearly as obvious to make this work with grade school students, where the curriculum and learning time and place are set.

I was also able to find plenty of research about student motivation. Some of these talked about great ideas on how to motivate students (the teacher must really care, be enthusiastic, knowledgeable, use key visuals, manipulatives, projects, make it real for the kids, and so on). Other sources talked about what makes the best students (motivated, mature, passionate about the subject, driven, etc.). But it was much more difficult to find any sources which gave research studies on whether or not making grade school classrooms more student centered could increase student motivation.

It would seem likely that it would indeed work. Intuitively it makes logical sense. I’m guessing though that there is a dearth of hard evidence showing this, simply because of the above; that given the lack of complete choice in grade school curriculum, and in the learning setting, then it’s hard to make the classroom truly student centered.

I do have some sources which show indicators, tendencies and so on, so I think I will be able to cite credible sources backing up my field study, but it won’t be a solid case. I suppose that if it were that obvious to motivated teenagers, someone would have started doing it ages ago, no?

Wow! To be honest, I didn’t really see the value in re-doing my autobiography. Didn’t I just do this last year?? How much could I really have changed in 12 short months? Aren’t I fundamentally the same person? I did just think that this was simply another writing assignment that TLITE needs us to do in order to evaluate us and to say that they’re getting us to write some papers. Rubber stamp, bang, you’ve done another paper. Well done. On to the next one.

WELL!! I just re-read my autobiography from last year, and let me tell you that a lot has changed.

Actually, I really wasn’t in a very good head space at the beginning of last year. I had just wrapped up a school year with a difficult class. The atmosphere was poisonous with that one group of students and it was weighing on me pretty hard. I felt like I had failed in the one most important area for a teacher; to maintain an overall good rapport with my students and to let them know that I was on their side. I didn’t blame them, kids are kids after all, but I really didn’t like them very much and I dreaded every H block. I said to myself that I’d been teaching for 15 years, pretty much the same way, and that by now I must know what I’m doing, that if a teaching formula had worked for that long, it must be pretty ok, so if one class was in rebellion, then it must in some way be their fault. That is to say, not really their fault individually, but the fault of this generation of students. I’d been reading articles talking about “the Millennial’s”, an uber-generation of students who’d been spoon fed high self-esteem, who believed that they deserved high praise and reward no matter what they produced, who continued in this vein of high expectations in university and even in the working world, being demanding of their university profs and of their bosses, whom psychologists described as “narcissistic and with an enormous sense of entitlement”. What could be done with such a generation??

Well, I’ve always said that it’s never the students’ fault, that teenagers are what they are and are sometimes difficult to teach, but here I was kind of blaming them for being who they were. I still really don’t think that we’re doing them a service to raise an entire generation to have that kind of sense of entitlement, but still, it’s this generation that we have to teach. They are our clients in a way, and it’s no good trying to swim against the current. I knew all of this last year, but I didn’t know what to do about it.

I registered for TLITE because I really wanted to enter the 21st century, that is, to learn much more about info tech than I knew. TLITE seemed ideal to me. I could learn a bunch of things that I wanted to learn anyway, it would give me the impetus to learn things I wouldn’t get around to without it, plus I would get university credit for it, plus I’d get a pay raise. What was not to like??

What I didn’t know was that TLITE would solve many of the difficulties I was having with my Millennial students. Don’t get me wrong. TLITE is not snake oil and doesn’t cure ‘everything what ails ya’, but it did serve to make my classes more student-centered, it gave my students a cool springboard to do their projects with, and it gave them what they want; the chance to just go ahead and do it on their own. A colleague of mine won a ‘Teacher of the Year’ award this past year. The teacher is nominated by their own students, and he was teaching the same group of students I was teaching last year. In the staff room, he complained about them as much as anyone did, but he had found a way of working with them. Of his own volition, he was doing TLITE-type projects with his classes (actually, I told him that he’d make a great TLITE candidate and now he’s going to apply for it next year). This year, I was much more engaged myself during my classes because I was learning a lot of things that I was fired up to learn anyway, but my students benefited enormously as well. My strong students stayed strong students (don’t they always? no matter what?), but many of my weaker students found a real role for themselves in the tech projects, and a couple of them really struggle with French, but are absolutely astounding in their tech ability, so they were suddenly in the driver’s seat of their group. It was great to see.

After re-reading my autobiography from last year, I realize that I had a much more successful teaching year and that it is largely due to this program we’re doing. Thank you, TLITE.

(Subtitle: A rather obvious, but accurate, description of this assignment.)

Well, as I look back over the past year, I remember coming into the summer session as a totally new, first year TLITEr. I was a bit in awe of the second year TLITErs, seeing them as Info Tech pros, and felt excited, but somewhat daunted. I recall asking some of them for advice and their thoughts about the program. Julia had assured us that the goal of the program was simply to show progress, to learn ourselves and to get our students to learn, but still I was worried that, being a bit of a Luddite, that I’d be in over my head.

Now, here we are a year later (and what a fast year it was), and I’m a bit surprised to find myself in a second year TLITEr’s shoes already. I wish that there was a new intake of first year TLITErs so that I could see their reactions and see the same growth that I’ve been experiencing. I felt quite grateful to the second year TLITErs who reassured me and helped guide me along, and I wish that I could return the favour and try to be helpful to a new intake of students.

I vividly recall that first summer institute. Everyday was a kind of waterfall of new terminology and names of software programs for both Macs and PC’s. I recall feelig overwhelmed but excited about everything: Flash, Dreamweaver, HTML, Audacity, del.icio.us, Garageband, iPhoto, Photostory3, ComicLife, MovieMaker, Gestures, Google Earth, Pod casts, MS Publisher, Web Quest, Inspiration, Wikis…Most all of these were new terms to me at the time, some of them I still have no idea about, but some others I have used myself in my first year of TLITE. I would like to suggest for future TLITE intakes that someone start a Wiki to give a brief explanation of all those programs. It really would help to reduce the feeling of being drowned in a sea of new terminology to know that there was a site that one could go to to look up just what this new thing does and if it applies to oneself.

OK then, to answer the questions:

a/ How am I as an “exemplary tech user”? Well, I AM an exemplary tech user in the classroom this year since I was doing tech projects with my students and showing them how to use the new software. Even though there were a number of my students who knew it much better than me, there were others who thought that HTML was short for ‘hotmail’. So in that sense, I was at least in the role of an “exemplary user”. Even in my private life, I am making inroads into the world of info tech. I prepared a MovieMaker show for my parents’ 50th anniversary this year, and re-touched some of the old, damaged photos using Photoshop. I never would have ventured into such a project pre-TLITE and now my family members see me as a tech guy. I still don’t see myself very high on the scale, but I AM on the scale now.

b/ How would I define “exemplary tech user”? Well, “exemplary” means “worthy of imitation”, or “commendable”. So again, in the sense that I was the one showing my students how to use new programs and in the sense that I made the digital photo album for my parents’ anniversary (and in the sense that my projects worked out well and that the digital photo album was a success), then I am in the role of an exemplary user of tech. I would define it as someone who uses technology as a role model for others, someone who can use it competently and inspire others to do the same.

c/ What are my visions as an “exemplary tech user”? Well, I am inspired to do more now that I’ve made some inroads into the world of technology. I feel like I’ve only just gotten my feet wet in the ocean and I’d like to continue on the path I’ve started on. I gave my students project ideas and I was in turn inspired by their work this year. I’d like to become much better at Photoshop and improve on the project we did in class this past year. I’d like to get to the point where I can casually and knowledgeably talk about all of the above-named programs. I’d like to become as good as my parents think I am with technology.

d/ What are my student-centered and student-directed curricula? Well, it was a pleasant shock for me this year to see some of my less-successful students take on a leadership role in the tech projects we did. It really was a turning point for some of them. And it was a bit of a revelation for me to see that all I had to do was present the project idea and to see the groups get inspired and come up with some novel ideas and great work. I was so used to having to battle to get some of them to “listen” and “get on with their work”. Really it was infinitely easier for me (and for them), just to let them take over their own learning and do a project, especially a project with the cachet of tech. It’s really making me re-think my teaching. Why on Earth would I want to continue butting heads with my students to get them to settle down, to listen to me, and to do their seat work, when they’re actually quite good at taking over their learning. All I have to do is to set up future projects in such a way that they cover the same areas of French grammar and vocabulary that I would be covering in a conventional lesson. My students will be happier, they’ll learn more (and I’ll live longer).

Nb: See also my previous blog entry, Review of an Ed Tech article, The Role of Tech in Quality Education(1). That article was a research paper about online learning. It was not intended to be persuasive one way or the other, but in my review of it, I came down on the side of caution, suggesting that we were going into online learning ‘full steam ahead’ without doing the due diligence that the article said was being done elsewhere, and that we would do well to implement some of those criteria for success before going ahead with online learning in BC.

Here is my review of another article,

Online High School Advantages and Disadvantages

http://diplomaguide.com/articles/Online_High_School_Advantages_and_Disadvantages.html.(2)

This one gives the pros and cons of online learning. Naturally, there are clear positives:

1/”The main advantage of an online high school is being able to work at your own pace. You determine when, and even where, you study (sic) your assignments.”

2/ Another advantage is the absence of the “distraction factor. You don’t have to worry about the cliques, the parties, apathetic peers, etc. When you decide to study, your complete focus is on the books… In this way you could look at your pursuit of an online degree as an opportunity to develop your identity apart from the social and peer group pressures of traditional schools.”

3/ The article also suggests that online students would be able “to focus your degree in your online high school by learning subjects of particular interest to you.” and that from having done independent study and research, they “will have the skills of a college freshman.”

I added the italics in #2 above, “When you decide to study, your complete focus is on the books“, since I thought it was relevant. That is, I see this as being the main disadvantage of online learning. Most people are procrastinators by nature, and teenagers are typically fine examples of this all-too-human trait. My guess is that a significant percentage of students will sign up for online learning because of the above mentioned advantages, that they will have a difficult time with the “when you decide to study part” and will struggle with their coursework.

Let’s see what the article had to say about learning online disadvantages:

1/ “most online programs don’t have all of the fun elements of high schools: prom, senior day, graduation, etc.”

2/ “isolation. Some online students may develop anti-social feelings.”

3/ The above-mentioned procrastination factor, ie, ” a challenge to focus on completing work when no an actual teacher is present to encourage them on a daily basis.

4/ The possible lack of a reliable resource person, “teachers … are also the ones you should go to if you have problems with your assignments. … Some subjects, such as English and math, may be hard to comprehend without a teacher present.”

This article does not mention other potential pitfalls of online learning (OL):

*That an institution may simply be jumping on the OL bandwagon, seeing it as an inexpensive way to offer courses without providing classrooms, but without also providing a carefully modified program, tailored to smoothly transition from a class course to an OL course.

*That there is an enormous amount of socialization that occurs in school classrooms; from learning to deal with bullies, how not to become a bully oneself, how to get along in cooperative groups, how to be a good team member, learning how to develop leadership skills, how to delegate responsibilities, how to manage team members, and I’m pretty sure there are a lot more that I’m not thinking of here.

*That one of the main things that OL could do to address concerns about a lack of varied input, would be to have multimedia available, ie, lots of graphics, video, sound, etc. to avoid having the student simply reading pages of text. BUT, internet browsers typically have limited formatting of content so, “if your content relies on a lot of media “bells and whistles,” or particular formatting, the Net might not be the best delivery medium. Limited bandwidth means slower performance for sound, video, and large graphics” (from the article,

Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Learning

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/210058/36)(3).

So, my fear is that we’re going ahead with OL, without having looked into potential pitfalls, that it will cause considerable upheaval in schools (declining enrollment, loss of teaching staff, loss of courses available), and that a significant percentage of the students who sign up for it will not experience success. So we’ll have had this huge and detrimental effect on schools, all for naught.

Sources
1.Garson, G. David, The Role of Tech in Quality Education, http://www.comminit.com/en/node/210058/36
2. Online High School Advantages and Disadvantages,
http://diplomaguide.com/articles/Online_High_School_Advantages_and_Disadvantages.html
3. James, Gary, Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Learning,
http://www.comminit.com/en/node/210058/36

My wide topic is, “How to motivate and encourage academically-challenged students?”

It’s heart-breaking for all teachers to see students slipping through the proverbial cracks in our classroom floors, especially when, for one, it’s our job to help them and, for two, you know you COULD help them if only you didn’t have so much else on the go (25 other students in the room, teams to coach, meetings to attend, other classes to prepare for, and so on, and so on…). Wouldn’t you sometimes just love to be able to be a one-on-one tutor and help a struggling kid find success??

SO, I’d love to find a way to be able to keep teaching the other 90% of students in my room, as well as finding a way of keeping on board the 10% of students who really struggle.

My sub-topic is, “Can the use of education technology help academically-challenged students, boys in particular, find better success?” My rationale for this is that:

*Boys have been in an academic slide for the past 15 years or so. There is much research showing that boys generally now have lower marks than girls in every area of grade school, and in post-secondary education as well, in every area of study, (except engineering and physics).

*Boys also fail more, drop out of school more, get disciplined more, and have more behavioral and emotional disorders than girls.

*In the 1970′s, it was found that girls were behind in Math and Science, and that boys were behind in Literacy. Since then, we in Education have addressed quite well the disparity between boys and girls in Math and Science; there are summer camps for girls in both areas, there are scholarships and contests for girls in Math, Science, and Literacy too. This is compelling evidence that encouragement and support actually do work for students. We should be proud of our success with helping girls and we should continue this help.

*But there is very little help out there for boys apart from Special Education classes. Increasingly, it looks like it is boys who need our encouragement and support.

On the bright side, it is a truism that boys are often drawn to information-technology. It is one of the few areas of school that is cool (let’s put the ‘geek factor’ aside for a moment) and masculine. Let’s face it, being really good at math or history or English, or French isn’t going to get a boy any points from the cool, tough crowd, but being able to take a computer apart and re-build a ‘Franken-computer’ is deserving of respect, from anyone.

It is also a truism that girls are computer-phobic, (or at least ‘computer-reticent’, according to Sherry Turkle, co-chair of the AAUW’s Commission on “Tech, Gender, and Teacher Education). Girls have been enjoying quite good academic success in the past couple of decades, but if it is true that they are not drawn to info tech, is there a danger that increased use of info tech in the classroom could hinder their success?

SO, my field study idea is two-fold:

1/ Will the use of info-tech in the classroom help to motivate and encourage at least some chronically academically-challenged boys?

2/ Could the use of info-tech in the classroom actually hinder girls’ success?

I’ve looked at some articles to see if I can find any solidly-based research supporting my idea. One of them in particular shed some interesting light on the subject. Transition Points for the Gender Gap in Computer Enjoyment, by Christensen et al, was accurately titled in that they did indeed find that there were transition points in the self-reported enjoyment of computers between boys and girls in different grades. A summary:

*Interestingly, at the primary level there was no significant difference in ‘computer enjoyment’ between boys and girls.

*By grade five girls enjoyed computers more.

*There was then a transition in grade six.

*And by grade eight boys reported enjoying computers more and this general affinity for computers carried on through high school

*(However, by grade 11 girls were more adept than were boys at surfing the www and at using email).

Another article, Do girls and boys need different electronic books? by J. Mikk and P. Luik, concluded that the use of ‘e-books’ did not “disturb the learning” of boys, but that e-books with a high degree of complexity of navigation and design of information did “endanger the learning efficiency of girls.”

Hmmm, interesting, no?

So I did find some research supporting my two-fold idea. To fine-tune my field study, I have to narrow the focus and find a way to measure my own students. How can I frame the question to allow students to respond to the concepts of “academically-challenged”? and “is info tech helping you?”

I found a most academic article about online learning. The focus was on higher education, but the issues it raised are relevant to elementary and high schools. The article is:

The Role of Technology in Quality Education

http://hcl.chass.ncsu.edu/sscore/garson2.htm

It was written by a guy, G. David Garson, from North Carolina State U. He doesn’t’ mention if he’s a prof, so I assume he’s a grad student. It’s not an opinion piece, more of a review of the relevant research out there on tech’s impact on the quality of education. It seems to have been written about ten years ago, since all of the (full page !) of academic references/sources are from the late 90′s. So it’s dated a bit, but is very well researched and presented.

He’s concerned about the “the recent, rapid, unregulated growth of distance education”,

and about the possibility that,

“diploma mills” are a danger. Even accredited programs from recognized institutions of higher learning may have been thrown together as experiments or simply in quick response to administrative fiat.”

and that,

“The American Federation of Teachers and other faculty organizations have also raised serious cautions about web-based education (Mingle and Gold, 1996) and have even gone on strike over it.”

He writes that in response to criticism, some higher ed institutions have come up with quite long lists of criteria for success, including,

“ *Accepted students have the background, knowledge, and technical skills needed to undertake the program.”

“* The institution evaluates the program’s educational effectiveness, including assessments of student learning outcomes, student retention, and student and faculty satisfaction. Students have access to such program evaluation data.”

It seems to me that high schools in the lower mainland could do well to heed some of these concerns.

BC secondary students can now:

-register for online courses at will (previously, permission was needed)

-re-take them as many times as necessary

-be taking online courses and regular courses concurrently

-be taking courses online without the school’s knowledge

-be taking online courses and will still want to access materials and help from teachers at their regular school, while that online course may well be hurting that school’s enrollment and staffing. In other words, teachers may be encouraging the very process that may be hurting their school.

My fear is that:

-students will sign up for distance ed, some will procrastinate and fail, school classrooms will face declining enrollment, junior teachers will lose their positions because of that decline, the students will not experience the success they hope for, and that the whole thing will not succeed as expected.

In fact, it seems that we’re going ahead somewhat willy-nilly with online learning, without having foreseen potential pitfalls. The woman who presented the new policies regarding distance ed for the VSB, when asked about the possibility of cheating on assignments (ie, How do you know who’s really turning in an essay or project when it’s done online?), her response was, “Well, cheating has always been with us”.

That was no answer at all.

I would like to see that the success rate of an open-door policy on online learning for high school students had been researched adequately (or how about ‘exhaustively’?), that we’d all have excellent reason to expect that it would succeed well,… before committing ourselves to it the way we have.

For example, in the UK, the Open Learning Institute did, in fact, study the effectiveness of online learning and they,

“concluded that three factors combine to maintain quality and integrity of Open Learning courses: (1) common, structured course materials; (2) open assessment using a competency-based methodology; and (3) an extensive support and monitoring network.”.

It doesn’t seem that we in BC are being as diligent and they were in the UK.

The article goes on to review the “Borkian Vision of the Future of Education”, where he speculates, among other things,

-Education will become highly interactive, engaging the student every 20 seconds or so for a response, much in contrast to present-day passive lecture methods.

-Education will become highly computer-mediated, replacing (not supplementing, which would be an added cost) the lecture method in courses for 15 or more students.

-Distance education will begin to displace campus-based education because the high costs of an interactive computer-mediated course can be justified only through their use by a large number of students than only distance education can provide.

Hmmmm, if he’s right, schools will be VERY different places in the near future, at least, as an experiement.

The article goes on to remind us that, “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it”, and he discusses the limited success of PLATO, an expensive experiment in ‘programmed learning of the 60′s and 70′s which had many of the same characteristics of Bork’s vision of future learning (ie, interactivity, individualization, and computer mediation)

Boys’ marks in school have been in a pretty serious slide in the last 15 years or so all through the western world. Nowadays, girls succeed better than boys in every area of pre- and post- secondary school, except physics and engineering. There are more women, with higher marks all through university, approximately 60% women-40% men, depending on the exact area.

However, boys seem to have a natural inclination towards info tech. Fairly often, you have some pretty seriously academically challenged boys, who are bored in school and chronically unmotivated in the classroom, but who are quite adept at info tech.

My idea for a field study is:

To what extent does info tech in the classroom improve academically-challenged students’ success?

Today I’m presenting a comparison between Camtasia and JIng screen capture software. I researched Camtasia by looking at an article published online on Digital Inspiration, a tech site with thousands of articles on info tech issues. I downloaded Jing, since it’s free, whereas Camtasia is $300 (!)