H Duderstadt, New Tech Maven

In my personal opinion there’s been far too much focus on the problems with our education system.  With a particular emphasis on rooting out BAD teachers (and killing off the unions that protect them), school “reformers” proclaim that they can fix what ails our current school system by getting rid of all those lazy, awful teachers.  Out with the bad…and viola.  We’ll rise back to the top of list when it comes to quality education systems.

Of course, if you want to take the approach of trying to find out what’s BAD in the American education system, you can’t stop with just teachers.  What about the BAD parents who don’t take the time to support their kids and make sure they are doing their homework?  Or, BAD school administrators who would rather protect their own jobs than support their schools and teachers.  Or, BAD kids that refuse to learn and show no respect for teachers no matter how hard they try.  Or, BAD politicians who make great promises when running for office and proclaim themselves the “Education Candidate” but are the first to vote to cut school funding when the budget gets tight.  Or, BAD voters who refuse to support any school bond issue because THEY shouldn’t have to spend their hard earned money to help somebody else’s brat. Or BAD media companies that could create exciting, engaging programming (that would earn the ratings) that could also educate.   The list goes on and on.  In fact, if you really want to know who is to blame for our bad school system…GO LOOK IN THE MIRROR.  We are ALL to blame.

But, what does finding somebody to blame do to really help find a solution to the problems we face?   Americans have a nasty habit of disregarding warnings, waiting until something goes wrong, and then looking for some hapless soul to point at and say…”yes, they are the reason things are so screwed up”.

I sincerely believe the solution to our education dilemma is to focus on SOLUTIONS and not problems.  There are teachers who are doing a great job.  And parents who support their kids, and wonderful pupils who not only do their work, but help others.  And politicians, school administrators, media companies, voters and on and on that are doing wonderful things.  Maybe, instead of taking a punitive approach, we pay those teachers who have figured out how to do it better, to help develop programs to help other teachers do the same thing.  Or, get those parents involved with the PTA, or give those kids encouragement to become teachers.  By focusing on rooting out the GOOD and then applying it into schools and the world kids grow up in, I feel we’d make much more headway than this fascination with finding somebody to blame.

Have you ever wondered about the way you learn things.  When I was studying education for my MS, I was introduced to amazing test called the VARK test.  It’s a series of multiple choice questions like:

Kids in school love to complain about how boring so many subjects they have to study are.  “Why do I have to learn Trigonometry anyway???  It’s so BOOOORING!”   Or, “our physics teacher was going on and on about gravity and I just don’t get it.”

Yet, ask them about the latest video game they are playing and their whole mood will change as they start going on and on about how many zombies they were able to kill in Left 4 Dead, or how they built this amazing house in Sims 3 and wished they could really live there.   The two might appear to have nothing in common but you’d be suprised.

Take a look at the typical video game boys in particular like to play and you’ll find a real world complete with many of the same  properties a real world has, INCLUDING GRAVITY.  In fact, there is a game known as Garry’s Mod which is called a “physics sandbox”.  It’s basically an environment where the laws of physic exist and you can create things that are influence by this.  A walking house; a tank you can drive around, an whole army that you can control, even electrical circuits that control specific machines.  Imagine a virtual place where children can build anything they can imagine and then operate it as if it’s in the real world.  The potential of this program in an educational environment is immense.

The possibilities go on and on.  If this is something that excites you, the best place to start is read James Paul Gee’s work “What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Second Edition: Revised and Updated Edition“

I’ve been reading a fascinating book, “Teaching for Tomorrow, Teaching Content and Problem Solving Skills” by Ted McCain.   It’s interesting because it focuses on several of the most powerful teaching methods currently starting to see more use.  Namely teaching through a combination of Problems and Projects.  Project based learning is already seeing real growth Instead of using the traditional lecture followed by review followed by test based on the lecture & reading content, in a Problem based environment the students are FIRST given a problem that they must solve.  Then, during the process of solving the problem the instructor RESISTS the urge to help and forces the students to do the research and find the solutions themselves.    An example of using such an approach to teach chemistry would be to tell students they work for the epa and must investigate large fish kills in a river downstream from an abandoned factory.  You explain that tests of water samples have shown large amounts of phenol chloride in the water.  You must determine just what phenol chloride is, why it might kill the fish, where it came from and how you might deal with the problem.   This approach to teaching has shown tremendous benefits, particularly in helping to develop the kind of problem solving skills that children will be able to use their entire lives.

Another popular technique that is often paired with problem based learning is PROJECT based learning.  This is pretty obvious.  Instead of traditional lecture, reading assignment, testing format, students are assigned projects that help them learn the material through the experience of creating.  In Career & Technical Education classes like mine, projects have always been the mainstay.  But, now you’re starting to see them appear in science, math, history, even English.     A favorite idea of mine is to use the same approach director Ken Burns with the Civil War.  You provide students with letters, photos, and other raw materials from soldiers involved in a famous battle then assignment them the task of building a presentation about that battle and the experiences of those involved and it’s importance.  Take it a step further and you could even bring in a local resident who was involved and let the students interview them and tape it.  The whole I idea here is to push beyond the specific subject in the class and help to develop their Digital Literacry or , more accurately, Digital Communications skills.

Finally, there’s the use of teams.  In my current course, I have divided the class into teams and have the teams work together to create content for the class.  Studies have shown that in college, students who create study groups do better than those who “go it alone”.  Though there is always the concern that a student won’t “carry their weight”, usually group dynamics  can fight this.  And, with online social network systems seeing more and more use in education, the ability for students to continue working outside of school gives this idea a lot of potential.  In my classes, I get the chance to watch “team” work in more ways than just the creation of game levels.  My students prefer multi-player games over single player.  The result is that they are often working as teams to “take out” the other team.  Certainly, it’s easy to see how one might be concerned that the students are working together to kill a bunch of zombies or terrorists, but the team approach they take actually can be applied to a broad range of areas.

There’s a lot more information out on these various means of teaching.  Find below a list of hyperlinks.  But, take it from me, they all show tremendous promise as we try to adapt and “reinvent” learning for these 21st century learners.

1. http://pbl-online.org/
2. http://www.usc.edu/hsc/dental/ccmb/usc-csp/Quikfacts.htm
3. http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Problem-Based_Learning_in_Middle_and_High_School
4. http://www.google.com/

While many school stakeholders say there’s a lot to like in the new National Education Technology Plan (NETP), such as its emphasis on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and using open educational resources to improve instruction, others are concerned about what they see as a fundamental conflict between the plan’s call for innovation on the one hand and the Obama administration’s continued focus on testing and accountability on the other.   Check this out