Thinking out loud, here...

... about -- can we even stand another round? -- my Educational Philosophy.

I am actually pretty tired of thinking about my Educational Philosophy.  But for our final class assignment, we're supposed to put together our philosophy on how technology can support educational objectives.

In the form of a digital movie.

Shoot me in the head.

We did digital movies earlier in the class.  Mine was a retelling of one of the stories within the Epic of Gilgamesh.  I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, learned a lot in the process, and was reasonably happy with how it turned out.

But it's a story, see.  Storytelling works best, for stories.  IMHO, as they say on the net.

Nonetheless, a girl's gotta do what she's gotta do.

Attentive readers of my blog and website will recall that we last left the philosophical thread here, with my overall philosophy in the form of a non-linear PowerPoint presentation.  (More linearly inclined readers can find the gist of the same ideas here, in a previous thinking-out-loud blog post.)  I will attempt to peel off the concluding visual, save it as a jpg file, and post it herein (wish me luck, folks):

(SCORE!  Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?)

Anyway.  The overall educational philosophy runs along these lines:

Sensory Stage:  In this stage, the big picture objective is that kids make sense of their physical world.  By its end, we hope that they understand concepts such as gradations from small to large; categories such as colors and shapes; and recognize rhymes, patterns, rhythms and pitch.  If they end up knowing their numbers, letters and sounds, great: but it isn't necessary.  Far better that they be able to recite a repetoire of nursery rhymes and retell the fundamentals of ten of their best-beloved dog-eared books in their own words.  

In this stage, kids' learning is sensory and self-directed.  Young children learn principally through their senses: by picking objects up, turning them over, looking at them from different angles, dropping them and seeing what happens, shaking them and banging them and crumpling them and listening to what sounds ensue.  And yes, by putting them into their mouths and tasting them.  They are small and ceaseless scientists all on their own, conducting experiments all day long, figuring out how the world works.  As they build their own mental models, our job in helping them is to set them up in a reasonably safe laboratory and get out of their way.  

What we should do is to feed their souls: we read to them, early and often, from good books with strong narratives, so that they learn early to associate books with joy.  And we expose them, in developmentally appropriate snippets, to poetry and music and art and dance, giving them access to materials and instruments and costumes so they can engage themselves if they choose.   We take them on walks, and model looking closely at plants and animals, and show them how to classify leaves and bugs and trees and look up their names.  In doing these things, we begin to train their ears, to build their vocabularies, to build their curiosity and lay the foundations for the introduction, later, of great epic literature and Linnaeus' system of classification.  But that isn't, now, the point.  The point now is to celebrate the wonder of the sensory world.

So the role of technology in this phase is... limited.  Extremely limited.  Computers aren't sensory, see.  If kids this age are to learn through their senses, any activity based on a flat flickering screen is a poor substitute for the real thing.  Those computer games that promise to teach toddlers to recognize small-medium-large relative sizes  are a poor substitute for this...

Or to teach them their colors... a poor substitute for this...

Or to arrange puzzle pieces... a poor substitute for this...

Or that have preschoolers set up patterns... a poor substitute for this...

Or to learn letter sounds... a poor substitute for this.

And even more fundamental than any of that?  Let them go outside, and collect leaves, and organize them by shape, and tell them -- don't harp, don't preach, don't try to make them memorize -- just tell them, the names of the plants or trees that they're from.   Read them some comically illustrated Ogden Nash doggerel, then close the book and giggle.  That is multisensory.  That is interactive.  

This isn't.

The one place that I do see a role for technology is in audio sources.  Because feeding their souls, at this stage, entails flooding them with stories of all kinds.  I'm particularly partial to folk tales and fairy tales and myths (they build up the foundations of the universal Narrative Arc that will support, later, kids' ability to comprehend literature), but all kinds of stories will do.  And while there's no substitute for being read to out loud, audio books have their virtues too: kids can listen to them in the car, kids can choose what they like when they like, kids can hear the same story twenty times in a row, the voices never get hoarse.  

Concrete stage:  In this stage, kids need to learn discrete, foundational skills in literacy and math; and also to begin to amass background knowledge in content areas.  Learning is concrete and teacher-led.  The most foundational of the skills are reading and writing, and first priority in this stage must be given to literacy.  For a few lucky kids, literacy comes as easily and organically as walking and talking.  For the rest, method matters.  

All that said, I do see a role for technology at this stage -- still limited, but a little greater than in the previous stage.  Ironically, I see its greatest role in the precise areas that have been lambasted in this course: "drill and kill applications."

Consider, for example, Quartermile Math.  It is, without doubt, a drill program.  


It's set up so that as kids master one set of math facts, they move onto the next level "race"; as their speed improves, their horse moves faster.

Not cutting edge. Not higher order on Bloom's Taxonomy. Not creative. Not Web 2.0.

But here's the thing: to learn multiplication facts, you have to practice. One way or another, repetition is necessary. So, you can do it with flash cards, or you can do it with timed drills like Mad Minutes, or you can do it with math games like Muggins or FouxMath (which have the virtue of being truly "interactive"), or you can do it, for kids who like such things, with drill and kill software. Vive la difference. If a little bit of flickering screen helps the medicine go down, well, great.

Just don't abdicate and allow them to graduate third grade without having memorized them one way or another. Math facts are foundational: Kids need to have their multiplication facts down cold before they undertake the multi-step, abstract formatted operation of long division.

So in the Concrete stage, kids mostly should be working with controlled readers, learning to read;and pencil and paper, learning to write; 

and with base 10 blocks, learning to group and regroup;

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and with Judy clocks (and real analog clocks!) learning to tell time;

and manipulatives, learning the concepts of fractions;

and pegboards and cuisinaire rods, learning the concepts of multiplication.

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But if kids prefer computer-based drill programs to flashcards or math games -- and some kids do -- then great!

And keep the audio books going, adding in biographies to build background knowledge in content areas.  And, in limited and teacher-led uses, start drawing on the resources of the Internet to pull in factual information.

Logical Stage:  At this stage, the big picture objectives are: students learn to write clear, well reasoned, persuasive essays; students transition to abstract and multi-step mathematical operations; students learn the concrete steps of, and the rationale behind, the scientific method; and students learn to discern and describe cause and effect relationships in both the sciences and in history.  Learning is increasingly abstract, and continues to be teacher-led.

By this age, students' need for sensory demonstration of abstract principles starts to wane.  If they've been educated well, they also have by now developed the tools to discriminate between main ideas, supporting details, and tangents; how to structure a logically sequenced narrative; and how to carry out multi-step operations in math and science. 

The role of technology therefore expands.  Its principal value at this stage is as a source of information in content areas.  Given the very vastness of the information available through the Internet, the challenge of the educator is to find ways to scaffold students as they learn to differentiate the wheat from the chaff.  Teacher modeling and full group discussions using tools such as SmartBoards are one option, though one whose cost may be prohibitive for many schools.  Narrowly defined WebQuests are another.

At this point technology may also be helpful, though it certainly is not necessary, to augment skill-building activities.  Programs such as Inspiration can facilitate brainstorming sessions and the progressive transfer of ideas into an organized outline; word processing can facilitate the mechanics of writing.  As they learn the skills associated with graphing and analyzing data, programs like Excel can facilitate the presentation aspects of the skills.  Kids studying literature can combine the time-honored practice of narration with podcasting.  Language students can use audio technology to drill vocabulary and check their accents.  These kinds of activities should always be considered means, though, not ends in themselves.

Synthesis and Evaluating Stage:  In this stage, students integrate their foundational skills and background knowledge, and develop the integrative and analytical skills with which they will assume responsibility for their own learning for the rest of their adult lives.  (Or not, as the case may be.)  This is the point at which they are capable of engaging in the "higher order" cognitive tasks of Bloom's Taxonomy.  Learning is based on abstract symbol systems and increasingly complex concepts; and transitions from teacher-led to self-led.

The role of technology expands considerably in this stage.  In school, the Internet becomes a major -- in some subjects, the principal -- source of content information.  Major teacher roles include guiding students in developing the skills of discernment, in ascertaining which sources are of greater reliability, in detecting bias, in attributing others' work fairly, and in integrating disparate piece parts into a coherent whole.  Technology also becomes a venue through which students can demonstrate their learning, through effective use of graphing and integration of visual and audio sources in presentations.

Outside of school, students of this age will utilize technology often and well, in endless capacities, as cheap and efficient communication, as entertainment, as a source of news and information, as a means of expressing their own creative vision.  That's fine.  That's great.  But just because many of them spend hours on end creating FaceBook pages, does not mean that schools should feel compelled to create opportunities for them to express themselves through class-based web sites.  They're figuring out how to design avatars all on their own, on their own time; why bother teaching it in school?!  Save those precious classroom hours and have them study Dante instead.  Thereafter, sure, let them demonstrate their understanding by making a funky visual representation on Tapped In.  Or, if they'd rather write an old-fashioned linear paper... that's okay too.  Really.