2/12 Assignment: "Value Added" of Technology Uses Discussed Thus Far

I'm taking three courses this semester: this one; Psychological Issues in Special Education; and Multicultural Issues in Counseling. All three, it turns out, speak to differences between learning styles and capabilities; and alternative means of working effectively with a diverse student population. I'd like to claim that I carefully planned the timing of my coursework so that I could take full advantage of these synergies, but I'd be lying. Sometimes, synchronicity just occurs.

But as it happens, I have referred to UDL explicitly in one of my other courses (using it to frame the idea that classroom modifications made to benefit special education students can also have the unintended effect of benefiting other students without disabilities as well); and spoken of the potential value of technology in reaching certain students from multicultural backgrounds (who may, for example, not be comfortable speaking in front of groups but may be quite comfortable presenting information electronically).

So I'm getting... somewhere.

The term "value added," which once held a specific technical meaning with respect to production processes, has now entered the popular lexicon and is bandied about freely, with radically different meanings to different people. In Sara Dexter's eTIPS article, she defines technological "value added" to be technology that "makes possible something that otherwise would be impossible or less viable to do" (Dexter article, p. 3). 

Some of the uses of technology that we've touched on in our class readings and discussions have met this standard more obviously than others. In class two weeks ago, we briefly touched on a tiny smattering of the primary documents available through the Internet: this is probably the most clear example of what Dexter calls "value added... in accessing information" (p. 5) that simply was not available to schoolchildren even a decade ago. The Webquest examples we looked at demonstrated ways that younger children might taste some of these primary sources within reasonable parameters, to ensure against the perennial Internet risk of Too Much Information.  By providing a guided, "scaffolding" structure, the Webquest framework may serve to provide "value added... in organizing information," as Dexter defines the term.  The Peace Corps blogs in the Resource list are a neat, very personal window into another world; and both they and the class blog featured in the Teddy Bears Go Blogging example served as what Dexter calls "value added... in communicating knowledge." Even the tableaux we worked with the very first class demonstrated a very quick, very accessible means of demonstrating understanding of the "key moment" in a text -- another example of "value added... in communicating findings and understanding to others."

At the same time, I see limits. In the Teddy Bears Go Blogging example, the most obviously terrific, inquiry-based, multisensory activities that the obviously terrific teachers were doing, were independent of the blog. The role of the blog was limited to communicating after the fact -- which does indeed meet Dexter's definition (and rightly so), but is not itself the main instructional event; nor is it the salient, impressive part of the Teddy Bears story. In the You Gotta BE the Book example, the role of technology is (again, rightly) subordinate to the larger idea of using drama to engage and motivate reluctant readers. Motivation per se actually does not meet Dexter's criteria for "value added" -- she is, perhaps, trying to steer away from the idea of "computer time" as a reward. In any event, as I blogged earlier, using drama (and technology) as motivational tools can be powerful, but ought not be confused with the still-necessary long slow slog of actually learning to read.

Even the wealth of wondrous primary sources: there's room for skepticism about the "value added," particularly in the younger levels of schooling. The Bloom's Taxonomy cognitive model that we discussed in class is a succinct model for the stages of learning; and the types of primary sources we looked in the Valley of the Shadow site were compelling examples of using primary documents to support higher-order Historical Thinking skills such as Applying, Analyzing and Evaluating.

But I would argue that there is a reason why Bloom put the lower order, recall-based skills at the bottom of the pyramid. And a reason that the bottom levels of the pyramid are bigger.  The model is meant to be hierarchical; with higher-order cognitive processes building on the foundational base of knowledge.

The implication of this for the question of "value added" as defined by Dexter is that before the "instructional goal" can turn to analysis and evaluation, students need to acquire significant background knowledge. Before they can plunge in and analyze that astonishing news clip about the adolescent youngster waiting for a bus, to take him to a school that had been closed for four years, they need basic background: about Jim Crow, and Brown v. Board of Ed, and the response of selected school districts, and how the courts were used to effect social change, and a host of other issues.   Otherwise, the clip -- marvelous though it is -- cannot make any sense. Otherwise, there is not, really, any value added.

Otherwise, they're just watching TV.

And that is, over and over, the question that Dexter posed, that we have keep coming back to, with relentless honesty: what is the "instructional intent"? Does technology actually support it?

You Gotta BE the Book...

When I told Guinea Pig #3 about the principles of Jeffrey Wilhelm's opus, You Gotta BE the Book, she was quite enthusiastic.

I had a lot of ideas. My first thought was that she could enact this week's Torah portion (this week happens to be one of the Greatest Hits, the presentation of the Ten Commandments...). When that failed to inspire her, I suggested that she might want to act out the story of Vasilisa, the type of good strong heroine who warms modern mothers' hearts. No, not her thing. Really, I would have been fine with Hermione.

But no, if GP#3 was gonna BE the Book, she was gonna be... a princess. This is her idea of what a princess looks like. (It's actually her enactment of a specific princess, a Desert Princess, from a particular page of the well-beloved book. Having not yet had the Copyright Law class session yet, I had my doubts about scanning the illustration in and loading it onto the blog. Nor would I have had the faintest idea of how to do so, even if I could.)

Anyway. Drama, to lure reluctant readers in. Read-alouds with exaggerated voices, to make the characters come alive. Physical enactment of the stories, to get kids to internalize the core of the narratives. Costumes!

Well. How great is that? What kind of crank-o-head could possibly find fault, with that?

And yet. The gestalt of the thing -- a bright, motivated teacher going to great lengths to find a way to reach his most reluctant readers and, in large measure, succeeding in sparking their enthusiasm through the use of drama -- is, obviously, terrific. The devil is in the details.

It is really, really great to get reluctant readers to understand that There Be Treasure Here, in literature. It is really great, to use drama to get them inside characters' motivations and to enable them to fill in the unstated parts and to form images of the characters and the worlds and the actions inside their heads. It is really great, to motivate them to go on to the library and pick out books to read on their own, outside of class.

Wonderful, all of it. But not to be confused with actually teaching them to read, with the long slow slog of teaching that sizable segment of every school population to whom reading comes hard, how to decode. How to develop fluency. How to tackle multisyllable and weird-looking words. How to develop automaticity, which really is a precondition to the enjoyment of reading. Honest.

That young readers be motivated is necessary. But it is not sufficient. Reading is a skill, with specific subskills that need to be mastered by all, and directly taught to those who need it. The marvelous activities with which Wilhelm engaged his reluctant readers help set the context in which kids will be willing to put in the long hard effort to gain that mastery. Particularly the kids with learning disabilities, who have to put in many more hours of greater effort. As educators, we have to do all that we can to help them understand that all that work is worth it.

Because, of course, it is. Truly, there be treasure here.

Then they (and we) still, alas, have got to do the work.