Category: Module C: Emerging Genres of Teaching, Learning and Digital Technologies

Reading back through all my blog posts for ETEC 533 was an interesting experience. It was remarkable how my beliefs and opinions about technology use in education have evolved throughout the course. To explain the changes that I believe have occurred in my thinking I’m going to use a sweet analogy; the role of sugar in baking a cake!

When I think of cakes, the first thing that comes to mind is yummy, sugary frosting. At the beginning of this course I regarded technology use in education as fulfilling a similar role to frosting on a cake. I saw technology as a great, eye-catching way to sell a lesson to students. In my initial post reflecting on memories of technology, I remarked about how much fun I had using the new computer my parents brought home when I was young. In my subsequent post on the proper use of technology in education I remarked that “…good use of technology in the math and/or science classroom occurs when the technology serves to enhance a students learning experience…”. My choice of words in this post is very telling; I believed that technology could enhance the educational experience, not that it would be an integral part of it. In the same way that sugar frosting enhances the look and taste of a cake, I believed that technology could enhance a students’ educational experience. However, if you remove the frosting, a cake is still a cake, and in this way my beliefs on technology relegate it to an almost superfluous role in education. I didn’t see technology as a tool to be used as a component of teaching, but rather as a fun activity to provide once the real learning was complete.

I found the assignment to interview a colleague about their views on educational technology to be a very eye-opening experience. My colleague was of the opinion that technology use was not an option teachers could use to enhance their lessons, but rather was something integral to reaching the youth of today. Her use of web 2.0 applications to facilitate communication amongst her students was not something I had previously considered implementing in my classroom. After speaking with her, and completing course readings on various available web 2.0 applications, I began to see new ways to utilize technology. I realized that technology can have a role throughout the educational process, not just as a way to complete assignments. To continue the analogy to sugary icing; just as icing is applied between layers of cake while constructing the final dessert, so too can technology use be integrated throughout the course of a lesson.

At this point I was beginning to realize the myriad of ways that technology can be used in education. I then continued with course readings and came across Chris Dede’s comment that “technology is not a “vitamin” whose mere presence in schools catalyzes better educational outcomes”. This was a bit of a light bulb moment for me, as it made me consciously consider that while technology can facilitate many fantastic lessons, it is not itself inherently beneficial. The benefits of educational technology are realized only when it is implemented by a competent educator. It is very possible for someone to receive a good education without the use of digital technologies; graphing calculators are not required to learn math, computers are not vitally necessary to the creation of lab reports. A cake without icing is still a cake, perhaps not a very tasty or interesting one, perhaps not the type that a student would choose if given options, but a “naked” cake is still a cake. That being said, the addition of icing or digital educational technology will not necessarily make the cake better. The worlds most delicious icing, if just dumped on top of a cake, does not make the cake any better and may in fact ruin it. The most advanced technologies, if not properly introduced to students and integrated into the learning process, will not benefit a students’ education and may even detract from it as they struggle to simply understand how to use the technology.

Once I began to realize that educational technology could play an integral role in education, and that it was vitally important that it be integrated responsibly into the learning process, I was introduced to the various applications available. The applications that most caught my attention were those that afforded new ways for students to communicate and collaborate within the learning process. Applications such as the Jasper series, Planetary Forecaster and WISE all facilitate a constructivist, collaborative type of learning that I find very appealing. I’m still not entirely sure how to translate this style of teaching and learning to my senior chemistry courses, but it something that I am eager to try in my junior science classes. The study of science is truly the study of a process, and in order for students to realize this they need to personally take part in the collaborative process of science.

Further exploration of available technologies led to the final breakthrough in my opinion of the proper way to utilize technology in the classroom. Icing is not the only part of a cake that contains sugar. If cake represents a students learning or education, then it is vital to understand that a key ingredient within cake is sugar. By this I mean, that while technology works well as a means for students to complete assignments, explore simulations, etc. it can also play a role in the initial learning experience. Cake batter contains sugar and learning can be facilitated by technology. Reading about embodied learning and technology, specifically the example of the infectious disease lesson wherein students worked together to explore the process of disease propagation, I realized that technology can be integrated to such a degree within a lesson that it becomes an organic part of the lesson. In the disease unit, it would not have been possible for students to carry out the experiments in the way they did without the technology, yet the learning wasn’t focused on the technology itself, but rather on what the technology represented.

Technology is another tool in a good teachers’ repertoire, just as sugar is an ingredient in a Baker’s kitchen. This course has shown me that the use of technology must be carefully integrated into the learning process, so that it doesn’t replace vital components (such as basic math skills), yet that it is possible for it to play a major role in the learning process. While I used to regard educational technology as a means to complete assignments once the core learning has been done, I now see how it can become an integral part of education. Although we can educate without digital technology, and we can bake a cake without sugar, learning to properly integrate this new technology into our teaching will result in a better educational experience for our students or a much tastier cake!

I recorded these thoughts awhile ago, but just got to posting them here…

I just completed my ILN lab. This was an experience where we were able to remotely operate a GC/MS analyzing a prepared sample. I chose to analysis sample 5, the anesthesiologist as I figured, since he’s the person handling the drugs, he’d have the best chance to swipe some.

My GC/MS analysis resulted in 2 peaks. I library searched both of them. The first I identified as caffeine (no surprise there) and the second I identified as Fentanyl!!

I’m interested in hearing what everyone else discovered! I love mysteries and as a chemist, it was nice to go back to a type of analysis I haven’t had a chance to do since I was in University!! 🙂

Who knows, maybe they were all swiping some drugs!

On a different note, I found I couldn’t get the camera to pan or zoom. I used the sliders, but the image didn’t seem to change. That being said, there isn’t much to watch while a GC/MS is processing, so I’m not sure why the camera was considered necessary in the first place.

I was very excited to arrive at my lab date and time. I felt like this was an appointment I could not miss which differentiated this experience from that of a simulation that is available all the time. I felt like I had the privilege of this one hour on the machine and I needed to be as prepared as possible to make the best of my one hour!

It would be interesting to see what effect (if any) working on experiments such as this while online with a lab partner may have. Would the collaboration between you and your lab partner help you to get more out of an experience such as this?

Science is a discipline that is never conducted in a vacuum, scientists are constantly collaborating in one way or another so it would be interesting to see if collaboration could be added into an experience such as this.

I sat in my PJ’s doing the lab, and it was more relaxed than I remember my university or high school labs being. While it’s interesting that we were running actual samples on an actual machine, it felt like a simulation as we were analyzing pre-prepared samples that we had no control over.

When in university, the major portion of the experiment was in preparation of the sample, the final analysis step of injecting the sample into the GC/MS almost felt like submitting your experimental work for assessment. The hands-on portion of the lab was lost in this ILN experience (for me anyway).

Even if my camera had been working, I’m not sure watching the machine inject my sample would have made it feel less like a simulation.

I wonder about this question every time I notice the reliance of students on technology. It is clearly evident to me that students no longer use technology to enhance their everyday lives, they are reliant on it. Take away their cell phones, they’d be crushed! Scarier…take away their calculators and the vast majority would be quite helpless in math class!

I think in our haste to utilize technology in teaching to help keep our students attention we may have begun to unconsciously teach them about a perceived value of technology.

While I am pro-technology integration in teaching I believe we need to be careful that in our attempts to expand our students experiences we don’t neglect the basics upon which we build our understanding of the world!

According to Resnick and Wilensky (1998)¹ , while role-playing activities have been commonly used in social studies classrooms, they have been infrequently used in science and mathematics classrooms. Speculate on why role playing activities may not be promoted in math and science and elaborate on your opinion on whether activities such as role playing should be promoted. Draw upon embodied learning in your response.

Role playing is an activity that seems especially well-suited to the humanities classroom. Students learn about a character by reading a novel and then exemplify their understanding of the character by acting out they way they think the character would behave in a given situation. In social studies a student could take on the role of Napoleon or Adolph Hitler and help the pages of the textbook “come alive”.

The practicality of role playing in the science or math classroom is not nearly as obvious as in the humanities classroom. If you asked a student to role-play an exponential curve they would likely look at you as though you’d grown a second head. However, from reading Colella (2000) and Roschelle (2003) I have realized that there is definitely a place for roll playing in the science and math classroom. Colella describes an example of embodied learning, where students utilize a small technological device to explore the way in which infectious diseases spread. The students were completely immersed in the experience, remarking about whether they were healthy or sick, expressing emotion against those who they deemed to have infected them, and arguing about the best ways to structure experiments to determine the causes of infection. I was very impressed with the personal ownership the students took of their own learning in this example. Role playing activities such as this one, where the students are actively involved in their learning and have the freedom to structure their own experiments, should definitely be promoted in the science classroom.

Winn (2002) described an interesting theory of learning where the students’ perception of the environment is considered along with the environments effect on the students. This is exemplified in the aforementioned disease example, as the students structure the experiments, then the feedback they get from the role playing game structures their understanding of the concept and points them in new directions of experimentation.

I would be interested in hearing about any such role playing experiments in the math classroom. Has anyone heard, or had experience with role playing in the math classroom?

References:

Colella, V. (2000). Participatory simulations: Building collaborative understanding through immersive dynamic modeling. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 9(4), 471-500. UBC library: full-text available online

Roschelle, J. (2003). Unlocking the learning value of wireless mobile devices. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19(3), 260-272.

Winn, W. (2002). Learning in Artificial Environments: Embodiment, Embeddedness and Dynamic Adaptation, Tech. Inst. Cognition and Learning, Vol.1

This week I explored virtual chem. Lab programs on the internet, focusing specifically on this website http://chemlab.byu.edu/tour/Chemistry

I like how this software combines visualization of lab technique with the creation of data values so that students can combine a scientific technique with the formulas they learn about in class. While I am still a strong believer in the benefits of traditional experiments, this is a great alternative for distance education students who are unable to carry out traditional labs, for expensive labs that are no longer feasible in school, and as a pre-lab activity to help familiarize the students with what they will be doing in the lab and for what sort of data points to expect.

In my searching I have not come across any programs that combine virtual labs with simulations allowing students to visualize what is happening at the sub-microscopic level. In a titration for example, the virtual lab software allows the student to understand the technique involved (to a degree) and to generate very accurate data about pH or concentration, but it doesn’t allow them to actually see what is happening at the molecular level. Programs such as NetLogo do a much better job of helping students visualize this.

Unfortunately, as this is not free software, I was not able to generate much discussion about it with my peers. In exploring the posting this week I have encountered many new types of simulations for use in the math and science classroom that aid in visualization from the macroscopic to the microscopic level. I am amazed and impressed by the amount of free software available for use in classrooms!