Author Archives: elske ammenwerth

Can we design learning spaces like playgrounds?

“Technology is us” (Roblyer, 2012) – this is a definition I find provoking, yet also inspiring. Technology is not just a tool separate from me, where I can decide to use I or not. Instead, technology is an inherent part of my acting as a teacher.

I agree that there is no inherent value in technology itself. Instead, the value of technology lays in enhancing teaching (Lapowski, 2015). The AECT definition on educational technology confirms that technology is not just a tool, but “practice”: “Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” (Hlynka, 2009).

We are teachers, thus we are designers of learning experiences. In this role, we design learning opportunities that facilitate student learning. From a constructivist point of view, we have to construct learning spaces that allow students to construct new knowledge. So a double constructivism here!

For me, design of learning spaces is like designing a playground: A playground offers a lot of opportunities of running, climbing, playing, sitting … the kid can choose which tool they want to play with and with whom, they know best which tool is challenging for them and which tool would be boring. The idea came to me when looking out of my window – there is a new and wonderful playground there, and I found it quite fascinating to think about learning opportunities in comparison to this playground.

Technology-enhanced learning spaces should be like that – rich, motivating, challenging, engaging, colorful, social, collaborative, adaptive – and fun.

P.S. The idea of “digital playground” has been also expressed by others, e.g. (Chen, 2012) wrote that it is possible to “create a playground with digital technology beneficial for learning”. So it is not solely my idea J

Who else thought about learning opportunities as “playgrounds”?

Image: Learning spaces should be like playgrounds:
http://www.creativerec.com/our-products/playground-equipment/

References:

Chen, G.W., Chuang, C.-K., Liu, T.-C. When a Classroom Is Not Just a Classroom: Building Digital Playgrounds in the Classroom. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology – TOJET, v11 n1 p202-211 Jan 2012

Hlynka, D. & Jacobsen, M. (2009). What is educational technology, anyway? A commentary on the new AECT definition of the field. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology 35(2). https://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/26395/19577

Lapowski, I. (2015). Inside the School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education. https://www.wired.com/2015/05/altschool/

Roblyer, M.D. & Doering, A. (2012). Integrating educational technology into teaching, (5th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Theory-to-practice transfer, errors foster learning, networking of teachers

Roland is scientist at UMIT, the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology in Hall in Tirol, Austria. His background is in biomedical engineering. Before joining the university, he worked for five years as network specialist and computer administration in a company. In the master program in mechatronics, he teaches a lab in biomedical technology, a lab in measurement engineering and a seminar in biomedical engineering. He has around six years of teaching experience. The interview was conducted in his office at UMIT on January 17^th, 2018. The interview focused on the labs he is organizing.

Theory-to-practice transfer

The aim of the lab is to independently solve a given problem of biomedical engineering. In each lab, students are organized within small groups. They get a limited amount of time (e.g. one full day) to solve a problem. The problem could be, for example, to conduct a proof of concept study on a new technical idea such as a new ECG tool. The student groups have to plan their inquiry, organize their work, and present their solution at the end.

The major aim of Roland in his labs is to foster application of theoretical knowledge within ill-structured, yet realistic situations. Therefore, he organized the labs around ill-defined problems the students have to work on. He lets the students try first on their own to help them to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical context.

Allow errors to foster learning

At the beginning of a lab, Roland finds that students are often a bit confused due to the lack of structure. This is not what they are used to from other labs. He tries to explain them that the idea of this approach is to show them how practical life will be after their university studies (“At the beginning, I try to explain the idea behind the exercises. It is all about soft skills. I refer to my personal practical experiences to explain why this is important.“)

While working on the problems at hand, students are allowed to make some errors (R: „When working in a group, I deliberately let them try and maybe fail. I also put pressure on them, time pressure.”). Yet, he regularly meets with each group to discuss their progress and their challenges with them and to help if needed.

Teachers’ networks for best practice exchange on educational technology

As instructional technology, he uses Powerpoint, a whiteboard and Moodle. He also uses Kahoot for interactive repetitions (“This is well received, the students are quite ambitious. I have some candies for me for the winner.”). In the future, he plans to use more online resources such as video tutorials to support him in presenting theoretical concepts. But he noticed that students are well able to find tutorials in the Internet by themselves.

Roland states that he often lacks ideas on which technology and tools for teaching are available and could make sense. Often it was only by chance that he heared e.g. about Kahoot. He would like to participate in a network of teachers, where teachers present their experiences with new technologies – a best practice network („Often, I just get the idea from somebody else using a new technology. This would be helpful – a list – a list of tools and technologies that are used by other”). Overall, he feels a bit left alone with selecting and using the technology. He also stresses that technology needs to be reliable (“If I try it once, and it does not work – well, that was it”).

Overall, the lab that Roland teaches is about biomedical technology. Yet, I felt that he did not think too much about using educational technology to support learning of his students. It seems that he lacks ideas on how to do this. Understandably, he would appreciate a best-practice-network of teachers to get these ideas.

Do we need different support structures for different types of teachers?

The first video shows good use of technology, including personalized teaching, student activation, student self-regulation, and cooperative learning. This mirrors some aspects we had discussed in lesson 2.1. How is this realized in the first video case? Personalized teaching is supported as students are able to select the tasks they want to work on, and by choosing their own pathway toward a solution and by working at their own pace. Student activation is supported, as students get open-ended questions and have to explore different solutions on their own. One student confirms this by saying that they are able to make experiences on their own, which is much more effective in his opinion than regular classroom teaching. Self-regulation is supported as students are supported to define a research plan with aims and tasks, but also to be flexible to adopt this plan if necessary. One teacher confirms this by saying that they teach kids to help themselves. Finally, cooperative learning is supported by group work. As a teacher explained, students have to work together as a group, not individual, to be able to solve the problems. Only the technology itself is not always seen as user friendly and easy to use – a teacher explained that often, the machines and computers will not work properly, which demands a high level of flexibility from teachers and students. All teachers agreed that in this lab, important soft skills are taught.

Based on this video, I want to extend my list on aspects of good use of technology, and this is: flexibility. Teachers must be flexible to accommodate to the learning process of the students and to unexpected barriers such as failing computers. One teacher says that it is not any more about designing lessons, but about flexibly monitoring students what they need, and to support them.

Some of the other videos show low technology integration into classroom. Video 5 shows teachers who are reluctant to use technology because of “lack of time”, “lack of training” or “lack of support”. But here, for me, there is an open issue: Is this reluctance to embrace technology really only a problem of time and training and support? Thus, will it really be sufficient to give those teachers more training and more time? Or do some personal attitudes versus technology (such as technology anxiety) would still prevent them to adopt technology despite training and support? On teacher said she had attended several professional developments courses, but never tried to apply the new knowledge in her classroom ….

Do we have to accept that there we always “laggards” in any technology innovation …? Or does it mean we need a special professional development initiatives and support structures for these reluctant group of teachers?

Elske

Good technology

For me, good technology use involves smooth integration of technology in the chosen didactical design. Lead by a thorough pedagogical design, digital technology should thus be chosen with care. There is no inherent value in technology, but the value of any technology lays in enhancing teaching.

Technology should help students in their learning process – it could, for example, help to identify misconceptions and provide challenges and quests. Good technology use should support individual, personalized, student-centred teaching – for example, by allowing different learning paces and learning depth.

Technology should also support student activation, self-regulation and increase motivation and curiosity – for example, by using gamification. It should also allow learning outside the classroom (e.g. at home).

Technology should also support collaborative and social learning.

And technology should be easy to use and also allow digitally disadvantaged students to participants.

I don’t think the implementation of this vision is too far away … with a good didactical design in mind, the teacher can choose from a broad range of available technology today. I guess will have a look at some of these technologies in this course.

Misconceptions: What? Where? How?

As the issue of misconceptions is new for me, I want to elaborate on three basic questions: What are misconceptions? Where do misconceptions come from? And how can we resolve them?

Conceptions of children are “ideas about their world” (Confrey 1990 , p. 4). They help to “obtain explanations for how and why things behave as they do”. Misconceptions are “learner’s deviations from scientists’ view” (Shapiro 1988, p. 99).

In Heathers case, it is not fully clear where the misconceptions come from. The idea of the bizarre orbit may come from text book illustrations. The source of her ideas on indirect light is unclear. Altogether, Heather tries to accommodate different sources of information into a coherent private theory.

After the lecture, Heathers changes some of her misconceptions. Posner (1982) calls such a conceptual change “accommodation” (p. 212). Heather is now able to give a correct picture of the orbit of the earth. Yet, she still has misconceptions on indirect light.

Confrey (1990) confirms that children have “firmly held, descriptive, and explanatory systems for scientific … phenomena” (p. 4), and that these “systems are resistant to change through traditional instruction” (p. 4). So the case of Heather seems to be typical.

According to Piaget, a child “develops certain perspectives and beliefs that are functionally adaptive”, and that “may or may not correspond well with the views of disciplinary experts” (Confrey 1990, p. 8). From this point of view, misconceptions seem a normal aspect of the maturation of a child. According to von Glaserfeld (1982), errors are “key moments” and “opportunities to glimpse our own constructs” (cited after (Confrey, 1990, p. 14)). For Heather, this seems true, as she is able to reflect on her own beliefs during class and correct them.

How can misconceptions be resolved?

First, students should describe their own conceptual framework when working on a problem (Confrey 1990, p. 43). Shapiro (1988) also states that the preconceptions need to be clarified, e.g. by group discussions. Shapiro (1988) proposes a Classroom Profile to document preconceptions of each student, helping the teacher “to understand how individual children are thinking” (p. 117).

Second, when a student understands that the own conception is not appropriate to solve a problem, he or she may get “dissatisfied” and adopt an alternative, better framework (Confrey 1990, p. 43). Posner (1982) also sees “dissatisfaction” as a major condition for accommodation (p.214) and suggests that the teacher should create “cognitive conflicts in students” (p. 225) for this. Accommodation is supported when the new concept is plausible and intelligible (Posner 1982, p. 214) and when the student sees the teacher as a “credible authority” (Saeli, 2011, p. 113).

I am a computer scientist and teach at a university. Misconceptions are not so obvious here, as learning is often not as visible as in a school setting. However, I looked for research on typical misconceptions in computer science classes. One study shows that these misconceptions are very individual, as “different students have different needs and difficulties” (Saeli 2011, p. 81). Thus, Saeli (2011) concludes: There is not one approach to support accommodation that suits all students, and thus the teacher has to adopt different strategies for different students based on his PCK (pedagogical content knowledge) (Saeli, 2011).

References

Confrey, J. (1990). A review of the research on student conceptions in mathematics, science, and programming. Review of research in education, 16, 3-56.

Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W. and Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Sci. Ed., 66: 211–227.

Saeli, M., Perrenet, J., Jochems W.M.G., & Zwaneveld, B. (2011): Teaching Programming in Secondary School: A Pedagogical Content Knowledge Perspective. Informatics in Education, 10(1), 73–88.

Shapiro, B. L. (1988). What children bring to light: Towards understanding what the primary school science learner is trying to do. Developments and dilemmas in science education, 96-120.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1982). An interpretation of Piaget’s constructivism. In Revue internationale de philosophie (142-143). France: Ministere de L’Education Nationale.

Computer science in 1988

Being at high school (around 1988/89), I had my first computer science class. In the first semester, around 40 students participated. After one semester, the number dropped to around 10. Why? Our teacher really taught as the basic of algorithms and programming (already back in 1988!), and not just “how to use a computer” – and this was not what many had expected. I like it!

For the final assignment, we had to programme a small piece of software – anything we liked. So together with a friend, we transferred a board game called “Cybernetics” to a computer game. This was a lot of fun, and a cool experience, as we really managed to present our computer game at the end.

I find this to be great pedagogy – activating, participatory, constructive, self-regulated, and meaningful.

Elske

Hello from Austria

Hi,

My name is Elske. I am senior lecturer at UMIT, a university located in Tyrol in the Western part of Austria. I am from Germany, but moved to Austria in 2001.

My field of expertise is health informatics. I am teaching health information systems, evidence-based medical informatics and project management, among others.

This is my 5th MET course. Until now, I have taken ETEC 510, 511, 512 and 515b.

I got interested in Education Technology several years ago. As a university teacher, I felt that our ways of teaching are often ineffective and not student-centred. I wanted to explore how to use technology to activate students and to improve teaching and thus started the MET programme. At the moment, I chair the UMIT Committee on Teaching and Learning that is responsible for coordinating activities regarding improving the quality of teaching at UMIT. Also, I am responsible to implement a new online master programme in health informatics. This is really a challenge, and the MET courses helped me quite a lot here …

In this course, I hope to deepen my understanding on how to use technology in fields related to my teaching area (computer science).

Besides my professional life, I have two kids (9 and 11 years). In my free time, I to Taekwondo (red belt) (see photo).

Elske