Learning what I thought I already knew

Digital Reflection

Technology in the classroom

So last week I had some extra time in the afternoon because of a minimum day so I went to visit my son at school to see how they are using I pads in there SDC classes. At this time this is the only class on campus that is using this type of technology. I was not sure what to expect. The class I was going to visit had six students in grades between K-2 and serves mild to moderate students with a variety of diagnosis. I arrived before they started using the Ipads and the class was structured very similar to many other classes and seemed to have the same results. Some students were on task, some were mildly off task, and others had no idea what they should have been doing. Things took a huge turn when the teacher told the students to line up to get their Ipads. All of the students literally cheered and ran to the line up spot. They were super excited, with most of them being able to control their excitement just about as well as any other student could. The teacher passed out the Ipads and separated the students into two groups. One group would using the Ipads to select books to be read to them and the other group was going to be doing to art stuff on them. It appeared to me that the students doing the art  stuff were those that had a more of a need to develop their fine motor skills. The students that were going to have the Ipads read to them all found a spot away from each other and proceeded to get their Ipads going, with about half of them needing help with this, while the other half seemed to have no problem getting whatever program they were using up and running. The students that were doing the art project seemed to need a little more help in general, but once they were into the program they all seemed very capable of using the program. Probably the most significant aspect of the entire lesson was the amount of engagement the students maintained.   For the entire length of the activity, about 15min, all of the students were very involved in whatever they were doing. The students that were being read to all seemed to enjoy the books and the students doing the art worked very diligently trying to trace and draw shapes and letters. I don't think the activities in and by themselves were the reason the students were engaged, I feel that just like many of us the students were excited to be using the latest technology to learn.

Disrupting Class Responses

Chapter 1: Why Schools Struggle to Teach Differently when each Student Learns Differently

1. Explain the difference between interdependence and modularity.  How is education currently organized?  

The difference between interdependence and modularity is simple. Interdependence occurs when the way one component is designed and made depends on how another component is designed and made, and vice versa. This requires that each piece only be used with the specific piece that it was intended to be used with. This requires customization and is more costly than modularity, which is essentially the idea that products or pieces are not proprietary and can easily be swapped in or out with other pieces that are made to a preset specification. Modularity is flexible and allows for easy modification. Christensen uses the examples of Windows vs Linux to illustrate interdependence and modularity respectively (32).

Eduation is currently organized  in a highly interdependent structure. It is laced with four major types of interdependency:

1. Temporal - you cant study this in ninth grade if you did not study it in seventh
2. Lateral - You can't teach certain foreign languages a certain ways becuase you would have to  change the way English grammar is taught and changing the way grammar is taught without changing other aspects of how English is taught.
3. Physical: the physical way schools are built limits them.
4. Hierarchical - Mandates that contradict each other, school officials, unions, and curriculum are all nested in this type of interdependence. 

Chapter 2: Making the Shift:  Schools meet Society’s need

2. Explain the disruptive innovation theory.  What does this have to do with schools?

"The disruptive innovation theory explains why organizations struggle with certain kinds of innovation and how organizations can predictably succeed in innovation (45). Essentially, this theory states that a disruptive innovation is a product that is not as good a its products already on the market. Because it is not as good a certain set of customers cannot use and a second, new set of customers is brought into the fold because they can afford and use the disruptive product which was not the case for the original product. Ultimately, the disruptor catches up to the original technology and surpasses it.

The way that this relates to schools is that schools are essentially monopolies without competition. Therefore, there is very little opportunity for a disruptor to be introduced. However, the schools do have to deal with disruptors in that society often requires schools to change to meet new demands. So as the schools attempt to meet the new demands, or disruptor, they are essentially "rebuilding and airplane while flying. (52). Christensen then discuss the jobs that education has had in our history:

1. Preserve the Democracy and inculcate democratic values
2. Provide something for every student
3. Keep America competitive
4. Eliminate poverty

Chapter 3: Crammed Classroom Computers

3.  Why doesn’t cramming computers in schools work?  Explain this in terms of the lessons from Rachmaninoff (what does it mean to compete against nonconsumption?)


Cramming computers in schools does not work because like the examples we have tried to use them as a disruptor but the implementation has been in the old model. This is counter to how disruptors work, they start off and work best in new models where all the disruptor has to do is be better than nothing. Essentially we have put the computer in competition with the teacher, so the computer has not been introduced as a disruptor where it has competition which stifles its ability to fully act as disruptor. 


Chapter 4: Disruptively Deploying Computers

4. Explain the pattern of disruption.

1. The pattern of disruption initially competes against non-consumption creating a "new plane of competition"(96). This new product often has a period of incubation on the S curves flat portion early in the process. Then the technology improves while simultaneously the costs are reduced. Then as the technology of the new product improves and eventually approaches that of the existiing prduct the world flips and leaves the older product on the short end of the stick. Eventually, the curve flattens again as the new product reaches market dominance.

5. Explain the trap of monolithic instruction.  How does student-centric learning help this problem?

1. The monolithic trap of instruction is that the teacher is unable to customize instruction. They are trapped in a system that has them trying to teach to the masses with little or no customization what so ever. The teacher simply tries to reach as many students as possible using the same techniques without much change. By using student-centric learning the student starts to receive instruction that is software driven and able to deliver in a manner that is customized for the students learning styles.

Chapter 5: The System for Student-Centric Learning

6. Explain public education’s commercial system.  What does it mean to say it is a value-chain business?  How does this affect student-centric learning?


Public Education's VAP is a system of creating and delivering and assessing learning material:

1. Producing and distributing textbooks and instructional materials
1. These products are designed by and taught to the dominant intelligence
2. Marketing and development
1. this step even more than the previous cements the system in monolithic, large scale products (130).
3. The remaining steps vary between monolithic and customization. Most of the instruction is monolithic with customization done when possible, but not often. Then moving back to testing in a monolithic manner. 
4. The last step is teacher training which is likely done in a monolithic manner.

This affects student-centric learning in a negative way in that the system does not allow for it to occur often enough and continues to operate in a monolithic manner. While this system works for some and aims to serve the dominant intelligence it lacks the flexibily needed to fully reach all of our students. 

#edchat rookie observations

So tonight was my first concerted effort at staying afloat in an edchat. I have been in the shallow end a few times, but tonight I dove off the high dive and cannon balled my way in. Man you want to talk about fast moving, I thought I was jumping into a pool and it was actually a river! Like Ferris said, "Life moves pretty fast." Well so does edchat. The topic was on eBooks/readers. It quickly turned into, for some anyway, textbooks are evil and if you use them you are not a very good teacher. Well, I don't agree with this. I view textbooks just like I view any other tool I have learned about. In capable hands they can used effectively as part of an array of tools. If you take the best teacher in the world armed with only a textbook and the worst teacher in the world with all of the tools, gadgets and anything else they want, and put them side by side, which one is going to get the most out of not only the tool, but the students? For me, it seems simple. The one common piece in any classroom where the students are thriving is a highly prepared, highly motivated, extremely skilled teacher. The tools only add to the effectiveness, they do not define it.

Are Grades Necessary for Learning?

Well, this is my second time addressing the question my first time I was a resolute and emphatic yes. However, when I reread the question I realized that I answered the question, "Are grades necessary?" Not "Are Grades Necessary for Learning?" which are two completely different questions. So my new answer is no not at all. What does a grade have to do with learning? Not much. The grade is needed as part of the current system that we operate in. But is in and of itself is not essential to learning, it is in fact more often a hindrance. Many studies have shown that grading is actually counter productive to learning and can have a negative effect.  I found this statement on Alfie Kohn's website,  "Grades may encourage an emphasis on quantitative aspects of learning, depress creativity, foster fear of failure, and undermine interest" (Butler and Nissan 1986, p. 215). This is a particularly ironic result if the rationale for evaluating students in the first place is to encourage them to perform better." There are also studies that show that when students get to choose what type of activity or problem they get to address, they will take the easier road if they think or know that they are going to be graded. Conversely, when they think they are not going to be graded they are more likely to challenge themselves, often at a level higher than the teacher would have. That does not sound like grades and necessary for learning to me. In short, grades are not necessary for learning, they are however, necessary for the educational system that we operate in for a number of reasons. But that is a different question all together.

Learning in New Media Environments

This was a very interesting video and had some great points. Some of which I thought, hey he is right. Others I thought that does not make sense. First on the that does not make sense side. One of the things he mentioned about the village in New Guinea was that after the media came in within weeks the culture was unrecognizable. This sounds somewhat odd. This is a culture that has developed over thousands of years with likely little change. I find it hard to believe that anything could make it unrecognizable after a few weeks... Just my opinion.

 Moving on... I loved his thinking as far as what a class should be. An open learning environment without walls so to speak. The idea of letting students pick a spot on a map and become an expert is very cool. Students buying in, becoming  responsible for their own learning, having a say in the output, growing their creativity this is where we want to be. But darn if they don't still need to know the difference between a Populist and a Progressive which is question #7 on the district mandated test they are taking. How do we bridge that gap? Do we wait for top down change? (I think the answer to that is no.) As someone so very new to this profession I want to teach in a system unlike the one I have been in for all of my life (save for the last two semesters). But how do we get there? My guess is that we start small, one lesson at a time and move from there. Our classrooms need to be more about equipping our students to knowledge-able, to me that means being able to manipulate knowledge in new and meaningful ways.. This type of teaching lines up very well with Pink's assertion that dominating with the left brain is not going to be enough in the future. Our students will still need to be top notch left brainers, no doubt. But to dominate, they will have to match this or even exceed this with right brain abilities. These are the skill that are presently being left out of our students classes.

One last point in my now obvious ramble... The speaker talks about media being able to be used or to be used against us. As educators, it is imperative that we learn to use media. We must know media, how to use it, how are students are using and how it is using our students and our profession. From here we can begin to adapt the media as a useful tool for our classrooms and students.