You know those days when it seems like you are just not getting anywhere?!
I have spent most of today working on something that was supposed to be fun (planning my upcoming trip to Boston on my new spreadsheet program) and yet I feel like I've gotten nothing done. My husband came home, and I was trying to explain to him why I was feeling frustrated. I couldn't quite verbalize where things had gone wrong -- I mean, generally speaking, spending time organizing, trip-planning, or working with my new computer is fun!
As we talked, it came to me. I had not defined what the goal of my spreadsheet was! I was unsure what it was supposed to look like, what success would be, and what I was after! Somewhere between wanting to "play" with the cool template and wanting to organize my upcoming trip, I had been trying to design something useful with no defined goal in mind!! And as I thought about this, I realized that this is kind of a pattern with me and designing things. I spent all summer working on websites, and thinking back on it, I was doing the same thing. In the end, I think I got things mostly figured out, but I could have saved myself a lot of "development" time if I had spent a little more time in the "analysis" and "design" phases. Writing stuff on 3 x 5 cards and rearranging them all over the dining room table just seems like so much work -- but I am now seeing that it is way more work to have to keep reinventing your design every time you come upon some new information that doesn't quite fit in right.
Wow. Information Design. Hmmm. . .
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Understanding by Design
I think I am feeling a little bit frustrated.
On the one hand, I really like the idea of backwards design. I can definitely see how this applies to education, business, and life in general. Any time you venture out to do something without a plan, you end up haphazardly getting nowhere specific. The more I look around, the more I see examples of this everywhere. In all areas of my life (family, personal, educational, etc.) I would like to employ this idea more often.
On the other hand, when I read the article and looked at the sample pages they showed, my reaction was "no WAY . . . I would NEVER have time to do this for every lesson!!" And besides the worksheets, I have been thinking about the reality of teaching this way. When I do teach, I am a math teacher, usually in algebra, geometry, trig, or calculus. I know firsthand how many kids struggle with math because they can't relate to it; it seems like something they will never, ever use. And as a math tutor, I have the luxury of trying to address that concern. But as a teacher, life is different. You don't decide your curriculum; it is mandated by the federal government, state government, or district. You have no choice but to cover the book, which takes all of the time you have available in class. And as great as it would be to teach each lesson with an eye towards what will be useful for the student to know, it is just not realistic. Those students who eventually study in the scientific fields will need advanced mathematics to solve physics, chemistry, and engineering problems. Those who will go into social fields will use mathematics in statistics. And any of them who are college-bound will simply need to "get through" calculus to get their degree (and whether or not that is a good idea is outside of my realm of influence). But the thing is that kids who are learning algebra simply don't have the skill set to comprehend what algebra is useful for! Yes, there are "smaller" applications -- they are called story problems! But when you teach with lots of those, you loose lots of students.
In the end, I am left wondering if there are some subjects that just need to be taught the way they are, with no specific application in mind. It's like long division. Is it important to be able to do? Yep. But although I can tell you why you need to divide things, I can't tell a child specifically why they need to be able to do it longhand. There are reasons -- preparing for standard testing, exercising your mind, learning the logical rules of mathematics, and just being able to follow your teacher, for example. But are these reasons that matter to a fourth-grader?? I hate to say it, but in the end, they just have to learn the algorithm, step by step, just like we did when we were their age. Without it, they will be handicapped.
On the one hand, I really like the idea of backwards design. I can definitely see how this applies to education, business, and life in general. Any time you venture out to do something without a plan, you end up haphazardly getting nowhere specific. The more I look around, the more I see examples of this everywhere. In all areas of my life (family, personal, educational, etc.) I would like to employ this idea more often.
On the other hand, when I read the article and looked at the sample pages they showed, my reaction was "no WAY . . . I would NEVER have time to do this for every lesson!!" And besides the worksheets, I have been thinking about the reality of teaching this way. When I do teach, I am a math teacher, usually in algebra, geometry, trig, or calculus. I know firsthand how many kids struggle with math because they can't relate to it; it seems like something they will never, ever use. And as a math tutor, I have the luxury of trying to address that concern. But as a teacher, life is different. You don't decide your curriculum; it is mandated by the federal government, state government, or district. You have no choice but to cover the book, which takes all of the time you have available in class. And as great as it would be to teach each lesson with an eye towards what will be useful for the student to know, it is just not realistic. Those students who eventually study in the scientific fields will need advanced mathematics to solve physics, chemistry, and engineering problems. Those who will go into social fields will use mathematics in statistics. And any of them who are college-bound will simply need to "get through" calculus to get their degree (and whether or not that is a good idea is outside of my realm of influence). But the thing is that kids who are learning algebra simply don't have the skill set to comprehend what algebra is useful for! Yes, there are "smaller" applications -- they are called story problems! But when you teach with lots of those, you loose lots of students.
In the end, I am left wondering if there are some subjects that just need to be taught the way they are, with no specific application in mind. It's like long division. Is it important to be able to do? Yep. But although I can tell you why you need to divide things, I can't tell a child specifically why they need to be able to do it longhand. There are reasons -- preparing for standard testing, exercising your mind, learning the logical rules of mathematics, and just being able to follow your teacher, for example. But are these reasons that matter to a fourth-grader?? I hate to say it, but in the end, they just have to learn the algorithm, step by step, just like we did when we were their age. Without it, they will be handicapped.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Is it an instructional problem?
Boy, I'm of two minds on this.
On the one hand, I agree with the people tonight in class that were having a hard time imagining a problem that is not instructional. We're teachers (by and large) and that's what we do -- instruct! It's hard to imagine a discussion with, for example, a principal that goes like this:
"Jim, your kids' test scores are low. Your kids aren't getting long division. What do you think you could do about that?
"Well, I don't think it's an instructional problem. . ."
Ok, maybe that's an oversimplification. But I almost raised my hand and asked for an example of a non-instructional problem that might come up in schools.
However. . .
Then there are the cell phones in Carter's class. You mean the kids don't know they aren't supposed to have a cell phone?? And I have to be honest, I am really wondering about the kids who don't know how to find files or programs, or where to save. Sure, they are having that problem in class -- that I believe! But do I really think they haven't been instructed in this before? I know that in my kids' elementary school, they work with files and drives all of the time. They have a shared drive they can't leave stuff on; they type, save, and print stuff; and I'm pretty sure my 13-year-old occasionally lost things in elementary school that he didn't save in the right place. So is that an instructional problem? Maybe. . . Maybe partially, anyway.
I keep thinking about a bill (I think it was a bill. . . the legislature is not is session yet, are they?) they were talking about on the radio the other day. Without getting too specific. . . let's just say they are concerned about a certain content area in high school health class. The sponsors of the bill are worried that our kids aren't getting enough information because they have so many pregnant teens every year. Um. . . excuse me?? Do we really think our teens don't know how they are getting pregnant? Sorry. This is not a lack of information!!
Maybe there are more "non-instructional" problems in our schools than I was thinking before.
On the one hand, I agree with the people tonight in class that were having a hard time imagining a problem that is not instructional. We're teachers (by and large) and that's what we do -- instruct! It's hard to imagine a discussion with, for example, a principal that goes like this:
"Jim, your kids' test scores are low. Your kids aren't getting long division. What do you think you could do about that?
"Well, I don't think it's an instructional problem. . ."
Ok, maybe that's an oversimplification. But I almost raised my hand and asked for an example of a non-instructional problem that might come up in schools.
However. . .
Then there are the cell phones in Carter's class. You mean the kids don't know they aren't supposed to have a cell phone?? And I have to be honest, I am really wondering about the kids who don't know how to find files or programs, or where to save. Sure, they are having that problem in class -- that I believe! But do I really think they haven't been instructed in this before? I know that in my kids' elementary school, they work with files and drives all of the time. They have a shared drive they can't leave stuff on; they type, save, and print stuff; and I'm pretty sure my 13-year-old occasionally lost things in elementary school that he didn't save in the right place. So is that an instructional problem? Maybe. . . Maybe partially, anyway.
I keep thinking about a bill (I think it was a bill. . . the legislature is not is session yet, are they?) they were talking about on the radio the other day. Without getting too specific. . . let's just say they are concerned about a certain content area in high school health class. The sponsors of the bill are worried that our kids aren't getting enough information because they have so many pregnant teens every year. Um. . . excuse me?? Do we really think our teens don't know how they are getting pregnant? Sorry. This is not a lack of information!!
Maybe there are more "non-instructional" problems in our schools than I was thinking before.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Technology in Education
So what is the role of technology in education?
We talked tonight about a quote from Seymour Papert, from 1984: "There won’t be schools in the future… I think that the computer will blow up the school. . ."
I don't think technology is changing the basic structure of our schools -- most of the time, anyway. Certainly there are some exceptions -- some people take things too far, by way of whatever "technology" is currently the rage. (Grading writing assignments using computers comes to mind. . .) But by and large, I think technology is useful in education as a tool that can facilitate learning.
There are just things you can do with technology that you can't do without it -- not without a whole lot of work and time, anyway! It is using modern technology that I quickly pulled up tonight's lecture notes and grabbed the previous quote. My son's English teacher used the convenience of email tonight to give me a heads-up about the assignment that is due Thursday. I personally welcome the addition of smart boards in his new classroom that is currently under construction (Hillside -- they are a bit behind schedule now because of the fires a few weeks ago). As a math tutor, I know how helpful it is to be able to see the teacher's notes from the day (in their complete form).
Has modern technology changed education? Sure! But since when was "education" a static thing? In my own discipline (math), think of the technology that has been made available over the years. In terms of calculators alone, consider the changes. When my grandparents were young, they used slide rules. My grandpa was a mathematician like me -- he taught math, starting in a small school house in Idaho, and then eventually became the Superintendent of Granite School District. He was no intellectual lightweight. But "advanced mathematics" to him was algebra, and maybe some trig. I think he probably did some calculus at the university. My parents used the newest and the best: calculators!! They had some disadvantages, though, even compared to our cheapest and smallest calculators today. For example, students of that generation learned a concept called "logarithms" by looking up values in a table in the back of their book. Since the tables could never contain all of the possible values a person might need, the students learned to be adept in "interpolating" -- that is, finding a more precise result by narrowing down neighboring results. This all took considerable time, though, and energy. By the time I was in school, we just pushed a button on our calculator to find a logarithm or a trig function. I thought I was pretty advanced as I painstakingly found roots of complex, higher-order polynomials that my grandpa probably didn't even comprehend! But now, my math students find approximations of these roots at the push of a button, shortening their work time dramatically! In the end, our math students today are using technology that I only even saw as a senior at the U. I wrote C+ and Fortran programs to find the best fit line to a group of data. Now in high school, they push a button and find immediately the equation and then use it to predict future behavior in a system! It's crazy!!
I know, I'm rambling. Blogging is fun for me because I have a captive audience to listen to my rants. Bottom line: yes, education changes with every new technology. Yes, some people take it too far, but that rarely lasts the test of time. Eventually, though, we refine our education process as we use the tools that are available to us to teach what the students need to know -- better, faster, and easier. And it's really cool!
We talked tonight about a quote from Seymour Papert, from 1984: "There won’t be schools in the future… I think that the computer will blow up the school. . ."
I don't think technology is changing the basic structure of our schools -- most of the time, anyway. Certainly there are some exceptions -- some people take things too far, by way of whatever "technology" is currently the rage. (Grading writing assignments using computers comes to mind. . .) But by and large, I think technology is useful in education as a tool that can facilitate learning.
There are just things you can do with technology that you can't do without it -- not without a whole lot of work and time, anyway! It is using modern technology that I quickly pulled up tonight's lecture notes and grabbed the previous quote. My son's English teacher used the convenience of email tonight to give me a heads-up about the assignment that is due Thursday. I personally welcome the addition of smart boards in his new classroom that is currently under construction (Hillside -- they are a bit behind schedule now because of the fires a few weeks ago). As a math tutor, I know how helpful it is to be able to see the teacher's notes from the day (in their complete form).
Has modern technology changed education? Sure! But since when was "education" a static thing? In my own discipline (math), think of the technology that has been made available over the years. In terms of calculators alone, consider the changes. When my grandparents were young, they used slide rules. My grandpa was a mathematician like me -- he taught math, starting in a small school house in Idaho, and then eventually became the Superintendent of Granite School District. He was no intellectual lightweight. But "advanced mathematics" to him was algebra, and maybe some trig. I think he probably did some calculus at the university. My parents used the newest and the best: calculators!! They had some disadvantages, though, even compared to our cheapest and smallest calculators today. For example, students of that generation learned a concept called "logarithms" by looking up values in a table in the back of their book. Since the tables could never contain all of the possible values a person might need, the students learned to be adept in "interpolating" -- that is, finding a more precise result by narrowing down neighboring results. This all took considerable time, though, and energy. By the time I was in school, we just pushed a button on our calculator to find a logarithm or a trig function. I thought I was pretty advanced as I painstakingly found roots of complex, higher-order polynomials that my grandpa probably didn't even comprehend! But now, my math students find approximations of these roots at the push of a button, shortening their work time dramatically! In the end, our math students today are using technology that I only even saw as a senior at the U. I wrote C+ and Fortran programs to find the best fit line to a group of data. Now in high school, they push a button and find immediately the equation and then use it to predict future behavior in a system! It's crazy!!
I know, I'm rambling. Blogging is fun for me because I have a captive audience to listen to my rants. Bottom line: yes, education changes with every new technology. Yes, some people take it too far, but that rarely lasts the test of time. Eventually, though, we refine our education process as we use the tools that are available to us to teach what the students need to know -- better, faster, and easier. And it's really cool!
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