Virtual science education

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

So William Gibson began his classic cyberpunk novel, Neuromancer. That sentence captures the inversion -- or is it sublation? or negation? of the human-nature relationship. Human-made technology is not like nature. No -- the opposite is the case. Nature is now like our technology. Our technology has become the reference point, more real than nature. Our life around and in technology has become more primary, a more recent and ready reference point, and in that sense more real, than our experience with grass, breeze, sunlight, woods, robins, etc. etc. Quick -- can you say what phase the moon is in?

River City is an interactive computer simulation application for middle school science students. The program is hosted on the ActiveWorlds virtual world platform. Students work through different stages of a simulation of an American town in the late 1870s beset with a mysterious disease. Students adopt avatars and move around the town, "interacting" with town residents, visiting town sites, collecting data, and conducting virtual experiments. Students can chat with each other in the virtual world, collect notes, make hypotheses, and test them. The simulation was developed as part of a National Science Foundation Harvard research project.

One of our 7th Grade classes did the project last year. I can't say how much their science knowledge grew by using the project, but I was impressed by how engaged students were in the project. The silence in the classroom as 30 students focused on their laptops was ... amazing. As simulations go, River City looked varied, well thought through, and fun. The students tool on new bodies, traveled through time, flew through a 19th-century town, and investigated disease without the risk of getting sick. What's not to like? I look forward to seeing the research results (the research portion of the project officially ends this month; Activeworlds is considering keeping the project alive on a fee basis).

In a world where virtual science activities are just part of an overall rich science curriculum, with lots of "wet science" and field trips and nature walks and other real world experience -- in such a world River City-type projects could be a useful addition. Virtual worlds create certain guided experiences difficult to achieve otherwise.

But... (as Pee Wee Herman famously said, "everyone I know has a Big But -- Let's talk about your Big But") In my school we don't have a rich science curriculum, and River City was the closest that that 7th Grade came to a real world in-depth scientific investigation outside of science fair projects. This is not the fault of the teacher, or the school necessarily. The ultimate factors I think are the big ones of the polarization of wealth and poverty associated with globalization, the related processes of de-industrialization, the privatization of education, the overall destruction of the working class, the war on the poor, ... As a result: the destruction of the family unit, deep social problems transferred to schools, and in the school, shorter school days, large classes, stressed teachers, crumbling infrastructure, the rule of the standardized computer-scored test, and on and on. We know this already don't we?

These desperate times become a rationale for the expansion of technology in the classroom. Save money -- do science virtually! One of the problems in this line of thinking is that virtual reality is a poor, poor replacement for real reality (somehow, perhaps sadly, I don't think that that phrase is redundant). It also makes for poor scientists. Goethe (who considered himself as much a scientist as a poet) said that "Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible." (the quote is from Douglas Miller's 1988 translation of Goethe's scientific works, p. 311) This may sound heretical to those who have been taught to mistrust their senses in favor of the cold precision of technology. But I think it gets to the notion that scientists need to be open to the sensual world to successfully investigate the world. Science has an intuitive and imaginative dimension that comes into play in the identification and the formulation of hypotheses, and this dimension is crippled when robbed of the interaction with the real world. Science cannot adequately be done in a virtual world. Too much is not there. (More on this: Maura Flannery wrote a nice article, "Goethe and the Molecular Aesthetic"; see also Stephen Talbott's The Future Does Not Compute.)

Computer applications cannot encompass (support, yes; encompass, no) an inquiry-based learning experience because computer applications are programmed experiences. They incorporate rules of the program designers, a minuscule subset of the law system of the universe. Regardless of the possible paths of investigations that programmed worlds offer, they are nevertheless impoverished representations of the world. The learner is channeled into the limited imagination of the programmer further constrained by his or her chosen technology. Inquiry-based learning -- the heart of the scientific adventure -- is supposed to avoid the "sage on the stage" teacher model; but instead, in virtual worlds, the teacher's role has been supplanted by the programmer. And worse, the supplanting is not immediately apparent. The programmer is a hidden presence, the wizard behind the curtain.

Given the dismal funding of education and the awful pressure on public schools, teachers are between a rock and a hard place. Yes a rich set of real world interactions supplemented by developmentally appropriate technology would be ideal. But the real world is more and more out of reach of the public school. We are offered up virtual experiences instead. And in the inversion (or is it sublation? or negation?) captured by Gibson, the scary part is how compelling the virtual experience can be.

Let's hear it for the negation of the negation...

jd

Criteria for evaluation of educational web resources

Here is another blog posting to satisfy a course requirement. This one lay out some criteria for the evaluation of web-based educational materials.

My list starts off with criteria I lifted from a university library site. This is only natural I think, because educational web resources function much like other media resources. Librarians belong to a profession devoted to material evaluation and selection, organization and retrieval. From the librarians list, the site should:

• be relevant to school learning goals
• the site should have quality content. Some indicators of quality include peer-reviewed content, positive reviews from librarians, or an authoritative sponsor.
• have a significant amount of content
• be distinguished from sites that cover similar subjects (e.g. in ease of use, or in depth in particular niche)
• be easy of use
• be reliable (available), stable, without broken links

Really good sites

• continue to be updated, and informs the visitor of what is new.
• allows others to share their great ideas, multiplying the sites usefulness.
• are easy to navigate
• from a design point of view, are not cluttered, with a clean design. Visiting the site shouldn't tire the visitor. (While not an educational site, I consider the godaddy.com site a prime example of hyperactive clutter and difficult to use. I like the design of the Mrs. Meacham's Classroom Snapshots site -- thanks again Lindsay.)
• have no popup ads or other ads that interfere with the content
• have a way to easily contact the site operator
• is supported
• does not use browser specific features (and specifically, will work fine with Firefox)
• use cookies responsibly
• are responsive -- they have enough hardware and bandwidth behind them to support their purpose
• have useful search functions

"Easy to navigate" and "clean" granted are subjective terms, and show my design preferences. I don't like frames, especially when they are poorly implemented.

The above criteria are really independent of the educational purpose of the site, and really apply to any site that intends to inform visitors.

If a site has a social networking feature, it also needs to have some protections for students. Educational sites should be free of advertising, and shouldn't be commercial sites masquerading as educational sites. I'm thinking that the most appropriate educational functions for websites should be either sources of information (search engines, online encyclopedias, archives, newspapers, tutorials, etc.) or places where students can express themselves (e.g. wikis, blogging, cartooning, digital storytelling, postering, etc.) I have mixed feelings about virtual manipulatives -- hands on is generally better. I am suspect of the educational value of role-playing sites and virtual worlds; also of testing or drill sites, and gaming sites. My next post will consider the role-playing/virtual world sites.

jd

Inquiry-based learning and webquests

Best technology-in-education practices direct students to problem-based / project-based / inquiry-based student-centered learning models that are the hallmark of progressive and constructivist education. The student is pushed to exercise and build higher order thinking skills through the problem-solving process. Ideally, computers and other digital technologies just provide additional means of investigation and reporting.

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a method of learning where students pursue an interesting open-ended question (that's my working definition of IBL). The student is the subject of that definition, the main actor. The object of their pursuit needs to be interesting to the student, to ensure the pursuit takes place. The object of the pursuit is an open-ended question: the question may lead the student in many possible directions as part of a process of discovery. Ideally, through IBL, students develop stronger transferable knowledge and a deeper understanding of the world than through traditional educational methods of fact-delivery and regurgitation. Inquiry-based learning works especially well for developing concrete concepts as a result of direct observation. Hands-on exploration is an important component of the best IBL. Also important is allowing students enough time and space and encouragement to formulate their own questions and conjectures. I see five important categories in the measurement of the "inquiry quotient" of a lesson. The best IBL:

1. Allows student to generate own question
2. Uses open-ended question
3. Relies on direct observation
4. Has as a goal the acquisition of concrete concepts
5. Maintains student interest

Inquiry-based learning and other student-centered approaches to learning are subtly inverted when technology takes center-stage, and the inquiry becomes centered around and dependent on the technology being used.

Educators have developed different genres of applications to try to implement technology-based student-centered models. "Webquests" are one popular example. Webquests are structured investigations oriented around a given task. Students work in teams using well-defined roles towards accomplishing the given task. Students are often expected to produce a report or deliver a presentation arguing for a position or solution that they have developed. Webquests support student collaboration, typically require the students to make their own assessments about a topic, and defend conclusions they have reached.

As an IBL application, though, webquests cannot help but fall short. First, by design they provide an already-constructed question (the task). Maybe students have a choice of possible solutions, but a webquest (in Bernie Dodge's original definition) cannot provide a truly open-ended question. Webquests are really a "quided inquiry" structure (see, e.g. QuestGarden, the site for a webquest creation tool developed by Dodge, where it is described as "guided inquiry made easy"). In Alan Coburn's spectrum of inquiry models, "guided inquiry" falls in the middle between "structured inquiry" and "open inquiry". Students are provided the problem and materials, but they must devise their own procedure. Second, as the name "webquest" suggests, webquest observations are usually observations web page content. (One can view video of phenomena, but this is a weak second-best to direct observation. Math explorations can be done using virtual manipulatives, which might come the closest to working with their real world counterparts, although something still is lost when the physical activity is sacrificed.)

This is not to say that webquests can't be valuable learning activities. Good webquests require students to be creative in assembling and combining data, and reflect and build on what they find. Students can build their collaboration skills and skills using computer applications. But as inquiry-based learning, webquests miss the important elements of student-formulated problems and direct observation.

I developed a rubric for assessing the "inquiry quotient" of webquests, and then tested it out on ten middle-school math related webquests. (You can view the rubric as well as links to the webquests and how I scored the webquests by clicking here.) The highest score I gave any of the webquests was a 14 out of 20. That particular webquest, The Dilemma of the Dangerous Meat Loaf, did use some direct observation that was brought back to the webquest, and, with a little tweaking, allowed for a high degree of open-endedness. [I should note that I developed the rubric as part of an "inquiry quotient" webquest developed by Craig Cunningham at National-Louis University, and in this case, my direct observations were observations of webquests.]

As guided inquiry lessons, webquests can be useful. A potential danger in their use is to think that they can replace direct observation. An exercise that pushes the student beyond "guided" and into "open" inquiry would push beyond the boundaries of the webquest format. Possible features of such an exercise might include heavier reliance on student collection of data via direct observations, and perhaps a relaxation of the task directive -- this is something to explore.

jd

Bookmarking

I started using diigo a few months ago to keep track of links that I found. Mainly I dump them there so I can keep track of them, but diigo is nice for also sharing them with the wider world. Most of the resources relate to education or math, though I think there are some other odds and ends in there.

Before that I used Portaportal, but it's functionality (describing, tagging, sharing, listing, etc.) is limited (here is a link to my Portaportal page, but I stopped adding to it several months ago). Before that, I did my lists by hand (here is a link to my teaching math resources page), but it has been too cumbersome to maintain, and while generally available on the web, not as rich in features as a site like diigo. I tried delicious at one point, but couldn't get comfortable with it.

One of the most useful features of diigo has been its "group" feature. I am a member of the "diigo in education" group, and as a result, I receive a daily summary of new links that other members of the group have found. Links include both online activities as well as news articles on education. This has been an ongoing source of good new (to me) resources.

I have not been so good about sharing my links with others, except for whoever stumbles upon them via diigo.

I now have over 300 links on my bookmarks page organized into almost 50 lists. When I moved my Portaportal links over, the associated lists did not all transfer, so some of those links may not be in any lists. A number of the links have no description, so there is the danger of the links being orphaned in my diigo attic (now that's a rather bizarre mixed metaphor). This points to the general problem of Internet resources, the challenge of adequately indexing the material so relevant material can be quickly retrieved. Google of course is one blunt tool for retrieval. Librarians have been sensitive to this issue for a long long time. Diigo uses tags, which I have not taken advantage of until recently. The drawback with tags is the variety of tagging terms that people use.

Looking through the links, I am once again reminded first how much stuff is out there, and how the Internet is pretty amazing at making the stuff available. And second that there isn't so much a shortage of resources, but of the time to review, select and absorb the resources into one's teaching practice. That old metaphor about putting your mouth up to the firehose of information...

jd

P.S. In case you were wondering (why would you wonder?), this was posted to satisfy a course requirement.

Money ruins everything #1

An insider's view of the textbook industry.

jd

Tech and ed spending in today's WSJ

Today's (7/23/09) Wall Street Journal reports on technology spending in education. The article is a bit confused, replicating many of the "e-lusions" that Todd Oppenheimer described in his book a few years ago. The article described federal stimulus money going into educational technology at the expense of money for teachers and other educational needs. The money has significant strings attached -- it's only for technology and tech training. So while teachers are laid off, classroom sizes expanded, and programs cut, more machines are being thrown at an educational system in crisis.

The fundamental fallacy is that machines can replace humans in education. The article repeats common dodgy research claims: a school district introduced laptops, and student scores went up over the next few years ("Sixth-graders taught with laptops the first year saw their reading and math scores rise 27% and 15%, respectively, by eighth grade, says District Superintendent Jerry Vaughn." Uhh -- they go up anyway; that's why the ISAT cut points go up for each grade level.

One North Carolina district saw signigicant gains after going to a one-to-one laptop program, but as with most tech and ed research, there is no basis for attributing causality to the laptops. My experience does support one observation by a school official: "Dr. MacNeill credits these advances in large part to the technology program, which she says has made the students 'more engaged, more active in their learning' and made school 'more purposeful and relevant to them.'" I think there is a sad statement about education and students in that statement though -- a sublation of some sort. Relevance is found in the interaction with an electronic device; and there is something in there about achieving engagement via consumption rather than self-generated. Some completely different physiological or neurological state is in play.

Some of the technology programs are accompanied by training in student-centered instruction:

Many districts receiving these funds are looking beyond simply equipping classrooms with the latest gadgetry ... in favor of rethinking the way education is delivered. In some tech-equipped schools, teachers are playing a less-dominant role in the classroom, group work and problem-solving are emphasized...

Ms. Herdman [district head of ed tech] envisions such a transformation in North Kansas City. “It’s no longer going to be ‘Turn to page 10 and look at this,’ ” she says. “It’s more collaborative work, the learning style is inquiry-based, and the teacher is guiding, facilitating learning rather than lecturing.

Which is to applauded I think, and is a responsible way to incorporate technology into the classroom. But Herdman adds, "It’s about teaching the curriculum using technology as your vehicle." I question the necessity of delivering the curriculum via technology -- it may be possible (even about that I am not so sure) -- but if so it is an expensive, and unhuman, way to do it.

jd

What good is the Internet for education?

I am taking a course from National-Louis this summer on designing Internet resources for teaching. One of the course requirements is a series of blog posts, which I will be posting here. The first topic is a reflection on the value of Internet resources for education.

What good is the Internet for education? The Internet is so many things now that there are many ways to think about its role in education. Thinking in terms of education roles, it is a conversation space, a meeting space, a filing cabinet, a classroom, a bulletin board, a library, and many types of museums. It is a printing press / radio or TV station / movie theater (where you can be the projectionist or an audience member). It's also a shopping mall, collaboratory and playground (of sorts). Thinking of Google Docs or Zoho, It is many types of computer applications, and the metaphors that they embody. I am sure I have left out important roles, and given short shrift to some. In all of these cases, the economics of the Internet mean that the Internet is a tremendously cost-effective resource for education. So one can interpret its value in a quantitative, monetary sense (quite high), or qualitatively, in terms of (for example) surprising discovered connections, social or otherwise.

On the other hand... It is important to remember what the Internet is not. It is not "right there" -- it can only be reached through electronic devices, and those magical gateways, although not that hard to find these days, are not ubiquitous or free. It is not nature, the real natural world. It is not tactile, physical, sensual world . It is not a real room where one can enjoy the richness of face-to-face interaction. The Internet experience is mediated through electronics, a bundle of media that exerts certain pressures on experience, and so alters and shapes and constrains it. The Internet, hyperlinks notwithstanding, is a programmed experience, where the rules governing interactions are limited by the imagination of the developers or the capabilities of the hardware. And all of the social networking opportunities notwithstanding, it is still a terribly segregated space, of like communicating only with like.

So while there is obvious and real value for education in the Internet, there is also a seductive lure to it. There is the danger that education gets swallowed up by the Internet. That educators might confuse the world with its (relatively) tiny subset, the Internet. Because the digital Internet is, if you are sitting in front of a screen, right there, easier to deal with than the messiness of the analog world.

Here is a more interesting question to me: What is the value of the Internet for education, versus leaving the school building, and spending an hour investigating the empty lot across the street?

jd