Jon Margerum-Leys article

This one sounds obvious. We're all in favor of thinking. People with the ability to think are key to a successful democracy, a vibrant economy, happy homes, all the things which society has as major goals. One way of defining thinking is this: 'Thinking' is the ability to use mental processes to organize existing knowledge and deal with new material. There are four imperatives for technology in terms of supporting this definition:

Important and generative knowledge, not trivia

Too often, technology is used as a support for encouraging students to recall trivia. Not that all factual material is trivial; existing knowledge is one of the building blocks of thinking and students need to have a store of facts to work with to provide raw material. To give just a few examples, I sincerely believe that every student, at the appropriate point in development, should know the multiplication table to twelve, understand the historical roots of the conflict in the Middle East, be able to recite a deeply meaningful poem, draw a picture which recreates an important piece of architecture, and sing the Star Spangled Banner. All of these require ready access to factual material.

But students have limited capacity and patience for acquiring facts and teachers have limited time in which to support students in learning them. When using technology, it's important to channel students' factual learning toward content which will provide building blocks for later lines of thinking and which are genuinely worthwhile. Bernie Dodge's WebQuests (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/) provide a useful model for creating activities in which students use technology to learn factual material in ways which encourage deep meaning while avoiding collection and reproduction of trivia.

Active roles and authentic tasks for students

A great strength of computer-based technology is its capacity to support creativity. Students can use technological tools to graph data, produce multimedia, communicate with other students, and write pieces with genuine meaning to the student and value to the community. Some of the best learning with technology takes place when students take an active role. Thinking requires both facts and mental processes; just as we need to consider which facts to concentrate on, we need to think about which mental processes students need to practice.

Extended time with connected ideas

For the most part, life is a set of extended processes. We plan the major parts of our lives over a long period of time and even the minor parts of our lives are extensions of and additions to slowly developing ways of doing things. Cooking eggs for breakfast, I bring together knowledge of nutrition (eggs have protein and fat and need to be complemented with carbohydrate), hygiene (wash your hands after handling raw eggs), and family (the kids won't eat Tabasco sauce, put it in when they're not looking). The same sense of extended time and connected ideas ought to be present when using technology. A curriculum which effectively integrates technology has to be more than a series of disconnected activities. Too often, technology use is separate from the curriculum, with ungraded activities which aren't a good match for the other learning which is taking place. Instead, we should seek to integrate technology over time and in ways which are connected to the curriculum. To see an example of an extended curriculum which incorporates technology, go to http://www.hice.org/ .

Interaction between physical world and technological representations

My 95-year-old grandfather, who I love dearly, never really did learn to read a map. In the crowded labyrinth that is his home town of Philadelphia, driving with him is a challenge, to say the least. He finds his way from place to place from memory, navigating each route as if recalling a folk tale. He simply has never learned to make the connection between the abstract world depicted on the map and the physical world seen through his windshield. The best technology-enhanced activities help students to make that link. Students can map the weather (http://groundhog.sprl.umich.edu/), test water quality (http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/gallery/pop4/pop4_1.cfm), or cook a meal (http://www.howard.k12.md.us/mhms/homeec/globalfoodswebquest.t.html).

Technology to manage instruction

As important as technology might be in supporting student thinking, it can be equally important in helping teachers to manage instruction. In a 1992 Journal of the Learning Sciences article, Ann Brown referred to working in the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of the classroom. There's a lot to pay attention to in classrooms, a tremendous amount of information which we are responsible for keeping track of. I have heard criticisms of one-computer classrooms in which the teacher is the primary user of the computer; I'm not sure that's always a bad thing. In at least three ways, technology use by teachers in managing instruction can have a significant impact on the way in which teaching and learning occur.

Mediation and elaboration of standards

In the 15 years that I've been a teacher, there has been an ever-increasing call for standards-based education. For the most part, I think that's a good thing in that it gives us a shared sense of direction in planning and enacting teaching and learning. Here in Michigan, a teacher-led project called MiClimb (http://www.miclimb.net/) is helping teachers to unpack the state standards and turn them into practical ideas for the classroom. Technology serves as a medium for communication between the MiClimb authors and state teachers; it also serves as a platform for delivering a rich set of complex resources which teachers can use in their classrooms.

Customizable, high quality assessment

To paraphrase a Watergate-era phrase, "What do students know and how do we know they know it?" Emerging technological tools can be a tremendous help in collecting and distributing assessment information. For individual teachers, programs like Gradekeeper (http://www.gradekeeper.com/) ease the record keeping load. One of my personal favorite tools is Rubistar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/), an online rubric generation program. Also very promising are handheld systems such as Sunburst's Profile to Go (http://www.sunburst-store.com/cgi-bin/sunburst.storefront/EN/Product/9644).

Data systems which communicate information quickly and easily

Schoolwide systems such as SASI (School Administration Student Information http://www.pearsonedtech.com/index.htm) make it possible for administrators and others to see data trends at a glance and to share information with parents and other constituents. By analyzing and sharing information, administrators can keep lines of communication with parents open and can build support for initiatives in their communities.

Technology to bring and keep people together

Robert Putnam writes convincingly about the decline of community in America. His 2000 book Bowling Alone (http://www.bowlingalone.com/) chronicles the plummeting participation in organized activities from bowling leagues to family reunions. Technology plays a part in this decline, as do changing roles for women and television. But technology has the capacity to bring people together as well.

Distributed expertise

One form of bringing people together is the use of distributed expertise. There's no need to reinvent the wheel--one of the beauties of the Web is that there are plenty of wheels around. Some of them may even fit on your axles. In Adapting and Enhancing Existing WebQuests, (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/adapting/) Bernie Dodge makes the point that for almost any topic area, there are almost always existing WebQuests available. Locating like-minded others and the work that they produce has never been easier, thanks to the technological tools we have at our fingertips.

Keeping track of expertise is also easier than ever. In the memory of my PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) I have contact information for over 700 different people and organizations. By having the information available in an easily-searchable form wherever I go, it's possible for me to reach people with a variety of skills whenever I need to.

Extended friendships

Each fall and winter, I meet with groups of students who are interested in and new to our teacher education program. In addition to giving them an overview of our program and their path through it, I encourage them to make connections. With the near-100% coverage of e-mail, current teacher education students will be able to maintain connections throughout their teaching career, if they choose to.

Conclusion

Technology does make a difference in the landscape of our educational systems. Computer hardware and software tools in particular have the capacity to support the acquisition and sharing of knowledge, which lies at the heart of our mission as educators. The decisions that we make will determine how well we can bring people together; manage instruction and assessment; and encourage complex interactions between technology, students, and ideas.

About the author:

Jon Margerum-Leys is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is a former high school (five years at Santa Maria High School in Santa Maria, California) and middle school (two years at Claremont Middle School in Claremont, New Hampshire) teacher. Jon’s background includes Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in educational technology, a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction, and a Bachelor of Music degree. For more information, see http://www.emunix.emich.edu/~margerum or e-mail Jon.Margerum-leys@emich.edu .


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What are we really after? by Jon Margerum-Leys, Assistant Professor at Eastern Michigan University Some years back, I was engaged in a friendly argument with a skeptical colleague. "Name me one piece of technology," he said, "which has changed public education." I thought for a minute and said "School Bus." It was a technology he took for granted, which he didn't even think of as a technology, but one which fundamentally changed education in America. Comprehensive high schools (particularly in rural areas), special education centers, interscholastic sports, magnet schools; none of these could exist in their current form without those ubiquitous yellow buses. Don't worry. This isn't going to be a piece about school buses, even though I think school buses are vitally important and we should think more about them and their role in education. Instead, I want to spend the next 1400 words writing about the technologies which I think have the best chance of changing education in ways which will help kids think and which can make our teaching lives richer. Technology can and does have an impact on education; we need to be sure that impact is consciously shaped, carefully considered, and in the best interests of our students. Technology as a tool to promote student thinking This one sounds obvious. We're all in favor of thinking. People with the ability to think are key to a successful democracy, a vibrant economy, happy homes, all the things which society has as major goals. One way of defining thinking is this: 'Thinking' is the ability to use mental processes to organize existing knowledge and deal with new material. There are four imperatives for technology in terms of supporting this definition: Important and generative knowledge, not trivia Too often, technology is used as a support for encouraging students to recall trivia. Not that all factual material is trivial; existing knowledge is one of the building blocks of thinking and students need to have a store of facts to work with to provide raw material. To give just a few examples, I sincerely believe that every student, at the appropriate point in development, should know the multiplication table to twelve, understand the historical roots of the conflict in the Middle East, be able to recite a deeply meaningful poem, draw a picture which recreates an important piece of architecture, and sing the Star Spangled Banner. All of these require ready access to factual material. But students have limited capacity and patience for acquiring facts and teachers have limited time in which to support students in learning them. When using technology, it's important to channel students' factual learning toward content which will provide building blocks for later lines of thinking and which are genuinely worthwhile. Bernie Dodge's WebQuests (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/) provide a useful model for creating activities in which students use technology to learn factual material in ways which encourage deep meaning while avoiding collection and reproduction of trivia. Active roles and authentic tasks for students A great strength of computer-based technology is its capacity to support creativity. Students can use technological tools to graph data, produce multimedia, communicate with other students, and write pieces with genuine meaning to the student and value to the community. Some of the best learning with technology takes place when students take an active role. Thinking requires both facts and mental processes; just as we need to consider which facts to concentrate on, we need to think about which mental processes students need to practice. Extended time with connected ideas For the most part, life is a set of extended processes. We plan the major parts of our lives over a long period of time and even the minor parts of our lives are extensions of and additions to slowly developing ways of doing things. Cooking eggs for breakfast, I bring together knowledge of nutrition (eggs have protein and fat and need to be complemented with carbohydrate), hygiene (wash your hands after handling raw eggs), and family (the kids won't eat Tabasco sauce, put it in when they're not looking). The same sense of extended time and connected ideas ought to be present when using technology. A curriculum which effectively integrates technology has to be more than a series of disconnected activities. Too often, technology use is separate from the curriculum, with ungraded activities which aren't a good match for the other learning which is taking place. Instead, we should seek to integrate technology over time and in ways which are connected to the curriculum. To see an example of an extended curriculum which incorporates technology, go to http://www.hice.org/ . Interaction between physical world and technological representations My 95-year-old grandfather, who I love dearly, never really did learn to read a map. In the crowded labyrinth that is his home town of Philadelphia, driving with him is a challenge, to say the least. He finds his way from place to place from memory, navigating each route as if recalling a folk tale. He simply has never learned to make the connection between the abstract world depicted on the map and the physical world seen through his windshield. The best technology-enhanced activities help students to make that link. Students can map the weather (http://groundhog.sprl.umich.edu/), test water quality (http://learnweb.harvard.edu/ent/gallery/pop4/pop4_1.cfm), or cook a meal (http://www.howard.k12.md.us/mhms/homeec/globalfoodswebquest.t.html). Technology to manage instruction As important as technology might be in supporting student thinking, it can be equally important in helping teachers to manage instruction. In a 1992 Journal of the Learning Sciences article, Ann Brown referred to working in the "blooming, buzzing confusion" of the classroom. There's a lot to pay attention to in classrooms, a tremendous amount of information which we are responsible for keeping track of. I have heard criticisms of one-computer classrooms in which the teacher is the primary user of the computer; I'm not sure that's always a bad thing. In at least three ways, technology use by teachers in managing instruction can have a significant impact on the way in which teaching and learning occur. Mediation and elaboration of standards In the 15 years that I've been a teacher, there has been an ever-increasing call for standards-based education. For the most part, I think that's a good thing in that it gives us a shared sense of direction in planning and enacting teaching and learning. Here in Michigan, a teacher-led project called MiClimb (http://www.miclimb.net/) is helping teachers to unpack the state standards and turn them into practical ideas for the classroom. Technology serves as a medium for communication between the MiClimb authors and state teachers; it also serves as a platform for delivering a rich set of complex resources which teachers can use in their classrooms. Customizable, high quality assessment To paraphrase a Watergate-era phrase, "What do students know and how do we know they know it?" Emerging technological tools can be a tremendous help in collecting and distributing assessment information. For individual teachers, programs like Gradekeeper (http://www.gradekeeper.com/) ease the record keeping load. One of my personal favorite tools is Rubistar (http://rubistar.4teachers.org/), an online rubric generation program. Also very promising are handheld systems such as Sunburst's Profile to Go (http://www.sunburst-store.com/cgi-bin/sunburst.storefront/EN/Product/9644). Data systems which communicate information quickly and easily Schoolwide systems such as SASI (School Administration Student Information http://www.pearsonedtech.com/index.htm) make it possible for administrators and others to see data trends at a glance and to share information with parents and other constituents. By analyzing and sharing information, administrators can keep lines of communication with parents open and can build support for initiatives in their communities. Technology to bring and keep people together Robert Putnam writes convincingly about the decline of community in America. His 2000 book Bowling Alone (http://www.bowlingalone.com/) chronicles the plummeting participation in organized activities from bowling leagues to family reunions. Technology plays a part in this decline, as do changing roles for women and television. But technology has the capacity to bring people together as well. Distributed expertise One form of bringing people together is the use of distributed expertise. There's no need to reinvent the wheel--one of the beauties of the Web is that there are plenty of wheels around. Some of them may even fit on your axles. In Adapting and Enhancing Existing WebQuests, (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/adapting/) Bernie Dodge makes the point that for almost any topic area, there are almost always existing WebQuests available. Locating like-minded others and the work that they produce has never been easier, thanks to the technological tools we have at our fingertips. Keeping track of expertise is also easier than ever. In the memory of my PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) I have contact information for over 700 different people and organizations. By having the information available in an easily-searchable form wherever I go, it's possible for me to reach people with a variety of skills whenever I need to. Extended friendships Each fall and winter, I meet with groups of students who are interested in and new to our teacher education program. In addition to giving them an overview of our program and their path through it, I encourage them to make connections. With the near-100% coverage of e-mail, current teacher education students will be able to maintain connections throughout their teaching career, if they choose to. Conclusion Technology does make a difference in the landscape of our educational systems. Computer hardware and software tools in particular have the capacity to support the acquisition and sharing of knowledge, which lies at the heart of our mission as educators. The decisions that we make will determine how well we can bring people together; manage instruction and assessment; and encourage complex interactions between technology, students, and ideas. About the author: Jon Margerum-Leys is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He is a former high school (five years at Santa Maria High School in Santa Maria, California) and middle school (two years at Claremont Middle School in Claremont, New Hampshire) teacher. Jon’s background includes Ph.D. and Master’s degrees in educational technology, a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction, and a Bachelor of Music degree. For more information, see http://www.emunix.emich.edu/~margerum or e-mail Jon.Margerum-leys@emich.edu . • Previous Articles

by Jon Margerum-Leys, Assistant Professor at Eastern Michigan University