The Education Tech Series is
supported by Dell The Power To Do More, where you'll find perspectives,
trends and stories that inspire Dell to create technology solutions that work
harder for its customers so they can do and achieve more.
Don Knezek, the CEO of the International Society for
Technology in Education, compares education without technology to the medical
profession without technology.
“If in 1970 you had knee surgery, you got a huge scar,” he
says. “Now, if you have knee surgery you have two little dots.”
Technology is helping teachers to expand beyond linear,
text-based learning and to engage students who learn best in other ways. Its
role in schools has evolved from a contained “computer class” into a versatile
learning tool that could change how we demonstrate concepts, assign projects
and assess progress.
Despite these opportunities, adoption of technology by
schools is still anything but ubiquitous. Knezek says that U.S. schools are
still asking if they should incorporate more technology, while other
countries are asking how. But in the following eight areas, technology has
shown its potential for improving education.
1. Better Simulations and Models
While a tuning fork is a perfectly acceptable way to
demonstrate how vibrations make sound, it’s harder to show students what
evolution is, how molecules behave in different situations, or exactly why
mixing two particular chemicals is dangerous.
Digital simulations and models can help teachers explain
concepts that are too big or too small, or processes that happen too quickly or
too slowly to demonstrate in a physical classroom.
The Concord Consortium, a non-profit organization that develops technologies for math,
science and engineering education, has been a leader in developing free, open
source software that teachers can use to model concepts. One of their most
extensive projects is the Molecular Workbench, which provides science teachers with
simulations on topics like gas laws, fluid mechanics and chemical bonding.
Teachers who are trained in the system can create activities with text, models
and interactive controls. One participant referred to the project as
“[Microsoft] Word for molecules.”
Other simulations the organization is developing include a
software that allows students to experiment with virtual greenhouses in order
to understand evolution, a software that helps students understand the physics
of energy efficiency by designing a model house, and simulations of how
electrons interact with matter.
2. Global Learning
At sites like Glavio.org, students can set up language lessons with a
native speaker who lives in another country and attend the lessons via
videoconferencing. Learning from a native speaker, learning through social
interaction, and being exposed to another culture's perspective are all
incredible educational advantages that were once only available to those who
could foot a travel bill. Now, setting up a language exchange is as easy as
making a videoconferencing call.
3. Virtual Manipulatives
Let's say you're learning about the relationship between
fractions, percents and decimals. Your teacher could have you draw graphs or do
a series of problems that changes just one variable in the same equation. Or he
could give you a "virtual manipulative" like the one above and let
you experiment with equations to reach an understanding of the relationship. The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives, run by a team at Utah State University,
has been building its database of these tools since 1999.
"You used to count blocks or beads," says Lyne Schrum,
who has written three books on the topic of schools and technology.
"Manipulating those are a little bit more difficult. Now there are virtual
manipulative sites where students can play with the idea of numbers and what
numbers mean, and if I change values and I move things around, what
happens."
4. Probes and Sensors
About 15 years ago, the founders of the Concord Consortium
took the auto focus sensor from a Polaroid camera and hooked it up to a
computer graph program, thereby creating the ability to graph motion in real
time. Today there are classrooms all over the world that use ultrasonic motion
detectors to demonstrate concepts.
“I’ve taught physics before, and you spend a lot of time
getting these ideas of position, and what is velocity, and what does motion
really mean and how do you define it,” says Chad Dorsey, the president and CEO
of the Concord Consortium. “And you end up spending a lot of time doing these
things and trying to translate them into graphs. You could spend a whole period
creating a graph for an experiment that you did, and it loses a lot of meaning
in that process. By hooking up this ultrasonic motion detector to a graph right
away…it gives you a specific real-time feel for what it means to move at faster
rates or slower rates or increasing in speed or decreasing in speed and a much
more foundational understanding of the topic than you could ever get by just
drawing the graph by hand.”
Collecting real-time data through probes and sensors has a
wide range of educational application. Students can compute dew point
with a temperature sensor, test pH with a pH probe, observe the effect of pH on
an MnO3 reduction with a light probe, or note the chemical changes in
photosynthesis using pH and nitrate sensors.
5. More Efficient Assessment
Models and simulations, beyond being a powerful tool for
teaching concepts, can also give teachers a much richer picture of how students
understand them.
"You can ask students questions, and multiple choice
questions do a good job of assessing how well students have picked up
vocabulary," Dorsey explains. "But the fact that you can describe the
definition [of] a chromosome ... doesn’t mean that you understand genetics any
better ... it might mean that you know how to learn a definition. But how do we
understand how well you know a concept?"
In Geniverse, a program the Concord Consortium developed to
help students understand genetics by "breeding" dragons, teachers can
give students a problem that is much more like a performance assessment. The
students are asked to create a specific dragon. Teachers can see what each
student did to reach his or her end result and thereby understand whether
trial-and-error or actual knowledge of genetics leads to a correct answer.
The organization is also developing a program that
will help teachers collect real-time assessment data from their students. When
the teacher gives out an assignment, she can watch how far along students are,
how much time each a spends on each question, and whether their answers are
correct. With this information, she can decide what concepts students are
struggling with and can pull up examples of students' work on a projector for
discussion.
“What they would have done in the past is students would
make a lab report, they’d turn it in, the teacher would take a couple of days
to grade it, they’d get it back a couple of days later, and two to three days
later they’d talk about it," Dorsey says. "But they’ve probably done
a couple of lessons in between then, [and] they haven't had time to guide the
students immediately as they learned it."
6. Storytelling and Multimedia
Knezek recently saw a video that was produced by a group of
elementary students about Bernoulli's Principle. In the video, the students demonstrated the principle that makes
flight possible by taking two candles and putting them close together, showing
that blowing between them brings the flames closer together. For another
example, they hung ping pong balls from the ceiling and they pulled together.
“With a simple assignment and access to technology,
researching and also producing a product that would communicate, they were able
to do deep learning on a concept that wasn’t even addressed in their textbook,
and allow other people to view it and learn from it,” Knezek says.
Asking children to learn through multimedia projects is not only an excellent form of project-based
learning that teaches teamwork, but it's also a good way to motivate students
who are excited to create something that their peers will see. In addition, it
makes sense to incorporate a component of technology that has become so
integral to the world outside of the classroom.
“It’s no longer the verbal logic or the spoken or written
word that causes people to make decisions," Knezek says. "Where you
go on vacations, who you vote for, what kind of car you buy, all of those
things are done now with multimedia that engage all of the senses and cause
responses."
7. E-books
Despite students' apparent preference for paper textbooks, proponents like Daytona College and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are ready to switch to digital. And
electronic textbook vendors like CourseSmart are launching to help them.
E-books hold an unimaginable potential for innovating
education, though as some schools have already discovered, not all of that potential has been realized
yet.
"A digital textbook that is merely a PDF on a tablet
that students can carry around might be missing out on huge possibilities like
models and simulations or visualizations," Dorsey says. "It takes
time and it really takes some real thought to develop those things, and so it
would be easy for us as a society to miss out on those kinds of opportunities
by saying, 'Hey look, we’re not carrying around five textbooks anymore. It’s
all on your iPad, isn’t that great?'”
8. Epistemic Games
Epistemic games put students in roles like city
planner, journalist, or engineer and ask them to solve real-world problems. The Epistemic Games Group has
provided several examples of how immersing students in the adult world through
commercial game-like simulations can help students learn important concepts.
In one game, students are cast as high-powered negotiators
who need to decide the fate of a real medical controversy. In another, they
must become graphical artists in order to create an exhibit of mathematical art
in the style of M.C. Escher. Urban Science, the game featured in the above video,
assigns students the task of redesigning Madison, Wisconsin.
"Creative professionals learn innovative thinking
through training that is very different from traditional academic classrooms
because innovative thinking means more than just knowing the right answers on a
test," explains The Epistemic Games Group's website. "It also means
having real-world skills, high standards and professional values, and a
particular way of thinking about problems and justifying solutions. Epistemic
games are about learning these fundamental ways of thinking for the digital
age."
Source: http://mashable.com/2010/11/22/technology-in-education/
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