Subject: Re: Curriculum, Instruction and the Internet
From: Ania Lian (ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au)
Date: Tue 18 Jan 2000 - 04:21:57 MET
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2000 13:21:57 +1000 (EST) From: Ania Lian <ania@lingua.arts.uq.edu.au> Subject: Re: Curriculum, Instruction and the Internet
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I have looked at the internet links included in Mohammend's paper and
what struck me was a paragraph from an otherwise very much insightful
explanation provided by Harris:
http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~jbharris/Virtual-Architecture/Foundation/index.html
The paragraph is: "When we are asked to wade through large collections of
lesson plans, replicate projects from other classrooms, or follow
overly-prescriptive directions for educational activities written by folks
who cant possibly know our students as we do, we are asked to ignore much
of what experience and reflection have taught us. Using Internet tools and
resources in our classrooms in ways that will benefit students and
teachers - in ways that are truly worth the time, effort, energy, and
expense - call upon us to function more as instructional designers than
direction-followers. Creating and implementing learning activities as a
designer is an artisans endeavor. I speak to you as that artisan;
analogously, as chef rather than cook; conductor rather than metronome;
educator rather than automatron."
Do we really know our students and hence can we really act on the
belief of knowing them and as a result take the responsibility of
functioning as Harris wishes us to be? LEt us look at another paragraph
whcih tells us more about the role of teachers:
"Choose educational activities that give students maximal return for
the amount of time and effort that all of us must expend to ensure
success."
The efficiency arguments always seem dangerous: let us look some more:
"In a phrase, we decide whether the new application is worth it.
In terms specific to educational telecomputing, is a particular use of an
Internet-based tool or resource in a particular situation for a particular
group of students and teachers worth the time, effort, expense that it
will take to use the tool or resource in this particular way?
While we may be able to recognise that our students are adults or
children, I am still not sure in what way being, white, 12 year old,
muslim, rather impulsive and a bit bored etc.. in a biology course can
tell us what is it that the situation *is* for us to make appropriate
decisions on this basis..... Let us look some more:
"How can we best make this decision each of the many times that we
will be called upon to do so, to help others in doing so? I suggest that,
keeping in mind a specific, feasible educational use of the Internet, and
in terms of both content and processes that students need/want to learn,
we consider the honest answers to two questions:
Will this use of the Internet enable students to do something that
they COULDN'T do before? Will this use of the Internet enable students to
do something that they COULD do before, but better?
If the honest answer to both of these questions is "no," there is
no reason to use Internet tools or resources in the way that we are
considering. Our time, effort, and resources would be better used in
another way. In any particular instance, if using traditional tools and
approaches can allow students to learn just as well or better than using
new tools and approaches, it doesnt make sense to use new tools in
traditional ways. It isn't "worth it" to do so, for students or for
teachers."
In short it seems that Harris suggests that the use of technology has to
be determined by statements regarding the informational use of specific
"application" (as Harris uses this word). If taken literaly, it may mean
that we know what speific application can reveal to our leraners. I find
it problematic. It seems, in the context of her paper,
that technology use is about facilitating information, or access to
important texts. Honesty though seems a one way path in the design: it is
the teacher that needs to make an honest decision regarding teh needs of,
say, 35, one even one person. I think it is a big responsibility to be
honest in the name or many. I think it is difficult to be honest even
toward yourself. Or? Let us look some more:
"This implies that when we do use these new tools, usually it will
only be "worth it" for us to do so if they can be applied in new ways to
help new and worthwhile things to happen in our classrooms."
Would we say that the use of technology is about continually searching for
new tools? HAve we exhausted the old ones? Btw I cannot understand why
Harris uses that many inverted commas. Isn't there a context that
justifies the value of things and hence the worthiness of things need not
be used in abstract terms and hence in commas? There is an very important
observation is Hariis:
"Yet, whenever we are offered new tools, something interesting
happens. Most of what we initially do with the new tools looks very
similar to what we did with older tools that were functionally similar to
the innovations. When teachers first began to use electronic mail and
electronic bulletin boards in elementary, middle-level, and secondary
classrooms in the early 1980's, for example, what kinds of projects were
most prevalent? Keypal projects!"
But, in this context, if we have such a tendency, how do we know that by
playing the architects we in fact do not play clairvoyants?:
"What's an activity structure? Let me begin by telling you what
it's not. It's not a model, template, plan, mold, or example. It's a
flexible framework, much like the wooden frame of a house or the skeletons
in our bodies. Its basic shape is clear, strong, and simple, but, as with
houses and humans, the same frame can support a myriad of different
architectural or bodily expressions."
Maybe it is not the frame that we need? Maybe facilitating conditions for
more meaningful learning demands exactly this rather than searching for
ways which to teachers appear to make learning meaningful?
It may well be that there is another reading possible to the article by
Harris. However, when we got closer to my area of what I would like to
call the field of my expertise, the following quote made it to me apparent
that my reading was not far off the mark:
"In Language Arts class, instead of asking my students to memorize
and use predetermined lists of vocabulary words, I helped them to form
personalized vocabulary lists each week that were drawn from both their
individualized and common reading in all subjects. In addition, to help
them to develop their skills in recognizing and deriving meanings of words
unfamiliar to them, we did "vocabulary sniglets." You remember sniglets,
don't you? Rich Hall, their creator, says that a sniglet is "any word that
doesn't appear in the dictionary, but should." and: "students individually
used units of meaning as building blocks in combinatorial action"
The old problem between lingusitics and language knowledge is that
linguistic categories have been often (almost always) perceived as the
frame in which we can fit "a myriad of different architectural or bodily
expressions". Yes, but are the words truly such frames? Some may argue
that there are larger frames than words which can fit the goal, like
context, for example. But it is difficult to teach context in ways that
can form a kind of personalised context lists.
So the question is: in what ways do we do what we promise to do: make
learning better? If "The activity structure, then, is a teacher's
instructional design tool; a piece of "wetware." (from Harris), then how
do we know that we do not use technology to reproduce the teacher rather
than to create something new? How do we know that in this way we do not
privilege our own prejudices about how things are and should be? In short,
don't we end up doing what we think is good but what at the same time is a
one-sided conclusion?
Maybe it is the relationship between activity and computers that is
problematic in her paper? What generates activities and therefore what is
teh role of computers in teh context of such activities?
Ania Lian
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