Posted by Alan Kay-4 on Nov 22, 2007; 5:56pm
URL: https://forum.world.st/Educational-research-tp114779p114781.html

Hi Folks --

Books are a real technology. Most people think that classrooms would be less rich without books and the literacy of reading and writing about ideas. (I do too.) And very few would disagree with the idea that the fruits of the printing press were one of the largest and most important forces in bringing forth our modern era. Yet, in the US where classrooms do have books, and there are free public libraries in most towns, education is failing. Should we blame the book or should we blame the classrooms and what's behind them?

One of the deepest built-in traits of human beings is "magical thinking" (superstitions, rituals, similarities, contagions), elements of which are found in most human behavior. This is reflected in many parts of education e.g the correct rituals will cause it to happen, or the proper effigies and/or contact with substances will cause it to happen. This is what "air guitar" (and much of fashion) is all about. It's always been a problem, and is likely worse today because the combination of media and pop culture is almost overwhelmingly focussed on form rather than content.

Some studies on the actualizations of personalities suggest that the decisive step is to take responsibility for what's necessary to turn a fantasy into actuality. In the US this has moved from a problem of individuals to a problem of the entire society.

Cheers,

Alan

At 06:46 AM 11/22/2007, Mark Guzdial wrote:

There’s actually a good bit of research indicating that technology in the classroom, even at the elementary level, makes a difference. “The Economist” just did an on-line debate on this very question (with Bob Kozma, formerly of SRI and U. Michigan, as supporting the claim of impact), and the conclusion was that technology in the classroom does make a statistically significant difference.  The Kulik’s did some meta-analyses early on (maybe 20 years ago) that demonstrated a small but measurable effect.  The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow had a visible effect that Dwyer talks about in his books.

The problem is that it’s impossible to hold all other factors equal.  As Jan Hawkins pointed out years ago, the real benefit of technology in the classroom was enabling new approaches.  I see Viewpoints as having this goal explicitly ­ the idea isn’t to replicate the current approach with technology, it’s to enable a new, deeper approach with kids (and teachers) doing real science and mathematics. 

Now let’s suppose that any school takes awhile to get all the kinks worked out to serve an approach optimally ­ for teachers to understand how to make details work well (like grading and supporting the weaker students), for parents and kids to change expectations, and for schools to understand how to work out the larger scale details (like dealing with curricular learning objective requirements and length of a class period).  If you measure the approach during this ramp-up period (which almost certainly is over a year long, from all the teacher adoption literature I’ve seen), the new approach will look worse than the old approach, on just about any measure you pick (from teacher/student/parent satisfaction, to performance on standardized tests ­ which were themselves optimized for the old approach).  Now, throw in technology on that new approach, and POOF! Technology is clearly not successful.

I don’t see OLPC as impacting the critics of educational technology much.  There are too many variables changing at once.  I suspect that we’ll see some impact ­ any investment in education where there is little there to begin with is going to have at least some short-term impact.  The challenge will be to sustain.

Mark


On 11/21/07 9:03 PM, "Richard Karpinski" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Sorry I can't cite the papers, but I recall that hardly any computer

based projects in elementary education had any noticeable beneficial

effect. This is what I would expect for any normal two or three hours

per week computer use in school.

The OLPC project, however gives the kid a computer full time, and she

has to use it just to read the textbook. Still, that's no pedagogic

help until you add the camera and the collaboration capabilities.

Suddenly, the computer is a mere tool to assist with a serious

activity involving the student and engaging her mind and body. This

is where I would expect a real effect, not by the presence of a

computer, per se, but by the research and the process of developing a

school report. It's the engagement that matters.

Of course, that's opinion, not science. The experiment is called

OLPC. The results are still out. And double blind is not an option,

but real science is. No matter how you try to manage it, there will

be differences in approach and differences in outcomes. Just look at

what correlates. Schools do a lot of testing, but how well that

measures the outcomes in fact remains open to question.

Incidentally, there was one year when the remote Stanford students

actually did better than the ones on campus. Naturally they changed

it immediately. The remote students had these advantages over the on-

campus students: The VCR delivery of the lectures allowed the remote

students to back up the tape to catch any missed phrase or whatever,

and the teaching assistant that arrived with the cassette was happy

to answer any student question, which could not have been asked in

the lecture hall.

If some OLPC teachers can act like the teaching assistants and some

course material can be provided as videos to be played on student

laptops, perhaps that Stanford experience could be replicated. Still,

I'm much more interested in the class project approach.

Dick

On 2007, Nov 21, , at 12:00, [hidden email] wrote:

> However, beyond such material, I get thoroughly confused by an

> inability to distinguish proven knowledge, accepted wisdom, and pure

> pseudo-science.    It seems that a lot of educational research is done

> by anecdote rather than by controlled blind large group studies.  Any

> pointers to the good stuff?

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