Talk:Substantially Improving Education






 * “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world: indeed; it's the only thing that ever has.” (Margaret Mead; 1901—1978)

Comment by David Moursund 7/28/09
A few weeks ago a person sent a message to the ISTE SIGTE discussion list asking for suggestions of the latest and greatest content that should be added to a preservice ICT in Education teacher education course. A variety of responses were received. The content quoted below comes from an email message I sent July 27, 2009. It contains comments from two other responders to the original email.

(Message from David Moursund sent 7/27/09.)

Hi everybody:

In thinking about the ideas in the two messages given below, it occurred to me to think about what has been learned in each of the academic disciplines during the past few years, and during the past few decades. Is there anything new being learned that is relevant to the curriculum content, instructional processes, and assessment in the various disciplines that is relevant to precollege teaching?

If you believe the answer yes, then it seems to me you should be concerned about how preservice and inservice teachers are to learn this new material and to effectively integrate it into curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Part of each academic discipline is the representation and solution of the problems, tasks, and challenges in the discipline. In many disciplines, the envelop is being pushed by use of the latest, greatest computer technology and underlying Computational Thinking (See http://iae-pedia.org/Computational_Thinking) as it applies to the various disciplines.

Thus, I tend to think of the "latest and greatest" computer hardware and software developments in terms of how they are being used to advance the frontiers of the various academic disciplines (and, entertainment). I think that this should be part of the computers in education instruction that preservice teachers receive.

Dave Moursund

On Jul 17, 2009, at 8:01 AM, John Elfrank-Dana wrote:

I’d like to expand on David Marcovitz's point a bit to add that teacher vision should drive their decisions about technology. I recommended Web 2.0 because my educational philosophy has democracy as its central focus. Any use of technology would, therefore, need to serve to facilitate a participatory culture in learning. Mandates run counter to this ethos. John Elfrank-Dana Adjunct Professor Graduate School of Education Fordham University

From: David Marcovitz

Sent: Friday, July 10, 2009 9:30 AM To: ISTE SIGTE Discussion List Subject: Re: [sigte-discussion] What should new teachers know? “The big question is: What should new teachers know how to use?”

Nothing. There is no specific technology that new teachers should know how to use. Instead, they should have the skills to find new technologies, evaluate them, and think about ways that the new technologies fit into their classrooms. The specific technology is unimportant. The only reason for specific technologies is to push them to go deeper than they would on their own, not because the depth with that specific technology is what they need but to practice exploring more advanced uses of a technology.

David M. Marcovitz, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Educational Technology Director Department of Education Specialties Loyola College in Maryland

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Comment: undated and anonymous
The message given below is quoted from a email message sent to David Moursund.


 * Maybe I've noticed this before, but this made me realize something:
 * - A large percentage of the discussion around "computers in education" comes down to changing the method of teaching. Sometimes this is technology driven, but sometimes it seems to just be that the computers provide an excuse for folks to try other means of teaching.  I suspect this conflation of issues doesn't help provide focus on the use of technology.


 * - I was also thinking that one model for much of the software for education is it is "just" another textbook. It is funny, though. I've heard of standardized textbooks and publishers pushing their textbooks... why have I never heard of the equivalent for software?


 * - I'm still left with the echos of the lecture I sent you yesterday, wondering about the other side of computers an education: How much do we need teachers? Is that perhaps one of the things that keeps tech in education from moving forward? That folks realize that if the stuff goes as far as it can, it may well put many a teacher out of business?  One reason the stuff may not have gone further may just be that folks are asking teachers to put themselves out of work, but asking them, themselves, to decide whether to go ahead with that idea? [Bold added for emphasis.]

Comment by David Moursund: Your question about "How much do we need teachers?" reminds me of Gladwell's book, "The Tipping Point." Our current educational system is both huge and well established. The people implementing the system have a huge investment in maintaining the system somewhat like it currently is. Many of the people using the system are not able to envision significant changes and are reasonably satisfied with their local schools.

The US Federal Government has given considerable support to the Charter Schools movement. Perhaps the underlying idea in this governmental support is that competition from Charter Schools will lead to significant changes in the traditional public school system. So far, the change represented by Charter Schools has not been sufficient to significantly change our public school system.

I can imagine a future in which we have relatively inexpensive, walking, talking, artificially intelligent robots. Each child is given such a robot to serve as a companion, a protector, and a tutor. Of course, the robot has access to much of the collected knowledge of the human race, school curriculum, theories of teaching and learning, and so on.

We know that reasonably good individual tutoring is a more effective aid to learning than our tradition teacher working with 20 to 30 students. Thus, such robots would likely create a tipping point leading to major changes in our current educational system.

Such a tipping point need not come in "one swell foop." We have the Internet and the virtual library we call the Web. We have a growing amount of computer-assisted learning materials. We have quite a bit of distance learning going on. The combination of these three things is beginning to rattle some traditional education systems.

The distance learning component, alone, is a powerful change agent. There are now quite a number of distance non-profit and for-profit schools that provide coursework at a lower cost than our traditional educational system. That is, there is growing competition for the school dollars. While the initial quality of distance learning tended to not be as good as traditional schooling, it is gradually improving in quality and is good enough so that it is being widely accepted.

Comment by DR 12/2/08
There’s cultural bias about math. I recall that in the second grade the teacher informed us that 10-5 was 5. I asked “so then is 5-10 -5? It was one instance of that teacher and I didn’t get along.

Personally, I think our schools should be radically changed. Fewer teacher, more aides. Meet the students where they are; individual mastery learning which doesn’t preclude cooperative efforts. Older students helping teach younger students.

Comment by David Moursund 5/4/08
I believe that all teachers actively think about how to improve the quality of education that their students are receiving. Teachers routinely learn new ideas about teaching and learning, and they try out these ideas in their own teaching.

However, some put a great deal more energy into such activities than others. Moreover, some schools and their administrative structures support such innovation much more than others.

I also believe that our educational system is doing a major disservice for many students. Many students receive little instruction, encouragement, and power to take increased responsibility for their own education. We all know appropriate ways to empower students. My believe is that at the current time, our educational system is moving in the direction of dis-empowering students.