Tools That Empower Students






 * "Knowledge is power." (Francis Bacon; English philosopher, statesman, scientist, author, and father of the scientific method; 1561-1626.)


 * "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." (Thomas H. Huxley; English writer; 1825-1895.)

Formal and informal education help to empower students to meet the conditions they are currently facing or will face in the future. One can compare educational systems by examining the extent to which they prepare students for likely and less likely futures.

This is, of course, a tricky task. The possible futures for a student growing up in the United States are quite a bit different from those of a student growing up in China or Bangladesh. Wars, epidemics, famine, global warming, forms of government, and other major situations do not affect all people equally throughout the world.

What we do know is that students will face a world that is very different from our world today. Technological changes are now occurring at a much faster pace than in the past, and the rate of change is increasing. Thus, a good educational system needs to help prepare students to deal with major changes in Information and Communication Technology, medicine, gene technology, nanotechnology, global warming, and other areas of mass impact.

Technologies (and, more generally, research) produce tools and other aids to solving problems, accomplishing tasks, learning, and making use of one's learning.

Powerful Tools Empower their Users
It is easy to memorize and use terms such as student-centered education and empowering students. When I first encountered these terms quite a few years ago, I thought to my self:


 * "So, what's new. Certainly I focus my courses on the students in my courses. Certainly my students are empowered by what I teach. I think that what is new is that educators are throwing some more educationalize at me."

Over the years, the ideas of student-centered education and empowering students have gradually sunk into my brain. One of the ways that I now think about this is in terms of what the increasingly powerful mind & brain tools can do for learners.

Some Examples
Here is a simple example that I like to use when working with elementary school teachers. By the time that students are in the third grade, they are beginning to understand the idea of using a circle diagram to show parts of a whole. They can learn to read a pie chart that represents a "whole" broken into varying sized pieces. However, they have not yet gained the knowledge of how to make a pie chart. This involves working with fractions or percentages of 360 degrees, and using a protractor to divide a circle into appropriately-sized wedges.

Of course, software that is easy to learn to use can do the necessary computations and produce a pie chart. Such software, along with many other data graphing options, is built into a modern spreadsheet program and other software. Thus, a third grader can be given the pie-charting power of a fifth grader through a little instruction in the use of such software.

For a non-mathematical example, consider providing computer access to a student who is just beginning to learn to write. Such a student can recognize letters on a keyboard and can thus produce nicely shaped letters on a computer display. The hand eye coordination and small muscle control needed to do this is simple relative to forming letters using a pencil and paper. Thus, it is feasible to teach students to write using a computer before they learn to write using pencil and paper (Dance Mat Typing for Ages 7 to 11, n.d.).

Another powerful example is provided by computerized information retrieval. Think about the knowledge and skills that were needed to go to a library's card catalog, find a card corresponding to a topic or specific book or other document that one wanted to read, and then go into the library stacks and actually find the item. Compare this with learning to use a search engine. A grade school student is greatly empowered through learning how to use a search engine to access information on the Web.

The list of examples of ICT-based empowerment is easily expanded. We have computers and computerized tools that can solve or help to solve a huge range of problems. In many cases, learners can understand the purpose of solving the problems and how to make use of solutions long before they can gain the knowledge and skills to solve the problems using simpler tools such as paper and pencil.

Early Research on Writing with a Typewriter
I find it interesting to compare early use of typewriters in schools with early and current uses of computers. You may enjoy reading a 1932 paper on this subject (Freeman, 1932).

The paper reports on an experiment conducted in Grades 1-6 in six large cities in the East and Middle West of the United States. Classrooms were provided one typewriter per four students. Individual students used typewriters for about 50-to-80 minutes per week in Grade 1, and about 90-to-130 minutes per week in Grades 2-6. The time was divided into two to five sessions per week.

This was a large scale experiment, with 2,383 students in the experimental group and 3,38 students in the control group during the academic year 1929-1930. Additional followup information research was conducted during the academic year 1930-31.

Here are three brief quotes from the article:


 * When the gains in the individual subjects of study are tabulated separately it appears that the superiority of the typewriter group was greater in some subjects than in others. The subjects in which they were the most superior in the first year, however, were not the subjects in which they excelled in the second year.


 * It is encouraging to discover that use of the typewriter did not cause a deterioration in either the speed of the quality of handwriting.


 * Considering the small amount of practice they enjoyed, the rapidity with which the pupils gained the ability to use the typewriter was rather remarkable. In the course of one year they learned to write on the typewriter approximately as rapidly as they could write with pen or pencil.

Calculator Examples
Reading, writing, and arithmetic (the 3Rs) have long been considered the basics of education. Thomas Jefferson is famous for his contributions to the Declaration of Independence and for being the third President of the United States. He saw the importance of education and an educated citizenry. Thus, he worked in his home state of Virginia to get the legislature to provide free public education up through the third grade. (He was not successful in this endeavor.) His thinking was that this level of grammar school education, focusing mainly on reading, writing, and arithmetic, would suffice for most citizens.

A person is greatly empowered through learning to read and write at a third grade level. Even nowadays, instruction in grade school is designed so that students are expected to be able to "read to learn" after completing three years of reading instruction. We know, of course, that additional years of instruction and practice can help most students to attain a much higher level of expertise as a reader.

Now, think about arithmetic. With a third grade education, an average student can count, read and write numerals and numbers, do addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers, understand a little bit about simple fractions, and perhaps deal with simple multiplication and division. More years of instruction and practice are needed for a typical student to learn to deal with multiplication and division of multi-digit numbers, work with decimal fractions, work with fractions and percentages, and so on.

One of the important ideas in math education is the difference between understanding a concept (for example, that numbers can be multiplied and divided) and learning procedures (such as paper-and-pencil multiplication and division algorithms.) There are a variety of algorithms that can be taught to students for doing multi-digit multiplication and division. In most of these, students gain very little understanding of the concepts we call "multiplication" and "division," or the meaning and usefulness of the results. Most students find that it is a significant mental challenge to memorize the algorithms and gain both speed and accuracy in using the algorithms. Much of the instructional time on these topics in school is spent in helping a child's mind develop "machine-like" speed and accuracy.

Historically, this was quite important to do in school. The technology of the Information Age opens up alternatives. Solar-powered, handheld, six-function calculators that will last for a number of years can be purchased for well under five dollars. What this simple tool does is help to more clearly define the difference between understanding and using arithmetic versus memorizing paper-and-pencil algorithms and gaining speed and accuracy in their use.

Our educational system has been struggling for more than 35 years about how the simple calculator should be affecting the curriculum. The National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics recommended calculator instruction and use in schools clear back in 1979. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics made a similar recommendation in 1980. Since then, schools and individual teachers have made their own decisions as to what to do about teaching the paper-and-pencil algorithms and teaching students to effectively and responsibly use calculators. Many of the state and national tests now allow use of calculators.

Apprenticeships in Education
Historically, some type of apprenticeship was a key aspect of education. The role of apprenticeships gradually declined as our formal schooling system developed.

There are many who believe that this decline should be reversed and that many students should be in apprenticeship programs. For example, such an approach to education is much more common in Germany than it is in the U.S., where such programs are often called School to Work programs.

Here is a 2007 example from a U.S. school (Dresang, August 3, 2007). Quoting from the article:


 * The lanky 17-year-old is grinding a load of electrical boxes.


 * As he's carefully adjusting his machine, he explains what he's doing—and why.


 * "It's hard to find opportunities like this, where a company will give you that start," Rewolinski says, loud enough to be heard over the fan that cools him. "A lot of companies now, they want you to have the experience right away. And with a program like this, I can get that start, and then I can move on and maybe move to something better or stay here and just get better at it."

Building Expertise
At the current time, the totality of collected human knowledge is very large and is increasing rapidly. Estimates are that this totality may well be doubling in less than ten years.

The Thomas H. Huxley recommendation quoted above was likely an unachievable goal even at the time he wrote it. However, the basic ideas behind his recommendation remain quite important. They focus on breadth and depth of education. They suggest that a person should strive for great breadth—sort of a shallow layer of education that provides some minimally useful level of knowledge and skills over a huge range of topic areas. They also suggest that considerable depth in one (or more) areas is desirable. With this depth, one can have a level of expertise that exceeds that of the great majority of people. This level of expertise might well be the basis for success in a career.

Humans (and a few other animals) find or develop tools to help increase their level of expertise in solving problems and accomplishing tasks. In a very broad sense, reading, writing, and arithmetic are tools that people have developed. They are of such importance that our schools spend years helping students to gain "contemporary levels of expertise" in their use.

Importance of Feedback
Here is another very important idea. I think that a person is empowered in a learning situation by receiving good and relatively frequent feedback on how well they are doing. Feedback can come from oneself and from a variety of other sources.

Thus, when I am playing a computer game, I get feedback from the game as it keeps track of how well I am doing. Through my efforts, I can improve my performance on the various measures that indicate how much I am improving.

We are quite used to measuring our progress in sporting events. If I am practicing shooting free throws in basketball, I can figure my percentage of success and compare it with data I remember from past practices. If I am playing softball or baseball, I can keep statistics on my hits and walks, and on fielding errors. In track I can measure my performance against my earlier performances and against other individuals.

So, in computer games and in many other "game" types of situations, I can compare my performance with previous performance and performance of others. In much of formal schooling types of education, this is not so easily accomplished.

Computer Use in Schools is Still in Its Infancy
Over thousands of years, aids to both learning and doing (using) reading, writing, and arithmetic have been developed. The abacus has proven to be a long-enduring tool to help do arithmetic. Computers and other ICT are very powerful tools that are now a part of the makeup of expertise in every academic discipline.

One of the basic challenges in developing a good, Information Age educational system is to establish an appropriate balance between historically-based and culturally-based content, and the content that appropriately takes into consideration rapidly changing technology. The totality of the collected information and knowledge of the human race is huge and growing quite rapidly. While the amount of time that students spend in school is increasing (for example, many more people go to college now than in the past), the amount that could be learned is growing far faster.

The capabilities of ICT as an aid to representing and solving problems in various disciplines has been increasing very rapidly, and this pace of change will likely  continue for many years to come. Thus, as we help students gain both low levels of expertise in a great many areas and higher levels of expertise in a few areas, computers and ICT are very important.

In summary, within any area in which a student is seeking an increased level of expertise, the student needs to learn the capabilities and limitations of ICT as part of that area of expertise.

Author or Authors
The initial version of this page was written by David Moursund.