A teacher's place in the digital divide

Warschauer, M. (2007). A teacher's place in the digital divide. In L. Somlin, K. Lawless, & N. C. Burbules (eds.) Information and communication technologies: Considerations of current practice for teachers and teacher educators. The 106th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 2. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Types of digital difference

• School access: unequal availability of digital technology in schools (between high- & low-SES; new tech benefits high performance students while exlcuding at-risk students)
  
• Home access: high- & low-SES families
  
• School use: student income and race correlate strongly with the type of use students make of computers in schools
  
• Gender gap: boys - more computer games; girls - more communicate & network
  
• Generation gap: digital natives vs digital immigrants

21st century skills

• Digital-age literacy
  
  • Basic, scientific, economic, and technological literacies
  • Visual and information literacies
  • Multicultural literacy and global awareness
    
• Inventive thinking
  
  • Adaptability, managing complexity, and self-direction
  • Curiosity, creativity, and risk taking
  • Higher order thinking and sound reasoning
    
• Effective communication
  
  • Teaming, collaboration, and interpersonal skills
  • Personal, social, and civic responsibility
  • Interactive communication
    
• High productivity
  
  • Prioritizing, planning, and managing for results
  • Effective use of real-word tools
  • Ability to produce relevant, high-quality products

Three challenges related to technology use in schools

• Workability: coordinating technology use (scheduling rooms, arranging and maintaining software, hardware, and network connections). Low-SES schools have higher turnover rates;
• Complexity: standardized testing increased complexity in integrating technology into instruction;
• Performativity: technological performance for its own sake rather than in connection with meaningful learning goals

Solution

• To complexity and workability: providing students and teachers more consistent and reliable access to computers and the Internet (through one-to-one programs or leveraging other tech resources in schools and communities)
• To performativity: instructional approaches that focus not only on mastery of tech applications, but also on broad learning goals related to academic content (e.g., developing both tech skills & academic expertise around topics related to students' life experiences)
  

The benefits of the laptop classroom

• teaching and learning of 21st-century learning skills (becoz constant access)
  
• greater student engagement (becoz the use of multimedia)
  
• increase in the quantity and quality of student writing (ease, feedback, professionalism)
• deeper learning (project-based work)
  

ICTs: Considerations of current practice (2) Reinventing Role

Dede, C. (2007). Reinventing the role of information and communications technologies in education. In L. Smolin, K. Lawless, & N. Burbules (Eds.), Information and communication technologies: Considerations of current practice for teachers and teacher educators (pp. 11-38). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

ICTs are reshaping three aspects of education simultaneously:

• The knowledge and skills society wants from the graduates of education are shifting as a result of the evolution of a global, knowledge-based economy and a "flat" world (Friedman, 2005)
• Methods of research, teaching, and learning are expanding, as new interactive media support innovative forms of pedagogy (Dede, in press-a)
• The characteristics of students are changing, as their usage of technology outside of academic settings shapes their learning styles, strengths, and preferences (Dede, 2005)

Three fundamental observations about the impact of ICT on society:

• The definition of what computers and related technologies can accomplish has repeatedly expanded - individual & collective expression, experience, and interpretation (e.g., productivity enhancers, email communication, expanding access to info through web browsers & streaming video)
  
• Cognition is now distributed across human minds, tools/media, groups of people, and space/time - distributed cognition & action (e.g., asynchronous discussion online, delocalizing, sociability) (Dede, in press-b; Engestrom & Middleton, 1996; Hutchins, 1995; Salomon, 1993)
• The types of work done by people, as opposed to the kinds of labor done by machines, are continually shifting - growing proportions of the labor force are engaged in jobs that emphasize expert thinking or complex communication - tasks that computers cannot do (The fundamental change involves deemphasizing fluency in simple procedures as an end-goal of preparation for work and life, instead using these routine skills as a substrate for mastering complex mental performances, p. 13) - erosion of routine tasks in favor of expert decision making and complex communication skills
  
  • 21st-century skills: collective problem resolution via mediated interaction (including problem finding and solving)

Shortfalls in how current ICT for learning meet 21st-century educational challenges

• Three competing schools of thought on how people learn
  
  • Behaviorism: because learning is based on experience, pedagogy centers on manipulating environmental factors to create instructional events inculcating content and procedures in ways that alter students' behaviors
    
    • Purpose: acquire skills of discrimination (recall facts), generalization (define & illustrate concepts), and chaining (automatically perform a specified procedure)
    • Emphais: factual knowledge, recipe-like procedures
      
    • Suitable ICTs: computer-assisted instruction (CAI), drill-and-skill learning management system (LMS)
    • Limitation: limited both in what they can teach and in the types of engagement
      
  • Cognitivism: because learning involves both experience and thinking, instruction centers on helping learners develop interrelated, symbolic mental constructs that form the basis of knowledge and skills
    
    • Purpose: providing a deep foundation of factual knowledge and procedural skills; linking facts, skills, and idea via conceptual frameworks - organizing domain knowledge as experts in that field do, in ways that facilitate retrieval and application; and helping students develop skills that involve improving their own thinking processes, such as setting their own learning goals and monitoring progress in reaching these
    • Suitable ICTs: intelligent tutoring systems (ITS)
    • Limitation: well-defined content and skills, material with a few correct ways of accomplishing tasks (very limited range of knowledge and skills they can teach)
      
  • Constructivism: because learning involves constructing one's own knowledge in a context richly shaped by interactions with others, instruction centers on helping learners to actively invent individual meaning from experiences.
    
    • Purpose: instruction as a process of supporting knowledge construction rather than communicating knowledge; teacher's role as guide, rather than an expert transferring knowledge to novices' "blank slates"; learning activities that are authentic and that center on learners' puzzlement as their faculty or incomplete knowledge and skills fail to predict what they are experiencing; encouragement for students to reflect on experiences, seek alternative viewpoints, and test the viability of ideas
    • Suitable ICTs: wide range
    • Limitation: difficult to implement in conventional school settings; not so efficient for material that behaviorism and cognitivism can teach (e.g., arithmetic operations)
    • Social constructivism: students actively constructing their knowledge with instructional support, as opposed to being passive recipients assimilating information communicated by the teacher (Jonassen, 1996). Students construct knowledge as a result of their interactions with their community (e.g., the scientific research community)
  • Shortfalls
    
    • Conventional approaches (behaviorist & cognitivist) emphasizes manipulating predigested info to build fluency in routine problem solving
    • Problem-solving skills are presented in an abstract form that makes transfer to other disciplines and real-world situations difficult
    • The ultimate goal of all three is often presented as learning a specific problem-solving routine to match every work situation, rather than developing expert decision making and metacognitive strategies that how to proceed when no standard approach seems applicable
    • Little time is spent on building capabilities in group interpretation, negotiation of shard meaning, and co-construction of problem solutions, particularly in behaviorist and cognitivist approaches
    • ICTs are largely used to automate traditional methods of teaching and learning, rather than to model complexity and express insights to others
      
    • The effects from technology usage are measured, but the effect with technologies essential to effective practice of a skill are not
      
• Situated learning
  
  • Definition: embedded within and inseparable from participating in a system of activity deeply determined by a particular physical and cultural setting
  • Unit of analysis: the relationship between the individual & the setting (studies of apprenticeship in 'communities of practice')
  • Requirement: authentic contexts, activities, and assessment coupled with guidance from expert modeling, situated mentoring, and legitimate peripheral participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991) (e.g., GA experience allows graduate students to gradually move from novice researchers to more advanced roles, with their skills and the expectations for them evolving)
  • Power: learning to solve problems as part of a community in the authentic context
    

A vision of how emerging ICT can aid in meeting 21st-century educational challenges

• Three complementary tech interfaces are currently shaping how people learn (K-12)
  
  • The "world-to-the-desktop" interface that provides access to distributed knowledge across space and time through networked media
  • MUVE that offers students an engaging "Alice in Wonderland" experience in which their digital emissaries in a graphical virtual context actively engage in experiences with the avatars of other participants and with computerized agents (e.g., Second Life) - it empowers the creation of contexts inaccessible in the real world
    
  • Augmented reality (AR) interfaces that enable "ubiquitous computing" models - it enables the infusion of virtual contexts within physical locations
    

(Reflection: if education can't precisely predict or control the future of technology, it should at least prepare people to be aware of the uncertainties that technologies may bring to them...)

(Reflection: some profs are very reluctant to let their students reference online resources. I'm going to disagree on that issue. Based on my experiences, I enjoyed so much finding information posted online which are so convenient, incisive, and valuable. Some articles are written by no names but they spark a lot of innovative ideas and provide multiple links that lead to further thinking. They make a lot of sense...)

ICTs: Considerations of current practice (1)

Smolin, L., & Lawless, K. (2007). Technologies in schools: Stimulating a dialogue. In L. Smolin, K. Lawless, & N. Burbules (Eds.). (2007). Information and communication technologies: Considerations of current practice for teachers and teacher educators (pp. 1-10). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

The volume will examine the gap between the promise of technology and its current reality in schools. It is written for classroom teachers and teacher educators, because it is through these two groups in particular that this gap can be closed. Authors identify the issues, the problematics, and the considerations that teachers and teacher educators should consider as they plan and implement uses of ICT with their students in mind, and address the integration of technology in school curriculums, as well as afterschool programs, instructional technology, professional development, information literacy, and the philosophical and pedogogical concerns associated with technology.

Tech in schools: Stimulating a dialogue (p. 1)

While new ICTs have afforded new opportunities to improve efficiency, exponentially increase access to info, and expand the notion of global citizenship, they have also caused many researchers and educators to rethink what it means to be literate in this post-typographic world (Leu & Kinzer, 2000).

Early pressure for integrating tech in schools came from contexts external to the school-most notably from the business sector (Scott, Cole, & Engel, 1992)...But because business and school contexts are quite distinct, technology became added to the school curriculum rather than integrated within it.

Although tech was being used within classrooms, it was still employed as a separate productivity tool, often replicating older forms of info transfer...However, tech can be more than a tool. It can also be a medium for reshaping the way in which we access info, communicate with one another, and learn in school.

Tech-based reform is esp. challenging because it is a multifaceted endeavor:

• Multiple professional communities: different professionals representing different discourse communities (Computer scientists, researchers, school administrators, teachers)
• Multiple theoretical perspectives
  a. Sociocultural: learning as a social practice through which the learner plays a central role (Vygotsky, 1978; Wells, 1999; Wenger, 1999)
  b. Curriculum studies: what is important for students to understand and be able to do (Bruner, 2004; Wraga, 2002) as well as the role tech should play in 21st-century learning
  c. Teacher education: importance of preparing teachers to implement technology (Pellegrino, Goldman, Berthenthal, & Lawless, in this volume, p. 52)
• Multiple strategies
  Technology is often poorly integrated with other classroom activities (Gewertz, 2007). Rather than using technology to transform classroom pedagogies and engae students in a knowledge-based world, it if often used to merely replicate the traditional curriculum (Cuban et al., 2001) - A gap between the promise of ICT and its current reality in classrooms. We are neither harnessing the power of technology nor appropriately leveraging it to meet the needs of 21st-century students.
  Dialog across multiple groups, perspectives, and domains is key to successful reform efforts in the future.

4 themes toward using ICT for transformative purposes

• Tech in and out of school: students use tech more outside school than in (Gewertz, 2007 & Mark Prensky, in Gewertz)
• Policy making: influence on how tech is used in schools (Haertel, Means, & Penuel, in this volume)
• Diversity (digital divide): The varied tech experiences of teachers and students (Jones' chapter); Students' cultural diversity
• Teacher development
  

References

• Bruner, J. (2004). Toward a theory of instruction. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
• Coiro, J. Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., & Leu, D. J. (in press). Handbook of research on new literacies. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Cuban, L., Kirkpatrick, H., & Peck, C. (2001). High access and low use of technologies in high school classrooms: Explaining an apparent paradox. American Educational Research Journal, 38 (4), 813-834.
• Gewertz, C. (2007, March 29). Outside interests: Young people typically plug in to new technology far more often on their own time than in school. Education Week, Technology Counts 2007. Retrieved October 6, 2007, from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/03/29/30tcstudent.h26.html
• Leu, D. J., Jr., & Kinzer, C. K. (2000). The convergence of literacy instruction with networked technologies for information and communication. Reading Research Quarterly, 35 (1), 132-141.
• Scott, T., Cole, M., & Engel, M. (1992). Computers and education: A cultural constructivist perspective. Review of Research in Education, 10, 191-251.
• Vygotsgy, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry: Toward a sociocultural practice and theory of education. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Wraga, W. (2002). Recovering curriculum practice: Continuing the conversations. Educational Researcher, 31 (6), 17-19.