LearningForward

Kent Chesnut's technology in education blog.

I’ve just started reading Alfie Kohn’s book “What does it mean to be well educated?”  I was surprised to find that he answered the question on page 10.  Basing his definition on Dewey’s belief that the “goal of education is more education”, Kohn answered the question…

“To be well educated, then, is to have the desire as well as the means to make sure that learning never ends.”

I’m not qualified to debate this with either Mr. Kohn or Mr. Dewey.  But I do feel qualified to reflect on what this means to me.

• “to have the desire”
  • If a person associates learning with school (seems natural) and consider a continuation of school (as it has been “done to” them) an undesirable thing, he will not be likely to desire learning that never ends.***
  • This “desire” will likely have to be intrinsically motivated - as there are probably few extrinsic rewards for a lifetime of learning (obviously, specific learning objectives like an MBA may be extrinsically rewarded, but I would suggest that examples such as this are few and relatively short in comparison with a lifetime).***
• “as well as the means” implies a number of things
  •  Financial means - one must have skills and knowledge that are marketable.*** 
  • Security means - one must have their immediate needs (safety, food, shelter, medicine, …) met before one can pursue lifelong learning (read about Maslow’s Hierarchy here for more information).
  • Freedom means - one must have the basic freedom to make choices such as pursuing a learning goal.
  • Intellectual means - one must have basic learning skills such as reading, writing, etc ***
  • Intellectual means #2 - it is extremely important that one have the goal setting skills (the ability to lay out a plan for achieving a learning goal) and metacognitive skills (the ability to monitor one’s own learning and make appropriate adjustments to attain their learning goals) to be a successful lifelong learner.*** 

Wow!  Even the best schools can’t achieve all of these criteria.  But schools can certainly have an effect (either positive or negative) on those that are marked with ***.

Are our schools encouraging intrinsic motivation and creating lifelong learners? 

Are our schools helping students acquire the cognitive and metacognitive skills needed to pursue a life of learning? 

Or are our schools killing off the desire and means for one to become a lifelong learner?

One of the complaints I read about school is that it is NOT an authentic preparation for the world of the workplace.  And I’ve always agreed.  When I think about school, I think about…

• Rigid and strict authoritarian hierarchy - with the student at the bottom.
• Rigid time scheduling… Students have little input - they are told when to arrive, when to start class, when to go to the next class, when to eat lunch, when to leave, when to go to the bathroom!
• Rigid control of methods… Students have little say in what they learn, how they learn it, or how they demonstrate their learning.
• Overdependence on extrinsic rewards and punishments.
• Numerous arbitrary (and sometimes senseless) rules and assignments… no student buy-in required.   

The world of school seems totally foreign to my work life… and, of course, I consider my life to be authentic.

Then, out of the blue, it hit me.  The characteristics of school that I mentioned above ARE a completely authentic preparation for the job market - at least if you only consider the lowest-paid, lowest-skilled, and least desirable jobs our economy has to offer!

Note: I just finished reading the second essay in Alfie Kohn’s book “What Does It Mean To Be Well Educated?” titled “Turning Learning Into A Business”.  I’ve read this essay before and it is clear that the “blue” that my ideas spawned from may well have included Kohn’s writings. 

In my last post, I discussed a project that I feel would be appropriate for upper elementary students.  I noted, however, that I thought it (the car driving simulation) would probably appeal much more to boys than girls.  In this second post about Scratch as a constructive learning environment for upper elementary students, I’ve selected a project that I thought may appeal more to girls - a virtual pet simulation.

A screenshot of the project is shown to the right.  Run the project here.  Download the project file here.  As it is now, the project is not very interactive.  All you have to do is click on the egg and make sure the food doesn’t run out.

So what can an upper elementary student learn from making such a project?

• Scratch programming constructs and modular programming.  The project uses loops, conditionals, broadcasts, and sprite / edge detection.  
• Debugging and troubleshooting techniques. 
• And hopefully she will have some fun!

One of the things I like best about the project is that there are so many ways to enhance and improve it.  A student could choose to:

• make the project with any kind of pet - either from the wide array of art provided with Scrath or by drawing his own.
• If he wanted the butterfly, he could have it metamorph from a caterpillar instead of hatch from an egg - luckily, we’re not talking science here
• Keep track of the pet’s age.
• Add variables to keep track of the pet’s happiness and provide a way for the user to play with the pet to increase its happiness.
• Add the capacity for the pet to “poop” and provide an interesting way for the user to clean up after it.
• Allow the pet to start smaller and grow to full size as it ages / eats.
• Make a cage on the screen for their pet to live in.  When they are finished playing, allow the pet to escape by opening the pen and allowing the pet to find his way out and return to the wild.
• Fix the bugs in the program… where the butterfly gets caught along an edge for a while occasionally.

Would an upper elementary student find such a project engaging?  Any comments? 

On reflection, the motion in this project may make it a little too advanced for an upper elementary student.  If a student chose to attempt a project such as this, it might be better to encourage her to do it without the motion at first.  As a second step she could add very simple motion… glide to the food when the pet gets hungry.  Finally, she could add some sort of randomness to the motion.

I’ve blogged about Scratch being a good learning environment for kids.  But my examples have tended to be at the Junior High level (or possibly higher).  For the next few posts, I’ll be looking at projects that I think could be generated by an upper elementary student.

This week we’ll look at a simple car game.  A screenshot of the game screen is shown below.  The objective is simple, drive on the road.  The referee will complain if you drive in the grass.  Run the program here.  Download the project file here.

So what can an upper elementary student learn from making such a project?

• Scratch programming constructs and modular programming.  The project uses loops, conditionals, broadcasts, and sprite / background detection.
• Concepts such as scaling (see below).
• Debugging and troubleshooting techniques. 
• And hopefully he will have some fun!

The hardest part of this game is trying to connect the car angle to the steering wheel angle.  If you think about how a car works, the car angle keeps changing as you hold the steering wheel in a fixed place (as long as you’re not going straight).  The student can use his body to do the Turtle Walk (see Papert’s Mindstorms Chapter 3 for a good explanation of this) to help troubleshoot this functionality.  Additionally, a program like this allows the student to progress as far as he wants.  He could make a lot of improvements, including…

• Improve the steering to make the car easier to drive.
• Add a lap counter.  A lap timer.
• Add sound effects.
• Add a second car and make a 2 player racing game?

Would an upper elementary student find such a project interesting and motivating?  I think many boys would… but I’m not sure that this would appeal as much to girls.  Any comments?

Pardon me this week as I use this space to do some personal reflection.  I’ll be back on more conventional Educational Technology themes soon!

A recurring theme in my life this past week has been “focus”. 

• Last Sunday, Pastor Jamie Storie preached on “The Main Thing”.  Keeping the “Main Thing” the “Main Thing” will require lots of focus.
• A young man finishing his third year in a teacher ed program confided in me that he doesn’t think he wants to teach.  He had several good reasons for his position (which I won’t elaborate on here), but I think they all are outside the real “focus” of what teaching is about!
• I often listen to a radio station with quite a range of styles.  On the way to work one morning I heard a song by Finger Eleven called “One Thing” (see video here).  I’d never heard of the group, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard the song before.  But its effect on me was quite strong.  It made me wonder what the “one thing” is that I should be willing to trade it all for.
• A while back, the company I work for did some work to find out why people leave the company and what could help them retain people.  One thing that came up, especially with manufacturing workers and technicians, was career development plans.  Friday, we were told that our supervisors would be coming up with career plans for each of us in the next couple of months.  This is quite amusing to me… I’m 47 years old and have  been a Systems Engineer for more than half of my life - and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up!  Anyway, I guess I’ll know in a couple of months.  Although humorous and probably a waste of effort, this event to has once again brought “focus” to my mind.

So let’s try to evaluate my focus (at least in terms of educational technology).  What is it that I want to accomplish in terms of Educational Technology?  I discussed this some in my post Ed Tech Goals for 2008.  But if I try to spell out the underlying theme beneath these goals - and create 1 long term goal - I think it would be something like:

To utilize educational technology to create products and / services that have a significant positive educational  impact on a large and increasing number of students. 

So what am I doing to try to achieve this goal?  At the moment I’m involved in a number of efforts, including:

• I investigate and reflect on constructive uses of educational technology in this blog
• I try to keep abreast of educational technology by reading the blogs in my blogroll and publications from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT).
• I evaluate educational technologies that could advance my goal, such as the XO laptop (see post here), Runtime Revolution (see post here), and Scratch (lots of posts here).
• I’m still trying to work out the Scratch camps that I discussed in the Ed Tech Goals post I referenced above.
• I’m working on a Moodle based eLearning website.
• I do some consulting for a local company that builds and markets language labs (see link here).
• I work with the Childrens’ Ministry at Fresh Start Community Church.  Helping children learn about Christ is the higher goal here, but I think the experience I gain is very valuable with respect to the educational technology goal I’m discussing.
• I work as a Senior Systems Engineer for Wood Group ESP.  Although my “real” job is not directly related to my ed tech goal, I probably won’t be able to progress very far toward the ed tech goal without a stable income.
• I think about the school experiences of my children and others I hear about.  I contemplate the good, the bad, and the utterly outrageous!  This is sometimes quite a distressing exercise!

All of these appear to be worthwhile efforts.  But…

• Do they move me toward the goal stated above? 
• Do I have focus?  Or am I swinging wildly in too many directions?
• What else could I do that would more directly help me reach my goal? 
• Do I need further education (I have M.S. Engineering Physics and M.Ed. Instructional Psychology and Technology)?  If so, what do I need?
• Which of the activities I’m involved in now have little value in reaching the goal and should be suspended?

Analysis - I believe that all of the activities I’m involved in are worthwhile, but they are all independent and don’t work together cohesively.  But how can they? 

Plan - what I need now is a plan of action.  Here’s the plan I’m contemplating…

• Continue all activities for now.  When working on one of these efforts, ask the question “What can I learn while doing this that could help me reach the goal listed above?”  Then try to ensure that I do learn those things that will help me achieve my goal.
• I usually plan activities on Sunday evening for the next week.  Consider each activity during this planning time to 1. ensure that it in some way will help me achieve my goal, and 2. list what I should do or learn in that activity that will help me reach my goal.
• Reflect on these activities to determine if they should be suspended or somewhat re-aligned to better focus my efforts.

These are personal reflections, but since I’m posting on the web someone may actually read them and have some suggestions on how I might proceed.  I’d appreciate any input.

The year was 1990 (give or take a year).  I wanted to replace my PC - an old CPM80 based Xerox.  My oldest son was 3.  I asked a few of my coworkers if there was a computer he would be able to use.  There was only one answer - the Apple Macintosh.

So I bought a Mac Plus.  It came with HyperCard 1.x.  I had never seen anything like it.  It was a programming environment where you actually started with a screen and worked downward.  As a System Engineer versed in assembly language and C (for embedded applications - which usually had no user interface at all), it was a real eye-opener.  I was teaching a Sunday School class for early elementary students and soon found myself lugging the “portable” Mac + to Church regularly for use with my class.  I could put together a lesson stack or a review activity in HyperCard that the kids could actually use productively! 

I upgraded to HyperCard 2.2 for about $100.  It was a good investment.  I continued to use HyperCard as I moved to a Mac Quadra 605.  My interest in education grew and I started working on a Master’s Degree in Instructional Psychology and Technology  at the University of Oklahoma in 1995.  Guess what tool we were using in our first class… HyperCard.

Many moons have come and gone and now I use PC’s.  I currently do my educational programming in Authorware or Flash.  Both are more powerful in some ways than Hypercard.  But in terms of putting together a simple database with a simple user interface, HyperCard still has its advantages.  I have followed the development of some HyperCard offspring over the years… SuperCard (Mac only), MetaCard (PC & Mac), and most recently Revolution (PC, Mac, Linux) - but hadn’t really worked with them.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve recently acquired an XO laptop.  I thought it would be nice to be able to write programs for it… a high level authoring system would really be nice.  Especially, if it allowed the kids to expand the knowledge base - which would be a constructive activity in line with the XO’s goals.  HyperCard came to mind.

Of course, HyperCard wouldn’t run on the Linux based XO (well, maybe with an emulator, see here).  I tried a program called PythonCard which was billed as a HyperCard-inspired development system with Python as the scripting language.  I didn’t see the heritage!  I then downloaded the 30 day trial version of Runtime Revolution’s Revolution 2.9 Studio and started to put together a simple stack based application (English / Spanish vocab stack with tags and sorting) to try out on the XO.  I chose the Studio version (retail $399) instead of the Media version (retail $49) because Revolution has no player for Linux at this time (the website indicated that one is in the works) and the Studio version was required to save as a standalone application.

Running the stack on the XO turned out to be disappointing.  The XO was very sluggish and also tended to lock up occasionally.  So for now I’m not considering Revolution a good development system for the XO.  Maybe I’ll look into this a little more later.

However, I am very impressed with Revolution and do want to talk a little more about it. 

• If you are running Windows or a Mac and don’t need to generate a standalone program (i.e. you don’t mind running via a player program - much like the original Mac HyperCard), you probably don’t need the $400 Studio version.   The Revolution 2.9 Media edition will likely fill your needs.  And at $50 it is half of what I paid for HyperCard 2.2 in the early 1990’s!
• The documentation noted that Revolution can import old HyperCard stacks.  To give this a try I pulled an old Mac laptop out of the closet and booted it up… yep, it still booted!  Then all I had to do was find a PC diskette (getting harder each day!) and I had a couple of HyperCard stacks on my Dell.  Revolution did indeed open the stacks - but they did require some massaging to get them to work.
  • I used messaging a lot in my stacks.  In HyperCard, the construct looked like “send <messagename> to stack”.  In Revolution, this must be changed to “send <messagename> to this stack”.
  • Some of the message names I used turned out to be key words in Revolution.
  • Fonts and graphics have to be adjusted - mainly due to the much larger screens available today.
• HyperCard graphics were all bit-mapped (think Paint).  Revolution supports both bit-mapped and object based graphics (think of a drawing program).  Object based graphics are much easier to change or resize later.
• The capabilities of Revolution are extensive.  Database interfaces, XML Support, internet support ranging from http and ftp down to socket level communications (which I haven’t tried any of yet).

I only see a few downsides to using Revolution.

• I’ve noticed short pauses when running stacks on PCs (running both the player and the stack from a USB flash drive).  The only time I’m sure I’ve seen this is in delayed response to button presses.  I’m not sure what causes this - it may be something I’m doing wrong.
• I don’t think there is a browser based player to permit easy delivery via the internet.  Note that the Studio ($400) version says it will ”run as CGI process on web servers”.  This may allow for internet delivery, but it doesn’t seem as straightforward as flash. 

I’ll keep at this a while.  I’ll try to finish my Vocab stack before my 30 days expire.  I’ll supplement this post if I run across any major problems or really impressive features.