LearningForward

Kent Chesnut's technology in education blog.

Personal reflection post here.  If you are wanting to read about ed tech, I’ll be back on that in the next post.

Background: 

 In January 1984, after receiving a Masters degree in Engineering Physics in the Fall of 1983, I started my first, full-time, professional job as a Systems Engineer.  I’ve worked as a Systems Engineer in a variety of industries ever since.  That’s 25 years!  With a healthy touch of optimism, I suspect that I should be able to contribute for another 25 years (and with the economy sucking my retirement savings down the tubes, I don’t have to worry about retiring any time soon).  This puts me at about the half-way point of my career.

It would seem to be a good time for some reflection.  Am I happy in my career?  Am I fulfilled?  Am I doing what I should be doing?  Should I invest the rest of my career in something else?  The answers:

• Systems Engineering has allowed me to have a comfortable living, provide for my family, and raise 3 children. 

• I have always had very good co-workers.

• The work has been challenging.

• I still enjoy software development and applying electronic / computing devices to solve problems.

• I’m not enthusiastic about what I’m doing! 

 As I sit and reflect on these questions, I’ve realize they are the wrong questions.  Maybe better questions would be; What am I enthusiastic about?  How have my interests changed over the years?  Answers:

• I see myself as a problem-solver.  And I endeavor to solve problems with technology.  I am enthusiastic about that.
• I am passionate about solving problems related to quality of life issues.  These include education, disease management, assistive technology.  (Does it seem odd that I consider education a quality of life issue?  As a parent, I’ve certainly seen my children’s quality of life on a roller coaster through the school years, with a few very good years, quite a few marginal years, and a few total disaster years.  I suspect too many total disaster years could hamper one’s quality of life for a very long time!)
• Over the years I have become more and more interested in education.  In pursuing this interest I received a Masters degree in Instructional Psychology and Technology in the late 90’s.  I am passionate about education and learning theory.  If you haven’t been a regular reader, I’ve blogged numerous times about constructivism, constructionism, and the use of technology in education.

I’ve been reading Ken Robinson’s “The Element” the last few weeks (strongly recommended, by the way).  This book has added a few more questions for me to consider; What have I done that has totally absorbed me, putting me in “the zone” and making the passage of time appear to change?  What do I really care about?

• In the last few weeks, I’ve had a couple of ”zone” experiences.
  • Writing my February 14 post, Evolving to Contructivist Learning, was a “zone” experience to me.  I really want to consider how the control system for a language lab could be used to encourage a constructivist approach in foreign language education.
  • Putting together the little program discussed my January 24 post, Speeding up the Spanish, was a “zone” experience for me.  Although a trivial program from a technical prespective, I was very engaged because the project empowered a student to take more control of her learning.
• I’ve also been very interested in a few conversations I’ve had with my oldest son in the last couple of weeks.  Steven is finishing his Bachelor’s in Spanish Education this Spring and has decided to continue his education seeking a Masters degree in Instructional Psychology.  We’ve discussed how language is taught / learned at the secondary and college level.  Could more technology be used to solve problems in foreign language acquisition?  Very engaging questions.

Current Opportunities:

I have wrangled the opportunity to help with the Technical Training department in our company.  I’d be re-designing a course in Applications Engineering (actually, a better name would be Oil Well Equipment Applications), helping with the teaching duties from time to time, and hopefully transitioning it to an online class at some point.

• I find this opportunity interesting from a pedagogical (androgogical?) perspective.  Can this highly didactic, teacher centered, course be redesigned to make it more student centered and constructivist?
• How can the learner centered nature of the course be preserved when it goes online?
• Even though I’m not passionate about the course content, I find myself passionate about how such classes could / should be designed and taught - and willing to argue my point to try to improve such classes.

Analysis:

• Solving problems with technology is compatible with my personal interests, my skill set, and Systems Engineering.
• Using technology to try to positively influence education (IMHO, by advancing constructivism / constructionism and other student centered ) is very compelling for me.
• Using technology to try to solve quality of life issues is compatible with my personal interests, my skill set, and Systems Engineering.

Conclusions:

• I’ll pursue the opportunity to work with the Technical Training department.  I’ll use my experiences to judge whether a transition from Systems Engineering to a full time Technical Training role is right for me.
• I’ll seek out opportunities to work on quality of life problems - and look for technological and educational solutions.
• I’ll seek out opportunities to work on projects that have educational value or could influence / encourage student centered learning methods.  (This could be a good starting place for a series of blog posts!)
   

One thing I know for sure, we tend to have a blind spot for our own situation.  If anyone reading this has any observations or suggestions for me, I’d certainly appreciate hearing them!

Is it possible to take a teacher-centered educational technology and evolve it in such a way that it becomes more student-centered?  Can it be evolved to the point that it becomes more natural to teach with it using student-centered methods than in conventional teacher-centered methods?

I’m thinking here of the language lab - specifically the audio only learning / language lab such as that manufactured by Educational Media here in Oklahoma City.  Such a lab has many uses in classroom settings, but is most often used in foreign language instruction.  The biggest advantage of the lab (in my opinion) is that students get more practice speaking the language.  The technology, however, is completely teacher-centered; teaching with the language lab appears to me more like what Alfie Kohn would call “doing to” the students. 

This is of particular interest to me.  My main interests are education and technology - and I’m really interested in student-centered, constructivist teaching methods.  As a consultant, I built the user interface and lab control program for the Educational Media lab back in 2002 / 2003.  So far, this has been my only foray into a ”real” educational product - and I am still excited about the product.  The program is very usable and we’ve been updating things over the years… but Ed Media might be about ready to think about a new user interface.  And I might be about ready to consider building one - but I would be much more interested if there were a way to design the program such that teachers would be inclined to evolve their classroom methodologies into a more student-centered experience.  (And face it, if the proposed design were truly revolutionary, Ed Media would be more likely to want it.)

So the question to consider is:

How can the user interface / control system of an audio based language lab be redesigned to motivate the teacher using it to evolve their teaching practices toward student-centered learning activities?

A more basic question might be:

Can a software program controlling a language lab have an impact on the underlying pedagogies used to teach a class using the lab?

I would love to blog here about how this can be done… but, at this point, I don’t really know!  Instead, I’ll put down some thought leaders and blog further about this at a later time.

Some thoughts about student-centered learning:

• Contructivism - students must actively build knowledge by interacting with their environment (hopefully, a carefully crafted learning environment) and other people.
  • What kinds of constuctivist activities are encouraged by the language lab?
  • How can the language lab be used to create an environment conducive to constructivist learning?
  • How can the communication afforded by the language lab be targeted to constructivist methods?
• Project Based Learning is student centered. 
  • Intrinsic motivation is increased as students are empowered to make more choices about their project.
  • What kinds of projects do the capabilities of the language lab support?
• Contructionism - constructivist learning is enhanced when students generate artifacts in the process of building knowledge that they are then able to reflect on and share with others.
  • What kinds of artifacts are supported by the language lab?
  • Could other kinds of artifacts be supported?
• Community - A community of learners working together can improve both the learning and the affective aspects of the classroom.  Of course, we need to have defined working together as collaboration (like the world in general) and not cheating (the world of school).

Sorry I don’t have links or attributions for these statements… I’m just pulling them from memory.

Some thoughts about the language lab:

• The current language lab offers group communication capability that would be useful in group based projects.
• The current language lab offers the ability to make recordings - which could be one form of artifact in Contructionist learning.  The current lab offers no other form of media artifact.
• The current language lab provides little control / choices to students.
• What kinds of changes would be needed to provide more choices for the student?
  • Adding some sort of clicker (Student Response) system to the lab might provide for more kinds of student interactivity - but I certainly don’t think that this could be classified as constructivist.
• What additional capabilities / technologies could be added cost-effectively?
• Any changes should also make the lab more desirable to schools and improve profitability.

 If any readers have any ideas  or comments (assuming there are any readers), I’d sure love to hear them!