September/October 2005
We're Here! Great Digital Teacher-Librarians
Debbie Abilock, Editor
I just listened to Marc Prensky (2004) argue that "digital natives" -- children who think and process information differently because they have always lived with technology -- should be gaming in school because "computer games are the most engaging intellectual format we have." I did not attend his talk at the Canadian Society for Training and Development Conference; I used online learning software called Elluminate, which calls itself a Web conferencing environment for virtual meetings and remote training, to listen to his speech.
Although Prensky acknowledges that engagement depends on great teachers who have a particular combination of skills, he dismisses that possibility because "great teachers are hard to find." In their place, a $10-billion-dollar-a-year gaming industry (Slagle 2005) has driven the development of elements that Prensky identifies as engaging: one-to-one learning, self-formed groups, active exploration, relevance to students’ interests, and a form of entertainment. He asserts that engagement is more important than content -- "it’s all about good theater." If we don’t want our digital natives "leaving the country" (I assume he means leaving schools en masse), he believes we’ve got to redesign learning as videogames.
While I have not studied Prensky’s work (his résumé says he’s an author, consultant, game designer, and principal in a company producing learning games, I was plagued by the feeling that, no matter how simplistic his analysis of learning, perhaps there is some truth in his hyperbole. What about games is so engaging?
One answer emerged a few days later while listening to a face-to-face lecture at Stanford by Carol Dweck. She was describing how "self-theories," the beliefs about oneself as a learner, influence motivation and achievement (Dweck 2005). According to Dweck’s research, students who think that their intelligence is fixed -- which includes both those who say either "I’m not good at math" or "I am good at math" -- are likely to be effort-adverse. That is, when facing problems or challenges, those who believe their intelligence is immutable are more likely to give up, avoid other classes in that field, and even cheat. Later, reflecting on her lecture, I could understand why children with low confidence in their ability in math, reading, or library research might avoid that subject, but it surprised me that students who say "I am good at..." might also avoid that very subject. Dweck’s research makes clear that if an "I am good at..." student finds a task to be challenging and is expected to put forth effort, the student sends the message to himself, "I guess I’m not really so smart -- after all, look how hard I’m going to have to work." The student expects "smart" to be a fixed state, not something to be developed. Thus, accomplishments and high grades are taken as proof of that native intelligence, while hard work is seen as proof that a learner is not bright.
In contrast, the students who have a "growth theory" about their intelligence will seek academic challenges and set goals for mastery because they believe that their hard work pays off. They embrace failure as an opportunity to learn, and ascribe success to practice and hard work. Fostered by their message to themselves that important aspects of intelligence can be cultivated, they exhibit intrinsic motivation and strong self-esteem.
So, too, software can send messages to users about the context in which it works best or what can be accomplished with it. For example, teens think of instant messaging as a personal medium, and group members report that blogs make them feel more connected to each other than threaded discussions. Perhaps students love gaming not only because it suggests play, but because the structure of a game reinforces students’ "growth theory" of learning. (Why would you play if your ability were fixed? Think how poor sales would be if buyers knew, before they bought a game, that they were perfectly accomplished at it.) In the culture of gaming, improvement results from your efforts: you play the game, again and again, and you improve. Failure is useful feedback for gamers, spurring them to modify strategies in order to accomplish ever more complex tasks.
Of course only a small number of games have explicit educational learning objectives and rigorous academic content. Although the software development of commercial games is big business that may yield useful educational byproducts, these games have not been created for the purpose of cultivating explicit metacognitive behavior, teaching sophisticated intellectual content, or transferring disciplinary knowledge and skills to real-world applications (Schankman 2005). While off-the-shelf edutainment games like SimCity, Civilization III, and Making History are used in social studies classrooms to enrich traditional learning, we are now seeing the development of games explicitly for education. For example, there are university research initiatives focused on student learning, such as the Serious Games Initiative sponsored by Woodrow Wilson, commercial software to educate preservice teachers such as SimSchool, and hybrid initiatives such as The Microsoft MIT iCampus Games-to-Teach.
This issue of Knowledge Quest looks at two types of online learning environments -- those that model a classroom and those that model an environment beyond the classroom. The first type of software, called a course management system (CMS), packages curriculum, lessons, group work, assessments, record keeping, and other user information in a classroom-like experience, fundamentally similar to its face-to-face counterpart. The second type of software hides these functions within a simulated environment -- a town, an adventure, or a problem. Each medium contains a message -- a classroom is a place for learning, a game or simulation is a place in which to play and explore -- yet each environment and, indeed, every real classroom, can be a place for playful, engaged, and reflective learning, if we design it carefully. Ultimately the teacher, not the technology, creates the learning experience.
All good online learning systems build a community of teachers and learners in a virtual place, provide easy access to relevant resources, capture data about student progress, promise (and sometimes deliver) economies of scale, and include just-in-time personalized teaching as well as just-in-case group support. Software can be customized: to facilitate feedback on student work samples; to assess learning performances; and to create, share, and master knowledge using critical and creative thinking and constructivist learning. Since the design message about the purpose of a tool influences its use, some have argued that weblogs, for example, foster social communication and peer writing and editing because the software feels more conducive to student-to-student interactions and collaboration than, say, a content management system (Deitering and Huston 2004).
Yet all online learning has drawbacks. Sometimes teachers feel overwhelmed by the need to give prompt feedback, or struggle to design engaging ways to teach certain skills. Sometimes students receive little attention or personalization and poorly facilitated groups struggle to work together -- online or in person. Content creation is initially labor-intensive and expensive, although there is potential for the reuse of simulations, lessons, and assessments in the form of digital learning objects (Wiley 2000) cataloged with metadata in searchable repositories. Sometimes networks fail or the simulation doesn’t accurately mirror the mult-causal problem. At its worst, online learning may isolate students and sequence skills in a stultifying instructional process characterized by mind-numbing animated practice.
Yet school librarians know that software can help you do the same task with less effort or amplify certain desirable functions. Think how online catalogs have progressed from DOS-based replicas of catalog cards with controlled vocabulary to graphical interfaces that allow keyword searching, show covers of book, link to full text e-books and Web resources, and even integrate results across databases. The authors in this issue of Knowledge Quest describe how well-designed online learning software helps them communicate with students, structure efficient pre-assessments, and deliver multisensory, just-in-time feedback to learners investigating a problem. Software can enhance peer-to-peer learning, guide a learner’s thinking from curiosity and reflection into a systematic critical thinking process, and provide a climate in which challenges are opportunities and concepts and skills are contextualized and relevant to the real world. When it is used well, teachers and students can reconceptualize software to support serious games, productive digression (Ugoretz 2005), and emergent communities of practice (Reingold 2004).
What Should School Librarians Know about Online Learning?
1. Recognize that you have a central role in online learning.
Read about the research and assessment of games being carried out at MIT’s The Education Arcade initiative. Ask yourself what school librarians could contribute to game prototypes on Games-to-Teach. Study library media centers that are already supporting online learning in virtual schools in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna School District’s SeeUOnline Program and those that are being developed in Georgia and North Carolina. Examine how they provide library services and programs, such as:
-
information literacy instruction through tutorials and interactive Web pages;
-
resources like subscription and deep Web databases, full-text e-books and high-quality open Web sources;
-
experiences like virtual trips, interviewing and conferencing;
-
online learning spaces for group collaboration, displays of student work and performances of learning;
-
both real-time and asynchronous reference assistance (Lamb and Callison 2005); and
assessments of student learning and program effectiveness
2. Learn about the technology that supports online learning.
For example, search digital repositories (Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab, The University of Texas, San Antonio, The Learning Federation supported by Australia and New Zealand governments) for learning objects which match your school’s needs and culture, explore weblogs (see the running list of examples of school blogs and a discussion of school blog developments) and Web pages maintained by school librarians and educate yourself about the features of course management systems (such as the Sakai Project and EduTools) so that you can work with the school technology team to determine which software best support your goals and values.
3. Examine your assumptions about online learning.
If you believe that free Web resources lack educational quality and value, investigate the AllLearn online library maintained by three topnotch universities. If you believe that games foster superficial thinking, promote antisocial behavior, reinforce stereotypical gender roles, and model violence, visit Whyville, an online environment in which nine- to fifteen-year-olds investigate science topics in a physics lab and on safari or design spaces, socialize and create objects in a lifelike town with a playground and stores. If your library policy bans all games, or you think that school librarians have no place in them, read the articles on River City (pages 29–32) and SciCentr (pages 18–22).
4. Reexamine your beliefs about your students’ capacity for complex thinking and decision making.
“Digital natives” (if you believe in the phenomenon) may be multitaskers, but that doesn’t mean they should learn exclusively from superficial experiences. We know that multitasking affects both memory and attention negatively. Experience first-hand learning experiences for adult learners that model best practices. Participate in online learning communities from nonprofits such as Tapped In developed by SRI’s Center for Technology and Learning with the support of the National Science Foundation and Sun Microsystems, PBS developed by public broadcasting and funded by the US. Department of Education, or education associations such as ASCD.
Students will learn well in real and virtual environments, if school librarians participate in the design, development, implementation, support, and assessment of learning. Great teachers are not hard to fine, Mr. Prensky -- we’re here!
Bibliography:
Deitering, Anne-Marie, and Shaun Huston. 2004. “Weblogs and the ‘Middle Space’ for Learning.” Academic Exchange Quarterly 8, no. 4 (Winter). Accessed 26 July 2005.
Dweck, Carol. 2005. “Fostering Students’ Desire to Learn.” Lecture delivered at the Center for Educational Research at Stanford, Apr. 22.
Lamb, Annette, and Daniel Callison. 2005. “Online Learning and Virtual Schools.” School Library Media Activities Monthly 21, no. 9 (May): 32–3.
Prensky, Mark. 2004. “Designing Learning Digital Natives Will Love.”. Accessed 26 July 2005.
Reingold, Howard. 2004. “Toward a Literacy of Cooperation,” experimental class. Accessed 26 July 2005.
Schankman, Larry. 2005. E-mail exchanges with the author. May.
Slagle, Matt. 2005. “Exopo Highlights Next-Generation Gadgets.” SFGate.com. Accessed 26 July 2005.
Ugoretz, Joseph. 2005. “‘Two Roads Diverged in a Wood’: Productive Digression in Asynchronous Discussion.” Innovate 1, no. 3 (Feb./Mar.). Accessed 26 July 2005.
Wiley, David, ed. 2000. The Instructional Use of Learning Objects -- Online Version. Agency for Instructional Technology and The Association for Educational Communications. Accessed 26 July 2005.
---------------
Download this article (PDF)
|
