Three of the major challenges facing school as we look to the future are exponential informational growth and change, inherent problems with incremental change in schools with regards to technology, and the structures of many current schools that impede technological expansion and growth.
First of all, in Windows on the Future, Ian Jukes and Ted McCain discuss the challenges involved in coping with and learning in a world of exponential informational growth and change. Parallel to Moore’s Law of exponential growth in the efficiency of computer hardware and the steady depreciation in consumer cost, Jukes and McCain posit that there is a similar exponential growth of “unique new technical information” that is currently doubling every two years. Subsequently, as Jukes and McCain show, if this rate of technical information maintains a doubling every two years, the amount of information in our world would increase 256 times its current size within the period of time a student enters the public school system to the time he or she graduates. Furthermore, fortunately or unfortunately, Jukes and McCain also speculate that, since the growth is exponential, the amount of information in the world will double itself every 72 hours by the year 2014 (34). This poses an extraordinary problem for teachers because it is already impossible to know all of the information currently in the world, but now it will be nearly impossible just to keep up with pertinent new information even haphazardly. In addition, this rate of informational change punctuates the idea of a structured curriculum with an enormous question mark. Exponential growth disallows for the development of curriculum that is content-based; from now on and forever, “our biggest challenge both personally and professionally will be comprehending and accepting a scale of change changing so rapidly that the very nature of change is changing,” and a paradigmatic shift in curriculum from content-based to strategy-based is likely in order (49). A shift like this is radical and cannot be taken in increments, which brings the ideas of Seymour Papert to the forefront.
In Papert’s article “Technology in Schools: To Support the System or Render It Obsolete,” Papert recognizes that many schools attempt to incorporate the use of technology incrementally and for the purposes of merely enhancing the established curriculum; however, he recognizes inherent problems with this approach. Papert compares the incremental incorporation of technology as a current curricular enhancer to attaching a jet-plane engine to the rear of a stagecoach to improve methods of transportation. In other words, the stagecoach is the metaphorical embodiment of the current educational system as it stands appallingly similar to models recommended more than a century past; the current technological world is the equivalent of the jet-plane engine. The jet engine is fast, modern, and efficient—using all of the world’s current technology as it’s updated in quality frequently. The stagecoach is archaic, and obsolete—a necessary stepping stone but one that is of out of date in modern transportation. Therefore, Papert suggests it’s time to retire the stagecoach that is the current educational system and radically reform the structure of education to promote necessary strategy-based classes like Technological Fluency. The challenge Papert brings to educators is a frightening one and his solution (the radical reformation of the structure of education) is also alarming. However, his extended metaphor of transportation sustains truth and relevance: “you have to stop trying to improve the functioning of the old system. Instead lay down the seeds for something new. Maybe this will result in decreased performance according to the traditional measures. Remember that the first airplanes were not so good as stagecoaches for getting around. But they were destined to revolutionize transportation” (Papert 4).
Finally, although Seymour Papert’s ideas call for a revolutionary change in education, the changes he purposes may actually be the answer to some of the problems uncovered by a study entitled “Techno-Promoter Dreams, Student Realities” by Craig Peck. In this article, Peck reveals that teachers feel disadvantaged by two structures of education: departmentalization by discourse and cellular classroom arrangements. Part of the appeal of technology is that it increases the accessibility of virtually everything including collaboration. Departmentalization is antithetical to technological education because it isolates (intentionally or not) beneficial pedagogical strategies or ideas centered in technology. In addition, departmentalization also isolates resources and the “deployment of computers in separate, department-specific technology labs, thus rendering the machines off-limits to those from other departments. Moreover, the isolated and individualistic nature of teaching, most noticeable in schools’ cellular classroom arrangements, often prevents the spread of ideas from teacher to teacher, even within the same department” (8). Therefore, the traditional, antiquated structures of the stagecoach educational system need to be laid to rest once and for all in order for technology to be an effective pedagogical tool with implications for an exponentially changing future.
In the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle
I received notice recently that the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle was interested in a blog posting taken from this blog. I thought I would share. The original version is still posted in this blog as "A Day without Words." Click HERE for the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle version.
A Day Without Words
I believe I spoke less words yesterday than on any other day I can possibly remember. I attended a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for Wisconsin teachers set up by the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations. Amazingly, the trip is only a one-day endeavor in which we fly a privately chartered jet from Milwaukee to Virginia. In Virginia, we are then picked up by a private bus company and taken to the Museum in D.C. As you can see from the picture above, there were a number of people who attended, but I didn't know anyone personally. I had never been to Washington D.C. before yesterday and was amazed for a variety of reasons. I didn't experience the city in any way besides seeing the memorials from a bus, but I did get a chance to absorb the Holocaust museum.
I say "A Day Without Words" because the museum provoked gasps and chokes and no verbally distinguishable utterances or adjectives during the experience. I have never been to a museum that affected me so viscerally as this museum. I am still left to reconcile merely with images: the 15,000 pounds of hair shorn from victims at Auschwitz and the countless brown-worn leather shoes; the dehumanizing video footage of concentration camps and death centers where bodies are disposed of like refuse in a landfill; the haunting and disorienting cobblestones taken directly from the Warsaw ghetto; the rusty, pale green cans of Zyklon B sitting behind glass cases like convicted felons of the world's most atrocious crime; the psuedoscientific diagrams of racial taxonomies that still plague the subconsciousness of so many in the contemporary world; the rail car in its seemingly innocuous inanimation once filled with desperate cries and diabolical screams; the wall of rescuers ten feet high and 50 feet long, filled on two sides top to bottom with names of heroes; the Danish fishing boat which carried Jews from the shores of Denmark to refuge in Sweden--reminding us that Denmark reclaimed all but 51 of its nearly liquidated Jews. And it continues with the denial of identities embodied in photographs of numbers tattooed in forearms, an all-encompassing photographic history of a 400-year-old shtetl and its inhabitants merely images in history, to the blue and white starched and tattered prison rags worn by the innumerable innocents barred within camp confinements and the partisans and resistors martyred for a nobility forgotten and denied in every regard--a nobility imparted in all to be a human being.
Suddenly shades of grey and ashen black evanesce into an extraordinarily illuminated hexagonal-like rotunda of smooth white stone. The sun shines vertically through its center, and an eternal flame sits in commemoration of millions. I remember being awestruck in the contrast of this room with the exhibit as its anteroom. I have not felt a compulsion to pray in my life like the compulsion I felt at the moment after entering the rotunda. Ironically, my feeling of prayer was not accompanied by any identifiable message and not associated with any particular God.
The surrealism begins to invade me upon leaving the Hall of Remembrance as two Holocaust survivors volunteer to share their stories in the open first-floor staircase. Both have had the tattoos as evidence that they can never forget and have had 63 years of remembrance (61 of them as a married couple). Walking testimonies of hope and memory, they had but one simple message that resonated throughout: "Do not love me, but tolerate me because I exist."
And then I thank the victims for their bravery and willingness to bear all to perfect strangers; we hug, shake hands, and dry our eyes. Within seconds, we are gone from one another, never to see each other again. Within minutes, I am back in the comfort of a private jet eating asparagus and turkey, drinking dark, sugary coffee. Within hours, I am home and in bed, in 2008, grappling in the dark with a blurry and horrifying collage of images I will never forget and likely never fully understand.
"The Next Generation: Educational Technology Versus the Lecture"
Joel Foreman’s article “The Next Generation: Educational Technology Versus the Lecture” (published in the July/August 2003 edition of Educause Review) suggests a paradigmatic shift in the possibilities of education—from everything involving the facilities used for education to the mediums used in educating students en masse. Idealistically, I am more than in favor of what Foreman suggests, but I also see the conflict in shifting education in such a revolutionary way. When he says that the proposed, videogame-based Psychology 101 course would “eliminate the need for placed-based psychology professors,” I can imagine the earthquake of complaints a change like this would make. To go with the analogy of a revolutionary change, Foreman’s game-based education proposal might cause a stir reminiscent of Dickens’s introduction to A Tale of Two Cities. It may be the worst of times for educators grown stagnant with their current pedagogical processes, but the educational benefits for students may be extraordinary and virtually immeasurable. In addition, some of these same professors and teachers who complain about the lack of academic competency produced by students might just see increased competence—of course the irony of this is that the academic competency existed in the first place, but not in a paper-pencil type medium.
One of the most important parts of Foreman’s ideas involves the assessment aspect of game-based teaching. Developing innovative assessments that measure students’ growth and offer students' immediate responses is likely the most challenging aspect for teachers. A major selling point of game-based learning is that assessments are built into the programs and “the student-player is unable to move to a higher level until competence at the current level is established and confirmed.” If game-based learning developers could show current educators some real, empirical data confirming that the learning process is taking place, I think game-based learning will be a nearer part of our future.
Although I’m a proponent of game-based education on almost every level, I have a difficult time understanding the benefits of game-based learning in some areas of literacy and Language Arts. On page 14, Foreman states that “these visualizations, best referred to as immersive worlds, can bring a student into and through any environment that can be imagined. Instead of learning about a subject by listening to a lecture or by processing page-based alphanumerics (i.e., reading), students can enter and explore a screen-based simulated world that is the next best thing to reality.” This statement is trumped up with rhetorical pathos by using words like “explore” and “enter” that coincide with phrases like “immersive worlds” and “screen-based simulated world” to make game-based learning sound, quite literally, out of this world. In this way, Foreman does an excellent job of helping readers ignore the adverb “instead” which is followed by a verbose synonymic phrase for reading he calls “processing page-based alphanumerics.” What concerns me is that students will always need to learn reading and writing competently even if they are involved in learning through immersive worlds. For example, when students learn about aspects of financial literacy, it seems unlikely that credit card companies will send students through an interactive world of zero percent APRs and retroactive interest. They send them either a brochure through snail mail or through an electronic message containing alphanumerics which must be processed in order to understand the implications of using credit. In other words, the game-based education will be beneficial in a number of ways, but educators and developers of educational materials must always remember that being academically disciplined is still an extraordinary part of learning. Life is filled with excruciatingly boring minutiae (i.e., insurance policies, loan agreements, financial-aid applications, investment reports, et cetera) that are essential to successful living. These things take time and discipline to learn and adequately fulfill. Educators cannot forget about this aspect of education. Remember, getting those “subject matter experts” to help develop the immersive world of the historically accurate, game-based Elizabethan London “populated by historical luminaries (e.g., Shakespeare)” will take an extraordinary amount of processing page-based alphanumerics from old and faded primary texts with some of the most difficult of antiquated language.
One of the most important parts of Foreman’s ideas involves the assessment aspect of game-based teaching. Developing innovative assessments that measure students’ growth and offer students' immediate responses is likely the most challenging aspect for teachers. A major selling point of game-based learning is that assessments are built into the programs and “the student-player is unable to move to a higher level until competence at the current level is established and confirmed.” If game-based learning developers could show current educators some real, empirical data confirming that the learning process is taking place, I think game-based learning will be a nearer part of our future.
Although I’m a proponent of game-based education on almost every level, I have a difficult time understanding the benefits of game-based learning in some areas of literacy and Language Arts. On page 14, Foreman states that “these visualizations, best referred to as immersive worlds, can bring a student into and through any environment that can be imagined. Instead of learning about a subject by listening to a lecture or by processing page-based alphanumerics (i.e., reading), students can enter and explore a screen-based simulated world that is the next best thing to reality.” This statement is trumped up with rhetorical pathos by using words like “explore” and “enter” that coincide with phrases like “immersive worlds” and “screen-based simulated world” to make game-based learning sound, quite literally, out of this world. In this way, Foreman does an excellent job of helping readers ignore the adverb “instead” which is followed by a verbose synonymic phrase for reading he calls “processing page-based alphanumerics.” What concerns me is that students will always need to learn reading and writing competently even if they are involved in learning through immersive worlds. For example, when students learn about aspects of financial literacy, it seems unlikely that credit card companies will send students through an interactive world of zero percent APRs and retroactive interest. They send them either a brochure through snail mail or through an electronic message containing alphanumerics which must be processed in order to understand the implications of using credit. In other words, the game-based education will be beneficial in a number of ways, but educators and developers of educational materials must always remember that being academically disciplined is still an extraordinary part of learning. Life is filled with excruciatingly boring minutiae (i.e., insurance policies, loan agreements, financial-aid applications, investment reports, et cetera) that are essential to successful living. These things take time and discipline to learn and adequately fulfill. Educators cannot forget about this aspect of education. Remember, getting those “subject matter experts” to help develop the immersive world of the historically accurate, game-based Elizabethan London “populated by historical luminaries (e.g., Shakespeare)” will take an extraordinary amount of processing page-based alphanumerics from old and faded primary texts with some of the most difficult of antiquated language.
Promoting Peacekeepers in Darfur
Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, helped send a message to the U.N. Security Council with a petition signed by more than 50,000 people to challenge the council to fulfill their promise in Darfur. View more...
Omar al-Bashir indicted for Genocide
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court has finally proceeded in indicting Sudan's president for his role in the genocide in Darfur. Ocampo has been gathering evidence for this indictment for a number of years. This is the first time in history that a head of state has been indicted for war crimes while currently in power. There are problems, however, because al-Bashir has not signed important documents that recognize the legitimacy of the International Criminal Court. Some even argue that violence may escalate in Darfur due to the criminal charges. Read more about this by visiting the BBC website.