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TRAINING WITH A PURPOSE. (Pepperdine University's Master of Arts in Educational Technology) GARY STAGER. Curriculum Administrator, Feb 2001 v37 i2 p55
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 Educational Media LLC
Pepperdine's immersive program allows educators to use acquired skills to achieve goals.
A lack of teacher professional development is routinely cited as the greatest need facing education today. And for two decades, the top priority in professional development training has been to empower educators to embrace computing.
Educational computing conferences and professional development events available to the most elite of educators continue to offer a plethora of sessions teaching little more than mouse clicking. Private and federal grants, totaling in the millions, are available for schools and universities promising to try to get teachers to use computers and the Internet. Yet for all of the inspiring, begging, funding, coercing, tricking and threatening, the percentage of teachers using computers and the net for educationally sound purposes remains low.
Perhaps the problem is not a shortage of after-school workshops and other traditional professional development opportunities. It could be that these programs need to reframe their objectives and reconceptualize their culture.
A narrow focus on "using" computers or the Internet may neglect the need of teachers to experience a valid context for changing their practice and therefore fail to motivate new personal learning experiences after the workshop has concluded. Teachers need a reason to use new technologies, abundant access to those technologies, a supportive environment in which to learn and grow and motivation to continue learning on their own.
PEPPERDINE'S CASE STUDY
Pepperdine University's Online Master of Arts in Educational Technology degree program faced this exact dilemma. How do you get educators to use digital technologies in a professional and educationally appropriate fashion? Most participants in the Pepperdine program are professional educators, while a smaller percentage are concerned with training and educational material development.
The university's online masters degree program, gsep.pepperdine .edu/online, requires students to visit the physical campus for four to five days at the beginning and end of the program. The initial meeting is designed to create an environment where cadres of students can get to know one another, become familiar with the educational objectives of the program, and develop sufficient technological fluency to be successful online learners for the next year.
The obvious and more traditional goals for developing tech fluency include the ability to communicate online via newsgroups, e-mail, synchronous environments and personal Web pages. However, technological fluency is much more than computer literacy and access to information. It not only helps learners understand the "how" of using technology, but also the why and when. Since the Pepperdine program states that learning may best be achieved through the social construction of knowledge in a community of practice, the camp at the beginning of the program was designed to model the type of learning environment desired for children.
The establishment of a strong community of practice is imperative for a group of busy professionals learning together virtually over an extended period of time. Participants need to collaborate in a playful purposeful setting and engage in what Seymour Papert calls "hard fun." The hope is that teachers immersed in such a learning experience come to value their own learning processes and therefore create similar experiences for their students.
The Pepperdine program promotes constructionism, which extends Piaget's notion that people learn by doing, by suggesting the best way to ensure rich learning experiences is to be actively engaged in the making of something shareable. That newly constructed knowledge nourishes the community of practice to which the learner belongs.
While all of this sounds quite idealistic, Pepperdine faces the added burden of teaching educators to learn online, appreciate constructionism, bond as colleagues and begin to be reflective practitioners in a few short days. The university not only wants to teach participants how to be savvy Internet users, but to reconnect them to their own learning abilities. It is useful to be reminded from time to time that you can learn things previously thought to be beyond your reach. However, there needs to be a context in which this explosion of learning can occur.
PROBLEM SOLVING OFF THE DEEP END
On the first morning of camp, students are placed in teams of three. These teams are loosely arranged to spread self-described technical expertise throughout the community. Each team gets a LEGO robotics kit; each kit has a single sheet of paper describing an engineering challenge.
Here are some of the challenges found inside the kits:
* Build a bird feeder that takes a photo of a bird when it feeds
* Build a vehicle capable of climbing a steep incline and have the vehicle return to the bottom when it reaches the top
* Build a coin operated vending machine that charges more money when it's hot outside
* Build a LEGO "phonograph" or CD-player capable of reproducing a pattern of sounds consistently.
The teams are expected to construct and program the machine to accomplish the task described in their team challenge. (The LEGO materials are particularly well-suited for this type of task since they require no additional tools, allow for multiple solutions and place most adults on an even level of expertise. A version of Logo is used to program the robots. Faculty members and teaching assistants, along with reference materials, are available to answer questions.)
Digital video cameras and digital still cameras are available and teams are asked to document salient moments of their construction processes. The participants are also asked to make notes, photos or video clips reflecting on their own learning processes or those of their colleagues.
The teams are told that by the end of camp they would design, construct and program a robot to solve the task randomly assigned (or a modification agreed upon by the team--an important part of the process itself) and publish reflections on the Web. These Web sites would describe what they learned, how they learned together and share examples of their robotics, complete with graphics and at least one digital movie.
After three hours of construction time, students attend a two- to three-hour workshop on either beginning Web design, intermediate Web design or digital video production. Students are expected to maintain digital portfolios of work throughout the year. Students with experience making simple Web pages and uploading them to servers can attend the digital video workshop using iMovie. A conscious effort is made to "teach" different skills to different members of the community. Too often schools limit what students are challenged to do by looking at the courses they have completed. Pepperdine wishes to demonstrate that groups of students can achieve great things by mobilizing the talents of expertise of others in their community.
All students are taught to use asynchronous Netscape newsgroups and the synchronous communications environment Tapped-In, www.tappedin.org, during formal sessions. They are then encouraged to use these environments to ask questions and share ideas with each other. Open "lab time" is available in between class sessions and in the evening. On the last morning of camp, each team demonstrates their robotic inventions and shares the Web site they created. At a recent session, one team programmed a robot to play the Star Wars theme on a xylophone. Some of the sites created may be visited at www.stager.org/virtcamp.html.
During the course of 10 hours, spread over several days, teams of educators of various abilities develop, and more importantly, exhibit the following skills: robotic engineering, programming, Web page creation, Web site publishing, computer graphic techniques, asynchronous and synchronous communication, including e-mail, digital photography, digital video editing and reflective professional practice
These seemingly incredible goals are achieved through collaboration, abundant access to appropriate technology, high expectations and a challenging context for learning that allowed participants to share their insights, creativity and humor. Perhaps educators do not need lots of professional development workshops, just one good one.
RELATED ARTICLE: HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSION
* Eliminate obstacles
It should not be surprising that teachers without sufficient access to computer technology don't embrace its use. How long must a teacher wait to get enough lab time for his or her students to work on a meaningful project? Educators must abandon the idea that schools should not buy computers before the teachers know what to do with them.
* Stay on message
Administrators must articulate a clear philosophy regarding how the new technology is to be used and how the culture of the school is likely to change. Communication between teachers and administrators must be honest, risk-free and comfortable. Administrators must constantly clarify the curricular content and traditions the school values, as well as specify the outdated methodology and content that is to be eliminated.
* Work on the teacher's turf
Those responsible for staff development should be skilled in classroom implementation and should work alongside the teacher to create models of constructive computer use. It is important for teachers to see what students can do; this is difficult to accomplish in a brief workshop.
* Plan off-site institutes
Schools must ensure that teachers understand the concepts of collaborative problem solving, cooperative learning and constructivism. Accordingly, teachers must have the opportunity to leave behind the pressures of family and school for several days to experience learning with their colleagues.
* Provide adequate resources.
Nothing dooms the use of technology in the classroom more effectively than lack of support. Administrators can support teacher efforts by providing and maintaining the technology requested and by providing access to a working printer and a professional level of Internet access.
* Avoid software du jour
Many educators feel considerable pressure to constantly find something new to do with their computers. Unfortunately, this newness is equated with amassing more software. The use of narrow, skill-specific software provides little benefit to students.
* Practice what you preach
Staff development experiences should be engaging, interdisciplinary, collaborative, heterogeneous, and models of constructivist learning. It also doesn't hurt for teachers to see their administrators use technology.
* Celebrate initiative
Recognize teachers who have made a demonstrated commitment to educational computing. Free them from some duties so they can assist colleagues in their classrooms; encourage them to lead workshops; give them access to additional hardware.
* Share learning stories
Encourage teachers to reflect on significant personal learning experiences. Encourage them to share these experiences with their colleagues and to discuss the relationship between their own learning and their classroom practices.
* Help teachers purchase technology
Schools might help fund 50 percent to 80 percent of a teacher's purchase of a personal computer. This support demonstrates to teachers a shared commitment to educational progress. Partial funding gives teachers the flexibility to purchase the right computer configuration.
Gary Stager, gary@stager.org is editor at large and adjunct professor at Pepperdine University.