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Re: Technology In Education
Posted:
Dec 5, 2007 4:01 PM
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Given my chronic shortage of time nowadays, I tend to avoid participating in discussions about whether or not technology in education is a good or bad idea. But parts of those discussions, especially when it concerns online technology, cause me to grind my teeth and want to yell at someone, so here goes: it is not the TECHNOLOGY itself that is the issue, but the DESIGN of that technology.
Would you say that textbooks in education are bad? Well, some are bad, some are good - it depends on how well they are written. Why, then, is not the same distinction made with respect to onscreen technology, instead of lumping it all together as an undifferentiated whole? It would be much more productive to look at just what it is about some online animations or interactivities that make them work for learning and what it is about others that does not. Research based on a few experiments with any one onscreen learning situation cannot be used to make the general conclusion that the use of technology in education is good or bad; it only demonstrates that THAT particular design and implementation of THAT particular topic in THOSE particular circumstances was or was not effective.
The major difference between print and screen technologies thus far is the length of their histories. We've been learning for a few centuries how to write to say what we mean to say effectively; the knowledge and rules are there even if they aren't always applied. We've been working with onscreen technology for only a few years; we're nowhere near a clear set of principles and rules for its use yet. So, yes, much of the stuff you find online so far is not conducive to learning, but much of it IS conducive to learning. And in the decade or more that I've been looking at this stuff, it's been getting a whole lot better. Should you spend money to introduce it into your classroom/school/district? Like anything else, it depends ... there are lots of failed experiments around, but an increasing number of successes as well. Implementing technology is not of itself inherently good or bad.
Trying to understand just what "better" means for math ed technology and how to get there is why I started a retirement PhD program in "onscreen mathematics communication design", after some earlier experiments and prototypes <http://thejuniverse.org/PUBLIC/MathDesign/index.html>. I'm lucky to be in a very interdisciplinary school <http://www.siat.sfu.ca/> with folks interested in cognition, visualization, education and other related fields, but with a major focus on design of technology and the use of technology in other forms of design. My long-term goal is to understand said onscreen math communication and develop design principles for it (though the thesis will most likely be something much more specific).
So, let's take an example: Lou's animations <http://clem.mscd.edu/~talmanl/MathAnim.html>. What SPECIFICALLY about them do folks think would make them conducive or not to learning mathematics? E.g. I looked at random at the sine curve animation. I like the use of colour to coordinate what's happening on the unit circle and what's happening with the curve (gestalt principle: things that appear similar appear related). As with other sine animations I've seen, however, it bothers me a little that there is an implicit requirement that the point moves around the circle with uniform speed, when the shape of the curve really has nothing to do with that fact. If I were doing it, I'd just make the point on the circle draggable to generate the curve and remove the fixed time dimension altogether. (Lou, I know you did this before the technology made interaction easier to do, so please don't take this as a personal criticism - it's only an attempt to get a what is important.)
Etc. etc. - anyone want to contribute something constructive to the debate rather than a blanket condemnation of technology in education?
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