Jan 30 2008
“Those Who Can’t, Moodle: Avoiding the ‘Napoleon Plan’ for Technology in the Classroom”
These are notes from my rough draft idea blog (http://blogs.opml.org/chrisjudson) that I used to present a concurrent session at the 2008 Indiana Computer Educator conference last week. Here’s the abstract of my talk:
Most of the successful transitions to moving instruction toward technology suggests a shift in pedagogy. Many times, incorporating technology into the classroom has amounted to the “Napoleon Plan” of decision making. Instead of merely putting up a static .html page with class rules, an assignment schedule, and perhaps some online quizzes, the effective online classroom makes use of the social aspect of the internet and structure and some would suggest moving toward a social constructivist approach to pedagogy.
We got a website! (The Napoleon Plan of Technology Integration)
And we’ve all done it: either it was coded by hand in some text editor or we used a visual web-editor such as Claris Homepage or Adobe Pagemill, but the school’s site was live and we had presence on the world wide web. Now all of our students, community and the world could come to our school website and … well, see our crafted table-layout or the more elusive frame-based text with stock gifs and scrolling java banners. And not much has changed, has it?
Well, swap out java and frames for Flash and perhaps add a lot more information (especially your school improvement plan and a link to the DOE school snapshot page) and that’s about it. The potential of the Internet got duped by the politics of the technology to put a computer into every classroom and wire all the schools so that all of our students could access all of this information. All for what? Besides cost a lot of money for our “shareholders” and a lot of headaches for teachers and IT folk to keep the little kiddies on task rather than any or all game sites, it reinforced that idea that we as educators and tech leaders are most guilty of: a Napoleon Plan [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0707436/] of technology integration: 1. Show up and, 2. See what happens. The new technology is purchased or presented to teachers and then we’ll just see what happens.
It’s no wonder why David Shenk in his 1997 book Data Smog stated that putting in the internet into every classroom is like putting a power station into every home. There was a fury of internet love last decade and seemingly everyone connected with education and technology was “on board” with the national plan to wire all schools and get Internet access for every child (the lesser No Child Left Unwired plan ). More energies were spent in acquiring Internet access for schools and honestly, it would have been viewed undemocratic not to get the access for “the students.” (Insert teacher and staff jab here for all of the eBay purchases and ESPN streaming video highlights that have been done by the adults). The most pedagogical the conversation got was which educational site the staff could visit or the latest online teaching “tool” javascript we could copy and paste on to our stale, static HTML pages.
BTW, we could say the same for each new technology through the decades as Todd Ophenhimer did in his Atlantic Monthly article from 1997: “The Computer Delusion” [http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/computer.htm] (which he later developed into the 2004 book The Flickering Mind: Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology). There is a pattern of “Showing up” and “Seeing what happens” and then it repeats all over again (almost like our educational reforms but we have chosen the technologies as silver bullets — but we will always say that they’re not…we’ll deny it).
We like shiny objects, we like the new new, we like CES and MacWorld announcements, we like computers, Palm Pilots, digital cameras, scanners with OCR, iPod touch, iPhones (or we have iPhone envy but can’t seem to justify the data plan to our bosses: that is, our superintendents or spouses). In short, we like the new shining object and we’ll talk for days on what it does, but the conversation slips into generic terms when we are asked how and why is it important or useful for learning.
Here’s my favorite response to “How” and “Why”:
These are the current tools of the trade and we should be using X (or having students use X) so that they will be better prepared for the real world.
What a load of desegregated data. Logically, there’s problems with that answer and I think you can figure it out. (Hint: How much does your school spend on making paper copies…I thought we were supposed to use those document scanners).
Herein lies the heart of my talk: We have been guilty of acquiring a lot of gadgets and URLs and just hoping that something magical educationally will happen, and it hasn’t. We’ve sometimes used the software companies own “studies” as justification to purchase Inspiration [www.inspriation.com] or Writer’s Workbench [http://www.emo.com/wwb/] because it says here that research says or that–and here it comes– it connects with most of your state standards. (BTW, probably one of the few pieces of software that has done real and reasonable educational research is CMaps [http://cmap.ihmc.us/]. Their white papers are for review and study and not for marketing alone). Instead, there is some hope out there and it happens to be connected with a product that some in the state of Indiana think is really great. It’s a framework for building and managing learning communities.
It’s really nice and I stumbled upon it about 3 years ago and now I’d like to give you some advice regarding Moodle: Don’t use it. Don’t install it. Well, okay, you probably will…but at least listen to the reason why it’s good for education and presents a solid case as far as pedagogy.
It’s based on an evolving idea of social constructivism and I’d like to talk to you about how doing education this way, in your classroom and schools, makes sense when using a framework such as Moodle [moodle.org].
Getting the “Those who can’t” on board (or Those stubborn teachers are like sticks in the mud)
It’s not about tools and more about how and why of doing things. And that’s the conversation we should be having and it is the conversation of teachers: pedagogy. It’s a much longer conversation than a demo of the latest site or shiny object; it’s a conversation, not a lecture. These people are a stubborn sort and many folk from different walks of life and points of view are wondering when these teachers will just “get on board.” The great thing is that they usually just don’t…you got to talk the talk of teachers and that, again, is pedagogy. And if there’s something that technology folks have done a lousy job is just this: explain how to use technology for learning. Not as a “learning tool” or how technology help with record keeping…nope, technology for learning. And that pedagogical conversation now turns to an idea–not a new one–but an idea that when individuals create and share information, something really cool happens. This is the general idea of social constructivism.
Here’s the bulleted list from Moodle’s site [moodle.org/philosophy]:
• Constructivism–This point of view maintains that people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environment.
• Constructionism asserts that learning is particularly effective when constructing something for others to experience. This can be anything from a spoken sentence or an internet posting, to more complex artifacts like a painting, a house or a software package.
• Social Constructivism–This extends the above ideas into a social group constructing things for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture like this, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture, on many levels.
• Connected and Separate–This idea looks deeper into the motivations of individuals within a discussion. Separate behaviour is when someone tries to remain ‘objective’ and ‘factual’, and tends to defend their own ideas using logic to find holes in their opponent’s ideas. Connected behaviour is a more empathic approach that accepts subjectivity, trying to listen and ask questions in an effort to understand the other point of view. Constructed behaviour is when a person is sensitive to both of these approaches and is able to choose either of them as appropriate to the current situation.
• Conclusion–Once you are thinking about all these issues, it helps you to focus on the experiences that would be best for learning from the learner’s point of view, rather than just publishing and assessing the information you think they need to know. It can also help you realise how each participant in a course can be a teacher as well as a learner. Your job as a ‘teacher’ can change from being ‘the source of knowledge’ to being an influencer and role model of class culture, connecting with students in a personal way that addresses their own learning needs, and moderating discussions and activities in a way that collectively leads students towards the learning goals of the class.
Again, these are not entirely news ideas (I’m thinking of Project-Based Learning [mindmap: http://www.vergil66.com/pbl/]) and there’s been other software that have attempted to bring collaboration into a teaching moment (Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment [http://www.daedalus.com/] comes to mind). What is interesting is that there is so much talk of social networks and the maturation of Web 2.0, once again we might just be missing the boat with our stubborn colleagues by telling them about all the cool stuff they could be doing with X.
You should notice that this is going to be a shift in how folk approach teaching. BTW, please don’t think that this is small groupings or merely student-centered classrooms; both of those ideas were and are good but their implementation was and still is pretty lousy. It’s the mindset we sometimes live in: Education is broke, let’s fix it by the end of the next NCA cycle or before the next ISTEP scores are released.
It’s about time to pause for a moment and find a way to use technology for learning and the social constructivism model is well-supported with in a little CMS called Moodle.
The good, the bad and the ugly of managing a Moodle site
Don’t get me wrong: I love technology and gadgets and all things shiny. I’ve been trying to talk my principal and technology folk into purchasing things since I’ve been teaching. I advise student publications, so I’ve been able to get my hands on hardware (had a lab of the original bondi blue iMacs after they came out…that was cool). But as I started making class webpages in the late 90s and then as I noticed that not everyone came a clicking to my static html page, I started to look at my practice as an educator and how in the world could this fun stuff be useful beyond a “yeah, my teacher has a web page.”
Probably like many folk, I started to add opportunities for students to leave comments and make social comments on my page (I think I was using iBlog at this time). I wanted my students to read and comment on each other’s papers, so I made a link to some discussion doc site (I think it was QuickTopic.com). I had a shout box on the site and invited students to leave messages for me or anyone who went to the page. But the whole thing was so duck-taped together, I continued to look around for something to manage all of the social activity along with integrating assessment.
Three years ago, I installed Moodle on a hosting site that I paid for out of my own pocket. Students in my classes we already used to the blogging way of me organizing our class info, so the jump to Moodle was a bit more polished. So since using Moodle for 3 years, I’d like to leave you with some advise on the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of using Moodle.
The Good.
- It’s Open Source (or, free…for the most part). This is the buzzing that’s sweeping through IT department across the state and nation. Stress budgets are now looking manageable as folk are seeing the possibility (and strength) of FOSS. Moodle is like Blackboard without the money concerns and there’s no financial obligation to a company who needs to make money off of their product.
- No coding! Yeah! I love to dabble…I like to mess around with putting things together, but Moodle (like many other Web20 apps) allows you to focus on creating and managing content rather than figuring out how it works. For most of your non-tech colleagues, training should be harmless and there’s wonderful documentation and online, in-context help system on each page. It’s easy to use…really.
- Full integration of all your classroom activities. That’s online stuff and offline stuff. Assessment presents some newer ideas and I especially like the Workshop module.
- Tons of opportunities for student interaction through bulletin boards and messaging to even blogs (if you so desire). More reasons to visit a site means more investment in its cause. Students can interact (along with the teacher) outside of the classroom day.
The Bad.
- Frankly, it takes more of my time outside of class and that’s because if I want something to be interactive, I just can’t build it and wait until they come. Tons of opportunities for interaction. I usually spend time each night responding to student’s messages and questions (though, for questions, I remind them to make a post and seek the help of the other students).
- Not every student has Internet access and so yes, those students miss out…a bit.
- You got to step down from the pedestal and allow stuff to happen. You have to let students argue things out for time to time and not always be the morality police. Sometimes you just have to not comment and allow other students to be consciousness of the classroom.
- There’s hiccups in the program and I think I’ve learned many workarounds in the gradebook module (which is going through a revision). Look, this is Open Source and many people are working to make it great…and it is. The wonderful thing is that if you have a question, there’s a great support community out there on the Moodle.org site.
The Ugly (only two things here…more cautionary things).
- It would be ugly to force every teacher in a school, district, region or state to use Moodle. That would be ugly because Moodle, like every other new idea or shiny object in education, is not for everyone. It supports a wonderful and dynamic way of approaching learning, but that’s not the only way of doing education. Sometimes I wonder how long some of the great teachers of the ages would last in the classroom (”Oh, just who just quite after one day?” “Oh, that was Socrates…he just asked ‘What am I doing here?’ and left.”)
- Another ugly thing, and this is all editorial comment, is that as schools discover great FOSS such as OpenOffice, Firefox, Audicity and Moodle, that the educational community wouldn’t feel an ethical and I would say moral obligation to give back to the OpenSource community. Sure the stuff is free, but with the freedom is an obligation to help pay for or help develop which ever project that we’re using. All of these FOSS projects list how you can get involved and I would encourage all of us to give back.
During lunch today, I did what many folk do when we go to conferences: made small talk. And I’m eating my cheeseburger and fries and I say “Hey” to the suited man at the next table. Dave Dobos was here at the conference as an exhibitor for a company that sells supplies for math and science classrooms and so I wasn’t really his target audience. He did thank me (as the representatives of high school English teachers) for teaching him how to write clearly and concisely (not that I’ve spoken that way today). We talked about how long it takes to learn to do just that: to communicate clearly and concisely and I think that is precisely what I’ve attempted to say in today’s talk: that education and learning take time and that something new and shiny may or may not have an impact on the stuff of learning. Let’s pause and think about broader and deeper issues such as pedagogy and it’s impact on using a content management system such as Moodle. Why are we using technology and to what real purpose are we aiming for? Let’s go beyond an endless cycle of Napoleon Plans for technology integration and try to speak clearly and concisely on why we do what we do.
Thank you.
Questions and some demonstration of actual classroom site using Moodle.
