|
Volume 1, Issue 2 ISSN 1528-5804
Print Version
Article and Commentaries
Submit a Commentary
Saye, J. W. (2000). Maximizing Technology's
Potential for Facilitating Educational Change: A Response to
Sherman and Hicks. Contemporary Issues in Technology and
Teacher Education [Online serial], 1 (2). Available:
http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss2/currentissues/socialstudies/article2.htm
Maximizing Technology's Potential for
Facilitating Educational Change: A Response to Sherman and
Hicks
JOHN W.
SAYE
Auburn University
Many teacher educators believe that technology can play an
important facilitating role in transforming teaching and learning.
I count myself among them. Sherman and Hicks focus on a key factor
in tapping the potential of technology as a transforming tool:
Teachers must have a vision of the possible. They must see tangible
examples of how technology may be seamlessly integrated into
subject matter rather than used as a frilly appendage to the real
work of instruction.
Sherman and Hicks stimulate our thinking about the roles that
virtual reality (VR) might play in promoting such a vision. They
provide ample evidence that readily available tools make the
construction of simple VR experiences possible for novices. The
products that teachers were able to develop in a one-week virtual
reality course are commendable. However, I am unsure whether the
visions of the possibilities generated from this experience are
powerful or convincing enough to plant the seeds that might help to
transform teaching and learning.
If technology is to entice teachers to reconsider their practice
and help them to empower their students, we must be prudent in how
we introduce new technology applications. We should not do
technology-based activities simply because it is possible to do so.
To demonstrate the power of technology for assisting in the
transformation of learning, we must only do those things that we
should, not all of the things that we can. How do we decide from
all that is possible which things we should pursue? I believe there
are at least four interrelated criteria that we should consider in
making technology-enhanced curriculum choices: robustness,
potential for promoting higher order thinking and disciplined
inquiry, potential for expanding the ways that students can gain
and demonstrate new understandings, and opportunity cost.
Robustness may be judged by the level of authenticity offered by
a technology-enhanced experience. To what degree does the
experience enhance our experience of social reality? I remember the
first time I viewed a VR site on the web. I had a "Gee whiz!"
moment. It amazed me that we could do such a thing so soon in the
development of the World Wide Web. But after viewing multiple
panoramas, the novelty faded. I wanted it to do more. I wanted to
be able to travel into the next room, look out the window, see what
was outside and down the street, ask questions of the inhabitants,
read the newspaper on the table, and play the phonograph. The
panorama quickly became confining. It allowed me to gain a better
perspective of the view from where I was virtually standing, but it
did not allow me to travel into this world that lay so
tantalizingly at my feet.
We can open deeper access to that virtual world for learners,
but we can't do it cheaply. Opportunity costs counterbalance the
attractions of robustness and potential for inquiry and multiple
paths to understanding. Four years ago my research partner and I
began developing a multimedia-learning environment for encouraging
higher order inquiry in social studies (Saye & Brush, 1999).
Our original intent was to build a template and tools that would
allow teachers to plug in multimedia content without requiring them
to have a great deal of technological expertise. To model the
potential of such an environment, we developed a multimedia
curriculum database on the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
Our work creating the Civil Rights design example confronted us
with the reality of the amount of time required to develop a robust
product. Time is the teacher's most scarce resource. The creation
of robust technology-enhanced products may require more of
teachers' time than is feasible. We believe that our learning
environment is an example of such a case. I suggest that virtual
reality presents the same challenge. VR has great potential for
robustness, but such potential is unlikely to be realized if the
teacher is the chief engineer.
In addition to providing a robust experience with rich
resources, technology-enhanced curriculum experiences should seek
powerful learning outcomes. The opportunity costs involved in its
production are too high for trivial results. If the same goals
could be accomplished in more cost-effective ways, we should
probably forego time-intensive technology enhancements of an
experience.
The teachers' projects presented in this paper feature some
powerful goals for historical analysis and narrative construction.
However, these goals seem overly ambitious in light of project
content. Constructing historical narratives involves reconfiguring
historical documents into a plot (Holt, 1990). Rigorous historical
analysis is likely to require richer data resources and more
support for student inquiry than are featured in the project VR
environments. Furthermore, most projects do not use technology to
allow students to represent their understandings in alternative
ways. Students are most often asked to write a narrative or a
journal entry. The "Pieces of the Past" project does require
students to compose their own VR web site, but the sites are to be
descriptive, not analytical or evaluative.
I do not intend this as an indictment of the teachers' efforts.
The authors acknowledge limitations due to the compressed course
time frame. Conceptualizing and developing quality, higher order
learning commonly takes longer than was available. Furthermore, the
course goals and assessment criteria seem open-ended enough to make
familiar, lower-order tasks acceptable for meeting course
requirements. The research on teacher change strongly suggests that
most individuals feel uncomfortable with the unfamiliar and tend to
co-opt an innovation to fit established ways of doing things (e.g.,
Cohen, 1988). If we are to leverage technology to help transform
teaching and learning, we need to present teachers with a more
powerful charge, give them rich visions of what is possible, and
provide them with adequate time and support to create robust
experiences.
What types of experiences would represent robust uses of virtual
reality for social studies? We need applications that tap into the
potential of VR to immerse us in a more holistic experience with
social reality. In most cases that is likely to mean virtual
reality is but one media element in a range of integrated
multimedia. For instance, the Nova pyramid tour uses scenes to go
beyond a simple panorama and take us deeper into the pyramid ( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/explore/khufuall.html
). However, it would be a much more holistic, genuine experience if
it also had contextualizing elements such as the street sounds and
oral history available in the visit to a 1930s tenement ( http://www.pbs.org/wnet/newyork/hidden/contents.html
. Conversely, the world of the tenement dweller would become more
real with the integration of linked panoramas.
Robust integrated learning experiences that tap the potential of
virtual reality may use only simple panoramas. However, those
panoramas would be used in conjunction with other instructional
elements to encourage complex learning such as disciplined inquiry
and historical thinking. For example, an interactive lecture format
that uses still and moving images, audio, primary accounts, period
documents and artifacts, and role-playing to complement framing
teacher narrative and questioning can immerse students in the
historical surround of a period while providing support for inquiry
and historical empathy. The addition of VR panoramas at appropriate
intervals in this instructional interaction could enrich the
learning experience.
More robust uses would link media elements into more authentic
virtual worlds. Richly featured simulations and situation
explorations that place students in authentic problem-based
scenarios are likely to represent the most robust uses. The problem
might be couched within a historical mystery such as the non-VR
experience featured at http://web.uvic.ca/history-robinson/index.html
. As in the Robinson scenario, learners would search the site for
historical evidence and make sense of data. Virtual reality could
be used to link data such as primary documents, personal accounts,
and testimony or interviews with historical figures within a
spatial context that enhances the experience of place and time.
Multimedia simulations or situation explorations that include
virtual reality might bring learners into closer proximity with the
complex dimensions of an historical figure's world as that person
is confronted with a dilemma that must be resolved. Part of the
challenge for novices in understanding a complex problem is looking
beyond the surface dimensions of a situation to grasp the third
dimension of the problem landscape, the abstract structural
components that are embedded in the case (Spiro & Jehng, 1990).
By virtually traveling into the world of the historical figure,
learners might encounter other contexts and perspectives that
deepen their understanding of the issue within its historical
setting. For instance, a number of virtual settings might be
integrated within a larger scenario investigating the role of
antiwar protest in the outcome of the Vietnam War. In one setting,
a learner trying to decide whether the Chicago Seven should be
indicted for actions taken during the 1968 Democratic Convention
might view the situation from the perspective of a reporter based
in a hotel room at Chicago's Conrad Hilton. With the reporter,
students could look out on Grant Park, travel through the scene of
the demonstrations and inside the convention hall, encounter
(through a period video clip) police attacking the protesters, hear
a speech by Mayor Richard Daley, read a newspaper editorial judging
the event, and view television coverage of the Vietnam War.
Developing such complex products requires a great deal of time
and expertise, but it is the experiences offered by these types of
technology-enhanced curricula that are worth the opportunity cost.
In concluding their article, Sherman and Hicks emphasize the need
for teacher education institutions to build networks to support the
efforts made by teachers to integrate technology into their
classrooms. Such networks are essential if transforming
applications of technology are to be developed and adopted by the
nation's teachers. Teachers often will not have the technological
expertise to develop complex technology applications, nor will they
have the time to invest acquiring such expertise. However, teachers
have a deep understanding of students and classrooms that are vital
to designing workable technology-enhanced curricula.
Colleges and universities should work with teachers to form
curriculum development partnerships. The summer course by Sullivan
and Hicks might represent the beginning of such a partnership.
Teachers would join with instructional technologists and content
area teacher educators in an intensive summer institute designed to
introduce the vision of technology's potential and brainstorm
powerful curriculum projects. The group might narrow those choices
down to several projects on which development teams of teacher
educators and teachers would focus over the course of the next
school year. Another intensive summer institute the following
summer might be devoted to final production of the
multimedia-supported learning environments. Ideally, such
partnerships would continue over the long-term with field tests and
continuing refinement of curricula. Developing and maintaining such
intensive partnerships will not be easy. However, without robust,
integrated learning environments developed through the involvement
of all stakeholders, the potential of technology-enhanced
instruction as a catalyst for transforming teaching and learning is
not likely to be realized.
References
Cohen, D. K. (1988) Educational technology and school
organization. In. R. Nikerson & P. Zodhiates (Eds.),
Technology in education: Looking toward 2020 (pp. 231-264).
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Holt, T. (1990). Thinking historically: Narrative,
imagination, and understanding . New York: College Entrance
Examination Board.
Saye, J. W., & Brush, T. (1999). Student engagement with
social issues in a multimedia-supported learning environment.
Theory and Research in Social Education 27 (4), 472-504.
Spiro, R. J., & Jehng, J. C. (1990). Cognitive flexibility
and hypertext: Theory and technology for the nonlinear and
multidimensional traversal of complex subject matter. In D. Nix
& R. Spiro (Eds.), Cognition, education, and multimedia
(pp. 163-205). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Submit a Commentary
|
