TE 891 Special Topics in Teaching, Curriculum, and Schooling
Special Topics in Teaching, Curriculum and Schooling is the foundational core course at the beginning of the master's program. Through the course we examined various educational practices and pedagogy through case studies and contrasted the perspectives of progressive inquiry-based education and traditional education. We also reflected on our own teaching practices as well as the role of technology in education. In the following essay I describe my experience with online education and compare it to the digital life of my students.
Digital Immigrants: Thoughts on Teaching in the Digital Age
Rather than looking at an individual, text, or other resource and how it contested my previously held convictions, I would like to examine revelations from the experience of inquiry in this online course as a whole. I approached the first course in the MAED program with preconceptions about the experience. My assumption was that working through an online course was essentially the same as a traditional university course but without the actual classroom experience. The online experience, I continued to assume, simply replaced lectures and a professor’s photocopied packet of readings with posted “lectures” and downloadable articles. The online course was enhanced by links to interviews, videos, and websites, but seemed essentially the same as an on-campus course with sources on reserve in the campus library. These assumptions remained strong until my reflections on the entire experience during the last unit. The differences I realized were about efficiency, the “digital immigration” of the learner and the transformation of sources, not content.
One’s interface with online learning leads to obvious temporal benefits. Reflecting on my undergraduate experience, I remembered getting dressed, packing my backpack, getting to class on time, going to the library, searching the stacks, finding a place to work, leaving to get coffee, photocopying and checking out texts, and then packing up to go home. In retrospect, it was four years of labor intensive, inefficient learning. During this online course, I had five books delivered to my temporary address via Amazon, all articles where on my laptop, and the “lectures” where available anytime. I could work from home in any time zone. The texts, online articles, videos, websites, and interviews where always within wireless reach. What is profound is that I had far more time to read.
The online program makes graduate work possible for my nomadic lifestyle. During the summer, I completed the coursework in Lockhart, Texas, Manchaca, Texas, rural New Mexico, a trans-Pacific flight, an airport in Japan, and in my apartment and school in Taiwan. As Dewey advocates the experience of community, one might argue that nomadic isolation would be antithetical to the communal aspect of progressive education. Yet my online work opened me into a broader community. I discussed what I was reading and writing with family members, friends, and colleagues. The conversations were on the content of the course but also on the experience of learning online.
Furthermore, metacognition is involved in this process. I have begun to reflect more on how I use digital media for inquiry and instruction. Interacting with the course on the MSU website, I experienced a well-organized architecture of information. Panels of units where linked to selected websites and embedded hypertext allowed for immediate access to images, definitions, and biographies. It was my first full immersion into a complexly constructed educational website.
I use a blog to communicate with my high school students, but I am unable to post links to other sources. I have to cut and paste the entire text with citations into my blog. I am constantly trying to push what I can do on the blog, posting video or photos to tap into visual intelligences. The TE 891 website experience is like walking through a Craftsman home after living in a cardboard box.
Last year, a veteran English teacher and I designed curriculum for teaching students to research literary topics. I emphasized the need to teach multiple types of online sources, how to cite them, and how to determine their authority and bias. She insisted that we teach reference texts available in the library and limit web sources to two per project. Our school, due to its budget and location in Taiwan, has a library of less than three thousand volumes. Using online sources and teaching students to use what they will undoubtedly be using in the future made perfect sense. My students have more books stored in their iPhones than our school library contains. Considering our situation, reference books and traditional libraries are antiquated.
When I read digital reactionaries like Neil Postman, John Updike and Nicholas Carr, I think of the Greeks who must have experienced a similar transition when the epic poems were transcribed and the rhapsodes slowly disappeared. The Greek’s neural patterns undoubtedly changed as well.
I have noticed these peripheral differences, but I believe that the experience of reading is essentially the same. When reading a magazine article online one is focused and absorbed in the ideas and becomes oblivious to the format. Nicholas Carr claims that “jumping around” when searching for information reshapes our neural patterns and possibly shortens our attention span. I used to scan the card catalog and The Guide to Periodical Literature and blur my eyes out looking at microfiche. That is searching, not reading. Although I am a digital “omnivore” according to the Pew Center survey, I feel I have greater concentration and can read as deeply as I could when I had to read Kant and Hegel on paper. Webpages are still pages and hypertext is digitally turning a page or reaching for another text to read more deeply.
I read poet laureate Billy Collin's “First Reader” to my ninth graders the other day. I projected an image of Dick and Jane and Spot that I downloaded from Google. I explained that Gutenberg invented the printing press. A student challenged me and said that the Chinese had invented the printing press. Within five minutes of searching online we had discovered that the principles of printing had been transferred from China to the Middle East and then to Europe. Gutenberg’s press was a slightly modified “contamination.” Without the wealth of sources available in my classroom, we would have continued both a misrepresentation and foster distrust between student and teacher.
A fellow teacher walked in and his face lit up open seeing Dick and Jane and Spot. He told us that he used to go home in first grade and repeat the new phrases to his mother. She responded in Italian, “What are you talking about?” Our students act with the confidence of second generation immigrants in the digital world, and we are their cautious parents with minds still in the old country.
The digital age is revolutionary. The resistance should have its voice, but it is a time of transformation and as a teacher I must learn to teach the new ideology. Language Arts is now about “media literacy” and must focus on filtering, categorizing, verifying authority, deciphering, and creating “information ecology.” We are preoccupied with this transformation, but our students are of the digital age, they are post-transformational. We have to teach to who they are yet adapt the trades of the old country to help them survive. Having been immersed in this digital learning experience, my assumptions about the difference of online learning have been challenged and I continue to inquire about how this new architecture reconfigures our relationship to learning.
Special Topics in Teaching, Curriculum and Schooling is the foundational core course at the beginning of the master's program. Through the course we examined various educational practices and pedagogy through case studies and contrasted the perspectives of progressive inquiry-based education and traditional education. We also reflected on our own teaching practices as well as the role of technology in education. In the following essay I describe my experience with online education and compare it to the digital life of my students.
Digital Immigrants: Thoughts on Teaching in the Digital Age
Rather than looking at an individual, text, or other resource and how it contested my previously held convictions, I would like to examine revelations from the experience of inquiry in this online course as a whole. I approached the first course in the MAED program with preconceptions about the experience. My assumption was that working through an online course was essentially the same as a traditional university course but without the actual classroom experience. The online experience, I continued to assume, simply replaced lectures and a professor’s photocopied packet of readings with posted “lectures” and downloadable articles. The online course was enhanced by links to interviews, videos, and websites, but seemed essentially the same as an on-campus course with sources on reserve in the campus library. These assumptions remained strong until my reflections on the entire experience during the last unit. The differences I realized were about efficiency, the “digital immigration” of the learner and the transformation of sources, not content.
One’s interface with online learning leads to obvious temporal benefits. Reflecting on my undergraduate experience, I remembered getting dressed, packing my backpack, getting to class on time, going to the library, searching the stacks, finding a place to work, leaving to get coffee, photocopying and checking out texts, and then packing up to go home. In retrospect, it was four years of labor intensive, inefficient learning. During this online course, I had five books delivered to my temporary address via Amazon, all articles where on my laptop, and the “lectures” where available anytime. I could work from home in any time zone. The texts, online articles, videos, websites, and interviews where always within wireless reach. What is profound is that I had far more time to read.
The online program makes graduate work possible for my nomadic lifestyle. During the summer, I completed the coursework in Lockhart, Texas, Manchaca, Texas, rural New Mexico, a trans-Pacific flight, an airport in Japan, and in my apartment and school in Taiwan. As Dewey advocates the experience of community, one might argue that nomadic isolation would be antithetical to the communal aspect of progressive education. Yet my online work opened me into a broader community. I discussed what I was reading and writing with family members, friends, and colleagues. The conversations were on the content of the course but also on the experience of learning online.
Furthermore, metacognition is involved in this process. I have begun to reflect more on how I use digital media for inquiry and instruction. Interacting with the course on the MSU website, I experienced a well-organized architecture of information. Panels of units where linked to selected websites and embedded hypertext allowed for immediate access to images, definitions, and biographies. It was my first full immersion into a complexly constructed educational website.
I use a blog to communicate with my high school students, but I am unable to post links to other sources. I have to cut and paste the entire text with citations into my blog. I am constantly trying to push what I can do on the blog, posting video or photos to tap into visual intelligences. The TE 891 website experience is like walking through a Craftsman home after living in a cardboard box.
Last year, a veteran English teacher and I designed curriculum for teaching students to research literary topics. I emphasized the need to teach multiple types of online sources, how to cite them, and how to determine their authority and bias. She insisted that we teach reference texts available in the library and limit web sources to two per project. Our school, due to its budget and location in Taiwan, has a library of less than three thousand volumes. Using online sources and teaching students to use what they will undoubtedly be using in the future made perfect sense. My students have more books stored in their iPhones than our school library contains. Considering our situation, reference books and traditional libraries are antiquated.
When I read digital reactionaries like Neil Postman, John Updike and Nicholas Carr, I think of the Greeks who must have experienced a similar transition when the epic poems were transcribed and the rhapsodes slowly disappeared. The Greek’s neural patterns undoubtedly changed as well.
I have noticed these peripheral differences, but I believe that the experience of reading is essentially the same. When reading a magazine article online one is focused and absorbed in the ideas and becomes oblivious to the format. Nicholas Carr claims that “jumping around” when searching for information reshapes our neural patterns and possibly shortens our attention span. I used to scan the card catalog and The Guide to Periodical Literature and blur my eyes out looking at microfiche. That is searching, not reading. Although I am a digital “omnivore” according to the Pew Center survey, I feel I have greater concentration and can read as deeply as I could when I had to read Kant and Hegel on paper. Webpages are still pages and hypertext is digitally turning a page or reaching for another text to read more deeply.
I read poet laureate Billy Collin's “First Reader” to my ninth graders the other day. I projected an image of Dick and Jane and Spot that I downloaded from Google. I explained that Gutenberg invented the printing press. A student challenged me and said that the Chinese had invented the printing press. Within five minutes of searching online we had discovered that the principles of printing had been transferred from China to the Middle East and then to Europe. Gutenberg’s press was a slightly modified “contamination.” Without the wealth of sources available in my classroom, we would have continued both a misrepresentation and foster distrust between student and teacher.
A fellow teacher walked in and his face lit up open seeing Dick and Jane and Spot. He told us that he used to go home in first grade and repeat the new phrases to his mother. She responded in Italian, “What are you talking about?” Our students act with the confidence of second generation immigrants in the digital world, and we are their cautious parents with minds still in the old country.
The digital age is revolutionary. The resistance should have its voice, but it is a time of transformation and as a teacher I must learn to teach the new ideology. Language Arts is now about “media literacy” and must focus on filtering, categorizing, verifying authority, deciphering, and creating “information ecology.” We are preoccupied with this transformation, but our students are of the digital age, they are post-transformational. We have to teach to who they are yet adapt the trades of the old country to help them survive. Having been immersed in this digital learning experience, my assumptions about the difference of online learning have been challenged and I continue to inquire about how this new architecture reconfigures our relationship to learning.
