The following thoughts came after a question I received from Shari about my experience with Montessori. She wanted to know if I thought their philosophy had any dimensions of existentialism to it and what I thought of that philosophy.
This was my response.

To me the Montessori method that I experienced didn't seem existential. If
felt free in terms of time restriction in a hippieish kind of way (with
hippieness being a positive descriptor.) But I don't remember them ever
saying that whatever I created was fine and so long as I was unique I could
create my own knowledge. There were still tests. I remember being stressed
out over the reading comprehension tests we had to do. However, the purpose
of those test was more to find out your level and amount of progress. I got
the feeling that there were expectations of being expected to know certain
things at a given level. That was largely because new material was covered
as you moved to the next grade level. Also since the class size was so
small the grades were largely intertwined and so you knew very well what
new material you would be seeing soon because someone sitting right next to
you was working on it already because they were a grade ahead. It was about
progress and getting better within some general expectations of where you
should be. Honestly, I remember being confused about where I should be at
times but then letting go of that since the teachers didn't focus on it.
They were more focused on presenting short lessons to the class at the
beginning of the class and then circulating around and helping you learn
whatever you were working on at your level. (Side note: I feel like there
were a few scantron state run tests we had to take in there too and those
were kind of stressful for us because they were really different from the
test we normally took and felt like an outside intrusion to our world. I
don't remember taking many test other than the reading comprehension ones
and maybe some math tests but those may have just been quizzes. I feel like
it was more quizzes and workbooks that were collected that they evaluated
us on.)
Anyway back to the existentialism question. What I remember most, other
than working on my own and sometimes sharing with my neighbor (not so much
small group work but often large group work or interactive lectures to the
whole class), is that there were really cool things to play with in the
class. Cursive letters written in raised sandpaper on wooden blocks so that
you could practice tracing the flow of the letter with your fingers. Math
beads for learning length, area, and volume and the multiplication table.
They were on straight wires, sheets, and cubes respectively. I'll try to
attach a picture to explain. Wooden boards with dimples that you placed
green beads in to do division. The point I'm trying to make here is that
there was something very concrete and physical about what we were doing. It
wasn't all us making it up. They surrounded us with interesting objects
that had clear purposes that they explicitly explained to us. The best
metaphor I can come up with is that they did not believe that knowledge is
an illusion but rather they almost had a severe realist philosophical
belief under everything that they did. They believed that there was
objective knowledge out there. But they also wholly embraced art. So they
arrived at some kind of genius realization of Plato's perspective. They
knew that the ideal form existed in the cave. Without a doubt they believed
that. They just choose to present that to use through art by creating the
most creative, artistic, and imaginative objects around us to represent a
way to get at that objective truth. Their goal was to give us the most
beautiful and fascinating shadows of those ideal forms that they could
think of and then step back and watch us play with those shadows at our own
pace stepping in when we needed a push to better understand the shadow and
beyond that the hidden form of knowledge casting it. I clearly remember
playing with these weird things, especially the math ones, and being
consciously aware that it was getting at something else deep that existed
apart from the toy(not as consciously as I'm expressing here now but still
aware). This may have been because we also did standard pencil and paper
formulas/calculation work too.

This I Believe Podcast

Here is my This I Believe Podcast on my perspective on technology in the classroom.

ThisIBelieve.egg on Aviary.

Reflections on Readings for 2010/07/23

James Paul Gee's comments ring true to me based on my undergraduate and graduate research experiences. The idea of the doing of the science being a game very much matches my sense of what successful researchers look like. It is all about getting it to work, seeing what you can figure out, determining what you are confident of and what needs more research. There was a very strong ethic in grad school of "Go look it up and keep working." That is, go look up that mathematical technique or that bit of programming or whatever and then apply it to your work to solve the problem you are having at the moment but then get back to work on the actual problem. Other information was used when we needed it and in order to solve a problem and move the work forward. In that sense research is the game. It strikes me that this idea of making education problem based could be highly motivating. That being said, research was also mind numbingly tedious so care should be taken in designing projects, activities, games, etc to fit this game oriented style of instruction. Another consideration is that because of the complexity of designing a good game it may be prohibitive in terms of time to construct lessons this way.

Post Class Reflections on Twitter and Webinar

It was cool to finally get on Twitter. I had been meaning to make an account but hadn't got around to it yet. It was interesting to follow along with our discussion while simultaneously reading Tweets about it. I think it would have been less distracting if we had talked about that happening before it started.
The discussion in the Webinar was really interesting. I had not participated in a Webinar before and thought it was cool. One idea that I think should be mandatory it to go over guidelines for what happens if technical difficulties occur. Another think that would have been helpful is direction about who could have their speakers on. At one time several people's audio was overlapping and I couldn't hear. I liked the discussion of the literacy project. It seems that they were both very similarly minded in that they picked technology to use because it seemed useful to them and not just for its own sake.

Reflections on Readings for 2010/07/16

These readings were very interesting. It was nice to get into some details about useful things on the web. I had not heard the term personal learning network before these readings. It seems that they could potentially be very useful depending on the level of participation within your field. I think that the key to seeing the usefulness of this technology will be to just dive in and try different things out. Twitter is an example of how an online tool can span the gamut from totally vapid and pointless to an immensely useful collaboration of professionals. It is all in how you make use of the tool.

In terms of the Media 21 literacy project, I was somewhat unsure what was actually done. Looking over the goals that were set for students in terms of being able to express their ideas online it seemed promising. However, I am not sure how it worked out.

I also found the article on the inherent causes of cheating interesting. I mostly agreed with the author that students will be less likely to cheat when the testing method seems meaningful and doesn't lend itself to cheating (its hard to cheat on an essay and easy to note if someone marked A or B.) However, I take issue with the assertion that multiple choice tests can't deeply test knowledge. It seems to me that they can test knowledge just as deeply depending on how they are structured. I am not familiar with the educational research on this topic so I will hold back my objections somewhat. I will readily concede that the typical multiple choice test is crap but I have personally struggled very hard to make meaningful multiple choice tests in astronomy and I do think my tests "accurately and meaningfully measure(d) student knowledge and ability." They did so at least as well as the highly subjective grading of "cases, exhibitions, portfolios, and problem-based inquiries." I would also immediately concede that multiple choice tests are equally subjective. My point is that the author is attacking a kind of test when he should be attacking the depth of the test. I have no doubt that my multiple choice questions made students think and thus learn more than many other essay questions(or other means of assessment) on the same topic would. Overall though the authors main points of trying to put more effort into testing, whatever the situation, and seeking to convince students that the test is meaningful are very valid and deserve more light in our current discussion.

Reflections on Our Discussion of Dewey.

There were several aspects of our conversation about John Dewey that were particularly interesting to me. One thing that struck me was the aspect of the historical context in which Dewey developed his ideas. The term societal flux resonates strongly with me in terms of how I see our present society. We are also increasingly urbanizing and taking on different jobs and roles than our parents. This does not strike me as a bad thing but something we must keep in mind in order to remain cohesive enough from people from different areas or age groups to understand one another. It makes me think of how on one hand technology is viewed a the cause of our frayed social fabric by many. On the other hand I see technology as a way of making new connections that would never have occurred before. That being said, having seen the benefit of mentorship in my undergraduate and graduate research career I do feel like in person mentorship is something that needs to become a larger part of our society again.

This brings me to the question of how Ed Tech fits in with Dewey's philosophy and with our current and future society. I see technology in the classroom as potentially fitting in with a Dewey style education very well. In this context technology would be a tool given to students but not the focus itself. Dewey's view of students being at the center of their learning and building knowledge together is a social way seems to dictate that the interactions between students and the students process of thought must remain the focus. However, technology could be fit in as part of the social fabric that the students are learning within. It could be used to connect students around the world with each other and with information but it should be seen as a tool to share ideas or to find them and not be an interruption or distraction from the learning at hand. I am hard pressed to say specifically what this would look like in the classroom. My guess is that it would be something like, discuss a topic in groups, set a goal for figuring something out, figure out what other information you need, go online to find that information, then put the computer down and discuss the topic again with this new information, come to a consensus, go back and make a class webpage to share your groups ideas with other classes that did the same thing.

Thoughts on Readings for 2010/07/09

I had never read anything about the life and work of John Dewey before this assignment. I must say that I almost instantly intellectually fell in love with the man. The reasonableness of his arguments and the clear way in which he justifies his statements is inspiring. In particular his ability to recognize that partial progress is not a solution or reason to stop seemed right on the money to me. All to often educational reforms seem to take the form of a partial fix taken as the full solution. Then people wonder why it didn't work when a useful reform was expected to be the end all solution to a series of problem that it can help but not completely change. Dewey's quote about "experience (not) occurr(ing) in a vacuum" is a very eloquent way to express the social aspect of many of the philosophies of learning we have discussed. This theme was more clearly articulated in his pedagogic creed statement. I also appreciate boldness of statement and actually saying what you mean. Anyone who will call something "stupid" outright and then clearly and convincingly justify that characterization in their immediately following statements in near and dear to my heart.
The article on Wikipedia and Google seemed to be useful because of the perspective that it was written from. It acknowledge the strengths and flaw of each and contrasted them with the same objective view of more traditional sources of information. There was clearly a focus on knowing when and how to effectively incorporate these resources into ones teaching. I particularly found the comparison of Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica interesting. It has been my experience that there is much more controversy over the accuracy of Wikipedia in the humanities than in the sciences and math. I believe this is because it is easier to agree on the wording (or equations, numbers, and figures) of more concrete scientific and mathematical concepts than it is in disciplines that more heavily rely upon language to describe the central ideas. I would be interested in hearing responses from some science and humanities people on this.