- Discuss whether your classroom learning environment provides these four motivational conditions. How are goals for student work created in your class, how much choice do students have in their work, and how immediately can students tap into feedback that reflects their progress?
- Pick one of these four elements—desirable goals, choices, immediate feedback, and the ability to see improvement—and brainstorm ways in which you and your students could use digital technologies available within your school to infuse that element more fully into academic work.
- In what ways could your students experience desirable goals, choices, immediate feedback, and evidence of improvement that do not involve digital technologies?
Internet-Inspired Collaborating
Teachers and textbook publishers are clearly no longer the gatekeepers of available content in any academic discipline. Most students now have access to the Internet and the will to surf. There are scores of organizations and individuals posting material on the Web, much of it updated more recently than anything available through traditional print media. Will Richardson (“The Educator's Guide to the Read/Write Web,” p. 24) points out one positive aspect of this development: Students are becoming more active in finding, organizing, and evaluating their own knowledge base. As Richardson explains,Many teachers and students have already begun writing their own textbooks online, cobbling together links and annotated reading lists that future classes can build on. Much like the open source software movement, this “open content” model begs for a more collaborative assembly of course materials. (p. 26)
Collaborate with your students in research and take the results beyond an audience of teachers. For example, select a published article or an excerpt from a quality science or history text that covers an area in which frequent discoveries are being made—such as the question of why conditions hospitable to human life developed on Earth but not on Venus. Ask a group of students with Internet research skills to join you in conducting online research to see whether together you can find additional—or more recent—information from credible sources. Alternatively, find a few Web-based sources on your own and collaborate with students to share findings with a wider audience than your class.
Guide the group in writing up several paragraphs incorporating that information and annotating the Web-based sources that provided it. You might share findings with the class as a whole, write them up on a blog, or even try posting the information as an entry on the publicly created online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Computers and the Essence of Childhood
What do you think of Lowell W. Monke's (“The Overdominance of Computers,” p. 20) assertion that “nearly everything children do today involves technologies that distance them from direct contact with the living world.” How does this square with your experience as a teacher, a parent, or an observer of young children?
Look over the six essential experiences for a healthy childhood that Monke lists on page 22. How does heavy use of the Internet and computers affect such experiences? Discuss whether digital technologies enhance or interfere with these activities. Are there ways digital technology might actually make some of these positive experiences possible?
Prescription for Professional Development
As Mary Burns (“Tools for the Mind,” p. 48) points out, when computer applications were enthusiastically introduced into classrooms in the 1990s, it was with the hope that computers would transform learning and enhance higher-order thinking skills. Yet Burns has found that computers are used most frequently in classrooms for applications that involve attractive presentation of data but fail to spur complex mental processes.
Burns presents a prescription for professional development that supports teaching with computers to enhance critical thinking, student-centered learning, and higher-level computer applications. She recommends professional training that gives teachers practice integrating computer applications into lessons as problem-solving tools rather than as “show-and-tell” tools.
Considering Burns's recommendations, reflect on any professional development experiences that you have had in the last 10 years geared toward using computers to teach. Did the training help you incorporate digital technologies into lessons in a way that promoted students' critical thinking?
