Posts from — July 2009

While many see technology as potentially unlocking an entirely new learning environment, almost as many see it as a bane to education. In fact, it now seems that at least one college dean, regretfully, believes that technology is the root cause of a boring lecture hall.

Jeffrey Young, reporting for The Chronicle of Higher Education, notes Southern Methodist University Dean José A. Bowen has gone so far as to challenge professors to teach without any machinery. Young notes that Bowen uses a more provocative phrase to describe teaching without technology.

He wants his staff to “teach naked.”

Teaching Naked

Actually, while insisting he wants to pull the plug on all technology, it seems that Bowen is primarily trying to discourage professors from using PowerPoint. Apparently, far too many instructors are using the tool as nothing more than a slide display.

These professors appear to be using the “program as a crutch rather than using it as a creative tool” according to Young. More importantly, they are apparently boring their students to death.

Still, reading a little deeper, it does seem that Dean Bowen is requesting a tad more. He appears to be advocating for the removal of most technology from the classroom.

“Class time should be reserved for discussion,” the dean contends, “especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors.”

Is Technology the Issue?

While the idea of teaching naked initially appears focused on eliminating technology from the classroom, it is clear that the issue is not one related to machines. Instead, it is the lack of skill employed by the professor and the inability to use technology wisely.

Yet, according to Young, the “biggest resistance to Mr. Bowen’s ideas has come from students, some of whom have groused about taking a more active role during those 50-minute class periods.” Unfortunately, while the standard lecture model is generally less than riveting as an educational format, it is a model that “is pretty comfortable for both students and professors.”

In other words, a bored student is also not having any demands placed on him. That suits more than a few college attendees extremely well.

Poor Message

Ironically, while presenting his ideas at a conference that was attended by Young, Bowen offered “a philosophical argument about the best way to engage students.” In it he talked of “using podcasts and video games.”

And it also seems that when Bowen first began removing some technology from classrooms, that technology was quite old and in need of an upgrade to match today’s sophistication. Apparently, there was no funds to upgrade.

That leaves one troubled.

Dave Parry at Academhack tackles the silly assertion head on.

“…..any teaching practice requires technology. Are we to imagine that these luddite professors disallow paper and pen from class? ‘Students should not take notes in class, the technology gets in the way of discussion.’

“Are we to imagine that they do not allow books in class? ‘No books, they get in the way of discussion.’

“Books, paper, pen, desks, chalkboards, whiteboards, all of these are technologies.”

Parry goes on, leveling the fallacious notion presented by Bowen:

“Teaching without digital technology is an irresponsible pedagogy. Why? The future is digital, love it or hate it. We can argue later about whether or not this is a good or a bad thing.

“But to educate students, or to attempt to educate students without developing their digital literacy is to leave them ill prepared for their futures. You wouldn’t think of educating a student and not teaching them how to read, digital literacy is this crucial. In the future if you don’t know how to use this technology you will be ‘illiterate’.”

Furthermore,

“We can’t go back to ‘teaching the way it was,’ because this will produce a generation of students who don’t know how to critically engage with, leverage, use, resist, these very technologies. Eliminating technology produces not the affect of a more engaged literate student populous, rather it produces the reverse, an ill informed, uncritical, unengaged student populous who will become at the very best passive consumers of the technology being resisted, and at the worst its willing victims.”

We could not agree more. The idea of ‘Teaching Naked,’ either figuratively or literally, simply makes no sense.

With the passing of Frank McCourt, remembrances are understandable. His brilliant Angela Ashes, of course, marks him as a literary giant, but to many kids he was far more important, he was their teacher.

What a superb teacher he must have been. As with most of the great ones, he could create a lesson out of anything imaginable, including the art of forged notes and excuses for missing school or unfinished homework.

The true brilliance of course lay in his ability to first reach kids where they were at, then take them someplace they would never have gone on their own.

He doesn’t just get these kids to review the notes they forged, he takes them on a creative journey, having them write such notes for some of the world’s most famous historical figures.

A brilliant author.

An equally brilliant teacher.

It is one of the great moments in movie history, one of the many that involve Jack Nicholson. It is when Nicholson, playing Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, is on the witness stand and he is in the midst of a remarkable exchange with navy Lt. Daniel Kaffee, played by Tom Cruise.

Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I’m entitled.
Col. Jessep: You want answers?
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Col. Jessep: You can’t handle the truth!

That scene immediately ran through my head when I read the recent news from Reuters regarding genetic testing for the gene associated with Alzheimer’s and other memory impairments. Ultimately, if I could be tested, would I want to be and emotionally, could I handle knowing the test results?

Could I handle the truth?

Most OK With the News

It seems that some in fact could handle the results.

In what was an enormous surprise to me, the findings from a group of American researchers indicates that the majority of those people informed that they carry a genetic risk of Alzheimer’s actually took the news well. Of course, that news also came as a shock to many professionals who have long thought that most people would not be able to psychologically handle such troubling news.

The gene in question, specifically the e4 version of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, is known to be associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease. It is also associated with memory impairments in people without dementia.

In the study, people were randomly assigned to one of two groups. They either received the results of their APOE genetic test, carrier or non-carrier, or they were not provided their testing results.

Reuter’s reports:

People who were informed of their test results, the researchers found, did not have significantly more depression or anxiety than those who were not informed of their test results either immediately after receiving the test results or 1 year later. That was true regardless of whether they were in the subgroup of people found to carry the high-risk APOE e4 gene variant.

“Subjects were not immune to the negative implications of learning that they had an increased risk, but these feelings were not associated with clinically significant psychological distress,” Green and colleagues point out.

Conversely, in what would be a very intuitive result, being informed that one did not carry the Alzheimer’s-associated gene was in fact a great stress relief.

The Future

As science moves steadily forward, such testing options will soon become routine. We will undoubtedly have access to information our forefathers could never have imagined.

For those diseases where treatments are available, well, it seems like a no-brainer. Test me and when necessary, get me started on the path to wellness.

When it comes to the terrifying thought of a disease such as Alzheimer’s or dementia, one where there is currently no cure, only horrifying blackness, well I am not so sure where I stand.

I am simply not sure I could handle the truth.

According to Wikipedia, engineering is the discipline and profession of applying technical, scientific and mathematical knowledge in order to use natural laws and physical resources to help design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective.

Because of their sheer intellect and innate ability to tie theory with practice, students entering the engineering field are generally considered a special breed of people.

Within this group of students is another subset of individuals, those who show such incredible promise at a very young age that they are able to gain admittance to a even more select group, the subset selected to study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For those who yearn to learn a bit more about the young men and women who are selected to study engineering at MIT, our sister site GoCollege recently featured the amazing work of one such student, Charles Guan. The young man who is part of the groundbreaking smart cities research at the school has been seen zipping around the streets of Cambridge in his own, high powered, motorized shopping cart.

The in-depth, revealing look at the work of Guan reinforces the notion that engineers, especially MIT student engineers, are a different breed of cat.

The agenda of the Obama administration continues to cast a wide net. While much of the recent focus has been on the need for affordable healthcare, the president and his advisers are moving forward on a number of educational fronts.

A great deal of time is being spent on the notion of making higher education more accessible to Americans. That has led to new provisions regarding the repayment of federal loans (undertaken prior to Obama taking office) and to a proposed overhaul of the financial aid application form, the FAFSA.

But while those steps are significant, none are likely to be as critical for education as the administration’s recent push to overhaul how public school teachers are paid. In a major speech to the members of the National Education Association today, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insisted it was time to not only rethink teacher seniority and tenure, it was time to tie those elements and pay to teacher performance.

Federal Funding Behind the Changes

While the emphasis on performance pay is not new, Duncan’s speech today provided clear indication that the U.S. Department of Education will likely continue to put federal money on the line as part of the process for fueling changes. In a move that is actually reminiscent of past Republican party planks on education, Duncan today indicated that it was time to use accountability measures such as student data as part of the teacher evaluation process.

Duncan spoke of the need to improve the quality of the teaching in America and insisted that it was time to eliminate the prior practices that treated teachers “like interchangeable widgets.” More importantly, Duncan alluded to the current seniority and tenure rules as a system design that puts adults ahead of children.

Said Duncan of the format: “We are not only putting kids at risk, we’re putting the entire education system at risk.”

Much as those in the healthcare profession are not enamored by the recent proposals to that industry, the calls for compensation and evaluation changes for teachers were not entirely welcomed by NEA members in attendance today. According to reports, those members booed and hissed when Duncan addressed those topics during his speech.

A Major Shift for Democratic Party

In an effort to appease those members, Duncan insisted that he would seek these reforms in a collaborative way, working with teachers to implement the structural changes. That stands in stark contrast to the Bush administration and Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s, my way or the highway approach, during the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Yet the uproar may be just as strong especially since the proposed changes represent a significant shift for the party that has traditionally been most in line with educators in the past. Current teacher payment and retention policies, all previously supported by Democratic leadership, focus strictly on years of service and degree status earned. The only bonuses currently going to teachers go to those who have earned National Board certification.

And in reality, over time, Obama and Duncan may soon find they have a bigger fight on their hands as Democrats in Congress begin pushing back, taking more traditional positions on the teacher pay issue as they hear from those outraged NEA members. However, there is no doubt where Duncan and Obama are drawing the line at this point.

Both insist it is time education found ways to reward teachers according to the quality of the instruction they deliver and not the credentials they have earned.

Flickr photos courtesy of House Committee on Education and Labor and House Committee on Education and Labor.