EDU 807 - Week 4 - Interview with Megan Erickson Spring 2018 - Group 2
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In this episode of the Majority Report, Megan Erickson critiques a variety of ideas that are popular in current conversations related to educational technology. I have tried to mark a few spots in the video related to different topics, and I invite you to discuss these ideas -- in light of what you just read in the ISTE standards.
As you listen, consider what the conceptions of students (and what technology/standards) can do with/for/to students? Who benefits? Who is left behind? What is the actual purpose for using the technology?
As you read, make connections between Erickson's argument about how and why students should use technology and compare them to the ISTE Standards.
What types of changes outlined in the standards appear to be easy to make? Which changes will be more difficult? Why?
For instance, at at about 1:50, she talks about "student-centered" and "personalized" techniques and then deconstructs that argument. This reminds me of ISTE standard for students 5c, which suggests that students "Demonstrate personal responsibility for lifelong learning." At this point in the video, then, I would want to offer some connection between Erickson and ISTE, pointing out the fact that -- while ISTE may have good intentions to help students become self-motivated and independent, Erickson notes that this is an unrealistic expectation fueled by a technocratic vision of education. What, in the ed tech industry's eyes, does it mean to be "personalized?" Is personalized learning in all students' best interests? Etc...
Please offer three initial comments, as well as three replies to your classmates' comments.
In this segment, she talks about “personalized learning,” making connections to Skinner and Kahn Academy.
I love Megan’s comment about Khan academy etc as being glorified textbooks. At the end of the day these resources still promote direct instruction so where is the collaboration and developing communication skills with this type of learning. I would call this “individualized” learning rather than personalized. I am not a fan!
Jen, so glad you chimed in here. I think in the case of Ms. Erickson that anything that allowed one person to advance more quickly or higher than another it would be a problem. I think for her, collaboration is just Orwellian for an end state of equal outcomes in education. But that is just my take from listening to only two interviews of her and not reading her books. As to your point regarding personalized vs. individualized etc.., It was difficult for me to define what age the students were that were using these tools. My assumption was lower school K-4. At the lower levels, I am not certain how much “collaboration” and development of communication skills is of value. Beyond that, I wonder, if the tools are being used to allow individual progression, then student grouping by ability level, allowing teachers to use small group instructional methods which, by their very nature are more personalized almost a combination of coaching and tutoring combined with discussion. If so, doesn’t the tool offer the ability to allow the teacher to achieve your ideal within the smaller groups?
Taking your glorified textbook comment a little further. Aren’t all teachers just a glorified textbooks. All the other parts of our job is just being an aid to the student to help guide them through different assignments. Should teachers content knowledge really matter in the tech world now? Should teachers just focus on pedagogical processes and let “textbooks” deliver the content? My point is the “glorified” part of direct instruction can be extremely important. We are all just delivering info, but how that info is conveyed, even in direct instruction, can vary and be learned in varying levels of success. Some direct instruction is vital to provide the basis for the more complex thought. Having Khan as a supplementary material is a great thing and still has its role. it just isnt necessarily the savior that many would like to believe.
Hi Todd
we are so much more than glorified textbook as we bring the affective side to education. There is a time and a place for everything but I worry about the movement on the UK that promotes only direct instruction as the best way to learn. hmmmmm.
In this segment, she talks about “management.”
At this point I had to go find out a little more about this individual and listened to this interview https://soundcloud.com/deadpundits/ep-13-class-war-in-the-classroom-socialist-education-policy-w-megan-erickson-kilpatrick-kenzo-shibata with her. So largely, she is not going to like skinner’s theories or Khan Academy, private schools, one parents ability to by their kid a baby Einstein item over another who can’t, or anything that might make a distinction between the ability of students. Everything is class warfare…as a matter of fact that was the interview title I listened to. She is entitled to her opinion but she has such a large bone to pick it is difficult to take her seriously.
Hi Coop
It’s us again! I actually agree with her comments about Skinner’s box and Khan academy. The unique and special quality about teachers and teaching is that we foster inter-personal relationships and use out social skills as well as emotions. I think learning is conducive in these types of situations otherwise would all learn from machines- how boring would that be?
Well, I get to bring in my sociology background. Skinner was a behaviorist and so, obviously the essences of his teaching/learning theory is behaviorism. Skinner’s box has much less relevance than his thinking machine which is really just a fore runner to using tablets in classrooms today for that individualized learning we were discussing in our previous post. Though it is individualized I prefer to think of it as lower order learning in relation to Bloom’s Taxonomy. Which make individualized as appropriate as several other methods. Anyway, behaviorism does not negate the ability of the teacher /instructor/ trainer whichever to foster interpersonal relationships. One of the methods of instruction in behaviorism is (boiled down) explain, demonstrate, practice, perform. This method is highly interactive particularly with small groups. Other learning methods and strategy’s stem from this approach (behaviorism) First Principles, Authentic Learning, Gagnes 9 events and others.
In this segment, she talks about “charter schools.”
I found this section a little hard to follow, but I think at one point they talked about how tuition was upwards of 25% of the average families income to attend these charter schools. These schools have a lot more funding and therefore resources as far as tech and quality teachers. The costs also confine the availability to a select few of higher income families which automatically increases the likelyhood of success for the students. This pressure on families to find a way to pay for “better” education is what has been fueling the college increase in cost and will do the same for k-12 if charter schools are given public funding.
In this segment, she talks about “income and SES.”
She starts this by saying the adoption rate of technology is low because teachers can’t do it basically because of the testing regime then, says well, really the problems was how they implemented the technology, no PD and 40 min lesson on how to use it. After this she talks about the dystopian future as laid out by Skinner and the teaching machine. This is one of the few points with which I agreed with her. She furthers this with the discussion of the need for collaboration and that the use of technology is only marginally personalized in its current use. This would be easier had I picked up on the grade level. But my suspicion is that at lower grade level a non-quantifiable amount “small” is probably acceptable in "personalized"learning for students and probably reduces the instructor burden in order to achieve focused learning for groups appropriate to their ability. I don’t see that as so bad. For a brief period of time some kids are in a small group setting with the teacher receiving more personalized attention. Where’s the problem?
In this segment, she talks about “classroom design.”
Megan describes a class design that promotes no interaction- students sitting in isolation. We need to be teaching students 21st C skills and this type of classroom design is still “individualized” learning which is not necessarily a good thing. How does social constructivism fits in? Are we just trying to encourage students to absorb and regurgitate knowledge?
In my time in education, some of the “smartest” students I have known have underperformed and been unsuccessful in life out of school because they never worked on any other skills beside collecting knowledge. k-12, and in many cases colleges too, reward those who can memorize and don’t help those students to develop skills like working with others or critical thinking and creativity to use that knowledge in a productive way outside of academia. It is sad to watch someone flounder in life after achieving so much in school and told they have so much “potential” when as educators we really set them up to fail.
In this segment, she talks about “curriculum reform.”
There are a small number of people worldwide who are leading the education reform however unfortunately the majority of teachers are teaching the way they were taught. I love to use this example of how little progress has been made in education:
If a doctor from 50 years ago was to visit a hospital now, operations, procedures and equipment would be hard to recognize because of the exponential growth in technology in medicine. If a teacher from 50 years ago were to visit a classroom now what differences would they see? I think very little, sadly!
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This was really hard for me to listen to. She had made a couple of points that I thought were reasonable and I could potentially find common ground with but it seemed her outlook overall, held to a view of achieving equal outcomes in education and the division of people by classes most typically a have/have not outlook. So, it just put in the “she has an agenda” mode and was very difficult for me. She finally made this clear in the last few minutes speaking about how the Social Justice Movement being involved will make things better and gave her hope. Don’t take any of this as my being offended, I’m not. That was a tough assignment for me Doc.
I also found this challenging to listen to as the conversation kept starting and stopping with the host interrupting and focusing on points that were not interesting or relevant in my opinion. I also like how Megan brought up teaching students about social justice and how to critically think.
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