Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

4.1.11 | Unblocking social media in the classroom; affective learning is effective; kids as “makers” of their own education—and villages; gaming theories take hold at UPenn; the Quest is on in Chicago ...

“Standing in the Back, Watching the Screens”: In a recent post on the Connected Principals blog, Jonathan Martin, head of St. Gregory Prep School in Tucson, Ariz., writes about the possibilities and perils of leading a one-to-one laptop school in which there’s no attempt to block or even discourage the use of social networking and gaming. Martin is willing to endure questioning from teachers and parents because he believes the way students learn has radically changed:

We aren’t going to stop being a 1:1 school, nor am I, as principal, going to wave a magic wand and prohibit lecturing (I will keep working hard to encourage moving away from lecturing). I do try to assure teachers that they manage their classrooms, and if they wish, they can sometimes direct students to close their laptops and take notes on paper during lectures. It is sad to me, though, that when we do so, we will eliminate the incredible power for our students of “parallel processing” in their learning.

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In blocking and filtering, we are sharply limiting the positive value of social networking (for the value of this, see Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From or Lisa Nielsen’s many posts), and we are deciding that gaming has no place in learning (see Jane McGonigal’s TED talk). We are also saying, when deciding to ban “distractions,” that every minute a student is at school they are under our dictates for how they spend their time, and that we have determined there is no value for them, even in their break times, to socially network or game; this is a hard proposition for this principal to endorse.

Martin’s thoughts from the educational frontlines reflect a growing consensus that digital learning necessitates a change in the power dynamic of a school and of individual classrooms.

Don’t Worry (About Test Scores), Be Happy: Part of what’s behind giving students more of a say in the classroom is the belief that happier students are better learners. Ben Williamson writes at DMLcentral about how “‘affective’ learning is ‘effective’ learning”—and how new technologies can be the sweet spot connecting a student’s well-being with their intellectual growth:

Through participation in diverse digital cultures and networked publics, young people are now increasingly immersed in virtual worlds and social networks that are saturated with feeling, excitement, enthusiasm and enjoyment. These participatory, networked experiences are more emotionally charged, or affective. As a consequence, it’s now familiar for digital media advocates to recommend that the education system take the affective lives of youth seriously and work to make productive connections with the taught curriculum.

“Makers” of Their Own Education: Along the same lines, Susan Engel argues in the New York Times that it’s time to “Let Kids Rule the School”—getting her inspiration from students at a western Massachusetts high school who ran their own school within a school. They named it the Independent Project.

The students in the Independent Project are remarkable but not because they are exceptionally motivated or unusually talented. They are remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience, when they learn things that matter to them and when they learn together. In such a setting, school capitalizes on rather than thwarts the intensity and engagement that teenagers usually reserve for sports, protest or friendship.

And “Makers” of Their Own Villages: One way to create a sense of ownership is to connect students more intimately to the products of their learning. We have discussed “maker culture” before—and its natural affiliation with digital learning—and Julie Scelfo, also in The New York Times, has found powerful “maker” examples in woodworking programs that are emerging in elementary and middle schools across the country. 

While some parents “see woodworking as a way of counteracting the passiveness of logging on and tuning out,” the fear of many other parents and educators toward children handling knives and other potentially dangerous tools mirrors, in many ways, the fear toward those same children having the maturity to handle social networking and other digital tools.

Gever Tully, founder of the Tinkering School in Montara, California, defends children embracing the risks of woodworking because it can “help them become competent people who ‘treat failures as feedback, which they incorporate in the ongoing, evolving solution to the problem.’” Sound familiar? See below.

And the Game Goes On: The digital equivalent to woodworking might very well be video game design—and more and more educators are seeing it as a way to re-energize the classroom. We have discussed Jane McGonigal—and her famed TED talk—but it’s a testimony to the resonance her ideas are getting that her book—“Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World”—is the one everyone will be reading in the next academic year as part of the University of Pennsylvania Reading Project, which will kick-off the UPenn’s Year of Games: Body & Mind.

From Novice to Master: McGonigal’s ideas can be found in many places, including the Quest to Learn school in New York and the one planned for Chicago. We have also discussed these schools before, but more details and responses to Chicago Quest are emerging.

Katie Salen, who co-founded Quest to Learn (and who has a great piece in The Atlantic, by the way, about how game design supports curiosity and creativity), and Elizabeth Purvis, executive director of the Chicago International Charter School that is running Chicago Quest, told Joel Hood of the Chicago Tribune how the new school will stay true to the “big, important ideas” about the power of a gaming-based classroom:

Those “big, important ideas” include a unique grading system that does away with traditional A, B and C and, instead, has students competing, in video game speak, to earn levels of expertise such as “novice,” “apprentice,” “senior” and “master.” Students learn to help each other improve.

Gaming is central to the school’s makeup, instructors say, because it provides the ideal platform for creativity, imagination and critique. It also creates an arena for learning where students expect to sometimes fall short, Salen said.

“One of things about gaming is that resilience is sometimes more important than ability, and that you can have kids with high ability who aren’t that resilient and won’t try and try and try again, and you may have kids with lower ability but their resilience is high and they may master the game,” Purvis said. “What they’re really teaching these kids are 21st century collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking.”

Hearing these cutting-edge digital educators use almost identical language as the “old-fashioned” woodworking educators makes us realize that it’s not the technology that will be revolutionary but the willingness to put learning in the bodies and minds of the learners themselves.