Mike suggested delaying my discussion of "problems with pilots" 'til
later, however Bill you hit exactly on the problem.
So much (new technology in) education research is "believed" to be done in
an educational vacuum.; this has two results which hit me over and over
again when I attempt meta evaluation of educational change programs
(especially qua new technologies). Pilot activity, by its very design, is
undertaken to insulate the institutions from the effects of change. New
activity systems are set up to conduct the experiment. This in turn means
that significant and important issues relating to change and the
institution are never tested. issues of interface with existing activity
systems (for instance) are rarely tested. What is usually tested are
simple output measures (student satisfaction, learning gains etc)that are
rarely convincing << my most recent review of a journal article ignored
their own data showing that students didn't like going to the library more
than they disliked using the www!>>.
This lack of conviction in such results leads to the second issue I
usually encounter. there is an implicit faith in the hearts of many
learning technology gurus that the technology is "good", that the world is
changing and that the technology will change the world. However this is
seldom well articulated and the ways whereby this change is going to
happen is rarely articulated. In turn this lack of articulation makes it
sound like an "act of faith" and also holds little and leads to (as Bill
says):-
>But this kind of information has been seldom shown to be sufficient for
>teachers and administrators to effectively ado pt a new approach."
What impresses me about the synthesis of CHAT and the work of Bateson is
that it helps me formulate ideas which can begin to explain how technology
will change what happens: it not only changes what happens in classrooms
(ie how we might teach) but fundamentally how we learn.
The keyword that comes from reading the Logical levels of learning in SEM
over and over is the word "context". What has made a difference form
acting at time a to acting at time b is context, or recognition of context
or the ability of change context/see beyond current contexts. Thus the
presentation of technology changing the context in which thinking/learning
takes place begins to provide a foundation for building a theory which is :
>a consistent treatment of how technology and people come together in a
>classroom to enable new sets of actions, and what is the role of
>everything "outside" the classroom
.
Not is what we learn about and what we learn with is different , but it
becomes possible to explain how we learn and know is different.
Martin
"Remember children, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people"
Mr Garrisson, Southpark Elementary
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